5 ms·

I disagree with this article almost entirely. Yes, labor jobs are on the decline, but service jobs are staying steady if not increasing. The "demand for uncondi

I disagree with this article almost entirely. Yes, labor jobs are on the decline, but service jobs are staying steady if not increasing. The "demand for unconditional basic income" is a joke, yes it's possible to attempt to initiate something where every person receives $10,000 a year, but the money has to come from somewhere. If the money for this basic income comes from taxation, then both the government loses net income and the corporations lose as well. You can think about it an entropy or friction, there is always a cost for doing something. If corporations essentially pay their customers (via the government) to buy their goods the world would eventually collapse. If the money for basic income comes from printing money (or equivalent) it devalues to insignificant amounts too quick to do virtually anything with it. This idea is a fantasy, perhaps the population of the world needs to DECREASE to maintain its stability in a technological world. If there are less jobs, maybe there's less need for humans.. If this is the case, perhaps it is time to move to Mars or something, like a cell that has replicated enough DNA/organelles to split in two and create a new daughter cell. You cannot suitably hold by basic unconditional income. Any college economics class/text book would probably make this much more clearer than I, but the "trends," conclusions and potential sources for the basic income would fall apart under close inspection. For example, if the need for labor decreases, the cost of labor decreases (the net company expense), therefore people may have worse pay, but also the products are cheaper. The point is basic economic theory define this as an impossibility.

SapphireSun 13y ago
300,000,000 people in the US. You give them each 10,000 dollars. That's 3T dollars, or roughly the size of the existing federal budget (~3.5T). US GDP is ~16T. It's a lot, but that's not beyond the pale of possibility, and the poorest people will spend that money nearly instantly, reving the economy and making the world a little bit better for everyone. "If corporations essentially pay their customers (via the government) to buy their goods the world would eventually collapse." I feel like this betrays a misunderstanding of how money works. First of all, 10k per person isn't enough to create an extreme situation. Secondly, it is the circulation of money that drives progress. If companies didn't disperse the money they accumulate somehow, the economy would stall. On a more noble level, giving people the option to not work is simply removing additional coercive elements from society. People should be free to choose what they wish to do with their lives. 10k isn't enough to remove the incentive to better yourself, but it is enough of a cushion so that you don't need to submit to awful situations simply to survive. If janitorial tasks become in high demand, they will pay appropriately or design machines to do it - just like everything else.
- lettergram 13y ago
  "Money" (or any currency) is just a means of trading one good for another, if there are no goods being transferred via the currency it cannot be considered a currency. That being said, if you simply hand out 3 trillion a year then you would be effectively taxing everyone by (3T/total wealth) then redistributing it does nothing because you've also taxed EVERYONE by that same amount. To follow up my argument: 3T/16T is 25% that would be the inflation rate per year, of course each year it would increase as follows: (3 * 1.25)/(16 * 1.25) (3 * 1.25 * 1.25)/(16 * 1.25 * 1.25) etc. Of course this doesn't take into consideration the approximate 1% growth or what ever it currently is. The point remains that the redistribution of wealth will decrease the amount the currency is worth. Currency that is handed out WITHOUT something being traded for it does not apply to "currency circulation." Instead what you have is a situation where every person is taxed at about 25% and receives slightly less than that tax in return (which was used to disburse the collected taxes). This is why NO COUNTRY ON EARTH gives out tax money to all of its citizens. It may on the other hand provide welfare checks to its needy, which again deflates the wealth of others (by inflating the currency), but keeps those poor from starving. Hopefully my explanation is somewhat sufficient...
  - SapphireSun 13y ago
    I do agree that it may cause some inflation (I'm not sure how much). I don't think those computations are correct though (3/16 = 18.75, not 25 for example). Inflation is measured as the cost for a basket of goods. Simply giving lots of people more money would not change the cost structure immediately. It would provide a larger consumer pool that companies can compete to server. The effects are complex and it's not immediately clear that inflation would spike to sky high levels, though a rise in inflation does occur when there is more trade because people are getting higher wages. A little bit of inflation is a positive indicator. However, redistributing definitely does have an economic effect because richer people has an increase propensity to save. When you take 10k that they weren't using and give it to someone poor, that money starts flowing immediately. An analogy would be something like, say you have a lake with some water seeping out from a small waterfall. If you go and take 10,000 liters and put it in a dry lake (ignoring soil absorption :P), that water will start flowing net much faster since you now have two waterfalls going. I'm not dismissing your inflation argument, I just anticipate that the magnitude of the effect is small (or at least able to be dealt with with monetary policy) compared to the benefit of giving people (especially poor people) some money. As an aside, part of the reason for doing this is not economic (assuming that inflation does not outpace reasonable technical measures to oppose it). The real question is are we rich enough to afford taking basic care of all of our citizens, regardless of where they started in life? It's a question of justice. We may not have reached that point yet, but I think it's definitely arguable that we have. You may reach a different conclusion, but ask yourself, if you were teleported outside of time and space, and didn't know if you were going to be rich or poor. What sort of system would you advocate for? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance We may not agree on the conclusions, but my position is that we should not let people starve or suffer if we can afford not to. Secondly, we should allow people the ability to choose their life circumstances to the best of their abilities. 10k a year removes many coercive influences and allows them to eat and sleep in safety.
rndmize 13y ago
> The point is basic economic theory define this as an impossibility. Given that economic theory is often wildly divorced from reality, I don't really see a problem with this. Snark aside, I don't see how service jobs are safe from automation. I've already seen videos of a robot that prepares your ice cream and puts it in a cup; I've interacted with automated checkouts; I've bought and had things shipped to my door (soon to be shipped with less human involvement than ever when self-driving vehicles get big) with no human interaction. Education is going through a phase of experimentation with teaching at massive scale (all the current ed startups, kahn, etc.) which is only going to get worse as we find ways to integrate teaching and game principles (fast feedback loops for faster learning, pacing adjustment based on student, learn by doing rather than hearing, etc.) I don't see how if corps indirectly pay their customers to buy things this is going to cause the world to collapse. An economy relies on the flow of money between parties to exist; if we have full automation, and all the money gathers in the hands of the people producing things, we have no economy because no one can buy anything (except the top .001% who have everything). There simply isn't any way around this except to tax and redistribute the money. There's already mountains of friction in terms of bureaucracy, regulation, etc., and this has hardly stopped the economy from moving, so I just don't understand your point there. And really, advocating a decrease in population for stability in a technological world? What on earth? Technology is what allows for MORE population, for more people to have food, places to live, and all the rest. The entire point of all the technology we've developed is to make human lives easier and better... but you think it means there's less need for humans? The logic astounds me.
wutbrodo 13y ago
Wow, this is completely wrong. The idea that "there is always a cost for doing something" is trotted out so often, and almost every time, there's ignorance of the fact that the intent is for the benefit to be higher than the cost. Enforcing contracts has a "cost", maintaining a police and legal system has a "cost", a road/highway system has a cost, maintaining a currency has a cost, regulating food so there's no arsenic in it has a cost, etc etc etc. The entropy and friction created by these things are considered to be far below the benefits to economic efficiency (lowering barriers to trade, reducing non-productive expenditure on security, etc). Saying that introducing friction into an economy causes the world to collapse and completely ignoring the potential for economic gains in efficiency is beyond ludicrous. I may be misreading that last sentence, but luckily the other possible interpretation is equally ludicrous. The idea that corporations paying their consumers who then buy their goods will cause the world to collapse is even more ridiculous than the previous claim. How do you think the economy functions exactly? The wages that employers pay to their employees ARE the money they use to buy products from employers (whether theirs or someone else's). "Any college economics textbook" can tell you this. In fact, if you partition each person's wages into subsistence wages (i.e. basic income) and "extra" wages, corporations are already doing exactly what you're claiming will cause the world to collapse. The only difference is that right now it's being done horribly inefficiently, and the gaps in coverage (unemployed people) have an even more inefficient system servicing them, welfare.
127001brewer 13y ago
I have disagreements with parts of the article, including the following: The result is that young people are not being allowed to grow up. In the 1960s the average first-time house buyer was 24 years old, and as late as 2002 it was 28. The average is now 37. I have disagreement with the above because, generally, "young people" are delaying getting married and having children [1] as well as purchasing housing. And, for some, this is due to greater economic opportunities, especially for women. Also, there is a type of "basic income" that is surprisingly increasing: disability.[2] [1] http://nationalmarriageproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/KnotYet-FinalForWeb.pdf http://nationalmarriageproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/0... [2] http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
TeMPOraL 13y ago
> The point is basic economic theory define this as an impossibility. Because "basic economic theory" goes out of the window when technology starts doing everything for you. You can't escape from labor being free to services, because services are next for machines to eat. And after them are knowledge workers. The pillar of our economics is scarcity. Money is needed to allocate scarce resources, because there is in general always more demand than supply. But the moment "resources" (food, manufacturing, energy) gets dirt cheap, the whole concept loses sense.

SapphireSun 13y ago

300,000,000 people in the US. You give them each 10,000 dollars. That's 3T dollars, or roughly the size of the existing federal budget (~3.5T). US GDP is ~16T. It's a lot, but that's not beyond the pale of possibility, and the poorest people will spend that money nearly instantly, reving the economy and making the world a little bit better for everyone. "If corporations essentially pay their customers (via the government) to buy their goods the world would eventually collapse." I feel like this betrays a misunderstanding of how money works. First of all, 10k per person isn't enough to create an extreme situation. Secondly, it is the circulation of money that drives progress. If companies didn't disperse the money they accumulate somehow, the economy would stall. On a more noble level, giving people the option to not work is simply removing additional coercive elements from society. People should be free to choose what they wish to do with their lives. 10k isn't enough to remove the incentive to better yourself, but it is enough of a cushion so that you don't need to submit to awful situations simply to survive. If janitorial tasks become in high demand, they will pay appropriately or design machines to do it - just like everything else.

lettergram 13y ago
"Money" (or any currency) is just a means of trading one good for another, if there are no goods being transferred via the currency it cannot be considered a currency. That being said, if you simply hand out 3 trillion a year then you would be effectively taxing everyone by (3T/total wealth) then redistributing it does nothing because you've also taxed EVERYONE by that same amount. To follow up my argument: 3T/16T is 25% that would be the inflation rate per year, of course each year it would increase as follows: (3 * 1.25)/(16 * 1.25) (3 * 1.25 * 1.25)/(16 * 1.25 * 1.25) etc. Of course this doesn't take into consideration the approximate 1% growth or what ever it currently is. The point remains that the redistribution of wealth will decrease the amount the currency is worth. Currency that is handed out WITHOUT something being traded for it does not apply to "currency circulation." Instead what you have is a situation where every person is taxed at about 25% and receives slightly less than that tax in return (which was used to disburse the collected taxes). This is why NO COUNTRY ON EARTH gives out tax money to all of its citizens. It may on the other hand provide welfare checks to its needy, which again deflates the wealth of others (by inflating the currency), but keeps those poor from starving. Hopefully my explanation is somewhat sufficient...
- SapphireSun 13y ago
  I do agree that it may cause some inflation (I'm not sure how much). I don't think those computations are correct though (3/16 = 18.75, not 25 for example). Inflation is measured as the cost for a basket of goods. Simply giving lots of people more money would not change the cost structure immediately. It would provide a larger consumer pool that companies can compete to server. The effects are complex and it's not immediately clear that inflation would spike to sky high levels, though a rise in inflation does occur when there is more trade because people are getting higher wages. A little bit of inflation is a positive indicator. However, redistributing definitely does have an economic effect because richer people has an increase propensity to save. When you take 10k that they weren't using and give it to someone poor, that money starts flowing immediately. An analogy would be something like, say you have a lake with some water seeping out from a small waterfall. If you go and take 10,000 liters and put it in a dry lake (ignoring soil absorption :P), that water will start flowing net much faster since you now have two waterfalls going. I'm not dismissing your inflation argument, I just anticipate that the magnitude of the effect is small (or at least able to be dealt with with monetary policy) compared to the benefit of giving people (especially poor people) some money. As an aside, part of the reason for doing this is not economic (assuming that inflation does not outpace reasonable technical measures to oppose it). The real question is are we rich enough to afford taking basic care of all of our citizens, regardless of where they started in life? It's a question of justice. We may not have reached that point yet, but I think it's definitely arguable that we have. You may reach a different conclusion, but ask yourself, if you were teleported outside of time and space, and didn't know if you were going to be rich or poor. What sort of system would you advocate for? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance We may not agree on the conclusions, but my position is that we should not let people starve or suffer if we can afford not to. Secondly, we should allow people the ability to choose their life circumstances to the best of their abilities. 10k a year removes many coercive influences and allows them to eat and sleep in safety.

rndmize 13y ago

> The point is basic economic theory define this as an impossibility. Given that economic theory is often wildly divorced from reality, I don't really see a problem with this. Snark aside, I don't see how service jobs are safe from automation. I've already seen videos of a robot that prepares your ice cream and puts it in a cup; I've interacted with automated checkouts; I've bought and had things shipped to my door (soon to be shipped with less human involvement than ever when self-driving vehicles get big) with no human interaction. Education is going through a phase of experimentation with teaching at massive scale (all the current ed startups, kahn, etc.) which is only going to get worse as we find ways to integrate teaching and game principles (fast feedback loops for faster learning, pacing adjustment based on student, learn by doing rather than hearing, etc.) I don't see how if corps indirectly pay their customers to buy things this is going to cause the world to collapse. An economy relies on the flow of money between parties to exist; if we have full automation, and all the money gathers in the hands of the people producing things, we have no economy because no one can buy anything (except the top .001% who have everything). There simply isn't any way around this except to tax and redistribute the money. There's already mountains of friction in terms of bureaucracy, regulation, etc., and this has hardly stopped the economy from moving, so I just don't understand your point there. And really, advocating a decrease in population for stability in a technological world? What on earth? Technology is what allows for MORE population, for more people to have food, places to live, and all the rest. The entire point of all the technology we've developed is to make human lives easier and better... but you think it means there's less need for humans? The logic astounds me.

wutbrodo 13y ago

Wow, this is completely wrong. The idea that "there is always a cost for doing something" is trotted out so often, and almost every time, there's ignorance of the fact that the intent is for the benefit to be higher than the cost. Enforcing contracts has a "cost", maintaining a police and legal system has a "cost", a road/highway system has a cost, maintaining a currency has a cost, regulating food so there's no arsenic in it has a cost, etc etc etc. The entropy and friction created by these things are considered to be far below the benefits to economic efficiency (lowering barriers to trade, reducing non-productive expenditure on security, etc). Saying that introducing friction into an economy causes the world to collapse and completely ignoring the potential for economic gains in efficiency is beyond ludicrous. I may be misreading that last sentence, but luckily the other possible interpretation is equally ludicrous. The idea that corporations paying their consumers who then buy their goods will cause the world to collapse is even more ridiculous than the previous claim. How do you think the economy functions exactly? The wages that employers pay to their employees ARE the money they use to buy products from employers (whether theirs or someone else's). "Any college economics textbook" can tell you this. In fact, if you partition each person's wages into subsistence wages (i.e. basic income) and "extra" wages, corporations are already doing exactly what you're claiming will cause the world to collapse. The only difference is that right now it's being done horribly inefficiently, and the gaps in coverage (unemployed people) have an even more inefficient system servicing them, welfare.

127001brewer 13y ago

I have disagreements with parts of the article, including the following: The result is that young people are not being allowed to grow up. In the 1960s the average first-time house buyer was 24 years old, and as late as 2002 it was 28. The average is now 37. I have disagreement with the above because, generally, "young people" are delaying getting married and having children [1] as well as purchasing housing. And, for some, this is due to greater economic opportunities, especially for women. Also, there is a type of "basic income" that is surprisingly increasing: disability.[2] [1] http://nationalmarriageproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/KnotYet-FinalForWeb.pdf http://nationalmarriageproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/0... [2] http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

TeMPOraL 13y ago

> The point is basic economic theory define this as an impossibility. Because "basic economic theory" goes out of the window when technology starts doing everything for you. You can't escape from labor being free to services, because services are next for machines to eat. And after them are knowledge workers. The pillar of our economics is scarcity. Money is needed to allocate scarce resources, because there is in general always more demand than supply. But the moment "resources" (food, manufacturing, energy) gets dirt cheap, the whole concept loses sense.