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Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

universiteitleiden.nl

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

#331

Post by missedthecue »

jjk166 wrote: post #299
missedthecue wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we want to create tax policy that discourages automation investment in favor of human labor?

So you are opposed to people not working, and you're opposed to people working?

I'm opposed to paying people not to work.

Humans and automation coexist. It's not as if all the engineers that used slide-rules and graphing paper went homeless when AutoCAD was invented. Same with farmers and the tractor. Society gets richer as automation makes our labor more efficient.

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

#332

Post by andi999 »

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.

Dont forget the 3.5 millon truck drivers in the US.

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

#333

Post by thegrimmest »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #290
thegrimmest wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Believe it or not, poor people generally don't buy football tickets. If their TVs were made by UBI workers, then they wouldn't be able to afford those either. Material things would become scarce again due to the artificially inflated cost of labour. You're basically rewinding all of the gains in productivity we've made by imposing a high floor.

CEOs aren't paid a lot because the assume risk, they're paid a lot because business leadership is hard, and good leaders are scarce. I also don't know of many CEOs at large companies whose job I would classify as "enjoyable".

> Every man and their granny will be a CEO of a one person company

Then we'll need a new word for "company" as it's meant today. Also no one is stopping anyone from being an independent contractor, which is basically this. I'm not sure I'm following.

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

#334

Post by lkxijlewlf »

I had a sibling (he's dead now) who, all his short adult life, would work a job, get a few paychecks in his pocket, then quit and couch surf until the money ran out. Often, he couldn't find a new job and so he would couch surf until his welcome ran out. I am confident, given UBI, he would never have worked.

Now, that being said, I don't believe he represent(ed|s) a majority and actually I am in favor of a UBI. I have friends who I believe it would help out tremendously.

However, I really wish we would get universal HC first. HC expenses, in the not too distant future, will create more hardships than a lack of UBI ever would. And ALL people deserve good healthcare.

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

#335

Post by qwytw »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #79
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?

Most of the productivity gains go to the top percentage of people. Despite massive gdp increases in 20 years wages havent budged. If all the work was automated/outsourced those people would still make the same money. These are the people who ostensibly will pay for UBI and automation/outsources is one of the cases for UBI.

If we take out the period between around 2000 and 2010 they have been growing continuously since 1980 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...)

of course it's not at the same rate as GDP (5x vs 1.5x for personal income).

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

#336

Post by inglor_cz »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #296
inglor_cz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer facing jobs are precisely the ones that are shitty. Some people are really entitled and awful. But you can basically only get rid of them by automating the process and disconnecting human workers from complaintants. How well does it work? Ask anyone who lost a YouTube channel without learning the real reasons and has no path to appeal to a human. HN hates whenever this happens.

You can also make higher-quality products that require less support, and then have a smaller number of high-quality well-paid support for the fewer customers who still need it.

... for a higher price.

And we may have a long discussion about "how to engineer software so that it doesn't need as much support". Theoretically, it can be done; practically, we have all been astonished by Ways of the Common User that no one anticipated, plus you always hit the problem with diversity of hardware.

Apple seems to be pretty user friendly, but Apple products are expensive to boot and Apple does not support their OS on non-Apple hardware.

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

#337

Post by augustuspolius »

tippytippytango wrote: post #301

You are earning $4000/month after taxes and begin to receive $1000/month. What do you do? Some fraction of people will reduce their workload so their earnings are $3000/month, bringing their total income back to $4000. Some fraction of people will not reduce their workload at all and inflate their lifestyle to depend on $5000/month. The overwhelming majority of people will choose the latter; we already know this, it'…

Why not to increase federal minimum wage instead to, say, $30/h? If you were making $4000 - you are good already. If you were making $1000 - you get an increase.

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

#338

Post by readthenotes1 »

grdeken wrote: post #316

Looks like a European university. Would love to see that same study done on the U.S. population...

Some data points: the FIRE movement.

How many people have quit working as soon as they are able?

It is essentially the same question and the answer appears to be quite a few, with a few odd people who are unable to do nothing.

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

#339

Post by kcplate »

I personally used to be a proponent of UBI, but after 2020 and watching some of the impact of Covid and what increasing government financial payouts has done to employment malaise and to the economy, my skepticism has increased. I am not convinced that the benefits outweigh the costs like I once did.

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

#340

Post by jeffbee »

srcreigh wrote: post #36
the_real_me wrote: post #5

I strongly suspect that the lion's share of UBI would go directly to landlords or existing property owners.

Would they get any more than the status quo? I suspect the extra support may translate to decreased profits for landowners. Tenants would have more time and money to file maintenance issues and represent themselves in the legal system, which would cost landowners. In Ontario it costs $50 and takes a lot of time and energy to file a complaint to the LTB. Tenants would also have more ability to change their situation i…

In many U.S. states you need not even bother going to court, because of robust "implied warranty of habitability" statutes and precedents. A person who experiences real habitability issues such as no heat, no cooking fuel, doors or windows that don't close and lock, etc after notifying landlords and waiting a reasonable time (which is as short as 24 hours in the case of no heat) can simply hire someone to fix it and deduct the actual cost from rent. It would be on the landlord to initiate legal action, if they disagreed with the outcome. The tenant has no obligation to go through courts.
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