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The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

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Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#81

Post by notahacker »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #40
golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.

Except that in any conceivable scheme in the future it doesn't, it just makes "worthy person" equal to "person with the decency to be born with the right passport" rather than "person who will be expected to contribute to our society in future if they can"

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#82

Post by beat »

ThomPete wrote: post #75
beat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Now starting"? Fast food vendors have been automating since fast food was invented. And now, the industry is bigger than ever.

I mean to replace the people who actually service you.

That's one of the very first things fast food did. It got rid of waiters and other floor staff, and the complex series of customer interactions.

Automating away the human in the order process removes a way to speed up the process. Modern registers are complex enough to require training. Untrained, possibly illiterate customers using them while decision-making? That's bad news.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#83

Post by notahacker »

ThomPete wrote: post #79
notahacker wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fast food restaurants with no human servers existed decades ago, but the Automats were actually killed off by the more profitable franchise outlets that used people rather than technology. And there's nothing remotely new about the fast food industry's investment in process optimization, or indeed their lobbying against minimum wages "This time it'll be different" is never a good argument, especially not when deploye…

You are missing the key point here. The chains have no other way to go than to reduce the cost of their staff. It's not a this time it will be different argument it's this is the only way they can survive in the market argument.

I don't think they've been keeping on their staff all these years out of charity, or that the repeated failure of vending machine based stores - including experiments by major fast food chains - to survive in the US market is an indication that this will be a good survival strategy.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#84

Post by ThomPete »

notahacker wrote: post #83
ThomPete wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the key point here. The chains have no other way to go than to reduce the cost of their staff. It's not a this time it will be different argument it's this is the only way they can survive in the market argument.

I don't think they've been keeping on their staff all these years out of charity, or that the repeated failure of vending machine based stores - including experiments by major fast food chains - to survive in the US market is an indication that this will be a good survival strategy.

No because tech havent been cheap enough now it is while wages are potentially going up. You are basically arguing against the numbers here.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#85

Post by dragonwriter »

TrevorJ wrote: post #65
golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

TO me, they key problem you have to solve is: how do you avoid rent-seeking, and cost of living inflation? I'm not convinced UBI works in a free market.

> TO me, they key problem you have to solve is: how do you avoid rent-seeking, and cost of living inflation?

You avoid rent-seeking by avoiding monopolies; competitive markets prevent rent-seeking.

> and cost of living inflation?

Monetary policy, the same way inflation is managed now.

That aside, before considering any corrective changes in monetary policy, any UBI is likely to produce some level of upward pressure on prices, but at a level where buying power is still increased for people on the lower end of the distribution receiving UBI.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#86

Post by notahacker »

ThomPete wrote: post #84
notahacker wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they've been keeping on their staff all these years out of charity, or that the repeated failure of vending machine based stores - including experiments by major fast food chains - to survive in the US market is an indication that this will be a good survival strategy.

No because tech havent been cheap enough now it is while wages are potentially going up. You are basically arguing against the numbers here.

The numbers show that McDonalds beat earnings forecasts three quarters in a row after putting wages up. Fast food is not a struggling industry.

Vending machines have always been cheap, but they've never been popular. Which is why the fast food giants, each with large teams of analysts armed with all the relevant numbers, have experimented very little with them, and generally cancelled the experiments after very short periods.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#87

Post by dragonwriter »

chrisco255 wrote: post #32
beat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much that there won't be a labor market, but rather than radical changes to the labor market are accelerating. Two centuries ago, well over 90% of income earners were farmers. Today, it's like 2% and dropping. But unemployment didn't become a more massive problem than it was then. Labor became available for other purposes, enabling the industrial revolution.

We had 25%+ unemployment during the Great Depression, at a time when hardly any women were in the workforce. I would say that was a much more difficult time than this great stagnation we find ourselves in currently. Our economy is now largely service-based, but we are still quite a ways off from automating most services. There's a lot of speculation that the economy will imminently suffer rapid upheaval with few jobs…

> We had 25%+ unemployment during the Great Depression, at a time when hardly any women were in the workforce. I would say that was a much more difficult time than this great stagnation we find ourselves in currently.

Certainly the Great Depression was more of an acute problem that the current ones; the current ones are more persistent. We're forty years past the peak in real (inflation-adjusted) hourly wages.

> Our economy is now largely service-based, but we are still quite a ways off from automating most services.

Arguably, that should be a "because" rather than a "but".

> There's a lot of speculation that the economy will imminently suffer rapid upheaval with few jobs to replace the ones that are automated, but it remains speculative.

The idea that there will be a rapid cliff in the number of jobs is mistaken, sure. What there is -- and not merely imminently in the future, we are well into it -- is an end to the returns to labor increasing alongside economic output. There's still output growth, but the returns are captured by capital. Automation is a key reason for that.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#88

Post by gshulegaard »

humanrebar wrote: post #74
gshulegaard wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a rather complicated question, but in general I think a lot of people tend to believe in a greater broken windows effect than actually manifests in practice...from the Economist article: > Mr Anoche’s first move on getting his windfall was to buy a new roof. Not only is thatch leaky, but it also needs to be replaced twice a year, at $40 a time. He spent half the money on his home, and half on timber and chicke…

I'm not opposed to UCT. I was wondering whether demand-side spending-for-spendings sake is a good argument here. Efficacy of UCT compared to CCT is a different (empirical) argument that I'd definitely like to see continued research on.

Ah you were talking about broken window from an economic perspective, not a social health perspective.

But I don't see spending for spendings sake as a bad thing. In some ways it was one of the pillars of the recovery from the Great Depression.

And I too am interested in continued research of UCT vs CCT and combinations thereof.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#89

Post by dragonwriter »

beat wrote: post #82
ThomPete wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean to replace the people who actually service you.

That's one of the very first things fast food did. It got rid of waiters and other floor staff, and the complex series of customer interactions. Automating away the human in the order process removes a way to speed up the process. Modern registers are complex enough to require training. Untrained, possibly illiterate customers using them while decision-making? That's bad news.

> Automating away the human in the order process removes a way to speed up the process. Modern registers are complex enough to require training. Untrained, possibly illiterate customers using them while decision-making? That's bad news.

A number of fast-food and similar outlets have order-ahead mobile apps, which include payment through the app. These take humans out of the order process, but do not require customers to use the kind of "modern register" that the existing counter staff use.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#90

Post by nightski »

dragonwriter wrote: post #77
notahacker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters! Trouble with breaking down jobs into smaller subsets is that you need an awful lot of robots, and suddenly the rental on those doesn't look an…

> There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters! No, actually, a century ago there was reason to think things would head that way at some time in the future ; now, there is evidence that it…

I'd reckon it probably did not peak globally. You can't ignore the effects of globalization when making such an argument.
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