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The indignity of no work

economist.com

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Re: The indignity of no work

#171

Post by hifier »

marcosdumay wrote: post #159
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…

What those people will do that we can not create machines that do it cheaper, faster and better?

So these machines will spontaneously appear?

Re: The indignity of no work

#172

Post by hifier »

VLM wrote: post #162
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 th…

I've either terribly represented my thought, or you have grossly misunderstood my statement.

I am arguing FOR a capitalist system. I'm saying I don't understand why the article authors will assume it is going to break down because of technological advances. It has not thus far.

Edit: I see that my second statement in my first reply is poorly written. I meant "this" to refer to technological advancement, not to joblessness.

Re: The indignity of no work

#173

Post by ahomescu1 »

whatevsbro wrote: post #165
atmosx wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

> 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.

I agree with the rest of your points, but not necessarily with this one. Many people do pay taxes voluntarily, because "it's their civic duty", and roads and schools and all of that.

Re: The indignity of no work

#174

Post by ahomescu1 »

thelogos wrote: post #46
argonaut wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It does not mean no one will ever work as a dishwasher/etc. It just means that the market rate for dishwashers/etc. will be higher. This would be due to the supply curve for labor shifting. Certainly, some businesses will not be able to hire as many (or any) dishwashers/etc, but those that they do hire will have to be paid more. But that is a natural extension of decreasing the supply of labor. The higher price t…

But it's getting to the point where dishwashing might not even be available as a job. Right now, that's not the case yet. But it's not hard to imagine a future where it is. Many menial jobs are getting automated and it's just getting worse and worse. Soon, we will have to do something about it. These protests and revolutions are spreading like the plague. And social unrest is bad for everyone, including business. One…

> In the rest of the world, these people don't commit suicide, they just gather into a big crowd and start protesting, violently.

In the Eastern Europe protests (Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey), people are protesting political corruption and abuse of authority, not poverty (in fact, I'll go as far as to say that many of the protesters are well-off middle class people, not the starving poor).

Re: The indignity of no work

#175

Post by _delirium »

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…

> However, earning one's own housing or food or clothing or healthcare is in no way serfdom - it is a natural state of a person

If we take a historical/anthropological view of what the "natural state" of human societies is, they have typically worked to fulfill essential-to-life needs, including defense, water, food, public health, fire response, etc. on a communal basis. The size of the communal unit has varied across times and places in history, from clans to tribes to city-states to nations. And hybrid systems where individuals (or more often, households) are responsible for some things and a larger communal unit is responsible for others have also been common. But the individual standing alone, providing for his or her needs entirely independently of any communal system except for market purchases, seems to only exist in certain philosophers' systems, not as something you really observe historically as the natural state of homo sapiens societies.

Re: The indignity of no work

#176

Post by vl »

smsm42 wrote: post #146
cmyr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do they provide housing and not pay workers to rent the same housing? Why part of the salary must be designated "housing allowance" instead of just calling it "salary" and let the worker decide to spend it on housing? Owning property outright might be hard to a lot of people, but there's an easy solution for it - renting. What you describe is functionally renting. The question is - why is it organized this partic…

I'm not sure why this is the case in this country, but right now in Germany some companies provide leases on the cars. It turns out it's a tax reduction and "support local industry" at the same time - if same amount of money is just paid as salary, combined taxes for company and employee are higher. And it also supports local economy since lease choices are for german cars only. And I heard that same leasing practice is common in Israel as well.

As a strange quirk they also pay for gas used by these leased cars. As a result, my friend with such lease always tries to do vacation in spots reachable by driving - it's just much cheaper for him, even if he has to drive for two days to get there.

Re: The indignity of no work

#177

Post by ahomescu1 »

ansimionescu wrote: post #29
dantheman wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The idea of a basic income is still sci-fi. There just isn't that much money. Sorry, but that last part is utterly dumb. There is enough of everything for everyone, money is just one of the abstractions we built for convenience's sake. Most of these abstractions for power have gone out of hand, but I assure you that there exists a theoretical parallel universe where basic income is implemented at a global scale.

> There is enough of everything for everyone

Citation for this fact?

Re: The indignity of no work

#178

Post by ahomescu1 »

dualogy wrote: post #109
pekk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally as the supply of dollars goes up, the price of a loaf of bread goes up too. Printing money isn't a panacea.

True for all national currencies but hardly for the world-reserve-currency. Here you have the following reality instead: > generally as the supply of dollars goes up, the price of a loaf of bread goes hardly up in any noticable way, financial assets / Silicon Valley valuations / houses go up significantly (so the country thinks they got "wealthier"), and bread-loaf prices in USD-aligned weak-currency/underdeveloped/p…

> True for all national currencies but hardly for the world-reserve-currency.

If the dollar ever started to inflate like crazy, I bet it wouldn't stay the world reserve currency for long. Also, keep in mind that some of the larger countries have been looking for alternatives (like the EUR) for years.

Re: The indignity of no work

#179

Post by erichocean »

Eliminating taxation and implementing a basic income payed for by new money created out of thin air, pegged to the GDP for the year, is how the world will deal with machines creating more wealth than we know what to do with, without people.

It's a direct form of wealth transfer that requires zero force, no "putting people in cages because they can't/don't pay" nonsense.

For social spending, you do the same: print new money that's a percentage of GDP, and let citizens allocate their share to various social causes (police, fire, education, natural disaster relief, etc.).

As a concrete example, if the USA produces 15 trillion in GDP for the year, you could print 3.75 trillion for basic income, and 3.75 trillion for social income. The 3.75 trillion for basic income would be split evenly among the 330 million people, amounting to $11,364 annually per person. Each person would also have $11,364 to allocate ("appropriate") for various social causes.

Taxation is eliminated. Everyone is fed and sheltered. Growth in wealth is shared equally. Anarchists still get to keep all of the money they earn (remember: no taxation). IRS is gone. All of the tax-funded welfare programs are gone, but we've got plenty of money annually to dedicate to social welfare programs. People don't have to give money to the police if they care more about education. There's no need for a minimum wage, or tracking people's incomes. There's no downside (in terms of extra taxation and lost benefits) to working more. And on and on.

This is entirely doable today, at a purely technical/administrative level. Once robots are doing the work of the labor class, and 40% of the country literally has no jobs, and won't, ever—then it'll become a social necessity.

That's why the problems in this article don't keep me up at night: not only is the solution easy, it's far preferable and way more democratic and fair than what we have today.

For extra humanity, create a global currency, peg new money creation to the world's annual GDP, and do a basic and social income for everyone in the world equally, full stop.

Re: The indignity of no work

#180

Post by _delirium »

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…

A reasonable number of social-democratic countries have basically an overly bureaucratic, somewhat perversely-incentivized version of a basic income already, and it works ok. For example, the last-line social welfare system in Denmark, which you qualify for if you have no assets and don't qualify for a "better" system (like jobseeking assistance), known as kontanthjælp ("cash assistance"), is about $24k/yr. If you're a citizen there is basically no way you can be disqualified for this system, so it functions as an income floor.

This isn't properly a basic income, because you don't get it if you work, and in addition you need to exhaust all your assets first. This provides some perverse incentives, along with some bureaucracy to keep it all organized. But when it comes down to it, once you exhaust your savings and unemployment benefits, there's an income floor of $24k/yr, which is like a basic income except you lose it if you save money or find a job... which if anything worsens the disincentive problem. I'm not sure just extending it to a proper basic income would be worse for finances, and suspect it could be better.

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