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The indignity of no work

economist.com

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Re: The indignity of no work

#31

Post by Broken_Hippo »

kfk wrote: post #11

So we are saying that most of the people out there are of no use to the economy and thus, most probably, to society. Well, welcome to fascism 2.0, this vision is elitist, it creates a huge power lobby (the entity paying up the basic incomes...), and it sees people as sheep with no brains.

How exactly do you come up with that? I understand the concept, agree with it to a point (it is rather exaggerated) and I am no facist and do not have enough power, percieved or monetary, to be able to be an effective elitist. I'm anti-huge power lobby, unless you can find one that does much more good than harm. People are under pressure to be sheep already if you work one of these 'jobs'. I take the notion and look at how doing fixes could make society freer and better.

My curiosity is how exactly you came to the conclusion of this being a facist and elitist idea?

Re: The indignity of no work

#32

Post by ansimionescu »

dantheman wrote: post #22
mattdw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of a basic income is still sci-fi. That's untrue. Switzerland is having a national referendum on whether to offer one, and stipends from oil or casino money, while not enough to live on at this point, already exist in a few places. You may be correct that there's not enough money to give everyone enough to live on, but it's far from sci-fi. (There is plenty of money in the world, it's just tied up in things…

In switzerland it was voted down because it doesn't make economic sense. Look at the numbers, they don't work.

Okay, now I am 100% that you're just trolling indiscriminately. There have been at least a couple real-world experiments done, have you even had the decency to look it up on Google?

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=basic+income+experiment

Re: The indignity of no work

#33

Post by unicornporn »

Since 1930 productivity in my home country Sweden has increased fivefold, mainly due to technical achievements. Does that mean that we work 20% of the time we did then? No it does not. Wealth has increased of course since the 1930s, and perhaps we want a higher material standard.

But also consider than since the 1970s productivity in Sweden has doubled. Does that mean we work 4 hour days instead of 8 hour days now? No, of course not. Instead, since the 1970s we work 100 hours more each year.

As a society i feel that we should be using the technical achievements to give us more time for the things and the people that we love. Is that too much to ask for?

Re: The indignity of no work

#34

Post by Someone »

argonaut wrote: post #8
dantheman wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of a basic income is still sci-fi. There just isn't that much money. Freeing people to work on things they desire will mean no one will ever wash dishes at a restaurant, no one will pick up trash, no one will spend time wiring your house for internet, or fix your computer, or do a large swath of jobs. The argument that with UBI people will still do that only for more money is crazy, since the taxes would hav…

No. It does not mean no one will ever work as a dishwasher/etc. It just means that the market rate for dishwashers/etc. will be higher. This would be due to the supply curve for labor shifting. Certainly, some businesses will not be able to hire as many (or any) dishwashers/etc, but those that they do hire will have to be paid more. But that is a natural extension of decreasing the supply of labor. The higher price t…

You still have to find the money to pay that universal basic income.

IIRC, the idea is to get that money by taxing capital and making it cheaper to hire people. As you indicate, getting it by taxing labor leads businesses to automate away labor, making it even harder to get that money from taxes on labor.

Think of it: that $5 an hour job currently costs a company $10 an hour or so. Without taxes on labor, they could pay $7 for a win-win situation. Even paying $5 would still be win-win, as the employee would have his basic income plus the $5 an hour.

Re: The indignity of no work

#35

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

jlangenauer wrote: post #21

Whenever I hear the phrase "the dignity of work", I'm reminded of Jeffrey Bernard's quote: "As if there was something romantic and glamorous about hard work ... if there was something romantic about it, the Duke of Westminster would be digging his own fucking garden, wouldn't he?" http://www.rense.com/general56/thevirtueofidleness.htm

Isn't gardening a popular hobby amongst the rich?

Re: The indignity of no work

#36

Post by [deleted] »

dantheman wrote: post #4
mattdw wrote: post #2

> A world in which a healthy adult has the reasonable expectation of earning a decent living while working full-time at a market wage is absolutely a world in which the dignity of work is a useful social value to cultivate. In a world in which that is not a reasonable expectation, the dignity of work can be a harmful concept. Interesting times ahead. It's going to be painful getting there, if we get there at all, but…

The idea of a basic income is still sci-fi. There just isn't that much money. Freeing people to work on things they desire will mean no one will ever wash dishes at a restaurant, no one will pick up trash, no one will spend time wiring your house for internet, or fix your computer, or do a large swath of jobs. The argument that with UBI people will still do that only for more money is crazy, since the taxes would hav…

[deleted]

Re: The indignity of no work

#37

Post by Kliment »

brazzy wrote: post #23
hayksaakian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that technology makes doing anything undesirable totally optional. We made horses obsolete for transport, and now nobody HAS TO ride a horse (99%). You can do it for fun. I would argue that today, most people who ride horses enjoy doing so, where the same could not be said for times before modern transportation.

No, that is not the idea, because automatability and undesirability of tasks are largely unrelated. We will habe to find a way to deal with tasks that are unpleasant but can't be automated.

Compensate them appropriately, how about?

Re: The indignity of no work

#38

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

dantheman wrote: post #4
mattdw wrote: post #2

> A world in which a healthy adult has the reasonable expectation of earning a decent living while working full-time at a market wage is absolutely a world in which the dignity of work is a useful social value to cultivate. In a world in which that is not a reasonable expectation, the dignity of work can be a harmful concept. Interesting times ahead. It's going to be painful getting there, if we get there at all, but…

The idea of a basic income is still sci-fi. There just isn't that much money. Freeing people to work on things they desire will mean no one will ever wash dishes at a restaurant, no one will pick up trash, no one will spend time wiring your house for internet, or fix your computer, or do a large swath of jobs. The argument that with UBI people will still do that only for more money is crazy, since the taxes would hav…

>There just isn't that much money.

A $10k/yr income for every American would cost $3T.

Current US gov't spending is over $6.4T.

Re: The indignity of no work

#39

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

Jach wrote: post #12
mattdw wrote: post #2

> A world in which a healthy adult has the reasonable expectation of earning a decent living while working full-time at a market wage is absolutely a world in which the dignity of work is a useful social value to cultivate. In a world in which that is not a reasonable expectation, the dignity of work can be a harmful concept. Interesting times ahead. It's going to be painful getting there, if we get there at all, but…

Here's a simple if perhaps naive question. Suppose UBI is $x/yr. What's going to stop every apartment complex owner and every rental landlord from raising the cost of living on that property by $x/yr/tenant? Will the government start fixing prices? (I imagine that slightly more realistically all owners of physical resources, not just land owners, would raise prices as much as they can while still maintaining roughly…

The same thing that keeps them from raising prices today:

Competition.

Re: The indignity of no work

#40

Post by tomp »

dualogy wrote: post #27
dantheman wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of a basic income is still sci-fi. There just isn't that much money. Freeing people to work on things they desire will mean no one will ever wash dishes at a restaurant, no one will pick up trash, no one will spend time wiring your house for internet, or fix your computer, or do a large swath of jobs. The argument that with UBI people will still do that only for more money is crazy, since the taxes would hav…

Last I heard, instead of paying taxes, Brunei citizens all get an annual $30k outright. Isn't that real-world, non-sci-fi Basic Income?

Source?
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