8 ms·

> The answer clearly isn’t economic I beg to differ. I totally agree with the paradox (with the advances in technology, humans should be working less) but the

by rakoo 12y ago

> The answer clearly isn’t economic I beg to differ. I totally agree with the paradox (with the advances in technology, humans should be working less) but the problem, today, is economic: - In order to live you need money - In order to obtain money you need to work (except for the lucky too few) - Therefore, work needs to exist to provide people with money, to the point of creating "useless" jobs if needs be How are you going to remove jobs if it so directly means no more revenue for those people ? The problem here is that we're conflating revenue with work. The only answer is to decouple them, and introduce something like basic income (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
crdoconnor 12y ago
This is preferable to Basic Income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guarantee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guarantee For the following reasons: * It it proven and was highly successful during the previous depression. * We actually do have a lot of infrastructure which needs rebuilding and projects which would make all of our lives better (high speed rail, mission to mars, etc.) * People actually like to work - to feel useful. Basic Income will prevent the unemployed from starving but nearly ALL of them would rather have a guarantee of meaningful, stable, reasonably paid and respectable work than just getting paid to stay at home all day. The PWA provided that. There is actually a good example of a public works program that was turned into basic income (Plan Jefes in Argentina). Unexpectedly, large numbers of the people who were part of it CONTINUED to work at the jobs (things like caregiving) even though under the new basic income rules they no longer had to go.
- rakoo 12y ago
  > People actually like to work - to feel useful. There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. I think it's completely wrong, people (most of them) will continue to work; the huge difference is that they will not do it for the money, but for the actual effect it has. Your example shows it. You can also ask yourselves if chefs, musicians, programmers, mechanics would just grab the money and stay home; I don't believe so. Only those who do their job purely for revenues will stop... At least, that's my prediction (and hope). In other words, useless jobs (as in, not useful for others) will vanish.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Not to mention basic income is not a comfortable living. Folks will not work unless they can get paid enough to notice. Will that drive down entry-level salaries, or drive them up? Hm.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      Probably a little of both, depending on how much people want to do the work in question for other reasons.
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    >There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. Rather than answering supposedly common misconceptions that nobody on this thread actually had - answer me this instead: What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? They need money, but they also want to work. During the last depression the PWA built tons of useful stuff, much of which we still use today. Why would Basic Income be better than doing that again?
    - orangecat 12y ago
      I'm skeptical that we have a significant number of useful projects today at which throwing unskilled labor would be useful. We saw a form of this in the last stimulus, where "shovel-ready" turned out not to be a thing.
      - crdoconnor 12y ago
        * High speed rail. * High quality housing projects in cities like San Francisco and New York to bring down the currently insane costs implying an insane level of demand. * America has plenty of crumbling infrastructure.
    - owenmarshall 12y ago
      I think you've set up a dichotomy where you can have the PWA or basic income. The best approach would be both: a basic income to provide people enough to survive (probably not so comfortably, but...). From there, you could have a PWA that focuses on infrastructure that features a strong training component and pays well, or you strike out on your own.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  I don't object to PWA style projects when we find things that we want to do. I don't think it's a sensible way to guarantee a job. As orangecat said downthread a bit, "shovel-ready" often isn't. I want to spend money to build the infrastructure we actually need. I don't want to throw money at boondoggles, which will be increasingly hard to avoid if we structurally have to keep pushing out projects whether or not we have anything that's actually 1) a good idea, and 2) ready to go. Edited to add: To be precise, when I say "throw money at", I really mean "throw physical resources and people's time at, while shifting power toward whoever organized it". Obviously I'm advocating paying out some of the money either way so that's not the difference.
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    >I want to spend money to build the infrastructure we actually need. I don't want to throw money at boondoggles I don't either, but there is no silver bullet to avoid boondoggles. Moving everything to the private sector certainly doesn't prevent them.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      Certainly not, but requiring any purchase decision be backed up by someone wanting the thing helps quite a bit. That's something that naturally follows in the private sector when we give people cash, and frequently happens in the public sector when things are working right, but is undermined by pressure to build out projects to "provide jobs" - and a guarantee makes that worse. I'll note again that I'm certainly well in favor of improving our infrastructure.
- thedufer 12y ago
  > People actually like to work - to feel useful Your argument seems to hinge on this, but I see no reason to believe it. There have been fairly long-term experiments on BI, and people who choose not to work do things they enjoy - learning to paint, going to school, etc. There weren't any problems with people "needing to work" but not being able to. > It it proven and was highly successful during the previous depression Much of the unskilled labor done by the CCC has since been automated into fewer skilled jobs. "It worked in a completely different world" doesn't convince me that it'll work in this one. > high speed rail, mission to mars, etc. See what I said re: unskilled->skilled labor shift. To what degree do you actually expect unskilled labor to move those programs along? They're held up by engineering problems, not labor shortages.
  - zaccus 12y ago
    >There have been fairly long-term experiments on BI, and people who choose not to work do things they enjoy - learning to paint, going to school, etc. How are those things not work? They require focused effort, just the same as any job does. Does something not qualify as "work" just because it is enjoyable?
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      I think something does not qualify as "work", in the sense thedufer was using it, if you don't stand an appreciable chance of being paid for it. I think that's an important sense, but I agree that we need to be careful that this does not cause us to overlook or undervalue productive efforts where that isn't the case.
    - thedufer 12y ago
      I was using some implicit assumptions made by crdoconnor (without which the `"need to work" -> PWA > BI` implication falls apart). The first, that "work" implies something you can reasonably be paid for. And the second, that there's some dependence on others in order to do the work. Alternatively, you can re-word my argument if you'd like - the human need to work doesn't imply that BI is insufficient because people can find meaningful work on their own. I thought the first argument was clearer, but your comment forced me to think harder about the second - and in retrospect, I think it makes more sense put that way.
loup-vaillant 12y ago
As far as I know, the job market is not demand driven. So, the number of people who work isn't really determined by how many people need money. It is determined by how many jobs there is. In other words, jobs don't exist to provide people with money. They exist to provide the boss with labour. The fact that people need money is just very convenient for the capitalists.
- nshepperd 12y ago
  That doesn't seem entirely true. If most people didn't need money to live, they would be less willing to sign up for "bullshit jobs", meaning employers would have to provide more enticing compensation, potentially resulting in a reduction in people working such meaningless jobs. In other words, the job market is currently supply driven, but that is due to the fact that demand is inelastic -- everyone needs money to live. ETA: There is also an indirect effect through public policy: politicians will not want to pass legislation that reduces the number of jobs, since that would increase unemployment figures, making them look bad. Of course, the fact that high unemployment figures are bad is a result of people needing to work to live.
  - loup-vaillant 12y ago
    Yup.
wolfgke 12y ago
> The only answer is to decouple them, and introduce something like basic income (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income) Or finding work for these people that is a lot more useful for the society.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  With a basic income, they can find work for other people (and other people can find work for them).
  - wolfgke 12y ago
    Basic income is not a necessary condition for that.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      But income is. Meeting the needs of people who cannot pay you is not a job, without some sort of external involvement. Giving them cash is the approach that gives the market the most room to find the best solution. Giving cash to everyone unconditionally gets rid of strange incentives around discontinuities. Hence, a basic income.
arca_vorago 12y ago
My SO has recently been on a kick about basic income, and I admit I have been skeptical. Could you elaborate on the pros/cons of basic income as you understand it please?
- laughfactory 12y ago
  The main downside, in a nutshell, is inflation. There's simply no way to distribute the same amount to everyone in an economy and not have proportional inflation occur--because basically what you've done is dilute the value of every dollar in the economy. This is essentially what has happened with the cost of college. The more aid we give students, the more colleges soak it up...which leads to those who needed assistance still needing assistance as much as before, but the absolute cost of education has just risen. Basic income sounds like a great idea until you realize the above.
  - Matumio 12y ago
    I don't think any of the BI proponents suggested to finance it by printing new money. More likely taxes, but keep in mind that they wouldn't be spent by the government. But speaking of inflation, in the eurozone, they can't seem to figure out how to increase it. Everyone seems to be anxious about the possibility of deflation. Which seems strange, because if they just printed money and distributed it to everyone, you'd think this would both produce inflation and increase consumption, no?
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Careful. Aid to students isn't something we can turn around and spend on something else when prices go up. That is a very different dynamic than "dollars I can spend like anything else". People bidding on status symbols with someone else's money, versus people trading off their various wants against each other from their increased-but-still-limited pool of resources. I think you would still see some inflation as typical demand for the marginal dollar falls, even if you don't increase the total number of dollars, but it wouldn't look like student aid. For the record, I support a low (certainly <$15k, probably closer to half that) Basic Income.
- 12y ago
dllthomas 12y ago
"The only answer is to decouple them, and introduce something like basic income" It should be noted that BI is a partial decoupling of revenue from work, not a full decoupling.
- rakoo 12y ago
  That's true, but when I said decoupling I meant "break the common misconception that one cannot happen without the other". It's more about breaking the idea than actually separating them. I don't think we can introduce Basic Income as a full income directly anyway, it will most certainly be gradual (start with e.g. a BI equal to the level of poverty, and go up from there)... but the most important part will be achieved: people will stop thinking that in order to live there is no other way but work, even in useless jobs.

by rakoo 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

crdoconnor 12y ago

This is preferable to Basic Income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guarantee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guarantee For the following reasons: * It it proven and was highly successful during the previous depression. * We actually do have a lot of infrastructure which needs rebuilding and projects which would make all of our lives better (high speed rail, mission to mars, etc.) * People actually like to work - to feel useful. Basic Income will prevent the unemployed from starving but nearly ALL of them would rather have a guarantee of meaningful, stable, reasonably paid and respectable work than just getting paid to stay at home all day. The PWA provided that. There is actually a good example of a public works program that was turned into basic income (Plan Jefes in Argentina). Unexpectedly, large numbers of the people who were part of it CONTINUED to work at the jobs (things like caregiving) even though under the new basic income rules they no longer had to go.

rakoo 12y ago
> People actually like to work - to feel useful. There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. I think it's completely wrong, people (most of them) will continue to work; the huge difference is that they will not do it for the money, but for the actual effect it has. Your example shows it. You can also ask yourselves if chefs, musicians, programmers, mechanics would just grab the money and stay home; I don't believe so. Only those who do their job purely for revenues will stop... At least, that's my prediction (and hope). In other words, useless jobs (as in, not useful for others) will vanish.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Not to mention basic income is not a comfortable living. Folks will not work unless they can get paid enough to notice. Will that drive down entry-level salaries, or drive them up? Hm.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Probably a little of both, depending on how much people want to do the work in question for other reasons.
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  >There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. Rather than answering supposedly common misconceptions that nobody on this thread actually had - answer me this instead: What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? They need money, but they also want to work. During the last depression the PWA built tons of useful stuff, much of which we still use today. Why would Basic Income be better than doing that again?
  - orangecat 12y ago
    I'm skeptical that we have a significant number of useful projects today at which throwing unskilled labor would be useful. We saw a form of this in the last stimulus, where "shovel-ready" turned out not to be a thing.
    - crdoconnor 12y ago
      * High speed rail. * High quality housing projects in cities like San Francisco and New York to bring down the currently insane costs implying an insane level of demand. * America has plenty of crumbling infrastructure.
  - owenmarshall 12y ago
    I think you've set up a dichotomy where you can have the PWA or basic income. The best approach would be both: a basic income to provide people enough to survive (probably not so comfortably, but...). From there, you could have a PWA that focuses on infrastructure that features a strong training component and pays well, or you strike out on your own.
dllthomas 12y ago
I don't object to PWA style projects when we find things that we want to do. I don't think it's a sensible way to guarantee a job. As orangecat said downthread a bit, "shovel-ready" often isn't. I want to spend money to build the infrastructure we actually need. I don't want to throw money at boondoggles, which will be increasingly hard to avoid if we structurally have to keep pushing out projects whether or not we have anything that's actually 1) a good idea, and 2) ready to go. Edited to add: To be precise, when I say "throw money at", I really mean "throw physical resources and people's time at, while shifting power toward whoever organized it". Obviously I'm advocating paying out some of the money either way so that's not the difference.
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  >I want to spend money to build the infrastructure we actually need. I don't want to throw money at boondoggles I don't either, but there is no silver bullet to avoid boondoggles. Moving everything to the private sector certainly doesn't prevent them.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Certainly not, but requiring any purchase decision be backed up by someone wanting the thing helps quite a bit. That's something that naturally follows in the private sector when we give people cash, and frequently happens in the public sector when things are working right, but is undermined by pressure to build out projects to "provide jobs" - and a guarantee makes that worse. I'll note again that I'm certainly well in favor of improving our infrastructure.
thedufer 12y ago
> People actually like to work - to feel useful Your argument seems to hinge on this, but I see no reason to believe it. There have been fairly long-term experiments on BI, and people who choose not to work do things they enjoy - learning to paint, going to school, etc. There weren't any problems with people "needing to work" but not being able to. > It it proven and was highly successful during the previous depression Much of the unskilled labor done by the CCC has since been automated into fewer skilled jobs. "It worked in a completely different world" doesn't convince me that it'll work in this one. > high speed rail, mission to mars, etc. See what I said re: unskilled->skilled labor shift. To what degree do you actually expect unskilled labor to move those programs along? They're held up by engineering problems, not labor shortages.
- zaccus 12y ago
  >There have been fairly long-term experiments on BI, and people who choose not to work do things they enjoy - learning to paint, going to school, etc. How are those things not work? They require focused effort, just the same as any job does. Does something not qualify as "work" just because it is enjoyable?
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    I think something does not qualify as "work", in the sense thedufer was using it, if you don't stand an appreciable chance of being paid for it. I think that's an important sense, but I agree that we need to be careful that this does not cause us to overlook or undervalue productive efforts where that isn't the case.
  - thedufer 12y ago
    I was using some implicit assumptions made by crdoconnor (without which the `"need to work" -> PWA > BI` implication falls apart). The first, that "work" implies something you can reasonably be paid for. And the second, that there's some dependence on others in order to do the work. Alternatively, you can re-word my argument if you'd like - the human need to work doesn't imply that BI is insufficient because people can find meaningful work on their own. I thought the first argument was clearer, but your comment forced me to think harder about the second - and in retrospect, I think it makes more sense put that way.

loup-vaillant 12y ago

As far as I know, the job market is not demand driven. So, the number of people who work isn't really determined by how many people need money. It is determined by how many jobs there is. In other words, jobs don't exist to provide people with money. They exist to provide the boss with labour. The fact that people need money is just very convenient for the capitalists.

nshepperd 12y ago
That doesn't seem entirely true. If most people didn't need money to live, they would be less willing to sign up for "bullshit jobs", meaning employers would have to provide more enticing compensation, potentially resulting in a reduction in people working such meaningless jobs. In other words, the job market is currently supply driven, but that is due to the fact that demand is inelastic -- everyone needs money to live. ETA: There is also an indirect effect through public policy: politicians will not want to pass legislation that reduces the number of jobs, since that would increase unemployment figures, making them look bad. Of course, the fact that high unemployment figures are bad is a result of people needing to work to live.
- loup-vaillant 12y ago
  Yup.

wolfgke 12y ago

> The only answer is to decouple them, and introduce something like basic income (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income) Or finding work for these people that is a lot more useful for the society.

dllthomas 12y ago
With a basic income, they can find work for other people (and other people can find work for them).
- wolfgke 12y ago
  Basic income is not a necessary condition for that.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    But income is. Meeting the needs of people who cannot pay you is not a job, without some sort of external involvement. Giving them cash is the approach that gives the market the most room to find the best solution. Giving cash to everyone unconditionally gets rid of strange incentives around discontinuities. Hence, a basic income.

arca_vorago 12y ago

My SO has recently been on a kick about basic income, and I admit I have been skeptical. Could you elaborate on the pros/cons of basic income as you understand it please?

laughfactory 12y ago
The main downside, in a nutshell, is inflation. There's simply no way to distribute the same amount to everyone in an economy and not have proportional inflation occur--because basically what you've done is dilute the value of every dollar in the economy. This is essentially what has happened with the cost of college. The more aid we give students, the more colleges soak it up...which leads to those who needed assistance still needing assistance as much as before, but the absolute cost of education has just risen. Basic income sounds like a great idea until you realize the above.
- Matumio 12y ago
  I don't think any of the BI proponents suggested to finance it by printing new money. More likely taxes, but keep in mind that they wouldn't be spent by the government. But speaking of inflation, in the eurozone, they can't seem to figure out how to increase it. Everyone seems to be anxious about the possibility of deflation. Which seems strange, because if they just printed money and distributed it to everyone, you'd think this would both produce inflation and increase consumption, no?
- dllthomas 12y ago
  Careful. Aid to students isn't something we can turn around and spend on something else when prices go up. That is a very different dynamic than "dollars I can spend like anything else". People bidding on status symbols with someone else's money, versus people trading off their various wants against each other from their increased-but-still-limited pool of resources. I think you would still see some inflation as typical demand for the marginal dollar falls, even if you don't increase the total number of dollars, but it wouldn't look like student aid. For the record, I support a low (certainly <$15k, probably closer to half that) Basic Income.
12y ago

dllthomas 12y ago

"The only answer is to decouple them, and introduce something like basic income" It should be noted that BI is a partial decoupling of revenue from work, not a full decoupling.

rakoo 12y ago
That's true, but when I said decoupling I meant "break the common misconception that one cannot happen without the other". It's more about breaking the idea than actually separating them. I don't think we can introduce Basic Income as a full income directly anyway, it will most certainly be gradual (start with e.g. a BI equal to the level of poverty, and go up from there)... but the most important part will be achieved: people will stop thinking that in order to live there is no other way but work, even in useless jobs.