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UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

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Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#111

Post by fuzzfactor »

Jedd wrote: post #44
blfr wrote: post #7

The world is increasingly complex making it seem to many people that their work is unproductive (bullshit/make-work jobs). This and lack of agency in many jobs is what leads to massive frustration with work* but it's not actually an incisive observation about the economy as a whole. it’s not possible to pilot a UBI. Giving cash to a small subset of the population is not UBI. UBI goes to everyone. It changes the econo…

> I am in particular very skeptical of anything that cannot be piloted or otherwise effectively tested on a smaller scale. In turn, I'm sceptical of people who say we can't entertain any non-trivial, non-cautionary, non-evolutionary changes to the status quo ... while downplaying the fact that the situation we're in now - 9-5, mon-fri, 20-65yo - was not piloted or effectively tested on a smaller scale before all of u…

This was piloted, only those who first rose to clamor for it were the guinea pigs for years, in place of the previous 6-6, mon-sat, 15-expiration.

Otherwise it couldn't have gotten so popular and we couldn't have inherited it.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#112

Post by swed420 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #106
swed420 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment suggests your views are heavily biased by capital owned/controlled western media. Here's a different take, with modern China as an example: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/07/24/chinas-thi...

Your answer to "capitalist owned/controlled western media" is China's third plenum ? You think that's going to be less biased?

It links to a blog post about China's third plenum and gives examples of western media's bias in relation to it. At least that's a dialog instead of the single sided take you offered originally.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#113

Post by diffeomorphism »

_heimdall wrote: post #72
diffeomorphism wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you are talking about some very different thing also abbreviated "UBI"? Here it stands for universal basic income.

No that's also what I'm talking about. If implemented, a UBI will subsidize every single market in the economy with federal dollars. For every dollar a consumer spends on any product, a portion of that money is directly from the government. For a government to build and maintain a UBI program they will have to be able to predict where prices will be and how much money everyone needs or deserves to cover the basics. A…

No

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#114

Post by _heimdall »

effingwewt wrote: post #99
_heimdall wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the crux of it though, people largely don't know what "enough" means. People aren't okay with having shelter, food, water, and community. We want the smartphones, huge TVs, ridiculously expensive cars, access to fly anywhere in the world, etc. We absolutely could have all the basics cover, and then some, with 20% of the work we all put in today but few people want that world.

You forgot about all the people making minimum wage working 40+ hours who can't afford the basics like food and shelter Because you can cover your necessities with 20% of your income doesn't mean everyone else can. I know several people on SSI who had to take under the table jobs because their checks wont cover their food and shelter. And that's with food stamps. If they get a regular job they lose their SSI. Ive got…

I was actually thinking about the societal level here rather than any one person's financial situation.

I expect that we could make sure everyone had the basics much more easily if the average person could define what "enough" means for themselves. For one thing, we would be using many fewer resources as a country and would therefore be much better able to make sure the resources we do have would be available. For another, when a person knows what "enough" is for them they may decide to work less when they achieve that goal, leaving those potential paying work hours for the next person that needs the work.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#115

Post by _heimdall »

Retric wrote: post #89
_heimdall wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite sure that I follow here. In your model, what are the proposed benefits given out as a UBI? Is it $260/mo reducing down to $0 when you make at least $12,000 per year? If so, how is that universal? Or a basic income covering some of the basic resources UBI is argued to cover, like shelter or food?

My example was for a US UBI that only covered food and the math was limited to single people, but the points could be applied more broadly. UBI means everyone has an income of at least x$/year. If you’re making more than x$/year in take home pay that’s an income > x$/year. Behind the scenes the advantage of the government handing out money every month is redundancy . Even if that same amount is normally removed from…

If you want to take the SNAP program as a baseline and only slightly tweak the limits on when funds taper off, why bother with a new UBI program at all? It sounds like SNAP gets you 90% of the way there, it mainly just needs the restrictions on what the money can be spent on removed.

With limits so low I'm not totally sure how it would make a meaningful difference compared to the various welfare and entitlement programs we have today in the US. We already have multiple programs attempting to give needs-based funding to the public. How is such a limited UBI as you describe it any different, or different enough to justify the massive political battle it would entail?

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#116

Post by _heimdall »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #113
_heimdall wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that's also what I'm talking about. If implemented, a UBI will subsidize every single market in the economy with federal dollars. For every dollar a consumer spends on any product, a portion of that money is directly from the government. For a government to build and maintain a UBI program they will have to be able to predict where prices will be and how much money everyone needs or deserves to cover the basics. A…

No

Helpful, thanks. I'm happy to be proven wrong if you have anything worth sharing.

I'd be particularly interested how you would see a program on the scale of a UBI working sustainably if the government can't predict the outcomes. Or, alternstively, if you think the government can predivt the outcomes I'd be curious if you disagree with the OP author that a UBI can't be tested before a full rollout.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#117

Post by _heimdall »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #102
_heimdall wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point isn't that Marx invented the idea of a UBI, I don't actually recall him specifically writing about the concept. My point is that the idea of a UBI is rooted in very much the same arguments as what Marx wrote so much about.

"These are my principles. If you don't like them, well, I have others." -- Marx BI is not for work, it's for when there is not enough opportunity for work that is productive enough to both better the worker measurably plus provide a return for the master. Regardless of whether it's a shrinking economy everywhere or just one of the selected demographics or career fields which opportunity can be found receding from, or…

Sure, I don't disagree with you about what the concept of a (U)BI is. I am arguing, though, that fundamentally a UBI maps very well to Marx's "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" writings.

Basic income on the scale of welfare programs for a small minority of the most poor aren't quite the same. A UBI is a much more broad program, even if it doesn't help every single person it does attempt to prop up a large chunk of the population. At that point we're solving the wrong problem.

That were we definitely agree. A growing number of people in the US are falling behind. We need to fix the root cause of that though, the lack of money is only an obvious symptom. If our social, political, or economic systems are the underlying problem then let's fix those. Throwing a UBI at the problem creates even more chaos in the system and we simply don't know what the side effects will be.

Worse, if a UBI isn't the right answer we will have wasted all of our attention and political capital forcing it through. We almost certainly would walk away feeling like we solved it and end up in a worse spot when we're blind to the still growing problem. Roe v Wade comes to mind, we hung our hat on the victory of one supreme court decision when what was really needed was legislation codifying the decision.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#118

Post by _heimdall »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #110
_heimdall wrote: post #6

The author seems to effectively argue for UBI as a solution to bullshit jobs. People waste a lot of time today in jobs that produce no real value, instead the government should pay people a similar wage to not do those jobs. > There is no such thing as a UBI trial. There is no such thing as a UBI pilot program. Instead, there are cash transfer experiments being branded as UBI. More strange to me, the author includes…

Snake oil is snake oil, but what if the economy is already upended? Plus after all recommended remedies have been tried, the only possible solution is to implement something that is not recommended. You're going to need a different kind of oil . . . Not my downvote btw, corrective upvote actually, you're making a lot of sense all over the place, along with many others.

Do you think we have tried all the recomended remedies? And who do we look to to define what is and isn't recommended?

We're in uncharted territory here, at least in modern history. At best experts can hypothesize about different interventions but they are ultimately making assumptions that frequently go unspoken.

The biggest category of remedies that I rare, if ever, see recommended is removing interventions from a complex system that has gone awry. In this case, instead of adding more layers to the economy by having the government give most people free money, potentially by racking uppre debt, maybe we should be reducing costs and liabilities. I wouldn't pretend to know what can or should be removed, but I would love to see honest research and consideration going towards what a remedy may look like if we come at it from the angle of subtraction.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#119

Post by _heimdall »

harimau777 wrote: post #93
_heimdall wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the crux of it though, people largely don't know what "enough" means. People aren't okay with having shelter, food, water, and community. We want the smartphones, huge TVs, ridiculously expensive cars, access to fly anywhere in the world, etc. We absolutely could have all the basics cover, and then some, with 20% of the work we all put in today but few people want that world.

It feels like people go to far the other way as well. People don't just need shelter, food, water, and community. Things like entertainment, art, and learning are also essential to having a good life.

Totally agree here. In my opinion, though, a UBI won't help with those and could actually hurt. We continue to quantify our lives to the point where the government can put a price on the products they deem me to be entitled to.

I'm not totally sold on Iain McGilchrist's specific analogy of the brain hemispheres, but his underlying point is spot on. In his model, we continue to make our world more and more left-brained (analytical) and we're losing the way of seeing the world required for art, community, etc. I expect a UBI would just make that worse, further quantifying our lives and reinforcing the idea that we're all cogs in a machine that can purr like a kitten if we just do as we're told and avoid thinking critically or differently.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#120

Post by slowmovintarget »

Jedd wrote: post #49
seydor wrote: post #5

Doesn't UBI equate to lowering the prices for everything? Isn't it more feasible to pursue the latter?

I don't think you can usefully equate 'UBI' to a single outcome of UBI. One of the goals of UBI, as I interpret it, is to reduce the cost of living closer to zero. And that's the literal cost of living - not the macroeconomist's use of the term. That phrase, once you contemplate it, is a ludicrous reflection of how our society has gone wrong. Why should it cost to live? (You can consider the answer in terms of > 11ky…

> Why should it cost to live?

Because that's how life works. With sufficient energy input into a system, the system can sustain complexity. Sun -> single-celled life -> plants -> animals. The food chain is an economy of energy. Money is a proxy for many different kinds of energy. It will never be cost-free to live, not for single-celled life, not for us.

A Universal Basic Income absent substantial other changes in our economy, would be a disaster because we no longer have a closed economy. It would simply flow out to other nations. UBI + open borders + bureaucratic dictatorship sends us right back into serfdom...

There used to be restrictions on the number of serfs allowed for a single geography, because the lord was expected to provide for them (schools and hospitals... etc.). We're replacing an oligarch with a bureaucracy which is just a transitive oligarchy as the bureaucracies ultimately get captured (Big Tech, Big Oil, Big you-name-it). All good intentions erode over time to neglect and malice, especially in systems where nepotism and dynasty rule instead of merit.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have."

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