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What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

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Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#421

Post by aminok »

>I know what you’re thinking – we can’t afford this! But yeah, we can, very easily. We raise the arbitrary lid on the Social Security contribution, which now stands at $127,200, and we raise taxes on corporate income, reversing the Reagan Revolution.

In other words, we massively increase the scope of human-rights-violating income taxation, while chasing capital out of the country.

The problem here is that the author is not making the link between this:

>Those jobs that disappeared in the Great Recession just aren’t coming back, regardless of what the unemployment rate tells you – the net gain in jobs since 2000 still stands at zero

And this:

>The fastest growing component of household income since 1959 has been ‘transfer payments’ from government. By the turn of the 21st century, 20 per cent of all household income came from this source – from what is otherwise known as welfare or ‘entitlements’.

The increase in social spending is the most likely cause of the decline in the labor participation rate and the less-than-stellar wage/productivity growth.

>But, wait, isn’t our present dilemma just a passing phase of the business cycle? What about the job market of the future? Haven’t the doomsayers, those damn Malthusians, always been proved wrong by rising productivity, new fields of enterprise, new economic opportunities? Well, yeah – until now, these times. The measurable trends of the past half-century, and the plausible projections for the next half-century, are just too empirically grounded to dismiss as dismal science or ideological hokum. They look like the data on climate change – you can deny them if you like, but you’ll sound like a moron when you do.

The author is lying. The empirical data does not confirm his technological unemployment hypothesis. The demand for labor globally has grown over the last half century, and it has accelerated over the last couple of decades. Wages have grown faster over the last 20 years than in any period of history:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-glo...

Another leftist demagogue looking for government money.

If you want to understand how automation affects the demand for labor, I strongly recommend this article over the submitted post:

http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/10/24/13327014/productivit...

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#422

Post by mac01021 »

qplex wrote: post #388
Animats wrote: post #79

We're there already. There are vast numbers of people who cannot make an economic contribution large enough to cover their costs. Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as many computers as needed doing it. The US has already hit "peak school" in terms of economic benefit. About half of college graduates tak…

>There are vast numbers of people who cannot make an economic contribution large enough to cover their costs. "Economic contribution" is hardly a factor if you discuss morality. There are plenty of jobs that are just plain harmful. There is also a difference in subjective value if a job is done by a computer or a human being; computers do not suffer.

It's tricky to talk about what is objectively harmful in a world where people's interests are less than perfectly aligned.

Those jobs exist because someone finds them beneficial.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#423

Post by nhaehnle »

aminok wrote: post #421

>I know what you’re thinking – we can’t afford this! But yeah, we can, very easily. We raise the arbitrary lid on the Social Security contribution, which now stands at $127,200, and we raise taxes on corporate income, reversing the Reagan Revolution. In other words, we massively increase the scope of human-rights-violating income taxation, while chasing capital out of the country. The problem here is that the author…

Taxes are not related to human rights. Unless you can point to cases where taxes have been so high in the past that people starved from it? But in any case, that's not on the table. Don't pretend that it is.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#424

Post by nhaehnle »

nico_h wrote: post #203
nhaehnle wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we already have a form of "social credits". It's called money. We're just not used to thinking of it that way, but that's really what money is. So replace "social credits" in your line of thinking by money, and you've basically arrived at the idea of a Job Guarantee. And somebody who works for their money is no longer a moocher, so...

The flaw in this analogy is that the current top earners (CEO, traders, White collar) net contribution to society has no correlation with the money they extract from the system. Does a CEO improving his company market value by firing people have the same contribution to society as a paramedic saving a life, a nanny taking care of a baby so the parents can work or a teacher educating kids? These are highly valuable se…

That is absolutely a flaw, but I don't think it kills the analogy. If you look at other attempts at building some kind of social credits system, e.g. karma or points on sites like Reddit, you'll notice that people often benefit from a similar kind of feedback loop and get outsize rewards.

The point is that rather than trying to follow NIH syndrome and building a new system from scratch, repeating all the same mistakes, perhaps one could try to fix the existing system?

Otherwise, the parallel social credits system will most likely either remain a parallel system with social stigma attached to it, or it will end up having the same problems as the already existing social credits system (i.e. money).

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#425

Post by nhaehnle »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #204
nhaehnle wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response is kind of frustrating because I feel we're on the same side of this, but you're just not getting it. It's like you have a knee-jerk reaction about what a job is, and there's a blindspot where you don't envision what it could be. When a plumber gets satisfaction from a good day's work of fixing piping in people's houses, do they get their purpose in life / sense of being needed and useful (note: not the…

>When a plumber gets satisfaction from a good day's work of fixing piping in people's houses, do they get their purpose in life / sense of being needed and useful (note: not the same thing!) from an authority figure? Hell no, unless you think clients are authority figures. >But they are getting this sense from their work. I guess I wouldn't say that self-employed professionals have a job . I think of it as a self-emp…

How does UBI solve any psychological needs at all?

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#426

Post by joantune »

The answer: communal work. Academic research, science, your own projects! UBIs for nothing would only work for certain people. We should ask them to commit to, and then supervise them in projects. That'll be the future, not fuck work, but love the work that you're doing, because you chose it after all!

The author referred to some interesting concepts of lack of work that we can draw conclusions from: the Aristocrat era (on which there was a decay of this class, for excess of leisure IMO)

We still need to have a purpose in life, we should help people find more about their purpose and help them achieve it. UBIs can and should be complemented with bonuses for achievements. This way we can take back the work hard and get good results kind of balance. Difference will be: you can choose whatever you do, it doesn't need to give money directly (just imagine what that could do for scientific research)

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#427

Post by afarrell »

cesarbs wrote: post #240
vacri wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Knowledge workers have it easy . It's hard to get here, but once we're here it's a great gig. We're paid well, we're in demand, and there's a robust freelancing sector to our industries, be it software, legal, medical, engineering, or whatever. That link describes a call center worker as a knowledge worker. That's absolute nonsense. You could, in theory, argue that a call center worker is about manag…

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

This varies based on employer. The company Im working for (GoCardless in the U.K.) doesn't have this problem, but I've seen companies that do.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#428

Post by loup-vaillant »

cesarbs wrote: post #240
vacri wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Knowledge workers have it easy . It's hard to get here, but once we're here it's a great gig. We're paid well, we're in demand, and there's a robust freelancing sector to our industries, be it software, legal, medical, engineering, or whatever. That link describes a call center worker as a knowledge worker. That's absolute nonsense. You could, in theory, argue that a call center worker is about manag…

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

Same here: a gig of mine, as a contractor, just ended prematurely because the client asked why I didn't seem motivated, and I answered truthfully: the tools forced on us were the worst I have ever seen in my career (we were using Rational Rhapsody as an IDE, on Windows, for Linux development).

The only alternative I saw was lying: it will pass, I'll re-motivate myself… Instead I merely promised to do my best, which no longer included motivation or commitment.

Didn't go so well.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#429

Post by Fuffidish »

I think it's not true that there is no more work to be done. We are just stuck with the idea that jobs come with growth, and that only jobs that yield growth should be paying salaries. I believe if we sat down and talked we could find hundreds of jobs around us, it's just the money that is lacking, if we could access even a little percentage of the huge money spent in wars, entertainment, gambling,... Many cities, forests, beaches need cleaning, people and animals that need care, understaffed hospitals, etc... These jobs just don't pay. I'd be happy to hear your opinions on this.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#430

Post by aminok »

nhaehnle wrote: post #423
aminok wrote: post #421

>I know what you’re thinking – we can’t afford this! But yeah, we can, very easily. We raise the arbitrary lid on the Social Security contribution, which now stands at $127,200, and we raise taxes on corporate income, reversing the Reagan Revolution. In other words, we massively increase the scope of human-rights-violating income taxation, while chasing capital out of the country. The problem here is that the author…

Taxes are not related to human rights. Unless you can point to cases where taxes have been so high in the past that people starved from it? But in any case, that's not on the table. Don't pretend that it is.

A tax on income means throwing those who refuse to hand over a share of the currency they receive in private trade in prison, where they are kept in small enclosures, and where they often develop mental illnesses, and suffer physical and sexual abuse.

An income tax uses the threat of imprisonment to force people to surrender their privacy rights, in disclosing how much income one received in private trade, and from what sources, and their private property rights. It's a violation of human rights.

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