Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Future of Not Working

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 279 posts

Re: The Future of Not Working

#131

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

Giving money is a great short term solution but we all know that free always has a limit. 22 dollars per month is a good start but at 22 bux they will never reach the standard of living we enjoy in the west. The goal should be to ensure that everyone has a job or business that provides the person a decent living.

I think that in addition to the money they should help with the following:

1)Education and the ability to get it at will. Financial education should be a priority. 2)Entrepreneurship, make sure anyone that wants to start a business knows what to do. 3)Security and the enforcement of the law thru a judicial system, both criminal and civil. 4)A working financial system. Make sure businesses and people can borrow money. 5)A way to go bankrupt that will let people start over. It should not be too painful for both creditors and borrowers. 6)A political system that works for the majority. 7) Community leadership that works towards the betterment of the town. 8)A tax system that will let the town provide items that no single person can provide on their own. It's a reality as painful as they are taxes and their prudent use help improve the community's standard of living. 9) Secure property rights. If someone owns something they should do with it what they want without infringing on the community's well being and no one should be able to take it away from them by force.

What gets me railed up is the inability to use the town's human capital. Giving free money will not help forever. If you could get people to work together they would eventually get out of poverty. Maybe the current generation might not but eventually they would be able to do it.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#132

Post by skybrian »

reddytowns wrote: post #55
marmot777 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the exact opposite of a cynical attitude. It's the attitude I hope all the participants will have. If everyone receiving BI are not trying to make something better out of their lives, then UBI is no better at helping the poor then any other charity -- the old give a man a fish thing. No US citizen in California really has to worry about starving to death. They do have to worry about losing their benefits, and…

Consider that if basic income isn't tied to a job, it makes it that much easier to move away from such places. (For example, look at all the retirees living in Florida.)

Re: The Future of Not Working

#133

Post by greendesk »

thinkloop wrote: post #120
malandrew wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What amazes me is that people keeping keep increasing the definition of basic needs and we wonder why things become unstable. Universal healthcare is now considered a basic need. We're not even talking about basic healthcare either. I see people arguing all the time that everyone is entitled to a level of care that is for all intents and purposes a premium product that commands a premium price. If you were to tally u…

The max is generally: food, shelter, health care, education, communication

But what good is the minimum? Food that you grow and cook yourself, or fried chicken at McDonald's?

Shelter - at what size is the minimum? I remember US standards increased the size of the houses two-fold within the past 30 years (I might be mistaken, I can't find the source now).

Health care - does it include complex treatments?

Education - would signing up to Coursera classes be considered minimum, or a drop in the level of education?

Communication - I considered a broadband minimum for reasonable standard of life. Would 10 Mbt/second be guaranteed? I do not think everyone shares this opinion what is minimum standard of life. When working with others, you would see disagreement over all aspects of it - and it will prove hard to come to an agreement how to define the exact minimum. Furthermore, it might become very hard if the resource you are distributing is referred as a 'free' one.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#134

Post by marmot777 »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #124
marmot777 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I remember when Bill Gates was the king of the villains now he's a saint. I have whiplash.

Whitewashing his reputation for posterity by spending money that has never been rightfully his.

Oh man, don't get me nostalgic for Bill Gates, the greatest villain the world has ever known. I was happy when he was the villain but didn't know I was happy.

We can't call him out of retirement now, he's busy, and besides Microsoft isn't as scary as it used to be. Nothing stays the same so learn to appreciate it next time an assholish villain rises up to roll you without the slightest pretense of charm and subtlety.

Thank him for occupying you and your friends' thoughts and prayers for mercy and for endless hours of debate, strife, and paranoia because you won't realize what you've lost until it's gone.

One day you'll wake up and your favorite villain will have become a hippie, smoking hash with bedouins, curing diseases, and exuding something suspiciously close to charisma but it's hard to tell.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#135

Post by Razengan »

With almost 8 BILLION people on this planet soon, not everyone can meaningfully contribute to something that can't be done more efficiently by automation (which is also cheaper for everyone and easier on the environment) or done away with entirely. See [1], [2], [3] for examples from our not-so-distant past.

You just cannot expect everyone to "earn" money while expecting technological progress to continue unabated.

Don't want so many people? Mandate reversible sterilization at birth.

Don't want so many disgruntled and unemployed people? Endorse some form of guaranteed income, or incorporate basic housing, meals, healthcare and internet into the list of undeniable human rights.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchboard_operator

Re: The Future of Not Working

#136

Post by PeterStuer »

praetorian84 wrote: post #127

Interesting comment below the article regarding a government-run programme in Brazil trying something similar: "However, there is a trend of the part of these persons become dependent of this benefit and do not strive to change this situation..." That was my immediate reaction after reading this. What about after the twelve years, when the donors ride off into the sunset? There are some encouraging stories there of p…

If this solves their basic needs, housing, food, medical, education, ..., then why would they need to 'strive for change"? Seems to me the world would be a far better place if people could get more content with just living. We have no shortage of produce already, and that is before the automation revolutions coming in the next decades. Just living without exponential 'wealth' accumulation plans that invariably seem to include some form of over-exploiting natural resources while externalizing the effects, or rent-seeking schemes that create lopsided distributions, seems to be a far more 'civil' future.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#137

Post by tn13 »

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.

As Milton Friedman would say we are standing on the shoulders of the giants. People who came to these shores with almost nothing and built this amazing economy.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#138

Post by marmot777 »

Clubber wrote: post #130
marmot777 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to be obtuse. I fully acknowledge that greed is one of the forces ripping the society to shreds. However, people act in what they misperceive to be their best interests all the time. If your scenario comes to pass, then it will be flatly impossible to have anything close to a stable society. The rich do not become rich and stay rich in a vacuum. Maybe some of them think they didn't act on a platform o…

Great comments. I understand your comments on money, but I suspect other modern economies will fair the weather much better than the US. The US wealthy have diversified their wealth in physical assets, gold, foreign currencies, etc; things that have intrinsic value outside of the US. Not only that, they can continue to manufacture in foreign lands and sell to foreign markets. Capital is mobile, labor is not. What the…

I think you've made some cogent points here. The '30s here were not deeply structural or were they? That is, during the Depression, there was always the potential to climb back closer to full employment. It was thought to be part of the business cycle.

If automation takes way more jobs than it creates, possibly a lot more jobs, then nothing will jump start economy into jobs creating machine even if with higher economic growth.

So there's no gaming the business cycle to kick job growth into gear, though.

Without UI or perhaps a better program that works on the same program, you're NOT keeping the dire wolf from showing up at your window to collect his due. The '30s came close to that condition.

So angry tea partiers were not starving, the protesters on the left aren't starving. This Trumpian wave of populism isn't the worst case. The worst case is a Stalin, a Hitler or some of the sort of malevolence we don't have the imagination to understand due to its depravity. Imagine the difference between well-fed activist headed to the pub after a protest vs. millions of displaced with no hope and nothing to lose. I

I look at what I've written and I can tell I'm losing some coherence due to fatigue as the night wears on so hope it still came through what I was trying to say here. Sadly, because I don't stop by HN enough I might have to sign off soon but maybe I'll stay only for while surfing to see what emerges as I've personally found this discussion great. And other than maybe some minor flair ups of which I'm guilty of as much or more than average, I feel this HN community is pretty damn solid. Nobody actively tried to make look stupid or applied ad hominem attacks, it's an earnestness here that I admire Earnest gets worthwhile work done so keep it up.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#139

Post by zuminator »

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…

Mincome guaranteed an income floor but it was not UBI. It was a means-tested income supplement to ensure that someone's income didn't fall below $16K year. If they already made $16K they didn't get any Mincome. If they made $8K, they got $8K Mincome.

GiveDirectly gives everyone in the community who registers $22 month. The amount doesn't go down if the person starts to independently generate income. It will be universal, not means-tested.

This isn't necessarily a better experiment, but it is a different one.

What does giving money to every person in a poor community tell you that giving money to poor people in a wealthy community doesn't?

Well, we don't know. Hence this experiment. Mincome, however successful, was basically a deluxe "welfare" program with all the negative baggage that comes with it. If we're giving a supplement to the poor, and taking away that supplement if they become wealthy, some argue it functions as a 100% tax on work, hence functioning as a disincentive. (That's in addition to the "disincentive" of not forcing poor people to work to meet their basic needs.) If you're in Mincome, why take an $8,000 yr. side job? It would be like working for free. But a person on GiveDirectly, if they get a $10/month side job, their total income will be $32. Side work will continue to be a financially productive investment. It's a different type of experiment.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#140

Post by jhlgkhkhil »

Eridrus wrote: post #110
einars wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also liked this: A vast majority of aid — 94 percent — is noncash. Donor resistance is one reason for this; it is not easy to persuade American oligarchs, British inheritors and Japanese industrialists to fork over their money to the extremely poor to use as they see fit. “There’s the usual worries about welfare dependency, the whole ‘Give a man a fish’ thing,” said Amanda Glassman, a public health and development…

I'm not against cash transfers, but I feel like they can't solve everything, having a bit more money won't necessarily cause hospitals or schools to appear, so I think that some non-cash support will continue to be necessary to provide expertise that they couldn't obtain on the free market.

If direct cash transfers work the economy of the recipient country will grow. They can then afford to build their own schools and hospitals - and employ teachers and doctors to work in them.
Post reply on HN