71–80 of 268 posts
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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?
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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?
> 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…
Absolutely disagree.
Freeing people to work on things they desire will mean that undesirable jobs (such as the ones you describe) will have to increase pay and conditions to correctly reflect the job's undesirability. To me, that's an awesome result!
In the specific case of being a doctor: it's possible (but unlikely) that desirable jobs such as doctors may have to take a relative paycut to cover other expenses.
I don't see that as the worst thing. Doctors deserve to be paid according to their skill, yes, but at the moment have entrance requirements which are disproportionate to the job at hand. This effectively limits a desirable career to the already-privileged and means the system is not necessarily accurate at identifying the most skilled candidates. If poor, skilled people are more securely able to fund themselves through medical school, that would also be great!
Everybody in the USSR had job. But these jobs didn't produce any (usually) value to the society. Who wants to have a job like this? You want to do something valuable so you know that what you produce people are willing to pay for (vs. being forced to pay for it). It just seems much more healthy too.
Well, they got a huge backwater, mostly agricultural country, into one of the big powers of the industrial era. And got to feed some hundends of million of people, have space exploration, very good physics and math, music and arts, and a lot more besides.
So, it's a myth that these jobs didn't produce any value to the society. They just weren't as competitive as the west, but then again, they started from far worse and backwards conditions, in an a land which is cold and unhabitable as hell in large regions. And they had political BS to deal with too.
Not every similar scheme will result in the same results. Stalinist politics and such is not a necessary byproduct of everybody having a guaranteed job.
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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?
I'm not saying that being born a citizen of Brunei is a raw deal, but their wealth is pretty dependent on the needs of much larger countries.
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> 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?
Because the US doesn't even claim to adhere to any notions of egalitarianism.
Whereas in real life you see people working their ass off all their lives still working at Walmarts at their 70s, while heirs, privileged slobs and frauds who haven't actually worked a day in their lives are living the dream...
Although there's still a taboo around not working, it can't last. The future, as Arthur C. Clarke said, is not full employment, but full-time playing. (Some of that playing will resemble what we now call 'research'.)
Meanwhile, there is work for anyone who has minimal food, shelter and web access. There are many unsolved problems out there and not just in open source software. With dignity galore, because they're important.
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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.
Basic income allows people to better choose their own destiny. I can move from London to Wales, or move from Wales to London, knowing in both cases that I'll at least have a basic income to cover moving costs and minimum expenses while I set myself up.
That nets me a different quality of life in each place, exactly as it should. Choosing to live in London means you share the resources with a much higher population density and take the (many) positive and negative consequences of that.
You still need to work, but you have more freedom to negotiate; at least, you have gained a decent Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) - if things go horribly wrong you can still move to Wales :)
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In switzerland it was voted down because it doesn't make economic sense. Look at the numbers, they don't work.
What numbers, specifically? You didn't cite any and there haven't been many real-world studies or experiments to produce data on the costs/results of a basic income program. Something this complicated isn't going to be accurately modeled by a couple economists purely using estimates...
There's 248 million people ages 16 and older in the US, of which 63% are in the labor force[1]. So 156 million people are available for work (not all of whom are employed).
Total population is about 330 million.
If each of them were to get a basic monthly stipend (this is everyone, including infants) of $1200, that's $396 billion per month in payments.
Per working individual, that's a tax burden of $2538 per month. And that's just for this program - there's also the rest of government to pay for. Military, roads, police + fire protection, and so on. This also assumes that the basic stipend replaces all other existing entitlement and welfare programs. Which isn't likely, because politics.
Yes, the working individual will also receive a stipend payment, reducing their net tax burden to $1338. But for an hourly employee, that comes out to about $8.35 per hour worked that goes to tax. Even with the new $10.10 minimum wage proposal, that leaves them just $1.75/hr as incentive to work, vs. just staying home and living off the stipend.
[1] http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...
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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.
Greater London, bigger than the next ~7 largest urban areas in the UK put together. A lot of infrastructure would need rebuilding if 10% of the UK population were going to quickly up and move to the remote hills and North Wales towns.