The indignity of no work • Hacker News Board

Re: The indignity of no work

#131

Post by harryh » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 6:43 PM UTC

ansimionescu wrote: post #32

dantheman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He's not trolling. Really it doesn't work and the math is simple. There are ~310M Americans. To give them even 10k each per year that's 3.1 Trillion which is more that the US gov't collected in taxes last year.

Re: The indignity of no work

#132

Post by hifier » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 6:43 PM UTC

I'm confused by the idea that technology will somehow eventually render most of the population jobless. Why should this cause a breakdown of the capitalist system? These discussions seem to take this for granted without explaining why this is true.

It looks like technology will continue to allow more and more people to pursue business ventures that are less and less related to filling basic needs. We will still consume, we will still find ways to trade that are mutually beneficial. We will simply have a better standard of living. It seems the logical conclusion is that there will be more opportunity for everyone, not less.

Different jobs and different opportunity is not the same as no jobs and no opportunity.

Re: The indignity of no work

#133

Post by everyone » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 6:47 PM UTC

I would argue that many modern 1st world jobs are a form of pointless busy work. I am also concerned by the waste of resources and damage to the environment many of these jobs entail. Most of the truly important work (like food production) is achieved overseas or by a very small percentage of the population. The victorian "work ethic" way of thinking needs to be re-examined and possibly discarded as I do not think it is useful anymore, in fact I think nowadays it is detrimental. A more exigent social philosophy for this age would be more focused on trying to achieve a more sustainable society.

Re: The indignity of no work

#134

Post by dllthomas » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 6:50 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #80

pekk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Unit... 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.

Which would mean jobs... but I don't think all of the unemployed need to move for it to be a worthwhile change. If people (with savings or familiar support) drop out of the workforce to pursue other interests (possibly still productive, like start-ups), that leaves more jobs free for those needing them to make ends meet on top of the BI.

Re: The indignity of no work

#135

Post by dllthomas » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 6:54 PM UTC

chiph wrote: post #79

kevingadd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Caveat: Not a professional analysis, and not the OP. 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…

Your math assumes we're paying for it with an employment-contingent head-tax, which would be totally crazypants. Most income is earned by high earners, most earners are not high earners.

Re: The indignity of no work

#136

Post by Edmond » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 7:03 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #119

Edmond wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is that prior to the ACA, you didn't have much of a marketplace for the self insured, so you were artificially tied to your employer for the group insurance coverage. The ACA is apparently not perfect (I, like most people haven't read the law:) ) but I think anything that keeps people from becoming serfs is a good thing. Your argument about healthcare being money in a different form is flawed.…

I'm not sure - how paying for your own needs with your own earned money is "becoming serf" and why getting rid of the necessity for work in order for your needs to be paid for is a good thing? >>> You could make a similar argument for when people used to live in employer provided housing because owning their own homes was impossible for most people. When and where there was such time? If you refer to real slaves or s…

I think you are giving too much weight to the people getting something for free argument...the subsidies are income based, meaning a lot of these people were never going to be able to get insurance even at work.

You can more or less tell who gets employer-based health insurance based what they're paid. I doubt too many people are going to stop working because they qualify for ACA subsidies, you still have a whole lot of things you'll need money for. I see the ACA subsidies as a way to make people more proactive about their health and keep them out of emergency rooms which is significantly more costly to the system.

As far as older folks working less because they are not tied to their employers for healthcare I think this is a good thing. I see more opportunity for younger folks to move into those jobs.

Re: The indignity of no work

#137

Post by yetanotherphd » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 7:11 PM UTC

I don't get the philosophy behind the "dignity of work". People primarily work in order to get paid, money they then spend on themselves or their families. Work is no more altruistic than going to clubs and having casual sex.

Society functions not because people feel compelled to work out of principal, but because if no one worked, the price of labor would go up until people were enticed to do it.

And it's also very strange that eroding the labor supply is painted as a "loss of jobs", when lowering the labor supply means more and better jobs for those who do want them.

Finally, the idea that making poor people better off is bad because they might work less, is ridiculous. What is society striving for in the first place, if not the benefit of its members? Sure, the disincentive to work creates real deadweight economic loss. But this loss has to be weighed against the gain to the people receiving the handouts. It seems pretty clear that the wrong balance between work incentive and reducing inequality was struck in the US, and Obamacare is helping to fix this.

Re: The indignity of no work

#138

Post by cmyr » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 7:27 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #119

Edmond wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is that prior to the ACA, you didn't have much of a marketplace for the self insured, so you were artificially tied to your employer for the group insurance coverage. The ACA is apparently not perfect (I, like most people haven't read the law:) ) but I think anything that keeps people from becoming serfs is a good thing. Your argument about healthcare being money in a different form is flawed.…

I'm not sure - how paying for your own needs with your own earned money is "becoming serf" and why getting rid of the necessity for work in order for your needs to be paid for is a good thing? >>> You could make a similar argument for when people used to live in employer provided housing because owning their own homes was impossible for most people. When and where there was such time? If you refer to real slaves or s…

I currently live in Zambia, and employees are frequently provided housing; either housing or a housing allowance is standard in most contracts. This is obviously the extreme, but there are tons of people in the world for whom owning property is functionally if not legally impossible.

Re: The indignity of no work

#139

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 7:36 PM UTC

cwaniak wrote: post #5

There are these interesting developments that I noticed and I'm interested to see how many others noticed that: (1) Polarization of left vs right views among people in both US and EU (2) Sudden drastic turn to the right in many places in the EU while at the same time turn to the left in the US. It seems to me that since 1945 the US has been mostly right wing and is turning left radically, while the opposite is true i…

There's something to it. It's anecdotal, but looking at the trends in political discussions in Poland among my generation (folks in their 20s), it seems to me that they want changes in the very direction of what people in US have and complain about...

Re: The indignity of no work

#140

Post by robotresearcher » Sun, Feb 23, 2014, 7:40 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #74

cwaniak wrote: post #9

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.

> Everybody in the USSR had job. But these jobs didn't produce any (usually) value to the society. 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 s…

Russia was a leading world power long before the creation of the USSR. Your "backwater" was:

"One of the largest empires in world history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires."

(Wikpedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire)