UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
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UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
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Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
#2> Unsurprisingly, the study participants became less inclined to work jobs.
while technically true the author neglects to put this into perspective - it resulted in a 2% drop in labor participation and less than 2 hours lost working per week.
Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
#3> Unsurprisingly, the study participants became less inclined to work jobs. while technically true the author neglects to put this into perspective - it resulted in a 2% drop in labor participation and less than 2 hours lost working per week.
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Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
#4> Unsurprisingly, the study participants became less inclined to work jobs. while technically true the author neglects to put this into perspective - it resulted in a 2% drop in labor participation and less than 2 hours lost working per week.
Agreed too much emphasis placed on a small data point from one study. Oddly enough my response was the opposite — only 2%??
Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
#5Doesn't UBI equate to lowering the prices for everything? Isn't it more feasible to pursue the latter?
Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
#6The 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 a quote arguing that UBI can't be tested at all, it must be fully implemented to test it. That really starts to sound like snake oil to me, and a huge risk as the argument is then that we should upend the economy based on an untestable hypothesis.
What I never see mentioned in arguments for UBI is also telling though. Namely that the whole idea for UBI is based squarely in Marxism. I'd rather not try out untestable ideas based in the fundamentals of Karl Marx. Read about the man's life at all and you'll really begin to question why anyone listened to such a person.
Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
#7The 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 economy as a whole
I am in particular very skeptical of anything that cannot be piloted or otherwise effectively tested on a smaller scale. These things usually don't work, not simply because the idea is generally unsound (though they often are) but because there are no effective means to tune/calibrate even a promising idea.
* Work is one of the least frustrating parts of this complexity since at least people see the paycheck at the end. Many consumers have trouble interacting with e-stores, self-service kiosks, credit card issuers, etc. where they pay for the privilege. This is why service jobs are so terrible: employees are soaking up the aggression born out of this frustration.
Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
#8Doesn't UBI equate to lowering the prices for everything? Isn't it more feasible to pursue the latter?
UBI equates to an assumption that the government can predict and control markets completely, effectively destroying markets that resemble anything like a free market.
Even considering an alternative to UBI like forcing all prices lower, i.e. price deflation, requires first taking that assumption as true.
The government never could allow prices to lower anyway though. Price deflation would make our national debt that much worse.
Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
#9Doesn't UBI equate to lowering the prices for everything? Isn't it more feasible to pursue the latter?
The US doesn't have a centrally planned economy, so the government can't lower the prices of everything. UBI is much more feasible to implement than communism.
Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift
#10So this explanation is neat and tidy. The problem we learned in COVID payouts is that people would rather watch Netflix and smoke weed all day than do any amount of low skilled work at a job they hate. So they start demanding exorbitant wages, show up late, if at all. This is productive work, and productive work that frees higher skilled resources to be more productive.
Based on the employers explaining this problem, they are asshole bosses. And in our 'normal' system of jobs and no UBI or other payouts, they can get away with treating people poorly. However, low skilled jobs don't have to be bad jobs, people enjoy all sorts of work and even find meaning in them. In this UBI / cash transfer role: employers can't get away with being an asshole(without spending big $$$) and have to connect meaning for the employee to the work they need done.