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Guaranteed Minimum What?

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Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#201

Post by zanny »

etskinner wrote: post #190

"There will always be a need for someone to wipe down the tables, mop the floors, and take out the trash so a few minimum wage level positions will linger on." Hah, yeah right. Boy is the author gonna be surprised when those jobs get automated too.

Seriously, we already have robots that mop and vacuum. Scrubbing tables and taking out trash are just more expensive - it isn't a technically infeasible thing to do right now, especially if you sacrifice some of the magic by just putting UV strips on the tables to indicate where the robot should scrub, or some such.

That eliminates the day labor, you would probably still want a weekly cleaning crew to come around and get in all the nooks and crannies, but it is also reasonable to design buildings around being robot-maintenance friendly, and the more and better of a job the robots can do the less often you need the cleaning crews coming through until you never need them anymore.

The problem right now is that buying a robot that can wipe tables is a large upfront expense few places want to eat up. Prices will come down, though, as they always do. The cost to manufacture machinery is fairly fixed by volume in the endgame anyway, you just have to overcome the R&D costs.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#202

Post by Taek »

justinator wrote: post #185
cbanek wrote: post #4

> Humans are agressively being eliminated from as many business models as possible. Well that's true, where they don't add value. What's the difference between the case of getting movie tickets and your waiter at a fancy restaurant? One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience. Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about i…

You write as though you've never held a minimum wage job. Have some compassion for those people who are working hard for almost nothing. Sometimes, it isn't their first choice, or it's their only choice. I would suggest a better experience is had when you give respect to the (say) service industry worker you engage in a transaction with.

Maybe we should be working on better ways to get the poor educated and integrated with modern society as opposed to making them dependent on jobs which take all of their time, don't pay nearly enough, and block any and all opportunity for a way out because there's no free time or disposable income.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#203

Post by antisthenes »

jawns wrote: post #75

One thing that might cushion the displacement of workers by automation is if the workers themselves had an ownership interest in the automation technology. Yes, they would lose their jobs, but having an ownership interest would allow them to generate income. Maybe instead of UBI, we should consider a scheme where we grant an ownership interest in productive property. One naive way to implement that is to just grant s…

Yes, communism would cushion the displacement of workers.

But that's not viable politically in many western countries.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#204

Post by redahs »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #50
chris_va wrote: post #33

I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment. My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. Mo…

Why would you expect inflation? All sane UBI proposals don't create money, they just move money from rich people to poor people. If you're a Friedman disciple, then "inflation is a monetary phenomenon" and we can stop there. If we're moving money from rich people to poor people, perhaps we'll see the prices of stuff rich people buy go down and the prices of stuff poor people buy go up. The vast majority of stuff poor…

> Why would you expect inflation? All sane UBI proposals don't create money, they just move money from rich people to poor people.

If UBI is funded via taxes on labor and its products (income and consumption taxes) then one should expect further inflation in housing prices, and ultimately the transfer of money from productive workers and entrepeneurs to unproductive landholders and mortgage lenders.

If you don't want this transfer to occur, then you need to fund it via a land value tax, which does not allow landholders to charge higher rent in proportion to increased public spending.

If you are funding UBI via increased taxes on income and consumption rather than land, then you run the risk of making the majority of people poorer if housing, rent, and mortgage costs increase faster than their UBI transfer payments increase.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#205

Post by chc »

atemerev wrote: post #130
goldbeck wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

Some numbers: Current US population: 324 million people, 250 million adults. Poverty line income: $22,000 for the family of four (it is hard to estimate individual poverty line income, but it's more than $22,000 / 4. Let's say $12,000, which is $1000 / month). Total cost of universal basic income of $1,000/month for the US: $3 trillion per year. Total US income tax revenue: $1.8 trillion for personal income tax, $0.4…

This appears to lead to the conclusion "UBI is impossible" only if we include the premises "It's impossible to reduce COL" and "It's impossible to increase tax revenues."

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#206

Post by objectivistbrit »

The following table (Employment by major industry sector) should be more widely known in this debate.

The most relevant column is the second one (Thousands of Jobs, 2014). Just seeing this table makes clear how broad the modern economy is.

https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

Here's a more detailed version:

https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_207.htm

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#207

Post by Taek »

pg314 wrote: post #168
rhino369 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really can't see anyone making a rational decision to work less hard because the tax rate is too high, within reason. I really think people do. Two years ago I had to work 250 hours in December to get a 25k bonus. At ~40% taxation, I felt it was worth it. I probably wouldn't at 65%. That is a pretty extreme case, but well off people turn down work if it isn't lucrative enough. Plus, if you are taxing investments,…

> It's not worth investing money if 70% of the proceeds get taken away. Yes it is. As long as the 30% of the proceeds are higher than the proceeds of the best alternative use of your money. > This is why world wide, capital is taxed fairly lightly. This is wrong. It is taxed fairly lightly because it is mobile. Tax it too much and it just moves abroad.

I was just in a meeting yesterday with a fund that chose not to pursue lucrative investment opportunities because the tax situation was much worse than the other opportunities available.

Tax is absolutely a huge part of the decision making for any substantial wealth management. Whether you buy property, bonds, or do something more creative is heavily influenced by the taxes you'll have to pay.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#208

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

chris_va wrote: post #33

I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment. My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. Mo…

UBI isnt the solution, there just isnt a better response that has even slight chance of being implemented.

There needs to be a radical shift in how we look at our economic systems and culture in the medium term. However, if the currently proposed health care replacement is evidence of current thinking, U I is a pipe dream.

I don't usually make predictions, but it is going to get very ugly in the next 10 years if nothing changes.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#209

Post by ebiester »

lordlimecat wrote: post #186
adamsea wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kinda missed the whole point of the OP, which was, if people don't add value to a business, how will said valueless people put food on the table and participate in society?

The same way we have every time an industry has disappeared in the past: by participating in the newly opened industries. Is it rough when (for example) shipping crates put a bunch of longshoremen out of a job, when they are in their 50s and too old to easily retrain? Sure. But how many people now not only enjoy (as customers) the benefits that Amazon provides, but also enjoy the employment benefits of a massively ex…

50% of the population have an IQ below 100. 16ish percent have an IQ below 85. What are they going to do?

We've already essentially phased out the useful work that people under IQ 70 can do. It's likely that it's creeped up to 75 or 80, even. As these are automated, let's creep it up to 90.

It also takes out those who are poor and have no branch on which to gain experience for their first job. If we have eliminated the first jobs for all but the most talented and those with connections, what does a somewhat bright poor student do?

Well, it used to be they got a job, proved themselves, and worked their way up. Now, what do they do when they don't have the social capital to get to the point where they can work up?

What are these newly opened industries that will work with these people?

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#210

Post by omginternets »

waqf wrote: post #188
goatherders wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief. Ordering food by appearance is like deciding music is good because the artist has purple hair or a painting is beautiful because the canvas smells like cotton.

Please enlighten us with your wisdom as to what reasons for liking a piece of art are acceptable, and what reasons are unacceptable. To put it another way, when you walked into the restaurant you committed to paying a premium for one sensory experience or another. Why not the visual?

I think his point is that there's more to food than the way it appears in a picture, and a human being can add a lot of insight into the selection process.
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