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Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

businessinsider.com

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Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#141

Post by AsyncAwait »

Unsimplified wrote: post #133

My problem with UBI is 1. It's not fair work-sharing, if people can live on it. 2. There's no economic mechanism that guarantees we'll have enough money to fund it every month. I propose another solution. Accessible, high paying jobs. If someone is unskilled, train them. Once they are skilled, guide them to useful work.

I have my own problems with UBI, but as far as 'fair work sharing', the presumption would be that the work is done 99% by machines, where you don't need to be 'fair' & the remaining 1% could be highly compensated.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#142

Post by moralsupply »

swiley wrote: post #119
moralsupply wrote: post #115

The government would need to get money somewhere for the UBI program. It can only do so either through taxation, or by printing money, as the government is not a value-generation enterprise. If UBI gets its funding by taxation, UBI can't work economically (not to say it wouldn't be "UBI"). Even if you tax all the rich people, it won't provide enough money for the program. Besides, you can't really tax the rich, the m…

You tax coorperations, not rich individuals. Although if you sit down and work it out I’m not sure it makes sense quite yet. UBS though probably could.

When you tax corporations, they don't simply make less profits, they embed the tax losses in their prices and pay less to workers. You, as a consumer or employee, end up paying that tax.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#143

Post by moralsupply »

maxerickson wrote: post #125
moralsupply wrote: post #115

The government would need to get money somewhere for the UBI program. It can only do so either through taxation, or by printing money, as the government is not a value-generation enterprise. If UBI gets its funding by taxation, UBI can't work economically (not to say it wouldn't be "UBI"). Even if you tax all the rich people, it won't provide enough money for the program. Besides, you can't really tax the rich, the m…

Public schooling is probably the most valuable thing humanity has ever done.

What if public schooling and taxation didn't exist, do you think that we'd be doing better than we are today?

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#144

Post by atq2119 »

Unsimplified wrote: post #133

My problem with UBI is 1. It's not fair work-sharing, if people can live on it. 2. There's no economic mechanism that guarantees we'll have enough money to fund it every month. I propose another solution. Accessible, high paying jobs. If someone is unskilled, train them. Once they are skilled, guide them to useful work.

> 2. There's no economic mechanism that guarantees we'll have enough money to fund it every month.

This isn't true, since the state can always just create more money.

The real limitation is in real resources and production capacity, and if a UBI was implemented by creating more money than the existing production capacity can sustain, it would likely drive up the rate of inflation.

If the UBI is set to a fixed nominal value, this would eventually balance out, possibly resulting in a corresponding UBI real value that is insufficient for people to live on. (What level of real value is sustainable is an empirical question.)

I agree with you that creating demand for labor is a better approach if done well. Ideally, you'd create a conceptually infinite demand for labor to ensure there's no involuntary unemployment. Of course, there's then the risk of increasing the rate of inflation via that labor demand, which you can fix by fixing the price at which the labor demand becomes infinite.

That's the direction that the "employer of last resort / job guarantee" proposals go in, though those also get flack from some people for being like workfare.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#145

Post by refurb »

grecy wrote: post #112
intuitionist wrote: post #26

Altman and Yang are a natural fit because they’re both very invested (Altman literally so) in the narrative that automation is coming for huge numbers of jobs. But the economic statistics just don’t back this up. Total factor productivity, a (rough) measure of the technological contribution to economic production, is growing considerably more slowly than it was during the early 2000s, and much more slowly than during…

Even if automation isn't coming for people's job, isn't it time we moved away from this idea that every single person has to work for 40 hours a week for 50 years of their life just to survive? What about spending time with family, or learning a new language or just enjoying one's time? When do we reach that magical future where we actually have leisure time and can enjoy the fact we're more advanced than we were a h…

You can have that right now if you’re willing to settle for a 1920’s standard of living.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#146

Post by atq2119 »

moralsupply wrote: post #115

The government would need to get money somewhere for the UBI program. It can only do so either through taxation, or by printing money, as the government is not a value-generation enterprise. If UBI gets its funding by taxation, UBI can't work economically (not to say it wouldn't be "UBI"). Even if you tax all the rich people, it won't provide enough money for the program. Besides, you can't really tax the rich, the m…

> the government is not a value-generation enterprise

This is incorrect. The value generated by providing a stable framework in which people can go about their daily lives is incredible. It's hard to measure this value, of course, but our modern way of life is impossible without this framework.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#147

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

Unsimplified wrote: post #133

My problem with UBI is 1. It's not fair work-sharing, if people can live on it. 2. There's no economic mechanism that guarantees we'll have enough money to fund it every month. I propose another solution. Accessible, high paying jobs. If someone is unskilled, train them. Once they are skilled, guide them to useful work.

This forces the bag holders to pay more. What happens when companies expenses increase? They increase their costs, cut jobs, cut benefits, and in very rare cases take short term losses to implement one of the former methods.

There are not enough high paying jobs. Period. Hard stop. There won't ever be.

Now, we need gas station attendants, room cleaners, baggers, bus drivers. These jobs will be replaced by much less expensive robots. Just like switchboard operators, seamstresses, tailors, cobblers, shoe shiners, appliance repairmen have all largely been replaced.

Pray tell, what high paying jobs will these people be given when they're put out of work? Who will pay to train them? How will they afford to live during the 2-120mos of training they'll need to get these high pain paying jobs?

UBI should be funded by a proportional tax on every product and the man hours of work it replaces. A calculator can do in 15 minutes what an average American would spend a day doing. Just as an example everyone should immediately grok. Then scale these up and require companies applying for patents, patent renewals, or business licenses to figure out how long it would take to do a job without their tool by comparing to other available alternatives. A positive net benefit of this is all the new jobs made figuring out how damn hard shit is to do without tools. Companies can then use their numbers to advertise.

Mind you, both our solutions are wholly unrealistic.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#148

Post by anovikov »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #120
kyledrake wrote: post #50

"Altman, who favors UBI, said in exchange for a floor, he’d like to see no ceiling on earnings, as some, like presidential hopeful Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have suggested. And like Friedman, Altman suggested tying the amount of the basic income to a fixed percentage of GDP. “Right now, because people are rightly angry that there's no floor, and that most people have no real chance to be super successful, we sort…

> UBI just doesn't solve that Doesn't it though? You create a floor, so that anyone with a miserable job can say "screw you" and quit and go start their own business without having to worry about how they're going to make rent before the new business starts making money, and you get a lot more competition. More smaller companies instead of fewer bigger companies. And the big companies would have to pay more to get so…

Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business.

I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that will be the only thing it will really allow doing.

Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a revolt in the middle classes, and mass exodus in upper classes), that will only give an equivalent of a minimum wage to everyone (ok 20% above national minimum wage but some states have it higher)... how far does that get you?

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#149

Post by Unsimplified »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #141
Unsimplified wrote: post #133

My problem with UBI is 1. It's not fair work-sharing, if people can live on it. 2. There's no economic mechanism that guarantees we'll have enough money to fund it every month. I propose another solution. Accessible, high paying jobs. If someone is unskilled, train them. Once they are skilled, guide them to useful work.

I have my own problems with UBI, but as far as 'fair work sharing', the presumption would be that the work is done 99% by machines, where you don't need to be 'fair' & the remaining 1% could be highly compensated.

Consider absolute numbers. Suppose monthly food expenses drop to $100. That's 2-3 hours of work for each person to eat monthly. X 330M = 1 billion hours per month. And that's just food. In practice, fair work sharing still seems critical, unless you have a better example in mind.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#150

Post by jononor »

anovikov wrote: post #148
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI just doesn't solve that Doesn't it though? You create a floor, so that anyone with a miserable job can say "screw you" and quit and go start their own business without having to worry about how they're going to make rent before the new business starts making money, and you get a lot more competition. More smaller companies instead of fewer bigger companies. And the big companies would have to pay more to get so…

Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that will be the only thing it will really allow doing. Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a…

Internet makes possible lots of businesses where one does not need to be based in a particular location to be successful.
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