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> 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 thi

by 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.
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    Politically it kind of is a dichotomy. I see very little hope for Basic Income politically because the A) protestant work ethic is too deeply embedded in American culture and B) for many Americans the only outcome they would notice would be very high inflation. I'm not against the very idea of it and if there were a referendum for it tomorrow I would almost certainly vote yes, but I honestly think that its basic presumptions are wrong: * The the labor market today is allocating people to jobs efficiently. * That as a society we don't have enough useful work for everybody to do today. * That the government wouldn't efficiently allocate resources if it were to create jobs.
    - orangecat 12y ago
      That as a society we don't have enough useful work for everybody to do today. I believe this is largely true today in the context of people who are currently unemployed, and will only be more so in the future. That the government wouldn't efficiently allocate resources if it were to create jobs. You think it would? Look at military contracts, where it's more important for every member of Congress to be able to point to jobs "created" in their district, than that we actually get functional projects at reasonable costs.
      - crdoconnor 12y ago
        >I believe this is largely true today in the context of people who are currently unemployed, and will only be more so in the future. Poverty is on the increase, our infrastructure is not only crumbling it is currently inferior in many ways to some third world countries like China. We have budget cuts for science and NASA not because they've run out of useful work, but because of a political imperative that we should create as many unemployed people as possible through budget cuts. >You think it would? It already did in the 1930s and I am confident it would again. >Look at military contracts, where it's more important for every member of Congress to be able to point to jobs "created" in their district, than that we actually get functional projects at reasonable costs. If we had an alternative working job creation program Congressmen wouldn't try and ram through military contracts to create jobs in their district instead. Meaning less military bloat and more infrastructure spending. Sounds good to me.
- rakoo 12y ago
  I challenge you to ask around you this question: "If basic income were to be established, what would you think people do ?" As owenmarshall said, you can perfectly have both -- establish basic income for "survival" needs, and let people have work if they really want to. Basic income doesn't mean abolishing all kinds of work, it just means making sure humans don't have to work to live.
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    I think most people would continue to work and the people who are currently unemployed would largely remain unemployed. I don't think the unemployment we have is economically efficient, though. Our neo-command economy run by wall street selfishly demanded high unemployment despite the need for currently unemployed people to work and desire for those same people to work.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      "the people who are currently unemployed would largely remain unemployed." Why do you believe that? Some small portion of those working, with better things to do, will probably work less or stop working. This will represent a larger portion of the unemployed, because of the size of the two sets. Meanwhile, demand will rise as the people at the bottom end of the income spectrum are more able to meet their needs. With increased demand for labor and decreased supply, it should become quite a bit easier to find a job. On top of that, looking for a job is quite a bit easier when you know you have some resources to fall back on, and a basic income can help provide the bandwidth to pursue whatever training, &c, they find appropriate rather than having to jump through bureaucratic hoops or focusing on scrounging together enough to get to tomorrow. I expect quite a few of the unemployed would stop being unemployed with a modest basic income.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? If you give them basic income, then the jobs can pay what the jobs are worth, and no one needs to be forced into economically inefficient make-work jobs that take time that could be used for focussed training, risky (but potentially valuable) self-initiated ventures, etc. Any such make-work jobs proposal is obviously paying a premium over the actual value of the work (which is why the same job isn't available in the market already), so instead treat the premium as basic income, and the job will be available, through the market, at its actual value (and, with an adequate BI, you don't need a minimum wage, because the BI provides basic support, so taking a low-wage job that may be more suitable for other reasons than pay doesn't have the opportunity cost of not being able to provide basic support.)
  - xaa 12y ago
    > Any such make-work jobs proposal is obviously paying a premium over the actual value of the work (which is why the same job isn't available in the market already) Wouldn't the government be providing these "make-work" jobs? The government regularly creates jobs, like research and infrastructure development, that would not be profitable for any private entity. Value can be calculated either from the perspective of the employer, or from the perspective of society at large, but the market only creates jobs which are valuable according to criterion #1. In my view, this is the essential function of government. It is fascinating that, if you look back 2-3 years, when unemployment was still quite high, the private sector had recovered completely in terms of employment -- all the unemployment was actually being caused by reduced government spending (mostly on the state or local level).
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      I don't know that dragonwriter meant to exclude government employment from "the market". If we include it, the question remains approximately as strong. If there is useful work to be done, we should employ them to do that work, but we should do that based on the work we see to be done, not based on some notion that people having freedom to choose how they spend their time is bad.
  - 12y ago
- indrax 12y ago
  >What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? Who decides what jobs are available? Who decide who gets which jobs? By giving a job instead of money, you are using up a significant chunk of the labor pool. You need an additional chunk to figure out how to allocate it, and are then relying on them to allocate it well. To build something, you are also paying for and using up capital. By giving money, people are free to use their time in whatever way is most valuable to them, only using up the resources they need to live, and those resources get allocated by market forces.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Giving money is currently costing more for the administration than the money given out. So not any better? Giving a job is incentive to get your own job - if you give awful jobs like shoveling sludge or picking up highways.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Giving money is currently costing more for the administration than the money given out. The administrative cost in giving money in status quo benefit programs is tied up in means-testing, use-enforcement, behavior-testing, etc. -- making sure that all the variable inputs that control who gets which benefits, how much of those benefits they get, and how those benefits can be used. That's the whole problem unconditional basic income solves. You have very simple qualified class (all citizens or all legal residents, whatever is chosen as the target population), everyone in the class gets the same benefit, and there are no use restrictions associated with the benefit. Administrative overhead eliminated neatly -- and at the same time, the perverse incentives that go with the same restrictions that the administrative costs go to enforcing are also eliminated.
      - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
        > Administrative overhead eliminated neatly Most administrative overhead eliminated neatly. Fraud prevention remains. (Keeping dead people off the rolls, and duplicate entries, and so on.)
dragonwriter 12y ago
> 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 Of course they'll do it for the money -- at least, for a very long time until productivity is so high that the economy can provide a very comfortable lifestyle that most people are happy with without work (but that's going to take very high output with little labor, which we are nowhere close to and may never reach, given the way that experience drives expectations and expectations increase with output.) BI reduces the downside risk of unemployment or entrepreneurial failure, provides opportunities to transitionally opt-out of regular employment or income-earning activity for education or other personal development, etc., but it doesn't in any realistic near-term scenario make it so that the vast majority of the population isn't working (whether at wage labor or something more entrepreneurial) for money.

by rakoo 12y ago

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.
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  Politically it kind of is a dichotomy. I see very little hope for Basic Income politically because the A) protestant work ethic is too deeply embedded in American culture and B) for many Americans the only outcome they would notice would be very high inflation. I'm not against the very idea of it and if there were a referendum for it tomorrow I would almost certainly vote yes, but I honestly think that its basic presumptions are wrong: * The the labor market today is allocating people to jobs efficiently. * That as a society we don't have enough useful work for everybody to do today. * That the government wouldn't efficiently allocate resources if it were to create jobs.
  - orangecat 12y ago
    That as a society we don't have enough useful work for everybody to do today. I believe this is largely true today in the context of people who are currently unemployed, and will only be more so in the future. That the government wouldn't efficiently allocate resources if it were to create jobs. You think it would? Look at military contracts, where it's more important for every member of Congress to be able to point to jobs "created" in their district, than that we actually get functional projects at reasonable costs.
    - crdoconnor 12y ago
      >I believe this is largely true today in the context of people who are currently unemployed, and will only be more so in the future. Poverty is on the increase, our infrastructure is not only crumbling it is currently inferior in many ways to some third world countries like China. We have budget cuts for science and NASA not because they've run out of useful work, but because of a political imperative that we should create as many unemployed people as possible through budget cuts. >You think it would? It already did in the 1930s and I am confident it would again. >Look at military contracts, where it's more important for every member of Congress to be able to point to jobs "created" in their district, than that we actually get functional projects at reasonable costs. If we had an alternative working job creation program Congressmen wouldn't try and ram through military contracts to create jobs in their district instead. Meaning less military bloat and more infrastructure spending. Sounds good to me.
rakoo 12y ago
I challenge you to ask around you this question: "If basic income were to be established, what would you think people do ?" As owenmarshall said, you can perfectly have both -- establish basic income for "survival" needs, and let people have work if they really want to. Basic income doesn't mean abolishing all kinds of work, it just means making sure humans don't have to work to live.
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  I think most people would continue to work and the people who are currently unemployed would largely remain unemployed. I don't think the unemployment we have is economically efficient, though. Our neo-command economy run by wall street selfishly demanded high unemployment despite the need for currently unemployed people to work and desire for those same people to work.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    "the people who are currently unemployed would largely remain unemployed." Why do you believe that? Some small portion of those working, with better things to do, will probably work less or stop working. This will represent a larger portion of the unemployed, because of the size of the two sets. Meanwhile, demand will rise as the people at the bottom end of the income spectrum are more able to meet their needs. With increased demand for labor and decreased supply, it should become quite a bit easier to find a job. On top of that, looking for a job is quite a bit easier when you know you have some resources to fall back on, and a basic income can help provide the bandwidth to pursue whatever training, &c, they find appropriate rather than having to jump through bureaucratic hoops or focusing on scrounging together enough to get to tomorrow. I expect quite a few of the unemployed would stop being unemployed with a modest basic income.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? If you give them basic income, then the jobs can pay what the jobs are worth, and no one needs to be forced into economically inefficient make-work jobs that take time that could be used for focussed training, risky (but potentially valuable) self-initiated ventures, etc. Any such make-work jobs proposal is obviously paying a premium over the actual value of the work (which is why the same job isn't available in the market already), so instead treat the premium as basic income, and the job will be available, through the market, at its actual value (and, with an adequate BI, you don't need a minimum wage, because the BI provides basic support, so taking a low-wage job that may be more suitable for other reasons than pay doesn't have the opportunity cost of not being able to provide basic support.)
- xaa 12y ago
  > Any such make-work jobs proposal is obviously paying a premium over the actual value of the work (which is why the same job isn't available in the market already) Wouldn't the government be providing these "make-work" jobs? The government regularly creates jobs, like research and infrastructure development, that would not be profitable for any private entity. Value can be calculated either from the perspective of the employer, or from the perspective of society at large, but the market only creates jobs which are valuable according to criterion #1. In my view, this is the essential function of government. It is fascinating that, if you look back 2-3 years, when unemployment was still quite high, the private sector had recovered completely in terms of employment -- all the unemployment was actually being caused by reduced government spending (mostly on the state or local level).
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    I don't know that dragonwriter meant to exclude government employment from "the market". If we include it, the question remains approximately as strong. If there is useful work to be done, we should employ them to do that work, but we should do that based on the work we see to be done, not based on some notion that people having freedom to choose how they spend their time is bad.
- 12y ago
indrax 12y ago
>What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? Who decides what jobs are available? Who decide who gets which jobs? By giving a job instead of money, you are using up a significant chunk of the labor pool. You need an additional chunk to figure out how to allocate it, and are then relying on them to allocate it well. To build something, you are also paying for and using up capital. By giving money, people are free to use their time in whatever way is most valuable to them, only using up the resources they need to live, and those resources get allocated by market forces.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Giving money is currently costing more for the administration than the money given out. So not any better? Giving a job is incentive to get your own job - if you give awful jobs like shoveling sludge or picking up highways.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Giving money is currently costing more for the administration than the money given out. The administrative cost in giving money in status quo benefit programs is tied up in means-testing, use-enforcement, behavior-testing, etc. -- making sure that all the variable inputs that control who gets which benefits, how much of those benefits they get, and how those benefits can be used. That's the whole problem unconditional basic income solves. You have very simple qualified class (all citizens or all legal residents, whatever is chosen as the target population), everyone in the class gets the same benefit, and there are no use restrictions associated with the benefit. Administrative overhead eliminated neatly -- and at the same time, the perverse incentives that go with the same restrictions that the administrative costs go to enforcing are also eliminated.
    - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
      > Administrative overhead eliminated neatly Most administrative overhead eliminated neatly. Fraud prevention remains. (Keeping dead people off the rolls, and duplicate entries, and so on.)

dragonwriter 12y ago

> 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 Of course they'll do it for the money -- at least, for a very long time until productivity is so high that the economy can provide a very comfortable lifestyle that most people are happy with without work (but that's going to take very high output with little labor, which we are nowhere close to and may never reach, given the way that experience drives expectations and expectations increase with output.) BI reduces the downside risk of unemployment or entrepreneurial failure, provides opportunities to transitionally opt-out of regular employment or income-earning activity for education or other personal development, etc., but it doesn't in any realistic near-term scenario make it so that the vast majority of the population isn't working (whether at wage labor or something more entrepreneurial) for money.