Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The indignity of no work

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 268 posts

Re: The indignity of no work

#161

Post by ZeroGravitas »

harryh wrote: post #128
AngrySkillzz wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. currently spends about 2.3 trillion dollars on social welfare every year. That's around $9,500 per adult per year, a pretty good starting point (and cheaper to administer since you aren't means testing and can collapse all of those other programs into one). Combined with small tax increases or a cut in some of the U.S.'s other massive expenditure programs (i.e. the military), we can pretty easily afford to p…

Cutting social security benefits that pay the retired 10s of Ks per year in order to give everyone, most of whom are by no means poor, 9.5k/yr absolutely is sci fi level crazy talk.

You get it back as tax from the non-poor so you don't actually spend the money. Though if they have a bad year or decide to start a business, or write a novel they are assured that I'll be there for them.

Re: The indignity of no work

#162

Post by VLM »

hifier wrote: post #132

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 consu…

You may find a study of history to be interesting. What you describe sounds like the European post-western-roman empire dark ages not utopia.

How do you intend to consume if none of the consumers have money anymore? How do you intend to trade if the market is polluted by expensive middlemen and centralized .gov pre-selecting the winners and losers? If the standard of living were better in a non-monetary economy in theory, how come it never works that way in practice? Opportunities require money and power to take advantage of them, without either they will not be lost.

Why wasn't the (first) Great Depression a paradise on earth? No one had jobs or money. New high technology all over the place. So why exactly would the second Great Depression be any better than the first, if its of basically the same form? Even worse, recall the interesting economic hack used to "fix" the first one? All you need is a world war, and for the survivors, its gets better.

Re: The indignity of no work

#163

Post by ronaldx »

walshemj wrote: post #101
gaius wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am talking about welfare not healthcare - different budgets.

Um no its not NI pays for both benefits JSA (social security for non uk people) etc and the NHS.

If you think National Insurance pays for those directly (it doesn't), you're the reason we've been fooled into paying a second income tax.

Re: The indignity of no work

#164

Post by harryh »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #161
harryh wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting social security benefits that pay the retired 10s of Ks per year in order to give everyone, most of whom are by no means poor, 9.5k/yr absolutely is sci fi level crazy talk.

You get it back as tax from the non-poor so you don't actually spend the money. Though if they have a bad year or decide to start a business, or write a novel they are assured that I'll be there for them.

AngrySkillzz proposed funding BI by eliminating other programs (including Social Security). You're saying we don't eliminate those programs and instead fund BI by raising taxes?

Re: The indignity of no work

#165

Post by whatevsbro »

atmosx wrote: post #90
whatevsbro wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what? He's pointing out that it's a practical impossibility. The money for UBI has to come from somewhere , and any money a government has at its disposal comes from: 1) extortion (ie. taxation), 2) printing, 3) borrowing. Those are the three options, and none of them are a sustainable way to fund UBI, because the amount of money needed is so massive. You can't get something from nothing, and everyone can't get…

> He's pointing out that it's a practical impossibility. I'm not convinced that it is NOT financially viable. Especially in Switzerland where the governance is exemplary compared to other countries. I believe it is, only a real world example will convince me and Switzerland IMHO is the perfect country to run this experiment . The fact that you equate taxation with extortion for example, shows that you have a differen…

> I'm not convinced that it is NOT financially viable. Especially in Switzerland where the governance is exemplary compared to other countries.

It's not about the "quality" of your "governance", ie. "how satisfactorily you're enslaved". It's just that all money a government hands out to people has to come from somewhere, and each of the ways of acquiring the money has negative, compounding consequences.

> The fact that you equate taxation with extortion for example, shows that you have a different, not necessarily wrong, starting point than me.

True. But if you think about it for a moment, you'll realize it actually meets the criteria for extortion. You're handing over your money under threat of violence, even if the violence is X steps removed from where you are now.

No one would pay taxes without the threat of violence. If you were just asked nicely: "would you like to support yet another war in the Middle-East with a few thousand dollars?", you'd just decline and go on with your life, and that's exactly why they don't just ask nicely, they force you to pay.

Re: The indignity of no work

#166

Post by ZeroGravitas »

harryh wrote: post #164
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get it back as tax from the non-poor so you don't actually spend the money. Though if they have a bad year or decide to start a business, or write a novel they are assured that I'll be there for them.

AngrySkillzz proposed funding BI by eliminating other programs (including Social Security). You're saying we don't eliminate those programs and instead fund BI by raising taxes?

I'm sure you can find a basic introduction to the idea you're arguing against somewhere on the web but basically, instead of giving money to the poor and needy, you give it to everyone and those that earn a little give some of it back in tax, at some point you earn enough to give it all back. Those in the latter group cost you nothing, even though you've "given" them x thousand dollars, so dividing (or multiplying) a dollar figure by population isn't accurate.

Re: The indignity of no work

#167

Post by strlen »

smsm42 wrote: post #144
Edmond wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>> I doubt too many people are going to stop working because they qualify for ACA subsidies Equivalent of 2.5 million workers is too many or not too many? >>> 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. This is also proven not to be true. Having insurance, actually, raises usage of emergency r…

I have to agree with you here. The problem with insurance for routine care (the system we have in US) is that it makes the information asymmetry problem worse: since it's someone else's job to negotiate the price of routine day-to-day items, there's no incentive for individuals to make sure they're getting a good deal. This is equivalent to going through automobile insurance for oil changes and other routine maintenance.

Re: The indignity of no work

#168

Post by mistercow »

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.

How much money? Basic income doesn't imply a specific amount.

>Freeing people to work on things they desire will mean no one will ever wash dishes at a restaurant...

This is probably false. Even if the basic income is enough to live off of, people will still want more money for luxuries. But instead of having to work 50 hours a week to scrape by, they'll be able to work 20 hours a week and live comfortably, even at low wages.

And if you get to the point that you actually have more jobs than people to work them? You either lower the basic income, or you let inflation do it for you.

Better yet, automation ceases to be a bogeyman for unskilled workers. If jobs get automated away, we can increase the basic income to compensate. On the flip side, we can actually incentivize automation by increasing the basic income, leading to a future where we stop making humans do dumb jobs just so they can be employed.

Re: The indignity of no work

#169

Post by whatevsbro »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #99
whatevsbro wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what? He's pointing out that it's a practical impossibility. The money for UBI has to come from somewhere , and any money a government has at its disposal comes from: 1) extortion (ie. taxation), 2) printing, 3) borrowing. Those are the three options, and none of them are a sustainable way to fund UBI, because the amount of money needed is so massive. You can't get something from nothing, and everyone can't get…

> The money […] has to come from somewhere Not necessarily. Money can be printed out of thin air. It is printed out of thin air right now, mostly by private banks (I know they're not technically printing money, but Fractional Reserve Banking and other shenanigans have the same practical effects). Of course, once you're explicit about printing money, you need to be careful about inflation. But we shouldn't fool oursel…

I did list printing as one of the three way a government acquires money, and as "smsm42" explained, it's not a sustainable way to fund anything, let alone the massive expenditures required for UBI.

> But we shouldn't fool ourselves: we never ever lacked money. Money isn't scarce. What we may lack however are resources (both renewable and fossil), and labour.

Money is a representation of value - you've had to earn it somehow (unless you're the government ofc). In other words, money represents labour/resources/services etc, and those are scarce even if our fiat currencies can be created out of thin air seemingly without any limit.

The point here is, again, that you can't get something from nothing. If a government wants to implement UBI, it can't just distribute grains of sand to everyone - it has to be something valuable and useable as a means of exchange, and that places limits on what the government can feasibly do.

Re: The indignity of no work

#170

Post by harryh »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #166
harryh wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AngrySkillzz proposed funding BI by eliminating other programs (including Social Security). You're saying we don't eliminate those programs and instead fund BI by raising taxes?

I'm sure you can find a basic introduction to the idea you're arguing against somewhere on the web but basically, instead of giving money to the poor and needy, you give it to everyone and those that earn a little give some of it back in tax, at some point you earn enough to give it all back. Those in the latter group cost you nothing, even though you've "given" them x thousand dollars, so dividing (or multiplying) a…

Oh, so your BI is means tested.

OK ya, what you're arguing for and what most of the other folks around here are arguing for isn't the same thing.

It's a little messy but we already pretty much have what you're talking about with a patchwork of unemployment benefits, welfare, medicaid and various forms of disability insurance.

Post reply on HN