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Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

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Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#281

Post by kwhitefoot »

0xfaded wrote: post #269
ozzythecat wrote: post #4

A link to the actual research paper would be helpful. In this experiment, what amount was given to the treatment group that received basic income? How often? How does that amount compare to the cost of living in their city? > ‘It’s sometimes said that people will sit around doing nothing if you give them free money.’ I’m not an academic, so take this with a grain of salt. If my job requires menial labor or involves g…

Another take is that if workers are able to say no to a shit job, then the burden is placed on the employer to either eliminate the job or make it less shit. In the Nordics, there are no manual car washes, yet life goes on. Economically it doesn't make sense because of the high labor costs, and realistically it is a menial job that can be for the most part automated. If you want to live in a world where you can have…

> In the Nordics, there are no manual car washes,

This is simply not true, at least in the more densely populated parts of Norway. They are simply very expensive.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#283

Post by jjk166 »

rabuse wrote: post #108
bryanlarsen wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI makes it a lot easier to move someplace cheaper rather than being forced to live where the jobs are.

Wouldn't those prices spike with supply/demand though?

Maybe if everyone moved to the same low cost of living area and tried to achieve the same densities as the high cost of living areas for some inane reason. Realistically the increase in demand in any one area would be negligible - Tulsa isn't going to become a happening place.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#284

Post by mushufasa »

pkdpic wrote: post #195
staticassertion wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Maybe that's a good thing. It's insane how people in service industries are treated - like they're less than human. Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot. And the pay would obviously go up. People would be…

Agreed, isnt this exactly whats been observed from pandemic financial aid? Increased pressure on employers to pay more and give workers a better work environment? Maybe someone has a better link to back that up but heres one at least. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2021/10/14/employ... Also isnt there some possibly-not-totally-fantasy narrative where at least some of these jobs become automated in respons…

~50 years ago Keynes predicted by now no-one would have to work menial jobs because everything would be automated, freeing up people to work a few days a week and pursue creative endeavors.

While we have automated things, we are nowhere close to that today. A lot of current menial jobs CAN be automated today, but the cost of labor is cheaper than designing and deploying automated solutions.

Having higher cost of labor will incentivize more capital solutions to menial jobs (automation, substitutions), which will change societal patterns a lot (maybe you should expect a machine to take orders at every restaurant) but could certainly lead to a happier 'steady state' long term.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#285

Post by mongol »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #145
jacobn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those who work and thereby pay for the UBI may feel that freeriding is actually unjust, and not the hallmark of a glorious new post-scarcity society?

As more jobs become automated, UBI will become a necessity to prevent the collapse of civilization. Imagine something as simple as burger flipping became completely automated. There would be a million fast food workers suddenly unemployed. Add making espresso to the mix and half a million baristas lose their job. There won't be a million new jobs created to maintain the automation to pick up the slack.

Go back all the way back to the industrial revolution and you will find that automation creates new jobs, just other kinds.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#286

Post by bitshiftfaced »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #254
bitshiftfaced wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And so what if people refuse to do shitty jobs? The "so what" is that basic income doesn't change the ordinal ranking of how much people prefer to do different jobs. Neither does it change people's ability to get those jobs. Better qualified applicants will always have better options. So while basic income might increase the nominal pay of the least preferable jobs, it wouldn't mean you suddenly get to skip over th…

That doesn’t ring true. If you had the capital to make the decision not to work a crap-corp and instead pursue your dream “job” of being painter, musician, rock climbing explorer, artisanal fisherman, etc etc

What about everyone else who now also has the capital to pursue their dream job? Just as before basic income, there's many people competing for a finite number of dream jobs.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#287

Post by pc86 »

godelski wrote: post #94
pc86 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly what will happen. The pay for those jobs will increase, until such a point where it becomes cheaper/easier to just not have the job in the first place. I don't honestly know why whether or not people will work even factors into one's support for UBI. Some people will keep working, some people won't. Nobody will starve so that seems like something in the "pro" column at least.

There's a clear difference between "some people won't work" and "some jobs won't be able to hire people." Just to be clear.

You're absolutely right and I did conflate them a bit here.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#288

Post by RussianCow »

tremon wrote: post #206
respondo2134 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this has already happened in the food service industry. McDonalds used to hire a lot of teenagers; for many it was their first job. When minimum wage went up sufficiently high enough they replaced human labour with self-serve kiosks and reduced staff to a single register and kitchen staff. Tim Hortons switched to centralized bakeries and terminated all store-level bakers. I'm not arguing either side of this, just tha…

Turning your example around: if those teens were to receive UBI and McDonalds could hire them for only $3/hour instead of having to pay them full wage, some of the self-service kiosks might not have appeared, and the customers might have encountered better motivated workers?

Who would take a job for significantly less than they receive from the government?

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#289

Post by ryan93 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #160
caskstrength wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for the other group who will have products of their labor "redistributed" to pay for other's leisure time?

Gettting rid of serfdom, debt prisons and endentured servitude all reduced work and caused products of labour to be redistributed. Who said that current distribution of products of labour between Amazok and their workers is optimal?

If we are getting rid of serfdom why has no one suggested this money goes to third world workers?

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#290

Post by CraigJPerry »

thegrimmest wrote: post #184
tda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are plenty of jobs where you absolutely will quit And so what if people refuse to do shitty jobs? Perhaps we as society can do without those jobs. And if we can't, we should value them more

The "So what" is that if pay for waiters and labourers has to compete with UBI, the cost of service, food, and housing increases significantly, putting it out of reach of more people, and contracting the entire economy as a result. You can postulate about how much we should value these jobs, but the reality is that most people wouldn't be able to afford a meal at a restaurant where all the staff make 50k, or a packet…

Who would pay the multi-million dollar salary of the top footballers if that came to pass? If people were suddenly paying a LOT more for strawberries and garbage collection, would they have disposable left over for footballers?

There’d still be footballers - the person who was picking fruit left that role to follow their UBI funded dream of being a footballer. They’re just not going to make the same amount of money.

Same goes for CEOs and other roles with comparatively enjoyable execution vs high pay. Every man and their granny will be a CEO of a one person company when you take all the risk out of the system by giving everyone a safety net.

Enjoyable jobs will pay less, hard jobs will pay more.

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