Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work • Hacker News Board

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

#561

Post by jjk166 » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #331

jjk166 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm an automation engineer. Automation and labor are at odds. Yeah, automation doesn't completely eliminate jobs, but it takes a lot fewer people to do those jobs. As per your example with farmers and the tractor, agriculture went from employing 90% of people to The main impediment to automation is the ready availability of cheap labor. Automation requires large upfront investments and lots of technical skill on the part of management. A highschool dropout has no upfront cost and responds to voice commands. I can say from personal experience, even when automation will easily pay for itself in a few months, there is generally still huge resistance to making that investment.

Throughout history you will find that many civilizations such as Rome or China had the opportunity to industrialize but didn't because labor was abundant. It is when there is a shortage of labor, such as after the black death, that moneyed interests are forced to invest in making their assets more productive. By paying people not to work (or more accurately not to work the undesirable jobs which ought to be automated) you get the same incentive to automate that a massive plague would induce, but without the tens of millions dead.

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

#562

Post by VirusNewbie » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

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.

>, UBI will become a necessity to prevent the collapse of civilization.

No, it won't. It might be the best way forward but it's not the only option. You could:

1. Give people free housing and food

2. Allow people to work other jobs, even if they're marginally as productive as automation (sweeping the floors, picking up trash, etc)

3. UBI

4. Give people welfare/foodstamps as we currently do in many countries

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

#563

Post by goodpoint » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

kuratkull wrote: post #415

goodpoint wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're paying large numbers to do nothing, the value of that money plummets and people will starve Absolutely not. Having a large fraction of population being unemployed is not good but this is not the point of UBI. Also, this is completely disconnected from inflation/deflation. Furthermore, deflation and "people will starve" are very much disconnected. Many countries devalued their money on purpose to be more c…

Currency exchange rates are bidirectional. You are arguing for people to produce less, so export plummets, which will bring down the value of the $, which means it is harder to import stuff you need.

> You are arguing for people to produce less

No I'm not.

> so export plummets, which will bring down the value of the $

No, if anything, it's the very opposite.

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

#564

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #536

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder if we can't make some conclusions from real world data over the last two years. Yes, the pandemic is a bit of a confounding variable, but from what I've been reading we have at least strong reason to believe that the support payments from unemployment both substantially contributed to inflation, and also reduced marginal propensity to work. Fortunately or unfortunately, I think there's not much of a cha…

> we have at least strong reason to believe that the support payments from unemployment … substantially reduced marginal propensity to work. I always see people blaming benefits for people not working, but nobody ever seems to offer an explanation why these same people didn’t return to work once the benefits were cut down to their pre-pandemic levels.

I'm not sure that they aren't gradually doing so? I don't expect cessation of benefits to have an instantaneous effect.

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

#565

Post by recursive » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #162

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you'd be more encouraged to work to buy a video game than to not be homeless? Why wouldn't regular minimum wage workers just be homeless and spend their money on luxuries if this was the case?

If you're homeless, what luxuries are you buying? What use is buying the new video game if you don't have a place to put a TV to play it on?

For playing on your Nintendo Switch of course.

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

#566

Post by akvadrako » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:48 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #553

OK, well let's look at the stimulus effects in the US. We have a real world example of a short term experiment like UBI. It shook up the labor market and now you've got worker shortages. People aren't working unless they have to. Everyone has to offer more money. I'm.happy about all this BTW. But it certainly goes against the claim in this article.

Nothing like UBI since it was combined with paying people not to work.

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

#567

Post by CraigJPerry » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

bitshiftfaced wrote: post #368

CraigJPerry wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about them? Comparatively enjoyable jobs will pay less, horrible jobs will pay more. Want to “work” as a golfer? Cool, enjoy living on UBI because no one will be topping up your salary for that. The person who cuts the greens earns wayyyy more than you though. Want to play lots of golf? You’re going to run out of UBI to pay for all those greens fees. Maybe you need to think about taking on a side gig in a comfor…

> Comparatively enjoyable jobs will pay less, horrible jobs will pay more. Why? Golfing is a poor example because you can already lose money trying to be a pro. Or, you could become world famous and make millions. What's more is that you don't need to be "hired" to become a golfer. When we talk about jobs that firms pay salaries to fill, then I don't see why the supply of those jobs would change, whether they're enjo…

>> then I don't see why the supply of those jobs would change

Are you not underestimating just how radical a change UBI would be? You’re going to radically change which jobs are viable.

For example, if you pay every teacher UBI, is it a stretch to imagine more than half decide not to go into work tomorrow? It’s not just a case of paying teachers more when they can afford to say no to your job. You’re talking about completely changing the role.

There’s going to be zero room for unruly kids in that classroom. Suddenly the teacher flips from being one of the least powerful professions to being up there with doctors and lawyers (im aware in some societies this is already the case but not in the US).

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

#568

Post by ashtonkem » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #564

ashtonkem wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have at least strong reason to believe that the support payments from unemployment … substantially reduced marginal propensity to work. I always see people blaming benefits for people not working, but nobody ever seems to offer an explanation why these same people didn’t return to work once the benefits were cut down to their pre-pandemic levels.

I'm not sure that they aren't gradually doing so? I don't expect cessation of benefits to have an instantaneous effect.

Why wouldn’t it have a rapid and sudden effect? If you suddenly slash the UI benefits for an entire state at once and people only start trickling back to work slowly, then it implies that there are other unexplained factors at play. After all, the hypothesis is that UI is allowing people who otherwise would have to work to survive to not work. Shouldn’t the sudden cliff in payments make these people go find a job once their meager savings are exhausted?

It’s also incongruous with the other hair on fire arguments you see about UI causing labor shortages; it’s inconsistent to say that UI makes people not work, then hand wave away why months and years after cutting the benefits were still facing a “labor shortage” in a lot of job markets. If it’s really down to UI, then you’ve got to propose some mechanism for why canceling UI didn’t fix the supposed labor shortage.

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

#569

Post by josephcsible » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #568

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that they aren't gradually doing so? I don't expect cessation of benefits to have an instantaneous effect.

Why wouldn’t it have a rapid and sudden effect? If you suddenly slash the UI benefits for an entire state at once and people only start trickling back to work slowly, then it implies that there are other unexplained factors at play. After all, the hypothesis is that UI is allowing people who otherwise would have to work to survive to not work. Shouldn’t the sudden cliff in payments make these people go find a job onc…

> once their meager savings are exhausted

Doesn't the fact that they have savings explain why it's a slow trickle?

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

#570

Post by akvadrako » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

disambiguation wrote: post #431

I would like to see "negative income tax" (a la Milton Friedman) make a comeback in these experiments. It's like minimum wage except the government funds the difference, and unlike UBI you still have to work to earn it, which seems to be a prevailing concern ITT.

That isn't how NIT works. Mathematically it is identical to UBI, it's just phrased differently.