4 ms·

That's more than a wee bit different than the parent's scenario. It's about interaction with the formal economy. Making a complicated camera or the social netw

by scarmig 14y ago

That's more than a wee bit different than the parent's scenario. It's about interaction with the formal economy. Making a complicated camera or the social network to share its photos might not be necessary for survival, but it is the result of a series of conscious economic decisions to satisfy some human desires by all parties involved. Unemployment simply means someone providing nothing in that sphere. Interestingly, it's happening even now. Much of the apparent decline in unemployment seems to be coming from people dropping outside of the workforce permanently, not people having their desire to participate in the economy satisfied. What happens if/when this trend continues to 60%? 50%? 40%? My ideal solution would be a basic income guarantee and a cultural acceptance of people working only in the gray or uncompensated sectors, but we'll see if the political impetus for that ever occurs. Edited to add: well, apparently author leads up to the same suggested solution I do. A thousand jackass points for me =)

jcampbell1 14y ago
> My ideal solution would be a basic income guarantee A bit of Econ 101. Structural unemployment is caused by income guarantees and minimum wages. This is why we don't do that, and instead use programs like EITC (a wage multiplier for low income people). Your ideal solution has been tried. It sucks, and we have moved on to better solutions to income allocation. I sincerely hope we move forward with larger income leveling policies, but I am grateful you are not designing them.
- _delirium 14y ago
  Denmark has a $20/hr minimum wage, and a nearly impossible to fall out of last-resort welfare payment (the kontanthjælp, "cash assistance") which provides a minimum income. And yet, it has quite low structural unemployment. What those policies did do is destroy the low end of the labor market, the poorly paid dishwasher jobs supporting cheap restaurants. So what? That forced them to move upmarket. Denmark doesn't have $6 hamburger joints; instead, it has $12 hamburger joints. But it doesn't matter. The people who might be most impacted by that are precisely the people who now make the higher minimum incomes: when your income as a burger-joint dishwasher is triple what it is in the USA ($20/hr vs. $7/hr minimum wage, not to mention healthcare), you can certainly afford a doubling of the prices, and still come out ahead. Now as a middle-class professional, it's probably bad for me: in the U.S. I could make a bunch of money and buy $6 hamburgers, while in Denmark I make a bunch of money and buy $12 hamburgers. But I can easily afford them either way, so I don't think social policy should be based on what benefits me.
  - jcampbell1 14y ago
    How does Denmark keep people out? There must be a million Poles banging on the doors for $20/hr dishwashing jobs. I suppose those jobs are only open to those that have the right blood line. How is there not a massive black-market for labor?
    - _delirium 14y ago
      There are indeed a number of people moving to Denmark. For well-educated people, the job market is particularly lucrative: Maersk can't find qualified office workers fast enough. For blue-collar jobs, though, language can be a significant barrier: many minimum-wage jobs require fluency in Danish, or at least in a related language such as Swedish. You can have any blood you want, but you've got to speak fluent Danish, which most foreigners don't...
      - jcampbell1 14y ago
        Interesting. The language barrier seems to be higher than our fence.
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      The teamsters, carpenters and a few food sectors are crying over cheap Polish labor every time they can, but hamburger joints can't hire people who can't speak Danish (because the place is essentially automated except with customer interaction). Lego is moving some of the production of Lego out of the country.
  - btilly 14y ago
    The Danish economy is heavily subsidized by abundant oil revenue, surprisingly wisely managed. What works there won't necessarily work elsewhere. (That said, I do not see a problem with a guaranteed basic income..when people can make more easily.)
    - _delirium 14y ago
      Denmark does not have significant oil reserves; you may be thinking of Norway. The Danish economy is based on some weird mixture of: shipping (Maersk), entertainment (Lego), brewing (Carlsberg), and banking (Danske Bank et al.). There is a goal of making wind turbines a major industrial sector as well.
- scarmig 14y ago
  A bit of civility, please? I'm sure you're sure you're the smartest man in the room, but don't go around spewing insults about topics you seem to have only a passing familiarity with. For one, it's not ever been really tried to my knowledge. Some limited versions have been, and they were actually relatively successful, but hardly dispositive. For two, basic income guarantees have plenty of theoretical benefits over EITC. The EITC creates some steep disincentives to work at certain points in the income spectrum, at some points topping a 100% marginal tax rate combined with other benefits, effectively trapping people in a low-income trough they can't escape from. The unconditional basic income guarantee doesn't face this issue: you don't have drastic marginal tax rates anywhere, as it's actually one of the only proposals that make a flat income tax consistent with a humane welfare state. Overall, though, you comment betrays a lack of understanding about what can cause unemployment. It's deeply lacking in theoretical backing. Just to stretch your mind a bit: one way to think about horses in the economy is that eventually they became mostly unemployed. Your statement is incapable of explaining that. At some point, the costs of employing and managing the worst employees in any sector will be greater than the capital costs of replacing them. And then they will be. Might be in a decade, might be in a century, but at some point that has to happen, unless you consider human labor inherently magical. And after that every advance of technology will make that group of too-expensive-to-employ workers ever larger.
  - jcampbell1 14y ago
    > A bit of civility, please? Sure. I'll let you start: > I'm sure you're sure you're the smartest man in the room > don't go around spewing insults about topics you seem to have only a passing familiarity with. > you comment betrays a lack of understanding about what can cause unemployment. Nice to meet you Pot.
- eru 14y ago
  > Your ideal solution has been tried. Who has tried basic income and failed?
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    Canada tried it in a single town once. On the one hand, the Mincome experiment ran vastly over its budget. On the other hand, it monumentally decreased the symptoms of poverty and improved living conditions, while turning out to only reduce people's "practiced work-ethic" (ie: real work-hours) by 5%.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    Mincome in Manitoba. I don't read too much into it and think it's pretty debatable that it failed, but one thing it certainly did show is that people wouldn't all suddenly stop working. IIRC only one group of people actually decreased how much they worked significantly: teenage mothers. The modal response was continuing to work and using the extra money for extra consumption.
    - padraigm 14y ago
      The Mincome experiment only failed in the sense that despite proving the benefits of a minimum income, it hasn't caught on very quickly elsewhere.

by scarmig 14y ago

jcampbell1 14y ago

> My ideal solution would be a basic income guarantee A bit of Econ 101. Structural unemployment is caused by income guarantees and minimum wages. This is why we don't do that, and instead use programs like EITC (a wage multiplier for low income people). Your ideal solution has been tried. It sucks, and we have moved on to better solutions to income allocation. I sincerely hope we move forward with larger income leveling policies, but I am grateful you are not designing them.

_delirium 14y ago
Denmark has a $20/hr minimum wage, and a nearly impossible to fall out of last-resort welfare payment (the kontanthjælp, "cash assistance") which provides a minimum income. And yet, it has quite low structural unemployment. What those policies did do is destroy the low end of the labor market, the poorly paid dishwasher jobs supporting cheap restaurants. So what? That forced them to move upmarket. Denmark doesn't have $6 hamburger joints; instead, it has $12 hamburger joints. But it doesn't matter. The people who might be most impacted by that are precisely the people who now make the higher minimum incomes: when your income as a burger-joint dishwasher is triple what it is in the USA ($20/hr vs. $7/hr minimum wage, not to mention healthcare), you can certainly afford a doubling of the prices, and still come out ahead. Now as a middle-class professional, it's probably bad for me: in the U.S. I could make a bunch of money and buy $6 hamburgers, while in Denmark I make a bunch of money and buy $12 hamburgers. But I can easily afford them either way, so I don't think social policy should be based on what benefits me.
- jcampbell1 14y ago
  How does Denmark keep people out? There must be a million Poles banging on the doors for $20/hr dishwashing jobs. I suppose those jobs are only open to those that have the right blood line. How is there not a massive black-market for labor?
  - _delirium 14y ago
    There are indeed a number of people moving to Denmark. For well-educated people, the job market is particularly lucrative: Maersk can't find qualified office workers fast enough. For blue-collar jobs, though, language can be a significant barrier: many minimum-wage jobs require fluency in Danish, or at least in a related language such as Swedish. You can have any blood you want, but you've got to speak fluent Danish, which most foreigners don't...
    - jcampbell1 14y ago
      Interesting. The language barrier seems to be higher than our fence.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    The teamsters, carpenters and a few food sectors are crying over cheap Polish labor every time they can, but hamburger joints can't hire people who can't speak Danish (because the place is essentially automated except with customer interaction). Lego is moving some of the production of Lego out of the country.
- btilly 14y ago
  The Danish economy is heavily subsidized by abundant oil revenue, surprisingly wisely managed. What works there won't necessarily work elsewhere. (That said, I do not see a problem with a guaranteed basic income..when people can make more easily.)
  - _delirium 14y ago
    Denmark does not have significant oil reserves; you may be thinking of Norway. The Danish economy is based on some weird mixture of: shipping (Maersk), entertainment (Lego), brewing (Carlsberg), and banking (Danske Bank et al.). There is a goal of making wind turbines a major industrial sector as well.
scarmig 14y ago
A bit of civility, please? I'm sure you're sure you're the smartest man in the room, but don't go around spewing insults about topics you seem to have only a passing familiarity with. For one, it's not ever been really tried to my knowledge. Some limited versions have been, and they were actually relatively successful, but hardly dispositive. For two, basic income guarantees have plenty of theoretical benefits over EITC. The EITC creates some steep disincentives to work at certain points in the income spectrum, at some points topping a 100% marginal tax rate combined with other benefits, effectively trapping people in a low-income trough they can't escape from. The unconditional basic income guarantee doesn't face this issue: you don't have drastic marginal tax rates anywhere, as it's actually one of the only proposals that make a flat income tax consistent with a humane welfare state. Overall, though, you comment betrays a lack of understanding about what can cause unemployment. It's deeply lacking in theoretical backing. Just to stretch your mind a bit: one way to think about horses in the economy is that eventually they became mostly unemployed. Your statement is incapable of explaining that. At some point, the costs of employing and managing the worst employees in any sector will be greater than the capital costs of replacing them. And then they will be. Might be in a decade, might be in a century, but at some point that has to happen, unless you consider human labor inherently magical. And after that every advance of technology will make that group of too-expensive-to-employ workers ever larger.
- jcampbell1 14y ago
  > A bit of civility, please? Sure. I'll let you start: > I'm sure you're sure you're the smartest man in the room > don't go around spewing insults about topics you seem to have only a passing familiarity with. > you comment betrays a lack of understanding about what can cause unemployment. Nice to meet you Pot.
eru 14y ago
> Your ideal solution has been tried. Who has tried basic income and failed?
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Canada tried it in a single town once. On the one hand, the Mincome experiment ran vastly over its budget. On the other hand, it monumentally decreased the symptoms of poverty and improved living conditions, while turning out to only reduce people's "practiced work-ethic" (ie: real work-hours) by 5%.
- scarmig 14y ago
  Mincome in Manitoba. I don't read too much into it and think it's pretty debatable that it failed, but one thing it certainly did show is that people wouldn't all suddenly stop working. IIRC only one group of people actually decreased how much they worked significantly: teenage mothers. The modal response was continuing to work and using the extra money for extra consumption.
  - padraigm 14y ago
    The Mincome experiment only failed in the sense that despite proving the benefits of a minimum income, it hasn't caught on very quickly elsewhere.