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Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

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Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#71

Post by sak5sk »

chr1 wrote: post #39
echelon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does UBI even work? Won't it just lead to rampant inflation where the basic income is spread thin, eaten up almost entirely by the rising cost of goods? It seems like this in turn will require an even higher basic income, which exacerbates the problem. Isn't an analogous situation that of private loans for tuition? Tuitions have risen across the board to eat up all the new "free" money in the system. Won't UBI ma…

It depends on how government would get the money for UBI. If it goes ahead and just prints more money then there will be rampant inflation, but if it redirects money from other programs, the prices of some goods may change, but there won't be inflation.

This is a breakdown of where the money would come from to pay for UBI: https://freedom-dividend.com/

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#72

Post by sak5sk »

rapsey wrote: post #59
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain to me how you view how reality works then. I'm not related to SF in any way btw. The total legal occupancy of SF is smaller than the number of people who want to live there. The city delays the issuance of permits for expanding occupancy.

Increase in the money supply and velocity of money. The money supply has increased dramatically and is why the bull market has been so long. However velocity is very low which has so far limited inflation. UBI would thus likely cause significant inflation. The bay area is rich and the rents follow suit. They are still limited to the overall supply of money in the area. Obviously increasing supply of real estate would…

Except no new money supply is created, hence little to no inflation.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#73

Post by nopriorarrests »

tempsy wrote: post #36
intuitionist wrote: post #26

Altman and Yang are a natural fit because they’re both very invested (Altman literally so) in the narrative that automation is coming for huge numbers of jobs. But the economic statistics just don’t back this up. Total factor productivity, a (rough) measure of the technological contribution to economic production, is growing considerably more slowly than it was during the early 2000s, and much more slowly than during…

Whether it’s automation or something else doesn’t really matter. I think it’s hard to argue that there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc. People in those jobs are the ones that could be most helped by UBI. Of course you need to think about how to replace shitty jobs with better ones over time, but UBI smooths out societal issues…

>there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc

Shitty jobs are not must vulnerable, quite opposite in fact. Automating some 400K/year quant job at hedge fund makes morse sense than automatng MCjob that pays 40K/year. More to that, shitty jobs are hardest to automate (we are nowhere close to good janitor robot, for example).

Also, you can not outsource cleaning toilets or hairdessers, but you can software development or building trading models.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#74

Post by jrs235 »

nopriorarrests wrote: post #73
tempsy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it’s automation or something else doesn’t really matter. I think it’s hard to argue that there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc. People in those jobs are the ones that could be most helped by UBI. Of course you need to think about how to replace shitty jobs with better ones over time, but UBI smooths out societal issues…

>there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc Shitty jobs are not must vulnerable, quite opposite in fact. Automating some 400K/year quant job at hedge fund makes morse sense than automatng MCjob that pays 40K/year. More to that, shitty jobs are hardest to automate (we are nowhere close to good janitor robot, for example). Also, you c…

There are "1000's" more 40k/yr jobs than 400k/yr ones. Automating a 40k/yr job that 1000 people do makes more sense than 10 400k ones. In aggregate, there is more money to be saved automating the 40k jobs.

Also, typically lower paying jobs are physical labor jobs, trading time for money, not "thinking" jobs that deal with exceptions to the rules.

Robotics are suppose to automate lower labor physical positions, AI is suppose to replace our thinking and mental positions.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#75

Post by didgeoridoo »

jrs235 wrote: post #74
nopriorarrests wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc Shitty jobs are not must vulnerable, quite opposite in fact. Automating some 400K/year quant job at hedge fund makes morse sense than automatng MCjob that pays 40K/year. More to that, shitty jobs are hardest to automate (we are nowhere close to good janitor robot, for example). Also, you c…

There are "1000's" more 40k/yr jobs than 400k/yr ones. Automating a 40k/yr job that 1000 people do makes more sense than 10 400k ones. In aggregate, there is more money to be saved automating the 40k jobs. Also, typically lower paying jobs are physical labor jobs, trading time for money, not "thinking" jobs that deal with exceptions to the rules. Robotics are suppose to automate lower labor physical positions, AI is…

Are there a significant number of physical labor jobs (in high-income countries at least) that do not require 1) intelligent human interaction or 2) detailed visual inspection and fine motor control?

There appears to be a huge hump in difficulty of robotic “automatability” caused by the fact that humans are just so much better at these two tasks than machines are.

“Thinking” jobs that essentially entail transformation of one type of data into another seem no more difficult to automate (if not perhaps even easier) than most manual labor that has not already been automated.

My uninformed guess is that we will automate low- and mid-level “thinking” jobs and the remainder of physical jobs at around the same time, because both require near-human perceiving, communicating, and manipulating capabilities.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#76

Post by paulgb »

3131s wrote: post #44
hnbreak wrote: post #25

Yang says that breaking up tech monopolies won't help (with giving a very weak example) but he doesn't give a proper answer how to get competition back. Why does China have 20 different kind of Youtubes and the western world just one?

Yang wants to give everyone legal ownership of their own data. That is going to be more disruptive to the tech industry than antitrust rulings against a few companies.

What does that actually mean in practice? From a technical perspective, thanks to GDPR, Facebook and other sites now let you download your data (even outside EU), but it hasn't led to a resurgence of competition in social networks. From a legal perspective, you do own the content you provide to Facebook, you only provide them a non-exclusive license to use it.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#77

Post by harimau777 »

goatinaboat wrote: post #62
tempsy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it’s automation or something else doesn’t really matter. I think it’s hard to argue that there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc. People in those jobs are the ones that could be most helped by UBI. Of course you need to think about how to replace shitty jobs with better ones over time, but UBI smooths out societal issues…

those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc Most of those jobs will be the hardest to automate because Moravec’s Paradox. Automation will wipe out lawyers and accountants long before it reaches sewer maintenance and refuse collection.

I'm not an expert, so I may be mistaken. However, my understanding is that, as it applies to motor skills, Moravec's Paradox applies to skills that require either fine sensing (e.g. manipulating something delicate) or adapting to a complex environment (e.g. navigating a room or painting).

It seems to me, that the success of robots in manufacturing demonstrates that this does not apply to many (but not all) unskilled labor jobs.

It also seems to me that in many cases it may be possible to modify the job to fit the capabilities of a robot rather than the other way around. For example, rather than build a robot that can clean an arbitrary toilet I could either standardize the internal dimensions of the toilet bowl or give the robot a pipe-style brush that it big enough to clean any bowl.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#78

Post by eric_cc »

echelon wrote: post #18
sak5sk wrote: post #2

Great to see tech leaders get behind UBI. Now is the time and Yang is the candidate of a lifetime. I never understood how people buy into the whole "break up the tech giants" argument. It makes no sense, just a great platitude with no real accomplishment. Who wants to use the 2nd best Twitter or Facebook? Not a single person.

How does UBI even work? Won't it just lead to rampant inflation where the basic income is spread thin, eaten up almost entirely by the rising cost of goods? It seems like this in turn will require an even higher basic income, which exacerbates the problem. Isn't an analogous situation that of private loans for tuition? Tuitions have risen across the board to eat up all the new "free" money in the system. Won't UBI ma…

The truth is that nobody can predict with certainty what UBI would do. It’s all speculation.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#79

Post by harimau777 »

3131s wrote: post #66
kyledrake wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using a regressive VAT tax to pay for UBI you are not redistributing wealth, you are disproportionately taxing the poor to distribute to themselves ( https://www.quora.com/Why-is-value-added-tax-regressive ) much of which will be lost as the prices of goods increases to match equilibrium. Amazon won't "pay the tax" it will pass the tax along in the form of higher consumer prices. If the primary concern is t…

> If you're using a regressive VAT tax to pay for UBI you are not redistributing wealth, you are disproportionately taxing the poor to distribute to themselves ( https://www.quora.com/Why-is-value-added-tax-regressive ) much of which will be lost as the prices of goods increases to match equilibrium. Amazon won't "pay the tax" it will pass the tax along in the form of higher consumer prices. A flat value added tax is…

For sake of argument, could this inadvertently make it more difficult for middle class people to pursue goals outside of basic survival?

It seems to me that many otherwise "normal" middle class people have one area, their hobby, where they own luxury products. That might be a sports car, a horse, a sailboat, ski trips, etc. Might a VAT tax on luxury goods make those products out of reach for the middle class?

While I can understand taxing a billionaire who buys luxury products in every area of their life, it doesn't strike me as unreasonable for someone to have one area that they choose to focus their resources.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#80

Post by maxerickson »

jrs235 wrote: post #74
nopriorarrests wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc Shitty jobs are not must vulnerable, quite opposite in fact. Automating some 400K/year quant job at hedge fund makes morse sense than automatng MCjob that pays 40K/year. More to that, shitty jobs are hardest to automate (we are nowhere close to good janitor robot, for example). Also, you c…

There are "1000's" more 40k/yr jobs than 400k/yr ones. Automating a 40k/yr job that 1000 people do makes more sense than 10 400k ones. In aggregate, there is more money to be saved automating the 40k jobs. Also, typically lower paying jobs are physical labor jobs, trading time for money, not "thinking" jobs that deal with exceptions to the rules. Robotics are suppose to automate lower labor physical positions, AI is…

Yes, McDonald's automates tasks across a massive labor force, they aren't trying to automate everything that a given employee might do.
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