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> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income. I think that with basic incom
by konstruktor 13y ago
> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income.
I think that with basic income, this question would not make sense, and that's exactly the reason that I like the idea so much. The reason why people do boring, dirty and dangerous work for little money is that there are folks who have no skills that would enable them to get a more fulfilling, cleaner, safer job that pays more. Those people depend on income, any income, to live, so they do the dirty jobs, and since there is a large pool of these workers, the shitty jobs can even pay just enough to survive.
With a decent basic income scheme, i.e. the basic needs of the people taken care of, the job market would probably flip: You would have to pay people very well for doing unpleasant work, and not so well for fulfilling jobs.
- marcamillion 13y ago> With a decent basic income scheme, i.e. the basic needs of the people taken care of, the job market would probably flip: You would have to pay people very well for doing unpleasant work, and not so well for fulfilling jobs. This is an interesting premise. It would probably cause a lot of firms to be started, that compete to do those 'shitty jobs' - that could potentially drive the cost down and be done much better. This experiment would be VERY interesting indeed.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gaius 13y agoVery interesting to watch from another country. That is the real reason politics moves so slowly, because the usual results of political experimentation is mass starvation.
- ZenoArrow 13y agoPolitical experimentation usually leading to starvation... Have you got a high number of examples to back that up? I can only think of a handful.
- rmchugh 13y agoNever let facts get in the way of hyperbole.
- gaius 13y agoSure, Cambodia is one, North Korea, China in the 50s, Zimbabwe... Millions dead.
- pgeorgi 13y agoUniversal healthcare, social security and pensions in Germany (late 19th century): millions saved. And it's that big a political experiment that the most powerful country in the world still doesn't dare to replicate it in its entirety.
- powertower 13y agoUSSR. Millions lost.
- pgeorgi 13y agoUSA's New Deal: potentially millions saved from starvation. That's the problem with those comparisons: it's easy to point at the precise body count of radical experiments that went the wrong way, but quite hard to enumerate the lives saved due to those that worked out. Kind of survivorship bias in reverse. I'd guess the establishment and enforcement of sanitary standards (which, at the beginning, was considered quite radical) saved more people than all dictators of the world together managed to kill. But that's as hand-wavy as anything else in this subthread.
- gaius 13y agoYou can't know how it's going to play out or it's not an experiment...
- ZenoArrow 13y agoIn what way were Pol Pot era Cambodia and Mugabe era Zimbabwe political experiments? They were/are dictators! There's nothing remotely radical about dictatorships.
- danenania 13y agoIt could also act as a strong incentive for developing automatic and robotic solutions to these needs.
- WiseWeasel 13y agoEither that or the development of robotic solutions to these needs will act as a strong incentive for the enactment of this type of program.
- femto 13y agoWhich begs the question: in a highly automated country, should receiving an income for free, or almost free, be considered the norm? I'd imagine that in the absence of communal action, the tendency would be for wealth to accumulate to the minority that own the automatons. Either the ownership of the automatons would have to be distributed or people would need to receive a "free" income. The latter seems like a gilded cage?
- hackinthebochs 13y agoFree basic income would be inevitable in a highly automated country. The owners of the robots would essentially corner the market on labor. The entire premise of our current social system would be thrown into chaos. Large swaths of the population are not going to starve quietly. We only need to look at history here: once income inequality becomes severe enough and it can't be hidden anymore, redistribution happens. It'll either be by decree or through violence, but it is inevitable.
- Suncho 13y agoI wish we could be better at separating the notions of "income inequality" and "not enough income." The first is necessary for a functioning economy and the second is... bad.
- prostoalex 13y agoOil-rich countries that do provide an equivalent of basic income for its citizens (Saudi Arabia, UAE) do not seem to have a thriving robotics startup community, but do have a wave of temporary foreign workers living in nasty conditions http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7985361.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7985361.stm
- sentenza 13y agoUnfortunately, there is actual experimental evidence to the contrary. Some of the Arabian Emirates have cash payments to their ethnically Arabian citizens that are practically equivalent to a high basic income. In those cases, all the "dirty" labor is done by legal/illegal immigrants that are not eligible for said basic income and thus willing to work for much less. IMO this is the central problem with the idea of a basic income. Either it has to be so low that it is on the "just don't starve" level (thus making it unattractive compared to any job), or you have to lock your borders, shutting down migration.
- derefr 13y agoWhat happens if you take the implicitly-assumed-to-be-ridiculous third option, and give every visitor a green card and a basic income voucher when they cross the border? Then you don't have any illegal immigrants, just lots and lots and lots of citizens. (Don't just reply with the obviously-bad first-order effect on the country receiving the immigrants; remember that bad things would also be happening to the labor pools of all countries without this policy.)
- jre 13y agoI think you raise an interesting point on the second-order effects, but that is only relevant if a big country introduces basic income. In the case of Switzerland, I think the first-order effect greatly exceeds any other effect on the neighbouring countries's labor pools. Because Switzerland is freaking small (7 million people - the size of a big european city) and is surrounded by large countries (Germany, France, Italy). So let's say you get 2 millions people from each of the 3 large countries, that's 6 million people. For the large countries, this isn't such a big loss. But for Switzerland, it's almost doubling the population, which is going to be a huge problem in term of finance, housing, transports, etc...
- derefr 13y agoSure. I actually meant to ask the "if a big country does it" version, because that's what makes Basic Income an interesting macroeconomic policy. If the US did this (and the US definitely has the room--both geographically and otherwise--to absorb way more than 6 million people), what do you think would happen?
- svantana 13y ago> the job market would probably flip: You would have to pay people very well for doing unpleasant work, and not so well for fulfilling jobs. Isn't that already the case? Boring jobs = accountant, lawyer, engineer (to most people), fun jobs = musician, actor, artist (again, to most people, or at least teenagers). I shudder to think what the median income is for those fun jobs.
- parasight 13y agoThe fun of law, engineering, and arts is a matter of taste. I am not sure if that applies to flipping burgers and delivering pizza. I know a lot of people developing software for free just for the fun of it. I doubt there would be that many people flipping burgers for free (or a very low salary) if there would be an unconditional basic income.
- TheCoelacanth 13y agoDeveloping software is fun. Developing the software that they want you to develop usually isn't. You don't get paid to develop software; you get paid to develop the software that they want you do develop.