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A world without work

theatlantic.com

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Re: A world without work

#101

Post by michaelchisari »

sien wrote: post #87
oliveira12345 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Basic income would pay for basic needs, and let people devote "free time" to more personally-satisfacting-activities: open-source programming, studiyng new interesting fields, etc... The mere fact that in today's professional career there is little oportunity for a 40-50years to work on a completely-new-unexperienced-field is an clear example. There is a point in time after which a job converts from ilusion-and…

There is a major problem with a basic income. This Economist article called 'Basically unaffordable' describes it. http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21651897...

The Swiss proposal is a very generous proposal that still comes at a time when saying "people can just get jobs" is not entirely laughable. You could say they're ahead of their time.

And yet, current government spending is 21% of GDP, and that amounts to $12,000 per man, woman and child. Remember, not everyone will hold on to their $12,000. Many will pay back a portion in taxes, and some will pay all of it back. And children will probably not receive the full amount, their parents instead getting a growing percentage until the child is 18. That's about 25% of the population. People in prison would not receive their basic income while serving their sentence, I'd assume. That's about 1% of the population, although I'd hope a basic income would decrease that.

The Swiss proposal would be $32,400 per person, for 74% of the US population, which would come to 7.7 trillion, or around 46% of the GDP.

Sounds outrageous, yes, but consider the fact that we are continually increasing the amount of wealth we create, while drastically reducing the labor necessary to create it.

GDP will continue to increase and wages will continue to stagnate and fall. And at some point, certain disruptive technologies (such as self-driving cars) will decimate whole industries almost overnight.

What that means is that the basic income amount won't be increasing nearly as quickly as the GDP, which means that balking at a current-day percentage of GDP will make less and less sense.

Especially when you're facing massive discontent and the prospect of a near freeze on consumer spending.

Re: A world without work

#103

Post by michaelchisari »

daodedickinson wrote: post #85
oliveira12345 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Basic income would pay for basic needs, and let people devote "free time" to more personally-satisfacting-activities: open-source programming, studiyng new interesting fields, etc... The mere fact that in today's professional career there is little oportunity for a 40-50years to work on a completely-new-unexperienced-field is an clear example. There is a point in time after which a job converts from ilusion-and…

Look, I think the robots are gonna take over, but you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum…

The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum

The word for that is inflation, and so far economists have not seen evidence that a basic income would effect inflation.

developing your happiness for and from what you have.

That's a good goal for microeconomics. But this is about macroeconomics.

Re: A world without work

#104

Post by markyc »

benaiah wrote: post #84
markyc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hiking, biking/rollerscating, enjoying a picnic, having friends over for card/board games, having a lan party are also valid and cheap/free alternatives :)

None of the things that you mentioned, card games excepted, are particularly cheap unless you already have the equipment, and some not even then.

I regularly practice each of them and barely spend any money

hiking: I just do light hiking, and all I need is a couple of sandwiches, a backpack and my boots. And plenty of water. Plenty of hills/mountains around helps, that's true

biking/rollerscating: you can get a decent used bike for about $100

picnic: just the food, and you need to eat anyway

board games: unless you need to switch the game every week I'd say you're covered with about $50 per year. We mainly play Settlers of Catan and Chess

lan party: I guess it depends on the games, we don't do this much anymore, but we're pretty old school when we do (CS, Starcraft 1, Worms World Party)

There's probably lots of other activities like that, for example we play soccer/foot tennis on a public field, and all it costs us is the price of the ball

Re: A world without work

#105

Post by createuniverses »

washedup wrote: post #72
methodover wrote: post #55

I really enjoyed reading this article. I've been thinking quite a bit about work recently. I'm just about to turn 29, and by all accounts I'm fairly successful: I graduated college with a worthless liberal arts degree just as the Great Recession was beginning. After an unsuccessful attempt at copywriting for a couple years, I managed to learn programming. A few years after that and I'm the leader of the engineering t…

The key to a happy and successful life is to find meaningful ways to spend your time. Meaningful to you, of course. Because of the monetary system we live in, usually a large chunk of our time needs to be devoted towards earning money, or at least finding a way to eat, live comfortably, and reproduce (too scientific sounding?). Buddhist monks will be able to show you other ways to enjoy life outside that system, howe…

Why "reproduce"? Don't produce the next generation of slaves. On balance, life is misery. Leave the unborn in peace.

Re: A world without work

#106

Post by washedup »

createuniverses wrote: post #105
washedup wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key to a happy and successful life is to find meaningful ways to spend your time. Meaningful to you, of course. Because of the monetary system we live in, usually a large chunk of our time needs to be devoted towards earning money, or at least finding a way to eat, live comfortably, and reproduce (too scientific sounding?). Buddhist monks will be able to show you other ways to enjoy life outside that system, howe…

Why "reproduce"? Don't produce the next generation of slaves. On balance, life is misery. Leave the unborn in peace.

Biologically speaking we are wired to produce kids, as such many people find deep meaning and satisfaction by raising a family. Of course this isn't for everyone, but I put it down as a driver for why people behave they way they do.

On balance, life is neutral.

Re: A world without work

#107

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

stock_toaster wrote: post #45
zzalpha wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, modern theory has it that the pyramids were in essence a type of stimulus program to keep folks busy and fed (and no, they were not in fact slaves)!

I would love to see a return to investing in and updating some of the physical infrastructure that has degraded over time. In the USA there are a huge amounts of bridges that need updating/repairing, dams needing repair (or removal), roads needing repair, dilapidated school buildings needing updating (as well as energy efficiency updates), etc. There seems like TONS of work to be done to refresh our aging physical in…

Not just the US. And not just maintenance. Creating good infrastructure is one of the best of all possible investments.

The problem isn't that there's no useful work; it's that the genius of the current economic system - the one where it's every individual for themselves, and there's no such thing as society - is incredibly bad at deciding what needs to be done to make the future better for everyone.

So education at all levels is mediocre, infrastructure is deliberately crippled for profit, there's no systematic planning for the future at all - and people in work are still spending huge amounts of time on essentially pointless activities.

It's an organisational and political problem, not a technological one.

Actually it's more of a psychological problem. Getting humans to learn deferred gratification as a species turns out to be exceptionally hard.

Re: A world without work

#108

Post by notNow »

methodover wrote: post #55

I really enjoyed reading this article. I've been thinking quite a bit about work recently. I'm just about to turn 29, and by all accounts I'm fairly successful: I graduated college with a worthless liberal arts degree just as the Great Recession was beginning. After an unsuccessful attempt at copywriting for a couple years, I managed to learn programming. A few years after that and I'm the leader of the engineering t…

Honestly I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes thinking about it.

This sentence reminds me of the First-world problems lady meme, nothing to see here boys.

Re: A world without work

#109

Post by GBond »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #78
waxymonkeyfrog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Falcolas, this is Derek Thompson, the author of the piece. 1. The quick answer is that we don't know how much of the misery of not working is from the financial shortfall of unemployment, vs the failure to meet a cultural expectation to work, vs some inherent need to feel productive, because it's just very hard to tease out the difference in reliable studies. How, eg, would you test this for prime-age adults at a…

How, eg, would you test this for prime-age adults at a time when income is tied to work and there is a cultural expectation that everybody work? How about interviewing early retirees? Those who have reached early financial independence and decided it was time to just not work any longer.

I would expect that the results would be similar to that of retirees, no cultural stigma and a sense of "earning" the the choice to not work.

Re: A world without work

#110

Post by rayiner »

nicholas73 wrote: post #86
methodover wrote: post #55

I really enjoyed reading this article. I've been thinking quite a bit about work recently. I'm just about to turn 29, and by all accounts I'm fairly successful: I graduated college with a worthless liberal arts degree just as the Great Recession was beginning. After an unsuccessful attempt at copywriting for a couple years, I managed to learn programming. A few years after that and I'm the leader of the engineering t…

I felt the same way at your age and in many ways still do at 32. 29 wasn't that long ago, and it wasn't biological maturing that happened. I became a father and now have a tenth of the free time I had before. The perspective that changed is twofold: first is that a job does provide life (your kid's), and second is that life is LONG. If you don't get rich by 30, you can get rich by 40 and still have a long time to do…

Having kids is a great way to give yourself some perspective and curb existential angst.
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