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The Future of Not Working

nytimes.com

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Re: The Future of Not Working

#71

Post by Clubber »

marmot777 wrote: post #41
Clubber wrote: post #6

The people with the wealth pay people for one reason and one reason only: they have to. Once they no longer have to, they will lobby the government to continue to lower taxes and squawk about laziness, welfare queens, and all that garbage. This will go on for a few decades until there is an uprising of sorts, then those with the money will return to giving everyone else crumbs, or just enough to quell the uprisings.…

I have no idea if what you say is true but let's say it is true. So the options are incomes and stability or no income and uprisings and instability. Which world would you rather live in? The uprisings don't put food on the table but are likely to have the opposite effect so I'm in favor of the income and I'm in favor of stability. I have a young son and a stable world is my dream for him, along with breathable air,…

Nobody can predict the future, I was just pontificating, BUT the US government (both parties) don't really work for the American people. I'm talking Congress and the House, the ones that have the real power. The US government was setup by elites for elites. Why do you think white, male landowners were the only ones who could vote? It's in our foundation and has only changed in brief periods.

I think a living wage will be required eventually, but you better believe the people who donate largely to campaigns will fight it tooth and nail. Not only that, they will make sure it's just enough to quell uprisings and comes out of debt rather than increased taxes.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#72

Post by gwern »

tedmiston wrote: post #65
spyckie2 wrote: post #8

The article's title is misleading - it is not about not working, it's about giving money directly to poor villages for 12 years to provide what is similar to basic income but meeting fundamentally different needs in a very different part of the world. That said, I think it is a fascinating anthropological read. We often do not realize how many layers of wealth we had to stand on to possess our current wealth.

What's most fascinating to me is the dollar amount: $22/month ==> $264/year. It's almost unfathomable from a Western perspective that this could cover someone's basic living expenses for a year. I wish there were a simple way to participate as an individual. You don't have to be rich to cover one (or more) people's basic living expenses at this rate. Edit: Here's the link to donate: https://www.givedirectly.org/give-…

> I wish there were a simple way to participate as an individual.

There is? You give money to GiveDirectly. They even take Bitcoin (I've done it).

Re: The Future of Not Working

#73

Post by loteck »

chrispeel wrote: post #28
harryh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious about the math on that $66 billion number. According to the world bank there are about 750 million people living in extreme poverty. We only need to give them $88/year to get them out of it? And that's just the people in "extreme poverty." It'll be even less if we move up the income scale a bit. The number seems low to me.

The doc [1] below agrees that there are about 700m in extreme poverty now, which it defines as living below $2/day. If we gave each of those people $2/day, we'd need $550billion/year. So yes, $66b seems low for the $2/day threshold. I wonder if this $66b is for those who are below $1/day. Looking at the plot in [1], we can guess that the number at $1/day is much lower; $66b would give 181 million people a dollar a da…

there are about 700m in extreme poverty now, which it defines as living below $2/day. If we gave each of those people $2/day, we'd need $550billion/year

700m × $2 = $1.4b. What am I missing?

Re: The Future of Not Working

#74

Post by rubicon33 »

marmot777 wrote: post #43
rubicon33 wrote: post #13

> "The research wing of Sam Altman’s start-up incubator, Y Combinator, is planning to pass out money to 1,000 families in California and another yet-to-be-determined state." Oh, really? Where do we sign up? I'd love to be able to build my business(es) without taking investor funds.

That's a pretty cynical attitude. It's obvious the intent of this is to test a program that has the potential to keep people from drowning. I doubt you're now gasping for air as you sink below the waves.

What's cynical about it?

I guess I must not understand what UBI is all about. I had thought it WASN'T a form of welfare. Rather, it's UNIVERSAL in nature. That would mean theoretically everyone from millionaires, to the poorest, would receive UBI funds.

I'd love to be free from having to earn an income, so that I can work on my own projects (businesses). But who wouldn't, right?

Re: The Future of Not Working

#75

Post by mirimir »

gwern wrote: post #72
tedmiston wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's most fascinating to me is the dollar amount: $22/month ==> $264/year. It's almost unfathomable from a Western perspective that this could cover someone's basic living expenses for a year. I wish there were a simple way to participate as an individual. You don't have to be rich to cover one (or more) people's basic living expenses at this rate. Edit: Here's the link to donate: https://www.givedirectly.org/give-…

> I wish there were a simple way to participate as an individual. There is? You give money to GiveDirectly. They even take Bitcoin (I've done it).

That is very cool. I will spread the word.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#76

Post by tedmiston »

gwern wrote: post #72
tedmiston wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's most fascinating to me is the dollar amount: $22/month ==> $264/year. It's almost unfathomable from a Western perspective that this could cover someone's basic living expenses for a year. I wish there were a simple way to participate as an individual. You don't have to be rich to cover one (or more) people's basic living expenses at this rate. Edit: Here's the link to donate: https://www.givedirectly.org/give-…

> I wish there were a simple way to participate as an individual. There is? You give money to GiveDirectly. They even take Bitcoin (I've done it).

Thanks, that is pretty cool. Somehow hadn't heard of them before this post.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#77

Post by Clubber »

woodandsteel wrote: post #51
Clubber wrote: post #6

The people with the wealth pay people for one reason and one reason only: they have to. Once they no longer have to, they will lobby the government to continue to lower taxes and squawk about laziness, welfare queens, and all that garbage. This will go on for a few decades until there is an uprising of sorts, then those with the money will return to giving everyone else crumbs, or just enough to quell the uprisings.…

>The people with the wealth pay people for one reason and one reason only: they have to. No, that is not true. Human beings are complicated, and different people do things for different reasons. There are lots of rich people like Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates who spend the first part of their lives doing everything they can to get rich, and the second part giving it away for the benefit of mankind.

I agree with you, but those are the exceptions, not the norm and I was generalizing. Also, the context I intended was payroll or taxes. Carnagie did it because he believed rich people won't go to heaven.

"He believed in the "Gospel of Wealth," which meant that wealthy people were morally obligated to give their money back to others in society."

I'm not sure why Bill Gates does it, but I commend him for it. Also keep in mind, most of his charity goes over seas. Furthermore, Gates is worth around $90 billion. If he gave the entirety of his wealth to all US working people (about 150 million), it would come out to a one time payment of $600.

The US is going to have to start keeping it's natural resources and stop giving it to companies for free or pennies on the dollar. You should see how cheap my state sells water to bottling companies that then sell it for a %1600 markup or something like that.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#78

Post by yummyfajitas »

marmot777 wrote: post #63
yummyfajitas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand what Basic Income is. Basic income is meant to support people who desperately need it as well as wealthy hipsters who just don't feel like working. Means-tested welfare is indeed a program with the intent of "keeping people from drowning", but that's explicitly NOT what this is about.

I get that is ultimately the idea but I guess I figured that the first stage of rolling something like this out would be to those near the edge and there's no shortage of those. My assumption is the money would be calibrated to subsistence level so it doesn't concern me that a hipster wants to do art instead of work for money. They'll have to live simply but god bless them if they want to paint in a shared house with…

So the first stage of testing a BI is to build a means tested program? Huh?

The moral hazard of this doesn't concern me but maybe I'm misguided.

vs

That's a pretty cynical attitude...I doubt you're now gasping for air as you sink below the waves.

I'm confused.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#79

Post by marmot777 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #27
BuuQu9hu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With each step, we shall come closer to a test which is applicable to the USA's poor. For now, we are establishing whether the concept works at all. The article described several previous tests, each of smaller scale and with flaws which this new test aims to eliminate. This program will tell us what the next test should look like.

Do you mind pointing out where? I went back through the article and found: With this initiative, GiveDirectly — with an office in New York and funded in no small part by Silicon Valley — is starting the world’s first true test of a universal basic income. As you stated, there have been other attempts, so I don't know what the definition of "first true test" is. A universal basic income has thus far lacked what tech f…

It looks to me like you are correct the Canadian thing looks like a universal income. So it could be just a garden variety error on the part of the NYT journalist to say it was the first. I'm happy there are other tests going on. Maybe I'm a hopeless idealist but I've always been optimistic about the future but that optimism has been pushed to the wall lately. This was the first thing I've read I while that made me think maybe the future isn't going to be a total dystopian nightmare. Maybe there's hope.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#80

Post by marmot777 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #53
aaron-lebo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the headline. This is essentially describing charity to poor communities. That's not new. The article's connection between it and "basic income" is tenuous. To be fair, that's not the fault of the article as much as the program itself. How is charity to poor rural communities with collectivist leanings a test of the vague notion of basic income? Or what will this program tell us about basic income in th…

A lovely asymmetry: econ research on people living in the west is assumed to be generalizable and applicable to populations worldwide, while research on non-westerners is assumed not to be general in scope...

Are they assuming it's generalizable or are they going to find out with testing?
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