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I don't understand how people oppose unconditional basic income without also opposing the fact that automation decreases the amount of working hours available f
by zxcdw 13y ago
I don't understand how people oppose unconditional basic income without also opposing the fact that automation decreases the amount of working hours available for a person(or in other words, the amount of jobs), and thus decreases the amount of income per person, while maintaining productivity stable if not increasing it, thus making all sorts of goods cheaper.
Someone enlighten me. These discussions always seem so damn complex and heated for some reason. What am I missing, when I believe that UBI/BIG(basic income guarantee) is the future, and that in future people don't need to work 40 hours a week?
Before anyone counters with saying that "people don't need to work and thus just leech the system", I will cover this now. People will need to work, because UBI/BIG will not cover anything but the very basic income. This means cheap housing, cheap food, clothing and whatever else is considered basic income. Perhaps this would be something like 800 USD per month, or 200 per week, give or take some. People would most definitely want to have more income, and as such they would want to work. A full 40 hour week? Perhaps not -- maybe 20 or 30 hours a week. Whatever they feel fit best for them.
(note that I live in a country with the nordic welfare system, where most people live on a rent rather than own a house, which perhaps makes a difference, or then not. I don't know, hence why I discuss.)
- cheald 13y agoAutomation reduces costs and prices, creates new job fields, and permits for specialization. It's been happening since the cotton gin, and is a basic staple of an advancing society. We're able to sit on our butts in our chairs and make our livings punching keys on a little rectangle while staring at another little glowing rectangle because our societies are highly specialized and highly automated, making it economically viable for us to purchase and consume goods produced two thousand miles away, rather than having to spend our time tending our gardens so we can make sure that we have food to eat this week. Bemoaning automation as the death of the common man's ability to feed himself is just as silly as it was in Eli Whitney's time. People will only need to stop working when automation reaches the point that their needs are met without it imposing a burden of work on anyone else. Of course, this will be the point at which the robot revolution will begin, and humanity is doomed.
- rbellio 13y agoI would just point out that from what I understand, automation isn't exactly what people outside of manufacturing/engineering believe it to be. There are still a lot of jobs that are not and will never be automated in the manufacturing industry. The cost of labor still ends up being cheaper than the design and maintenance of a machine smart enough to do fabrication and assembly. I wish I could find a percentage of manufacturing down with automation, but I would guess that a fair number of things are still built by hand. I've taken a fair number of factory tours outside of the automotive industry and am always amazed to see skilled laborers at work.
- zxcdw 13y ago> Automation reduces costs and prices, creates new job fields, and permits for specialization. Specializing(education) takes time and effort. At what kind of rate can the technology make jobs obsolete that thesociety and workforce can keep up? As far as I am aware, technological progress is exponential, meaning that it accelerates at an accelerating pace. As such, it's inevitable that at some point people and the society as a whole can't keep up anymore. At the point where it's simply easier to use machines, if not basic income or some other way of more or less equal resource distribution, what do you do?
- TeMPOraL 13y ago> Automation reduces costs and prices, creates new job fields, and permits for specialization. Currently automation has reached the point in which it replaces lower-skilled jobs by higher-skilled jobs. Many people who worked in the former will not be able to work in the latter (mostly because it takes years to specialize), so for them, those jobs are as good as gone.
- cheald 13y agoDo you have any particular examples we could analyze? Yes, you're right, the jobs that robots can do better are gone, but any improvement in efficiency in an industry generally results in lower prices and an increase in job creation around that industry. Again, in the case of the cotton gin, while the gin itself reduced the need for manual labor to pick seeds from cotton, it blew the demand for labor to plant and harvest cotton through the roof, and the improved output of these larger plantations resulted in the creation of shipping ports and explosive growth in the textile industry. In fact, this is widely considered to be a socially negative effect of the cotton gin, since it dramatically increased the demand for labor, which was then filled by slavery. That was obviously not desirable, but the core point I'm trying to make there is that eliminating all those slaves' jobs resulted in a dramatically larger demand for labor in the supply chain. Just because the old job is gone doesn't mean there isn't a new one to be done, and improvements in efficiency and costs of production result in economic growth that have positive impacts all over related markets.
- jsnk 13y agoHistorically speaking, automation in various fields greatly increased number of jobs, productivity and quality of life.
- jotm 13y agoBut that curve will start going downwards as soon as machines can fully replace people and most countries start using said machines. It's kind of like slavery - you could have 1000 working citizens do the work of 50,000 people (because slaves were basically "free labor", like a robotic arm is nowadays)... Except slavery went away (thankfully), and automation will not (hopefully)...
- TeMPOraL 13y agoBut it also systematically replaces low-skilled jobs with high-skilled ones. You can't expect a low-wage factory worker to change into control engineer overnight, nor a clerk will be able to program automated checkout machines. Nowdays new jobs are simply not accessible to the people who get replaced. I think what people don't get when discussing it is that historical (XIX century) examples don't apply because our computer-based automation is something different than their mechanical automation; robots can do any low-skilled thing humans can, which wasn't the case during Industrial Revolution. It's not just about doing stuff faster.
- prostoalex 13y agoI think the discussion is more about long-term change than short-term. I'm sure operators of horse feeding stations had similar arguments when Model T came around, but you don't find many people in that occupation nowadays.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoWell, that's kind of my point, isn't it? Except the meaning of "long-term" changes fast as the progress of technology accelerates.
- cookingrobot 13y agoI think that giving only "basic" income is a bad stopping point. If the only thing most people can afford to buy is basics of food and shelter, then there won't even be any jobs for them if they want a better life than that. If instead the basic income allows for discretionary spending, then there would be a huge market of consumers to serve, and jobs would appear to serve them. Some people will be willing to work occasionally so that they can have even more spending money for other things.
- jotm 13y agoI believe the problem lies in where exactly do you get the money for BI? Who pays to provide it for millions of people - obviously you can't tax the BI itself, so what's left is the rich and corporations, which incidentally are the ruling class at the moment and will most likely oppose BI. Also, health care will still need to be covered separately. BI is a great concept, and I hope some country will make it work, but it's not going to be the US, that's for sure.
- ihateloggingin 13y agoThere will be a segment of the ruling class who support it because they don't want to be removed from power. There will also be the possibility of removing the ruling class from power in order to implement it.
- Tichy 13y agoThe statement "people need to work 40 hours" is already obviously false. There are lots of people who don't need to work, because they already have more money than they could ever spend.
- zxcdw 13y agoOn which fields is it obviously false that the status quo is to work 40'ish hours per week?
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- Tichy 13y agoYou are rephrasing what I said in the wrong way. I didn't make a comment on the status quo, just on the notion that everybody has to work 40 hours.
- ihateloggingin 13y agoTechnically correct is the worst kind of correct.
- Tichy 13y agoWhat is your point and/or problem?
- talmand 13y agoNot that I'm advocating, but the Fair Tax Plan (US) has a similar notion in terms of a rebate to cover the basic necessities. But anytime you have a discussion about taking by force from one group to give to another, it gets complicated and heated rather quickly. Well, maybe that's different from culture to culture.
- harryh 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
- prostoalex 13y agoSo a few basic strategies for maximizing UBI: 1) Get educated, find a job, work. 2) Produce more children, pool financial benefits that a single household is eligible for. 3) Vote for politicians who promise to increase UBI. Long-term which option do you think the populace will go for?
- zxcdw 13y agoFirst one. I would assume UBI is only available to adults. The third one isn't really much of an option since it assumes that politics is more black and white than what it actually is. 50 shades of grey and counting. And of course people realize that UBI has it's drawbacks too.
- prostoalex 13y agoThat goes against the principle of requiring only residency or citizenship, why would you kick children out of it? Wouldn't you then need to provide a separate welfare program for needy children?
- zxcdw 13y agoI am not sure -- perhaps if the proposal is that it's directly based on only the residency or citizenship then children too would have it, although I would find it somewhat questionable if it is needed(because it's the parents who need the money, not the children themselves for example). Perhaps the system could work better if it was for adults only, or that the money goes to adults.
- prostoalex 13y agoSo a few basic strategies for maximizing UBI: 1) Get educated, find a job, work. 2) Produce more children, pool financial benefits that a single household is eligible for. 3) Vote for politicians who promise to increase UBI. Long-term which option do you think the populace will go for?