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The indignity of no work

economist.com

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Re: The indignity of no work

#61

Post by michaelt »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #39
Jach wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know about where you are, but here in London there's more competition between buyers than between sellers.

If you give money to me and the people bidding against me, the money will end up in landlords' pockets for sure.

Re: The indignity of no work

#62

Post by pekk »

gaius wrote: post #58
nkoren wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Basic Income hasn't been voted on yet in Switzerland. You're probably thinking of the 1:12 pay scale referendum. And yes, the numbers do work. You just need relatively high tax rates (>= 50%) to support the Basic Income -- but no higher than already exist in many European countries.

Well, only kinda. For example here in the UK we could scrap our welfare system and give every man, woman and child in the country £3000/year no questions asked no strings attached, for what the welfare system costs now. A family of 4 could live on £12000/year not luxuriously but with the basics, somewhere like Wales. A single person could not live on £3000/year in London.

Why should anyone be subsidized to live in London? Let them live someplace cheap, or work to cover their expenses for living in an expensive place.

Re: The indignity of no work

#63

Post by gaius »

pekk wrote: post #62
gaius wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, only kinda. For example here in the UK we could scrap our welfare system and give every man, woman and child in the country £3000/year no questions asked no strings attached, for what the welfare system costs now. A family of 4 could live on £12000/year not luxuriously but with the basics, somewhere like Wales. A single person could not live on £3000/year in London.

Why should anyone be subsidized to live in London? Let them live someplace cheap, or work to cover their expenses for living in an expensive place.

I agree, but that isn't the "spirit" of basic income.

Re: The indignity of no work

#64

Post by thelogos »

DanBC wrote: post #56
thelogos wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans are already working a lot less hours than american. It's ridiculous that many Americans can't even get 2 weeks of vacation. Things are even more brutal in developed Asian countries, and that's why their suicide rate is so high.

Here's the first ten countries in the list of countries by suicide. Greenland Lithuania South Korea Guyana Kazakhstan China Belarus Slovenia Hungary Japan Obvious caveats about national suicide stats apply.

Obvious exception of the Eastern European countries. South Korea and Japan are notorious for the high suicide rate. The work hours in these countries are ridiculous. People literally get worked to death. Engineers pretty much devote their entire life to their company. There is no work-life balance. There is only work.

Re: The indignity of no work

#65

Post by coldtea »

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…

>The argument that with UBI people will still do that only for more money is crazy, since the taxes would have to be so high to support UBI that the costs would dwarf what people could afford.

Actually you could support UBI by just taxing 1-2 people in the whole US.

Re: The indignity of no work

#66

Post by graphene »

smackay wrote: post #19
dantheman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you allow competition the market will do this. Compensation also takes into account the joy the job provides, some jobs are relatively pleasant and thus pay less than some that are much worse. As for automation, I completely disagree - we automate where we can get the biggest gain on output. So if something costs a lot or has high social benefit we should automate it as much as possible so that it can provide more…

There are many types of job where market forces cannot solve the problem. (Within the context of the Universal Basic Income) there may entire categories of types of job that could be created to solve social (in the most general sense) or civic problems. For example charitable or education related activities are low to no profit - or at least it is not easy to measure their benefit directly or immediately, but high so…

Two examples that invalidate your last sentence would be Khan Academy and Mozilla -- both very competitive places to get a job, yet they don't pay substantially above market; their mission is what draws employees in. Not all competitive forces are financial in nature.

We could argue about the extent to which these nonfinancial competitive forces influence (or ought to influence) the market, but saying that they "simply cannot" seems false.

Re: The indignity of no work

#67

Post by pekk »

Kliment wrote: post #37
brazzy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Or find people to do them who are sufficiently desperate and low in status, compensate them just enough, make sure they don't have enough savings to walk, convince them they can't be hired elsewhere, collude with other employers to set wages, make harsh examples of anyone who pushes back, and do anything to prevent workers from organizing.

This is much cheaper and considered socially acceptable or even laudable (depending on the country, certainly in the US). Businesses with a large share of their costs in unpleasant labor either do this or get destroyed by the competition. That's capitalism.

Re: The indignity of no work

#68

Post by EliRivers »

gaius wrote: post #54
EliRivers wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Freeing people to work on things they desire will mean no one will ever..." Unless they want more money, of course. Hands up everyone who might want more money than the minimum needed to survive.

This is where the theory collides unpleasantly with the real world. The "minimum needed to survive" will be ratcheted up by every politician courting votes, and the people will happily play along. F'rinstance I don't begrudge anyone a roof over their heads, but right now in the UK it is causing an enormous political storm trying to roll back "... with a spare bedroom or two, in the postcode of your choosing" getting…

You agree with the principle; you're just arguing over where to draw the line. That argument will always exist.

Re: The indignity of no work

#69

Post by pekk »

kevingadd wrote: post #26
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…

I don't understand how 'there just isn't that much money' is a meaningful statement in a world where governments can issue more currency. How much money do you propose we need to offer a basic income system?

Generally as the supply of dollars goes up, the price of a loaf of bread goes up too. Printing money isn't a panacea.

Re: The indignity of no work

#70

Post by coldtea »

gaius wrote: post #57
ansimionescu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of a basic income is still sci-fi. There just isn't that much money. Sorry, but that last part is utterly dumb. There is enough of everything for everyone, money is just one of the abstractions we built for convenience's sake. Most of these abstractions for power have gone out of hand, but I assure you that there exists a theoretical parallel universe where basic income is implemented at a global scale.

No, post-scarcity is what is dumb. Some things just are scarce. Let's say we agree a basic human right that everyone gets a house. Who decides who gets houses on the beach? You can actually see this in practice if you visit Cuba. In Havana there are 3 families living in one apartment with cardboard over the windows for normal people, and there are gorgeous ex-Colonial villas with landscaped gardens, where well-connec…

>In Havana there are 3 families living in one apartment with cardboard over the windows for normal people, and there are gorgeous ex-Colonial villas with landscaped gardens, where well-connected Party types live.

And how is that different from the US? Besides "party types" being Ivy Leaguers and silver-spoon fed people?

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