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The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

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Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#301

Post by Dylan16807 »

heynonynony wrote: post #241
nkoren wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The math doesn't work and has never worked. UBI proponents will never talk math because it doesn't add up, even with the most casual analysis. Wrong, utterly wrong, on accounts. > It's not enough to do anything with. You have no idea what it's like to be poor. I grew up poor in America. $12k per year is an absolutely life-changing amount for many people. It means you will not go hungry. It means you will not die of…

sorry but $100K is not a lot of income these days, especially in places like CA and NY, so a 20% tax increase or a loss of $8K/year would be DEVESTATING! so, you just want to f' over all these perceived "wealthy" people (who are actually pretty f'ing middle class in CA or NY) for what? to let slackers play video games all day? F THAT!

It was just an example, using intentionally simple math.

You could adjust it to take cost of living into account. You could adjust it to be slightly over 20% but let the first $200k be tax-free.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#302

Post by Dylan16807 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #270
nkoren wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The math doesn't work and has never worked. UBI proponents will never talk math because it doesn't add up, even with the most casual analysis. Wrong, utterly wrong, on accounts. > It's not enough to do anything with. You have no idea what it's like to be poor. I grew up poor in America. $12k per year is an absolutely life-changing amount for many people. It means you will not go hungry. It means you will not die of…

Assuming no change in employment. Yet one of the first arguments for UBI is always that people can then quit their crummy jobs.

Crummy jobs don't pay a lot. So that has some effect but not a tremendous effect.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#303

Post by crdoconnor »

condercet wrote: post #160
crdoconnor wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What storm? We're constantly being told that robots can do work better than workers on low wages but evidence presented to support this is very thin.

"evidence presented to support this is very thin" Autonomous cars are on the roads today. They're a ways off from serving as reliable truckers or taxis, but that's in our future. We're seeing rapid advancements in machine learning, especially in computer vision and abstract strategy games. Trucking alone accounts for 5% of the US GDP [1], and employs 1.7 million Americans annually [2]. That's about 1/10 of the total…

>We're seeing rapid advancements in machine learning, especially in computer vision and abstract strategy games.

This roughly translates to "we've programmed a computer to beat a human at go and trawl your facebook pictures and identify pictures of flowers but have yet to build a robot that will clean your bathroom".

>Autonomous cars are on the roads today. They're a ways off from serving as reliable truckers or taxis, but that's in our future.

I'll become a real and true believer that autonomous cars are the future the minute an executive at an autonomous driving company agrees to shoulder criminal liability for crashes caused by defects in the cars they sell. If I can go to prison for reckless driving, an exec should go to prison because their cars engaged in reckless driving. That's fair, right?

What I have seen currently is a lot of backroom lobbying to try and shift liability in order to open the floodgates to this "brave new world". To me that's sending a clear signal that the executives themselves aren't totally convinced of the safety of their new technology.

Ultimately where the legal liability falls is going to determine how, when and if self driving vehicles become more than just toys, and, ultimately, how many people they will kill.

>What happens if all those jobs disappear overnight?

1) Jobs never disappear overnight.

2) Trucking involves a lot more than just driving.

3) Even if it did happen a 5% increase in employment to counteract "the end of trucking" could be enacted relatively easily by the government simply by removing the fiscal spending brakes. The deflationary impact of trucking being automated (and presumably much cheaper) will presumably counteract the inflationary impact of any increase in govt spending.

4) They can get other jobs? Typists used to be a very common job too. The world didn't end for them when computers came along, did it?

Meanwhile, still patiently waiting for that robot that will clean my bathroom. I mean, if a robot can beat me at go, how hard could it be?

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#304

Post by Dylan16807 »

jganetsk wrote: post #152

UBI is inflationary and discourages people from working. Economists have moved on to better ideas than UBI, like the federal government providing a JG (Job Guarantee) or being an ELR (Employer of Last Resort): https://www.thenation.com/article/job-guarantee-government-p... The summary is: everyone who is willing and able to work should get a standard salary and benefits from the Federal Government. We could have a de…

> UBI is inflationary and discourages people from working. Economists have moved on to better ideas than UBI, like the federal government providing a JG (Job Guarantee) or being an ELR (Employer of Last Resort)

If by "discourages" you actually mean negative incentive to work, that would be awful.

But I suspect you mean it lowers the incentive to work. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Productivity per hour keeps increasing. It's okay to let the average workweek get smaller. Minimum wage government labor is likely not the best use of a lot of people's time.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#305

Post by tom_mellior »

EGreg wrote: post #260
dragonwriter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USA is at once too big and too small at the same time. I haven't seen a convincing argument for either half of this, much less the mutually contradictory combination.

Too big because it is out of touch with its citizens, and a UBI would lead to a national ID. Look at China for what can happen from that. Also too large because the cost of living varies from place to place, so no one amount of UBI can fit every citizen. At the same time it's too small because Americans are already far better off than most of the world, so if anyone really needs UBI it should be the poorer per capita…

Plenty of countries have national ID systems, and they are not dictatorships. (But the IDs are easy to get for everyone, and we don't have discussions and "rumors" about fake voters, which is also nice.)

On the other hand, I'm fairly sure China had a civil war that established a communist dictatorship before it had an efficient national ID system.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#306

Post by apatters »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #294
apatters wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Everything Sam says on this topic makes me question whether he actually knows any of the people that UBI supposedly would do the most good for -- the poor, the working class, people whose jobs have been automated away, etc. Does he have any friends from these walks of life? Drinking buddies down at the local pub maybe? How much of his time has he spent actually listening to them talk, befriending them, ear…

>Many of these people just aren't ambitious. They have no interest in unlocking their "maximum potential." Most people don't have time to be ambitious because they're too busy subsisting. If the subsistence were taken care of, wouldn't you expect them to do better? Not everyone will suddenly start a billion-dollar endeavor, but they'd have more time for recreation, learning, political engagement, and yes, maybe even…

Sure. It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round.

- Some as you say want to be ambitious and giving them UBI for subsistence may unlock that creative energy. Perhaps they'll do great things with their time. On the other hand, it'll remove some pressure to make what they're doing efficient, scalable, and market-oriented, so in my opinion you're much more likely to get people who collect UBI and pursue hobbies, not build world-changing businesses or "unlock their maximum potential." But hey, no problem with that. This happens to be how a few people I know who have been on welfare for years behave.

- Then there are the people who find meaning in what they're doing even if it is menial: for instance working in a rote job which isn't a lot of fun but provides for their family. You eliminate the rote job and put them on UBI and they're probably going to be less happy because they liked the structure that job provided. In the absence of a clear, structured alternative for getting back into the workforce they may just subsist in a less happy state indefinitely on UBI. For these people UBI is worse than temporary, conditional assistance which requires them to at least make a token effort to look for work.

- Then there are the nasty people. The guys who haven't worked a day in years, and when they get some money, they spend it on booze, gambling, start screaming at the TV, start screaming at their wife, maybe beat up their wife or kids for good measure before they pass out and do it again the next time they get some cash. These people are out there and by giving them UBI you've just made it easier for them to be their scumbag selves.

I think my main point here is that people are incredibly diverse in terms of motives and behavior. UBI is the wrong solution precisely because it's universal. To me it's a little insane that anyone would propose a single program and expect it to work nationally or globally for everybody. My bias is that people who think this must live in a bubble or have a romanticized view of the human race.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#307

Post by gaius »

firethief wrote: post #236
dahdum wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The other way is thinking of the billions of brains wasted every generation just trying to survive, exactly what humans did 2000 years ago. Now imagine if all these brains could be freed and god knows how much innovation, progress and intellectual output can be unlocked into a completely different kind of society. That's a vision." It's not so cut and dry. I don't believe that incentives under UBI will lead to great…

> what guaranteed monthly checks does to ambition Do you think it's a coincidence that that check is only guaranteed in the absence of ambition? You've seen the perverse incentives of means-tested welfare, not the effects of a UBI.

The B is for basic. You won't starve or freeze, but if you want any luxuries then you will need to earn them. That's why UBI won't kill ambition. Contrast to welfare where if you earn anything the welfare is taken away.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#308

Post by tom_mellior »

sytelus wrote: post #176

The experiment Sam mentions is already heavily biased. They are giving away $1000-$2000 to few families in Oakland as basic income. The problem is that these families are already aware that some Silicon Valley billionaire is performing experiment on them and they know this life line would disappear in future. So they would be forced to make best out of it unlike if this was provided by government for rest of their li…

> janitorial services to cashier at grocery store to construction sites. Once you get same amount of money for free, there is less incentive for anyone to do this sort of work

Yes, the UBI will free the labor market to be an actual free market in which services are priced fairly. If you need a janitor, you will have to provide pay that the janitor is willing to work for, even if not threatened by starvation or homelessness.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#309

Post by js8 »

dahdum wrote: post #252
js8 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it doesn't add up in the monetary sense, but economically it kinda does. If you look around, the actual resources are there. I was born in socialist country (Czechoslovakia) in the late 70s. It was inefficient system (the productivity of the most advanced economies today is about 3-4x times higher), and yet it was able to provide housing, food, health care, education and even decent culture for more than 90% of…

Czechoslovakia was a communist country, and while it did pretty well relative to others, I'm not sure it's a great model for UBI under capitalism.

My point wasn't for people to copy the model, it would be a terrible idea.

My point was, any typical Western country can provide all basic necessities (actually lot more, 70s lifestyle in CS wasn't just basic) for its population (an excellent basic income) with maybe 30% GDP (because of the higher productivity) and 80% employment tops (more likely somewhat less). Surely, you can do better than Czechoslovakia in the 70s! So how come we can't find the money, if the resources (energy, labor, materials) are all there?

And if 30% GDP is spent on basic income, the remaining 70% can be subject to the capitalist competition. (That's my understanding of the UBI - we basically put aside a portion of GDP that we are not going to compete about in capitalism. It keeps the profit motive going but the poor people aren't starving or forced to work for non-livable wages.)

Economists just sometimes focus too much on money and lose sight of the real thing.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#310

Post by gaius »

dahdum wrote: post #158
mrob wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welfare discourages striving for greatness, because as soon as you show any sign of success it's taken away from you. The "universal" in UBI means it's paid to everybody, rich and poor. It lacks the weird breakpoints and perverse incentives of welfare. You are always better off working.

Most discussions I've seen of UBI recently have shifted from universal to means tested. Regardless, wouldn't UBI need to be higher for the sick, elderly, and disabled? Either it's high enough for them and too much for everyone else, or it's too low for them. Keep adjusting and you end up with a means tested welfare system like today.

It can't be means tested, both philosophically - the U - and practically, since to make the numbers work (in the UK at least) you need to also ditch the expensive bureaucracy.
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