People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working. People in a functioning society still have to work.
I read it as all the human essentials are covered without work (sufficiently nutritious food, safe, clean, shelter with sufficient heating and water for basic needs, basic healthcare, basic internet, and a small extra for discretionary spending) with the assumption that most people will happily do some work to upgrade their circumstances and get more fun and interesting food/entertainment/shelter.
If quitting your job doesn't put your life or your ability to get another job (because you're not capable of maintaining basic grooming, for example) at risk, then the "free market" model of employment can actually work, and people can opt out of jobs that treat them poorly or underpay them. At that point all the most essential/difficult/unpleasant jobs would actually have to pay the most, and cushier jobs with more reasonable hours could pay less, and people could do the amount of work it takes to get the amount of money they want. Think of how hard people work just to make a bit more money even when they're financially stable, just because they want a house or a cool car or a nice vacation. Why would that change if you didn't have to bleed yourself dry just to eat and sleep under a roof?
There's a mindset that I often run into with IRL discussions that revolves around the premise that if a person has some minimal essentials met by doing nothing, then they will have no motivation to ever improve their situation at all.
That if a person can afford to accomplish nothing but still have enough money to smoke weed and play video games, then all anyone will ever do is smoke weed and play video games.
I don't subscribe to that mindset: I want a nice place to live, with room for all of my hobbies and for guests to comfortably visit overnight. I want a good car and a nice place to park it and to work on it. I want to be able to afford a glorious steak dinner out or an amazing gyro without having to sacrifice. I want the best tools to create my own food in my own kitchen. I want the fastest internet and an ample homelab to do stuff with it. I want to make an annual thousand-mile pilgrimage to hang out with some friends for a week doing cool shit together (which requires real money), and I want to be able to take an actual-vacation some other time in the year where I can afford to go camping or something. I want to be able to provide thoughtful and useful gifts to my people, even if they happen to be expensive. (And if I were allowed to smoke weed [my job doesn't permit it and testing is both thorough and regular], I'd want the best weed.)
I wouldn't be able to accomplish these things with UBI, so even in a hypothetical future where UBI is a thing: I won't want to sit around and do nothing: So far in life, I want quite a lot more more than the basic essentials and I'm willing to work for those things.
(I do know some people who don't seem to be capable of more than nothing, due to mental and/or physical conditions, and it's likely that all of us know someone like this -- and these folks will have a rough time with life with or without UBI. But I firmly believe that most people would prefer staying in the rat race, because most people who are capable of work also have some fondness for whatever they consider to be *nice* things.
But I might fall down in the future; it's happened to me before for a variety of reasons. And it'd be nice to be able to afford to fall down without becoming homeless when my income drops from something useful to near-zero.)
When I was in the military reserves, there were some guys who graduated High School and went straight into a minimum-wage job, working at Home Depot and the like. At first they thought it was great -- I have my own place! Sure, it's a room in a flat shared with three other guys, but it's mine! I have my own car! Sure, it's an old beater that guzzles gasoline, but it's mine! I can buy a Playstation and afford whatever game I want, and stay up as late as I want!
But pretty soon, once the novelty wears of, it begins to pale. I mean, I have my own place, sure, but it's with three other guys; not someplace I'd want my GF to move into, and definitely not a place to raise a kid. I have my own car, but it's a piece of junk. I can't really afford to go to concerts or long trips, all I can really afford to do is sit around at home and play games on my PS/2.
So, after 2-3 years they all started do things to make themselves more valuable to society: one took classes to become an EMT. Another took classes to become a fire fighter. They landed better, more stable jobs, and could afford to move into a nicer home, get better cars, attend concerts and sporting events, go on trips, start families.
That would be my ideal for how UBI would work: make sure people never have to chose between a bad job and starving or being on the street; but also make sure they have a clear path and opportunities to improve their situation and become more valuable to society.
Are there "deadbeats" who would just play video games for life? Sure, but there already are. I'm not sure how much those kinds of people contribute to society, even if they are working a minimum wage job to support their lifestyle.
>That would be my ideal for how UBI would work: make sure people never have to chose between a bad job and starving or being on the street; but also make sure they have a clear path and opportunities to improve their situation and become more valuable to society.
I think this discounts the formative experience of the prior years. I would expect it helped by:
1. Motivating those guys to make themselves more valuable on the job market.
2. Giving those guys baseline discipline/reliability to get them to their next work and training milestones.
The military reserves is an interesting beast, but if you were in the active component before that, you probably ran into lots of guys needing similar training in basic reliability. UBI could be a strong disincentive away from those minimum-wage jobs, and the outlay described by grandparent is superior to a minimum-wage standard of living.
I think it depends on your perspective and prior experience with people.
There are a lot of people that dont engage in the rat race even when food, health, the material conditions of their children depend on. It seems like most people want a base level of UBI to be better than the conditions they have from working now. It also seems like the expectation for UBI is often even above the average US income of $37K, and that would be if there was no additional salary left to be had from working
Based on this, I empathize with anyone of median income or higher who feels like they are struggling to get what they want, and UBI would be a huge dead weight, likely preventing them from getting all of the things on their lists.
I assume my list would go down the drain to support a UBI policy.
There are indeed plenty of people who can't or won't work. These people exist today, with or without UBI. And they will exist tomorrow, with or without UBI.
And so what?
These people are still human beings. They still deserve life: If dogs deserve no-kill shelters[1] then humans also deserve a life. They deserve a chance to live out their days, and to tell stories to their (perhaps prolific) kids and grandkids (who also deserve a healthy life, and that includes having a healthy -- if piss-poor and inept -- family that includes their elders).
Right now, it often works like this: They live in squalor, and have broadly have nothing of merit. Their kids -- if they manage to thrive -- disown them. And the whole time this very real person is still alive (if they make it that far), their grandkids only know of them through photos.
That's no life. Not for the senior, the kid, or the grandkid.
We can do better than that. It will not be cheap, but we can afford it, and we'll have a healthier society as a result. People, and the families they create, are important to the healthy existence of everyone in a society.
[1]: We can certainly talk about assisted suicide for humans or just culling the herd as options that may be superior to leaving folks to die in the gutter, but isn't it easier to just avoid that topic and give all humans a stable and reliable chance to stay alive? How much does that cost, do you suppose?
I can afford it. It will cost me a lot of money because I'm barely on the tall end of that hypothetical situation right now, but I can put my part in.
I can afford it because a healthy society is a productive society, and this will return to me because good economies are built largely upon productive societies, and healthy societies are more productive than unhealthy societies are.
Productivity generates wealth.
Are these not things that we generally understand to be true?
(Unless... Can it instead be shown that it is economically beneficial to have a relatively unhealthy and unproductive society?)
[Shall I make popcorn?]
(edit, can't reply further because of HN thread limits:
My dudes, "free" money from UBI isn't to keep people from working who want to get ahead. Most people can work, and most people do want a lot more than a shitty apartment in their life and are willing to work for that.
Y'all certainly want more than shitty apartment in your own lives, don't you? So why in the fuck would you ever assume that "dur, I have a shitty apartment and some simple food, so I don't have to do anything ever!" is the be-all, end-all human state?
Please re-align yourselves with the people you actually-know in life: I promise you that you'll see that almost none of them will give up on the rat-race if they start getting UBI. They'll generally want to keep making steps that seek to bring them ahead of their peers, and that means that they'll continue to do productive things. A thousand dollars per month (or whatever) isn't enough motivation for them to somehow cease being productive and stop working to get ahead.
There is no proposal for UBI that means the end of the fantastic American dream. UBI doesn't even mean the end of capitalism. UBI just creates a baseline financial safety net onto which anyone may fall without necessarily facing disease and death in the gutter, and it's there for everyone without even a shred of additional paperwork because it exists like clockwork without additional action on the part of the recipient, while also providing a bit of a boost for those at the low-end who do produce something that lets them get ahead of the game a little bit easier.)
I think we are discussing different magnitudes of Ubi. I would consider leaving a 200k job for 40k Ubi (which I think is a number more in line with what people describe.
First off, my 200k salary would be taxed into effectively a 100k salary.
I could live pretty well off 40k if I never had to work, so quitting my job would be a quality of life upgrade.
I think a lot of my peers would consider the same.
I think 40k is way more than most UBI proponents are aiming for. It's certainly 3 times as much as I have bean mentally considering in UBI discussions.
When I think UBI, I think paying for a shared living space and food. A minimum budget, not necessarily a comfortable budget.
I think that is a fundamental Gap between different people talking about this. The most upvoted response to this article was an argument that this isn't a real test of Ubi because 12K a year is a trivial amount and not enough to see results. Also keep in mind that this 12K was in addition to existing welfare programs, and most Ubi proponents argue that it would replace welfare
Ps, the people want Ubi as a replacement to means tested welfare and Social Services, consider what level of Ubi would be required for an unemployed or disabled mother of two
That's just another assumption you're adding into the ring. I see no reason why UBI would replace disability. It wouldn't even make sense to. They solve different problems.
really? How are they different? I thought the point was the same: make sure people have enough income to survive without working. Why does the reason for them not working change how much they need to live?
if you're in a country where healthcare costs to the individual can be considerable, someone who's disability costs them extra money would need additional funds to get to a baseline of living. Eg I don't need a wheelchair to get around, so my cost of living does not include buying and maintaining a wheelchair. Someone who does would need to pay for that somehow.
People are still expected to work with UBI. Disability is for people whose ability to work is impacted. They don't even have the option to work, or must do so to a lower degree than previously able.
That being said, I can see the argument to reduce disability in the event of UBI.
I dont think money and getting ones needs met without work is an incentive for health or productivity. I think it is an incentive for the exact opposite.
Or retirees who have plenty of money but still choose to work because they're bored.
If getting your needs met was a disincentive for work then why are all the multi-millionaires still working instead of downsizing their lives and playing video games / smoking weed for 40 years?
I think the "at that point" is the crucial element. An extra 20k to work a physically and mentally taxing job for inconsistent hours, no benefits, and no flexibility -- the calculus is garbage. But would I continue working my SWE job for my current salary, easily.
If we're having to say that the only reason someone ever would work a specific job is because it's an alternative to homelessness then that's on the job at that point. These are "inferior jobs" in an economic sense and it's up to the employer to do better. Make working for you suck less. Even in customer-facing retail jobs it's more than possible.
I'm having a hard time seeing the downside. Employees can afford to take more risks because they're not betting their livelihood anymore, and it provides a natural upward pressure on wages and working conditions at the bottom on the labor market which is sorely needed. Anyone whose desired lifestyle can't be supported on the meager income, which is most people, there's no change.
>If we're having to say that the only reason someone ever would work a specific job is because it's an alternative to homelessness then that's on the job at that point.
I think that is a major motivation for most work and I question if it is as bad as you think it is? Is it really that unreasonable that someone do something they don't like to get shelter, food, and healthcare?
>But would I continue working my SWE job for my current salary, easily.
Would you do it if your take home income was reduced by 50% to pay other people who choose not to work?
How small would the difference between working full time and full retirement have to be before you considered it?
I don't actually think it's that bad but I was trying to steelman your argument. The hypothetical presumes a terrible job with not enough pay to make up for it. The kind of job that someone would only take if they had not better option. If the job isn't that bad, or it pays well enough I think people will take it despite not needing it to make rent.
> you do it if your take home income was reduced by 50%
I don't think that would happen because UBI is supposed to be replacement for all other forms of welfare and I would also expect some small gains in reducing the prison population, and administrative overhead. But to answer your question, yes. Government already takes >30% right now and because of the U I'm getting the benefit as well so that covers a good chunk of mandatory expenses. In a very real sense I need less money under this system.
I'm not really sure how to answer the retirement question because under this system I can't "just retire" because my lifestyle wouldn't permit it.
I dont think that UBI could or would ever be implemented in a tax neutral way, so that is a pretty huge difference right there.
>I'm not really sure how to answer the retirement question because under this system I can't "just retire" because my lifestyle wouldn't permit it.
another way to frame this is how much (if any) of your income would you be willing to give up if it meant 0 work hours. Would you take a 10k pay cut? 50k? or are you completely inflexible when it comes to lifestyle spending, or alternatively, do you like your job enough that you would do it for free.
Why do you think dogs deserve no kill shelters? Euthanizing stray dogs and other critters in urban areas is quite common throughout the world and most definitely a superior choice if you have a limited budget and would need to cut services for humans instead.
If no-kill shelters ever make sense (and some people must think they do, as these are things that do exist), then no-kill humanitarian efforts also must make sense. I find this to be self-evident because I think that humans are more important than domestic animals are.
UBI directly helps with the latter; UBI helps people avoid death.
UBI also indirectly helps with the former: By reducing the burden of taking care of pets when the bottom starts to fall out on folks' lives for whatever reason that happens, the need for dog shelters of any sort is also reduced.
The American consumerist economy is already heavily driven by keeping up with the Jones's. Why would that change just because we let people that can't work eat, shit in a toilet, and sleep indoors?
Yes, teenagers can be lazy and get stuck in unproductive situations. Some adults even can! That doesn't mean that's what the majority of people want to do, and there are more effective ways of getting people unstuck than turning off their power and evicting them!
One thing that I haven't seen discussed is retirement. When you have a high paying job, you can retire early and still maintain your desired standard of living (and most people do, because most people don't enjoy their job and that is why we call it work). So a pretty uninspiring job like plumbing would end up paying a very high salary. Or stressful jobs like nurse or doctor. What happens when people doing these critical and now highly paid jobs retire to their yachts at 40? Will the market balance things, and did enough apprentice plumbers get trained to take over? Or will things spiral out of control and collapse? And how does the extremely high wages of critical jobs affect the level of UBI? If it is set to meet minimum essentials, then the UBI too can spiral up as the cost of those essentials such as the plumbers wage goes up. I tend to think that without a lot more automation, then a UBI cannot cover the minimum essentials/poverty line, because of the large amount of work required to support society that is only done because people are forced to do it, to the point that we cannot sustain bribing people to do it. But maybe it will work if we are able to replace every barista with a vending machine, have the trucks load and drive themselves, and build robotic assistants to allow 1 plumber to do the job of 10.
Honestly, I think it would even be acceptable to punish UBI "freeloaders" with, like, austerity. Like they get slow(ish) internet, a 10x10 foot studio apartment with a toilet, a stand-up shower, a counter with a mini-fridge and a hotplate (or premade food rations, whichever is cheaper), and a single window with a shitty view. Nutritious food, clean water.
And then, if you have proof of another habitable residence, you can get the cash value of all that instead.
The tricky part is that the austerity absolutely cannot reduce anyone below the minimum actual needs to live a full human life. You absolutely need to be giving them enough and healthy enough food, and water. The apartment can be claustrophobic, but it needs ventilation and sound insulation so people can actually sleep. The bed can be boring, but tall people can't be literally cramped when they sleep, and it needs to actually support their weight so people don't get back injuries. Health care needs to be fully adequate. Basically, minimum needs are 100% covered, so that if anyone ever wants to get working they don't have any immediate barriers. Don't take away anything that will make it harder for people to work.
There are many who would feel blessed with a 10x10 studio apartment with a (safe, clean, minimal) bathroom in the corner and barely enough room for good sleep, with shitty Internet and a bad view, and a barely-functional kitchen (and heat when needed, and maybe even cooling when needed).
(I've stayed in cheap-ish hotel rooms that are a lot larger and more flexible than that. I've also stayed in far worse.)
And that's... well, fuck: Isn't that OK? Is it not OK for some people who have (for whatever reason) failed to thrive and climb ahead at the present time to have these things?
(I think it's OK to give all people means with which to limit how far they can fall, even if that means that many quasi-successful people are essentially including this as a line-item that they pay to themselves on their own tax bill.
I also think that it is imperfect, and that we mustn't let imperfection stand in the way of general progress.
I mean: Nothing is fucking perfect. But the mere existence of ubiquitous imperfection doesn't somehow mean that positive progress cannot ever be made.)
The system breaks down when people get to democratically vote for their own UBI. Why work extra for a cool car or nice vacation when you can just vote for more benefits?
UBI is the risk in question, and the economics ARE terrible. The average US income is ~$37K and that includes workers. How does that stack up with expectations for UBI, given that it would take 100% socialization of income to reach that level of UBI.
> it would take 100% socialization of income to reach that level of UBI
I want to see you attempt to do the math to show that.
Here's my rough math: Mean income is about $60k. If we take the extra simple option, we can increase all tax brackets by 20% and give everyone a $12k credit, and it trivially balances. The median income increases, the low end of income drastically increases, and higher incomes drop.
Such an outcome is very far from total socialization. The effective tax rate of anyone below $60k income drops, and the max marginal rate is a not-crazy 57%.
But also we can make the tax increase progressive as well. And we can include capital gains as income and lower the percents. And we can cut a good chunk of existing welfare which decreases the tax burden. This isn't a suggestion for an optimal method, it's a basic sanity check.
60k is the average working income, not average adult income or human income.
You are also casually applying a 20% hike, which for many people is their entire budget after taxes and housing. My effective rate is already >40%, and you are proposing another 20%. That would mean others are getting more of my salary than I am.
12k seems an absurdity low number to provide universal shelter, Healthcare, food, security, and entertainment. My newspapers are full of stories on how 100k/yr isn't a living wage in California
My effective rate is already >40%, and you are proposing another 20%. That would mean others are getting more of my salary than I am.
There’s nothing magical about exceeding a 50% marginal tax rate. (Hitting 100%, sure, that would be bad.)
There’s definitely a psychological threshold there for most people. I ran an informal survey a few years back about what tax rates people would consider fair, and there was a very strong clustering at 50%.
I have a hard time understanding it myself. The whole point of taxation is redistribution, so why would you care whether you’re “winning” versus the marginal tax rate?
>The whole point of taxation is redistribution, so why would you care whether you’re “winning” versus the marginal tax rate?
A substantial portion of the population doesnt think taxation should be used for distribution at all. They think the fundamental point of taxation is to pay for public goods that everyone uses like roads, police, and firemen.
> 60k is the average working income, not average adult income or human income.
It's close enough, that's for 240 million people. If I use Gross National Income I get a much higher number.
I'm not worried about children right this second.
> You are also casually applying a 20% hike, which for many people is their entire budget after taxes and housing.
Another 20%, minus 12 thousand dollars. That makes a big difference.
The median worker would pay significantly less than before.
And I already said progressive would be better. But a flat tax like that is very simple and would not be the end of the world.
> My effective rate is already >40%, and you are proposing another 20%. That would mean others are getting more of my salary than I am.
Are you taking the minus 12k into account? If so it sounds like you're making a lot more than the people you just described that can't find reasonable housing. You'll be fine.
> 12k seems an absurdity low number to provide universal shelter, Healthcare, food, security, and entertainment. My newspapers are full of stories on how 100k/yr isn't a living wage in California
The nice thing about having a guaranteed income is that you actually can move without massive risk.
Or you can adjust it based on location, idk, I'm going with the simple version first. If it only helps most people then that's enough to show the idea has merit. Nitpicking won't work!
Okay. Please stop nitpicking and either defend your claim about "100% socialization of income" or admit you were wrong.
Sorry for saying irrelevant words, I will try to minimize them.
A flat tax increase of 20% of income minus 12k would be far from ideal, but anyone making less than 60k would have less taxes, anyone making 60k-120k would have a 0-10% of income increase, and super high cost of living places could use different numbers.
The exact details don't matter because I only made that scenario to prove your claim wrong. Because it's wrong.
At the end of the day, I have fun I don't think you are 60k number is right, or your 12K number is sufficient to cover all of the cost of living a comfortable life. This is fundamental to the difference. I think the desired level of Ubi is on par if not higher than the average American Income. This leads to the 100% redistribution claim. It is very simple.
If we assume the average income is 60k, urinalysis is still wrong. A 20% flat tax for Ubi would then provide a 12K benefit. This would not be a net positive for incomes between 60 and 120k. The break-even point would be an income of 60k, progressing to a 10% net loss at 120k. 20% of 120 is negative 24,000, and 12 would be returned via Ubi.
I meant to say income tax increase of 0-10% for 60k-120k. That's why I said break even at 60k. Sorry for the confusion.
> I think the desired level of Ubi is on par if not higher than the average American Income. This leads to the 100% redistribution claim. It is very simple.
You think the "desired level of UBI" is more than the median income? You're talking to caricatures and fools, not real advocates. And you should have said you were talking about far more than $1000 a month significantly earlier in the conversation.
I think most advocates sell UBI as a replacement for welfare and enough that people would feel "comfortable" quitting jobs they don't like, or support the disabled.
Top post for this thread mocks 12K as a negligible handout, and claims UBI has never been tried.
Let me ask you what level of UBI would support a disabled mother of two that cant work?
What level of UBI would allow a construction worker to quit their job and go back to engineering school?
These are exactly the types of things advocates claim UBI would solve (along with poverty and crime).
> Top post for this thread mocks 12K as a negligible handout, and claims UBI has never been tried.
Top post says it's not enough to quit their jobs (and keep the same lifestyle, presumably) or to get a "nice" apartment. That doesn't make it negligible.
And the claim of never really trying is also true, these tests tend to be small and pick random people out of a big crowd.
> Let me ask you what level of UBI would support a disabled mother of two that cant work?
That depends on whether the children are getting UBI, or whether there is a separate program for poor children. But UBI for the mother alone should not be expected to pay for that situation.
> What level of UBI would allow a construction worker to quit their job and go back to engineering school?
Well we don't fix tuition prices through UBI. Or the housing crisis.
But let's see. 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation, you could easily get a dorm bed for $4000 per school year at a big school. (Yes I know that doesn't cover the entire year.) So if we can just do that again, and charge a reasonable tuition (my local college is about $2500 per year right now and that number would be fine) then $12k of UBI would let someone go to school.
An issue is where.... rent in SF or LA or NYC is $4k a month for a 1bedroom apartment. Rent in some parts of the mid-west is probably $500 a month or less. So is UBI for the first or the 2nd? Do you have to move somewhere where rent is cheap? If not why not?
I always interpreted the point of the programs as by taking immediate insecurity off the table, you are allowing people to make more long term decisions for their well being.
Growing up I was in a negative leverage situation, even though I was smart and hardworking I was bled financially and I had to spend effort to layer contingency after contingency before I could even drive.
This gave my life negative torque, the moment I got a little leverage, I stacked up roommates and basically lived like a digital ascetic for 12 years.
I ended up in the top 1% of earnings for my starting co-hort not because of my fairly average intelligent but because of my nearly 100% openness, insane resilience and way above average mental health game, and a decade of luck.
I spent all that time and energy getting out of poverty and by the time I bought a house and stabilized I was worn out.
The really shitty part is that all along the way I had chances and risks that I couldn't take, companies I couldn't start, etc. because while any one of those chances was a play money/time opportunity for others it would have been a bet the farm, burn the ships, might have to squat with a bunch of homeless dudes (again) risk for me.
Anything that gives a person the breathing room to stop the frantic hunter gatherer subsistence doom spiral and build skills is amazing.
Let's let other countries play the economically wasteful poverty game,
let's let people in other countries die deaths of despair during their prime production years but if we want to be an advanced technology powerhouse we can't keep wasting the potential of all these poor but intelligent kids.
People really do love to take imperfect solutions to tractable problems and deceptively expand them into something intractable so they can continue to sit on their hands.
"How can I tie real solvable issues to some kind of thought stopping meme", it's a fun game politicians and and other disingenuous people play.
Every pundit buzzword you've injected is orthogonal to the point and the issue. You can personally pursue those plans if you want, they have nothing to do with what I am discussing.
Worse, everything you've raised is irrelevant to all the little american kids getting screwed right now.
But better America and Americans suffer and decline than having measurable but marginally imperfect solutions right? Perfection or nothing right? Iteration, measurement and incremental improvement isn't real so we shouldn't try? Defeatist attitudes didn't make this country.
Both of those things are in fact tractable, and many other countries manage to keep track of who's supposed to be in them just fine. It's telling that you think something that should be a non issue is a thought stopping meme.
For instance, couples where both partners need a job in a fixed location have less mobility than couples where one or both can work remotely. Therefore, they are locked into their geographic markets, unable to explore better opportunities.
> in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working
In society A, machines and clean energy allow the population to work an average of 20 hours a week. Some, even many people choose not to work at all, but still get access to a basic apartment and have their basic food, social and education, etc, needs met.
In society B, machines and dirty energy allow a tiny segment of the population to live on super-yachts, replete with airstrips for their private jets. They hire people who hire people to convince the majority of the population they must work at least 40 hours a week (preferably 80).
Which society would you say is "functioning" better?
Why blame the unemployed for the functioning of a society, when record inequality and the policies that allow it are so much more responsible?
The way to get to A is through people working. We didn’t get from where we were 100 years ago to now because society as a whole was fine with working the minimum amount needed to sustain life.
People consume a hell of a lot more now than 1950. Houses are bigger, we buy more clothes, eat more food, have more gadgets. The yacht class can only consume so much.
> People consume a hell of a lot more now than 1950.
The graph is true regardless.
Americans could be working 20 hours a week without society falling apart. The only thing that would change would be to the yacht class - who would still be very very wealthy.
> Houses are bigger, we buy more clothes, eat more food, have more gadgets.
How much more does housing cost? I'll save you the effort - it's fully twice as much per square foot, adjusted for inflation.
How much more temporary and flimsy are our clothes?
How much less nutritious is our food? How much more toxic is it - to ourselves, to the soil? How much fatter are we? How much more unhealthy?
We have more gadgets, sure. They're all owned by a handful of companies with damn-near monopoly powers, and none of them are changing this trend of a more and more unequal society.
> Why are people in society B concerned with the majority working if they are unnecessary?
I think that's a great question to ask. Some possible answers:
A - to make money for the yacht class
B - to keep the 99% too busy/distracted to wonder why all the productivity gains of the last 50 years have gone to the yacht class (see graph above)
C - They're not even that concerned - they pay people to be concerned about that stuff on corporate media / in politics / in our Supreme Court.
The point above is that "100% employment" is absolutely not the barrier between society B and society A. There's no good reason for full employment to be "necessary" to a well functioning society.
It could even be argued that one measure of a functioning society is how many people need to work 60 hours a week just to have their basic needs met...
In my mind, society C is the basic standard. Anything less is living in a late-stage capitalistic dystopia that is inherently anti-human. All progress depends on the unreasonable man. And I am more unreasonable than everyone.
It's not that utopian to want a society where people aren't made homeless if they don't work. Finland did it - it worked great. It wasn't even that hard.
Also in a society where just eight people own as much as 4 billion. Maybe making 'jokes' denying that we're in late stage capitalism is an odd choice? Like, yeah, we're headed for destruction.. It's funny the way Ralph Wiggum's "I'm in danger" line is funny.
> People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working.
There's nuance worth teasing apart here.
The only definition I've ever heard is that UBI allows you to lose your job and still be able to pay for the basic necessities (food, water, shelter, transportation, etc.). Anything less misses the whole point.
However, just the basic necessities would make for a pretty dull and repetitive life, which most people hate. And so the idea (as I understood it) is that it's not supposed to go beyond that, so your incentive would still be to keep your job if you at all can, not quit it.
> The only definition I've ever heard is that UBI allows you to lose your job and still be able to pay for the basic necessities (food, water, shelter, transportation, etc.). Anything less misses the whole point.
Excellent. Now open the border and hang out citizenship, or other form of voting rights. Does your definition require having a job once in a life time at least?
> However, just the basic necessities would make for a pretty dull and repetitive life, which most people hate
Oh no, many people would love it. Hundreds of millions for sure, if not billions.
I think it's called dystopia, and cannot last long.
Because until we have unlimited robots with AGI, stuff needs to get done for the society to function. Growing food, building stuff, delivering stuff, fixing/maintaining stuff, etc.
I appreciate the honest answer to what was a bit of a provocation.
Can we assume a fraction of people would still be doing these relevant things and that it'd be enough to maintain a functioning society? If not, wouldn't that point towards the directions we need technology to evolve? Would paying more to the people who now don't need to work, but are willing to, suffice?
One thing I would bet on is that, in that scenario, degrading working conditions (as we frequently see in agriculture, transportation, etc) would make it harder to find people willing to subject themselves to them.
Cards on the table: I think the vast majory of people would do less, and perhaps very little socially productive work without the current financial incentives.
> Would paying more to the people who now don't need to work, but are willing to, suffice?
This is not possible because you cant simultaneously pay workers more (as a whole) and have them subsidize the non-working.
I admit it may be possible to reallocate compensation among the workers so that some get more, while collectively they get less.
> Cards on the table: I think the vast majory of people would do less, and perhaps very little socially productive work without the current financial incentives.
I don't disagree, but aren't you implicitly admitting here that the vast majority of people don't want to spend their lives doing work? We get a few laps around the sun, once, before we return to oblivion. It seems a tragedy to me to force almost everyone into spending that brief spark of life on the drudgery of increasing shareholder value.
If you agree, would you then also say that it would be in humanity's interest to work toward a situation where people can lead happy, fulfilling lives? I'm not saying I have any answers, but I am saying that implicit in your own assumption is a problem that needs solving.
I agree with everything you said except the shareholder value part.
people dont want to spend their lives doing work, but they do want to spend their lives consuming. If you eliminate the shareholders and shares, it still take the same amount of work to produce what we consume, so this wont help reduce work.
In the 1930s, Keynes imagined that humans would live lives of leisure as productivity doubled every 20 years. However, the human hunger for material comforts is bottomless.
The only offramp from work is reducing consumption or 2) freezing consumption (assuming productivity increases)
> it still take the same amount of work to produce what we consume
Does it? Seems like if we don't have excess value going to shareholders, less work could be done to provide the current level of value for things people are consuming.
Value isnt the same thing as labor/work. This would change where the value goes, not the amount of work done.
A restaurant needs X hours of labor to make Y hamburgers. This is true if all the money goes to workers, or just a fraction of it.
You could pay a worker more, but that doesn't increase the supply of hamburgers.
Inversely, any value tied up in the share price is not being spent on hamburgers.
The best you can hope to do is shift some consumption from investors to workers, but consumption differences are as great as wealth/value differentials. e.g. Musk & Bezos might have 1 million times as much value to their name, but they don't consume 1 million times as many hamburgers. The vast majority of excess value held by investors is not directed towards consumption.
> The vast majority of excess value held by investors is not directed towards consumption.
So why does it need to be created in the first place then? That takes work that apparently does not need to happen for any other reason than economic, not because it is valuable in and of itself.
>That takes work that apparently does not need to happen for any other reason than economic, not because it is valuable in and of itself.
Value =/= Work.
no extra work is happening at the burger shop. you still need X hours to make Y hamburgers. If anyone works less, fewer people eat.
The extra value is extracted from the buyers (many of whom are workers elsewhere).
>So why does it need to be created in the first place then?
In theory, the utility of investor profit serves as a market signal for what goods are desired, when things should be produced, and what should no longer be produced. Markets determine this through trial and error with thousands of participants simultaneously acting.
In theory, people have proposed doing away with the profit signal, but the only alternative is trial and error from a political process.
for the last 150 years, it has been understood that neither process is perfectly efficient. For most goods, it is conventionally understood that inefficiency of the profit signal is less than the inefficiency of political process.
By way of analogy, Walmart has a 2% profit margin which is a cost consumers bear for Walmart curating the selection of goods they want in the quantities they want. In terms of efficiency, I think it is unlikely a panel of government politicians (with their own motives and biases) could run a store and decide on the types and quantity of goods that people will want in a more efficient way.
>> The extra value is extracted from the buyers (many of whom are workers elsewhere).
>Who could, in turn, work less if burger prices didn't reflect the need to pay investors more than they invested.
This then invokes the problem that if everyone works less, less is produced. Even if you raise salaries, the options are the same. A) Same hours, same amount of goods to buy, or B) fewer hours, fewer goods to buy.
This is why I am saying "value" is entirely besides the point. What matters is production and consumption. you could cut salaries by 99%, and if production is the same, prices go down 99%. You can double salaries, and if production is the same, prices double.
The amount of "value" an investor has locked up doesnt change this. all that matters is the consumption of investors. If Investors are buying and eating all the hamburgers for themselves, yeah, that impacts workers. If they stick it a locked box of reinvested stocks, it has exactly zero impact.
>You can always measure by actual consumption.
Yes, this has been proposed in the last 150 years of economic literature. The challenge is who measures it, and who controls it. Remember, we already no that the market isnt perfect. The question is if it is better than a realistic alternative. Do you think a panel of elected republicans and democrats, with all their campaign promises, lobbyists, and personal product desires would do a better job of keeping the super market stocked?
>Note Walmart is subsidized by government programs that pay their employees because the wages Walmart pays are considered too low for survival.
Lets be honest about what is happening here. Voters feel bad and want people to have more money than Walmart needs to pay them to secure their work.
Calling this a subsidy is rhetoric. Walmart doesn't need the programs. Walmart will have enough workers either way, or even raise the wage to secure workers if they need to.
People dont want to work but they want the benefits of other peoples labor. Simultaneously they try to fight the automation that would lead to a world were humans dont need to work for things to exist
Alright, I'll concede the numbers, let's say some fraction of people are employed not because they see value in their work but because they're economically incentivised (in other words, to make ends meet). I'm saying that given the choice, those who are forced into spending their time in a way that is detrimental to themselves in any other term but economic would not do so, and furthermore, that humanity owes it to itself to remedy that situation in order to maximise for fulfilled lives. That is if you agree that societal progress means making people's lives better, and that spending one's time meaningfully is a good measure of better.
What I'm not saying is all work is horseshit and let's all party.
>I'm saying that given the choice, those who are forced into spending their time in a way that is detrimental to themselves in any other term but economic would not do so
You cant have the fruits of labor without the labor.
People make this calculus every single day, and nearly unanimously decide that it would be more detrimental to go without the fruits of labor (especially those that must be incentivized).
It is obviously worth exploring how to make work less miserable, or better fit the interests of a worker, but that is a genuinely difficult matching an allocation problem.
A "do what you want" policy would not result in the tasks people want done getting done.
The closest equivalent to a system without transactional incentives is individual subsistence farming where one has to work for oneself so they don't die.
You want fresh produce in your supermarket, but you don't want to be the person who drives around to various farmers to get their produce, the person who stocks the shelves, the person who plants and harvests the produce, etc.
(Well, I guess if you're american you don't have fresh produce in your supermarket, but the point stands.)
I see, but I’m not sure if these wouldn’t get done in a “do what you want” policy. There’s even a chance that they get done better than how they are done today. People would put in resources to improve (automate, simplify, etc.) the tasks they don’t enjoy doing.
It's not Star Trek, even in very automated industries someone has to do the things.
If you don't get in the tractor and plough the field you don't get the wheat.
Economic value is no less real. If anything, it's much more real at the low end in fast food, the supermarket, labouring jobs etc than it is in Uber for dogs.
Sure, someone needs to do something, but due to automation we need less labor for the same value, even if it isn’t fully automated luxury space communism (yet?).
That excess time could be spent on leisure, instead the insatiable hunger for more is driving us to drudgery.
how much productive work would you undo for more leisure time? Go back to the productivity of 2000? 1980? further?
On one hand, I think this is an interesting question to put the value of work into context.
On the other, I think most of society would fight tooth and nail against it.
That said, I do know people who do live pretty simply, no electricity, healthcare, or fancy food.
It kind of reminds me of an old miner that would periodically ride into town on a donkey when I was growing up in the 90's. He was about 150 years out of place.
> On the other, I think most of society would fight tooth and nail against it.
...why?
We'd still have modern computers and stuff. Dropping productivity wouldn't revert technology itself. So if you ask people "Do you want the same amount of housing and clothes and cars and services you could get back in 1994, but while working 4 days a week instead of 5?" what's the horrifying factor that makes them say no?
That's a loaded question. Presumably you have a person that needs food. On order for that person to get food in our society, you need (lets focus on grown food for now)
- People that plant things
- People that harvest things (may be the same people, but maybe not)
- People that a order things to be planted (seeds)
- People that order/plan short term things to facilitate planting (fertilizer)
- People that make those short term things (who other industry, lots of people)
- People that order/plan long term things to facilitate planting (tractor)
- People that maintain long term things to facilitate planting (repair men)
- People that build systems to allow ordering of short term things
- People that build systems to allow ordering/renting/use of long term things
- People that build systems to allow finding people that maintain long term things
- People that handle making sure those ^ people have the infrastrucure they need (government + industry)
- People that handle making sure those ^ people get hired and paid
We are WAY beyond "in order to get food for people, we need Doug the farmer". So yes, a LOT of the people participating in this thread are in the set of people that are responsible for making sure people, as a whole, have access to food.
And food is only _one_ of the things needed for a society to function
You know, those guys who always dodge their round at the pub, they never pay you back that fiver, they always need somewhere to crash?
Hell, have you ever dated someone like that, or known a friend that has? One person goes to work, cooks, maintains the home, the other just spends their time on highfalutin' ideas like their photography project?
UBI to me sounds like a way of hiding that behind bureaucracy. I don't want to support people who don't do anything useful and purely consume resources.
You can see that they exist already, without UBI. So the question is, what effect will UBI have on freeloading if introduced? Will they contribute even less than they do now? Will there be more of them? Or will they stop free-loading off companies and individuals?
If UBI means everyone at the place you work is actually motivated, and you never have to watch your friend support a free-loader again, I think we're probably better off as a society.
You're forgetting about the bit in which you've literally given the person thousands of dollars.
They use that free money to get you to do things for them.
It's hidden behind bureaucracy but it's the same thing. Worse, even, because you don't have a choice.
It's like the nonsense solutions the left propose for tackling crime. "If we give people X, they won't have to steal X". I mean, sure, because they have already gotten it from me for free...
Right, but there are situations where you will pay for something one way or another; we'd like "not paying" to be an option, but trying to take that option causes you to pay in the most expensive way.
If you have a piece of industrial machinery, you will have down time for maintenance: you can pro-actively schedule planned maintenance when it's less disruptive, or the machine itself can schedule unplanned maintenance without regard to the disruption; "not having maintenance" isn't an option, and trying to take it is actually taking the "expensive unplanned maintenance" option.
If you're the parent of a toddler and that toddler wants your attention, they will get it one way or another: you can pro-actively make time for them, or you can re-actively make time when they act out, perhaps destroying something in the process; as frustrating as it is, "not making time" is simply not an option, and trying to take it is actually taking the "expensive re-active to acting out" option.
Here in the UK several years ago they cut back severely on social services to people with low-grade emotional problems. So instead of calling the social workers, they started calling emergency services, who are required to send someone out. The result was that much more more money was spent on emergency services. One could of course jail people who falsely call 999, but then that's pretty expensive too. For better or for worse, "not paying for people for them to talk to" isn't an option; it turns into "pay expensive EMTs to talk to them".
So, maybe there are these people who are just freeloaders; they get jobs and then do the minimal amount of work possible, they get boyfriends or girlfriends or spouses who will support their freeloading lifestyle. That cost is being paid right now, but in a damaging way: they're dead weight in companies and vampires on romantic partners. It would be nice not to pay that cost at all, but that doesn't seem to be an option. Maybe if we just explicitly paid them to freeload, then at least we'd have the benefit of not having them hurt our friends and our companies.
> I... don't believe that it is equivalent to giving free money to people.
And I hope two things are clear:
1. I don't like freeloaders either. I don't ever plan to be a freeloader, and I don't like the idea of paying taxes to enable people to choose a lifestyle of taking and not giving. (Obviously there are people who create value for society that's harder to "capture", like working on open-source software or making art; and there are people who have a harder time contributing because of other limitations, not because of choice; we're not talking about those people here.)
2. I don't claim to know that giving free money to people will help. It's possible freeloaders will take money from the government and companies / individuals; it's possible that having free money available will significantly increase the number of freeloaders. We don't know because we haven't tried it.
What I'm asking you to consider, however, is the possibility that 1) the overall benefits to society of UBI are greater than the harms caused by enabling freeloaders; and 2) there's no way to have UBI without enabling freeloaders.
If that's the case, then our options are:
1. Take UBI and its benefits, gritting our teeth at the necessity of enabling freeloaders
2. Miss the benefits of UBI on principle to avoid enabling freeloaders.
If UBI is a net benefit to society, in spite of freeloaders, I'd have to go with #1 instead of #2.
Consider that our current capitalist system enables lots of other types of freeloaders: people who have inherited enough capital that they can live off the profits without doing any work whatsoever, companies or people who have patented something simple and obvious and are then able to extract rents from the people actually making things, people who buy things and sell them milliseconds later. We put up with this kind of freeloading in capitalism because it's hard to prevent it without damaging the benefits that capitalism brings. The same might end up being true for UBI.
Knowing that it doesn't matter how badly you screw up, you'll always be able to cover your most basic needs.
This is one. We should go deeper into this question. I most certainly would continue doing a lot of the things I do now, but for fun and to progress the state-of-the-art in my field of work. I'd accept higher taxes in compensation for the assurance I will always be able to do what I do best, instead of what someone would pay me to do.
This assumes people just stop doing anything of value if there no longer is a proverbial stick in the form of financial ruin if they stop working.
Nobody is saying that the carrot (personal financial gain) needs to be removed from the equation. Just that everyone is guaranteed some basic level of financial support.
Society already produces enough wealth to cover the expense of UBI. Remember it would replace any other welfare systems in place today.
Personally I think I might take a bit more risk, and choose to do something that I personally believe is of actual value to society rather than please some corporation or VC.
> it would replace any other welfare systems in place today
I’ve never seen this math worked out.
Also, some benefits are inherently lumpy. A special-needs or chronically-ill person needs (and receives) resources that wouldn’t be covered by a broad-spectrum UBI.
Most UBI proposals assume a functioning healthcare system, which would deal with most of those needs. Probably not all, so you could certainly have additional programs as needed.
What's your incentive for continuing to eat, drink, and breathe once your overlords have fulfilled their greatest dream and replaced their need for human labor with robots and machines and other forms of automation? Your purpose will have been fulfilled and your existence now meaningless. That is the ultimate goal we're all working for, right? Being freed from working for our overlords so that we can all just lay down and die and leave the world to the worst of humanity?
the "overlords" already have enough money to pay a team of real live human beings to tend to their every need until they die, AGI robots aren't going to change that for them.
Because it's 2024 and we're not yet living in the world of WALL-E.
I agree it would be nice to weight 300 pounds and float around on a levitating lounge all day doing nothing but sadly we're just not at that point yet.
Because I want to live in an interplanetary society with awesome tech and flying cars and holodecks and life extending medicines and who-knows-what-else and we're not going to get there if people are content to sit around in their nondescript 1-person apartments eating pre-packaged meals and the occasional weekly piece of cake and play Call of Duty or watch YouTube all day.
I agree, and I think there are more nuanced and meaningful historical and especially modern reasons we encourage veterans to turn swords to ploughshares.
It’s reasonable to assume that the powers that be may find themselves in situations politically precarious if veterans aren’t able to provide for themselves and those they ostensibly fought for. Veterans know where real and metaphorical bodies are buried, they also know that at a nation scale, the internal problems that face first world nations are usually not logistical, but political. If not for fear of disrupting business interests, UBI in the form of food stamps, housing, and Medicare for all is possible. The veterans know this, because they are fed and housed and medically treated at scale during and after service. However, if everyone receives these same benefits also without service obligations, the ability to offer incentives to service is limited.
UBI is a thorny issue due to the complexities of implementing it piecemeal alongside the already-existing status quo. In some ways, a greenfield solution would be easier, but they call those revolutionary changes revolutions rather than evolutions for good reasons.
> I'm not sure we could offer VA benefits to every adult without massively raising taxes.
If we eliminated waste and slippage/loss and gained efficiencies of scale by eliminating private health insurance obligations except for high net worth, like is done in some countries like Australia, I think we could come out ahead actually, due to reducing the cost of employment borne by businesses, while maintaining or increasing health outcomes for those on public healthcare rolls.
To our great collective shame. That being a veteran is essentially a greater risk factor for peacetime structural violence in the form of homelessness, food insecurity, and lack of health care is a travesty only eclipsed by the how commonplace these issues are among fellow countrymen who are merely civilians.
What is this grand democratic experiment even for, if we still suffer from the same failure modes as that which we originally fought to save ourselves from?
> What is this grand democratic experiment even for, if we still suffer from the same failure modes as that which we originally fought to save ourselves from?
We treat our veterans poorly, but let’s not lose perspective, that’s still far better than most countries today or in history.
Another comment mentions land grants and swords to plows in antiquity. Lots of those vets weren’t super happy with the offering at the time since it moved them out to the frontiers where they’d feel less threatening to the republic, sure, but idk, a actual land grant seems better than token assistance of a loan for housing that remains pretty unaffordable.
Education assistance is more substantial maybe, but then again that’s something much of the civilized world enjoys without the threat of being blown up by ieds far from home in a pointless conflict.
Indeed though, let’s not lose perspective, let’s take a hard honest look at things and ask ourselves whether we’re doing better or worse.
The military is one of the best available options to lift people up out of poverty and give them a better chance at life, and it always has been. but it’s also a chance at no life at all, and so if people are forced into making this desperate bargain then it is disgraceful and reflects badly on what we’ve actually accomplished with all the time since antiquity.
Veterans in countries with free college and health care for all, such as Australia or many European countries have it better still, as they receive their veterans benefits, while allowing those who did not or could not serve to also live free from undue burden or peril.
I do take your point, though, and don’t protest too much. It’s less a matter of how much is enough for our veterans, but rather, how far we have left to go, one and all. In many ways, veterans simply arrived at the limits of political capital before the rest of us, and now that the problems veterans face are similarly butting up against many if not all in some form or fashion, we have economic capital concerns in the form of UBI that has become the stalking horse for larger structural issues largely left unaddressed facing us all.
I’ve worked with organizations that employ people whose physical or mental condition makes it difficult to obtain/maintain a typical job. In all likelihood the type of work performed (stuffing event participant packets) was a net negative in a small view of value. The folks there seemed pretty happy to do what they did in a supportive setting with other folks who had similar life circumstances. That leads me to believe that there were larger value-concepts at play than what a cash amount can enumerate.
The value that any person can create is principally limited by imagination, not the free market. The wonderful thing about a moderately regulated free market is that the imagination of more people can be used to engage the value creation inherent in every person.
