'Universal Basic Income Doesn't Work' (theguardian.com) 1022
An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from The Guardian, written by analyst, writer and head of social policy for the New Economics Foundation, Anna Coote: A study published this week sheds doubt on ambitious claims made for universal basic income (UBI), the scheme that would give everyone regular, unconditional cash payments that are enough to live on. Its advocates claim it would help to reduce poverty, narrow inequalities and tackle the effects of automation on jobs and income. Research conducted for Public Services International, a global trade union federation, reviewed for the first time 16 practical projects that have tested different ways of distributing regular cash payments to individuals across a range of poor, middle-income and rich countries, as well as copious literature on the topic.
It could find no evidence to suggest that such a scheme could be sustained for all individuals in any country in the short, medium or longer term -- or that this approach could achieve lasting improvements in wellbeing or equality. The research confirms the importance of generous, non-stigmatizing income support, but everything turns on how much money is paid, under what conditions and with what consequences for the welfare system as a whole. [...] The cost of a sufficient UBI scheme would be extremely high according to the International Labor Office, which estimates average costs equivalent to 20-30% of GDP in most countries. Costs can be reduced -- and have been in most trials -- by paying smaller amounts to fewer individuals. But there is no evidence to suggest that a partial or conditional UBI scheme could do anything to mitigate, let alone reverse, current trends towards worsening poverty, inequality and labor insecurity. Costs may be offset by raising taxes or shifting expenditure from other kinds of public expenditure, but either way there are huge and risky trade-offs. As this week's report observes, "If cash payments are allowed to take precedence, there's a serious risk of crowding out efforts to build collaborative, sustainable services and infrastructure -- and setting a pattern for future development that promotes commodification rather than emancipation."
The report concludes that the money needed to pay for an adequate UBI scheme "would be better spent on reforming social protection systems, and building more and better-quality public services."
It could find no evidence to suggest that such a scheme could be sustained for all individuals in any country in the short, medium or longer term -- or that this approach could achieve lasting improvements in wellbeing or equality. The research confirms the importance of generous, non-stigmatizing income support, but everything turns on how much money is paid, under what conditions and with what consequences for the welfare system as a whole. [...] The cost of a sufficient UBI scheme would be extremely high according to the International Labor Office, which estimates average costs equivalent to 20-30% of GDP in most countries. Costs can be reduced -- and have been in most trials -- by paying smaller amounts to fewer individuals. But there is no evidence to suggest that a partial or conditional UBI scheme could do anything to mitigate, let alone reverse, current trends towards worsening poverty, inequality and labor insecurity. Costs may be offset by raising taxes or shifting expenditure from other kinds of public expenditure, but either way there are huge and risky trade-offs. As this week's report observes, "If cash payments are allowed to take precedence, there's a serious risk of crowding out efforts to build collaborative, sustainable services and infrastructure -- and setting a pattern for future development that promotes commodification rather than emancipation."
The report concludes that the money needed to pay for an adequate UBI scheme "would be better spent on reforming social protection systems, and building more and better-quality public services."
Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll either end up with some kind of basic income, or you'll have an exceedingly tiny % of the population doing great while all the others are left to starve. The French revolution showed us the outcome of that scenario.
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is what Henry Ford accidentally stumbled upon when he paid his workers double the prevailing wage at the time. Those workers could suddenly afford to buy the cars they were building, which they did, which created more work for them, which required hiring more workers at that wage, which resulted in them buying more cars, which created more work, etc. That economic feedback loop catapulted Ford into the richest man alive at the time. Economic efficiency is increased when the people doing the labor get paid a greater share of the overall productivity, not have it siphoned off by an economic elite. So in developed countries, the rich don't get and stay rich by selling to each other. The get and stay rich by selling to the masses.
The trope of a rich elite owning and controlling the country's economy is only true for the early stage of developing nations. Countries which aren't able to rise past this stage due to the corrupt influence of their rich elite generally stagnate at a GDP of around $7k-$15k per capita [wikipedia.org]. To rise past this point requires the development of a middle class, with the middle class becoming the dominant economic power at the higher levels of GDP per capita.
If automation ends up making a substantial percentage of the population unemployable, then those people will be unable to buy stuff anymore. Which will result in the incomes of rich people decreasing. That means it will become a problem that everyone - poor *and* rich - will want to solve.
Re: Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Of course... (Score:5, Interesting)
You should not be penalized for being right. Investing enables economic activity to take place. What we need to clamp down on is income from trading. That generates no real value. If you buy shares in ABC corp and they use that revenue to build another widget factory that puts people to work. If I buy your ABC shares and speculate about ABCs future and sell them for a few pennies more to bob - that does nothing really for the economy.
However you can't take trading off the table because few will want to invest if they can't cash out when they need their capital back for other users. So you need third party buyers.
My proposal is simple - make investors pay tax when they buy rather than when they sell. This does two things.
The first: It means taxes on investment are collected win or lose. Unlike today where you don't pay capital gain unless you have gains. This means short term trading would result in large tax liabilities. So it would disincentivize high speed and day trading and make investing in things one really believes are longer terms growth prospects practical. (Or shorts etc)
The second: It eliminates all the complex book keeping around basis cost and wash sales etc. This will also level the playing field. Small retail investors who don't have enough capital to spread across as many vehicles won't face a punative tax situation like we have today where the big guys get to write their gains off against other losses. Which in many cases shifts large portion of those losses effectively onto the public.
Re: Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
You intentionally left out unearned, investment income which is where the majority of hyper wealthy individuals income comes from. Tax that appropriately and wealth inequality starts to normalize.
Disregarding the hyper wealth for a second...
Are your suggesting that we should tax folks that have the forethought and discipline to invest their money on a steady and consistent basis?
Have you actually meet an 'everyday millionaire'? I have on many occasions and I guarantee you couldn't pick them out of a small crowd. They drive old cars, because they still work. They live in small houses, because that's all they need. You wont see them blowing their money at Starbucks. They spent their entire working career living frugal lives, just so they than retire in dignity and do what they want later.
And you do realize, those wealthy and hyper wealthly folks are the ones that are 'investing' like mad into the economy. I mean, you do know where investment money goes right? Here's a hint; it's likely in some part the money for your house, the money for your car, the money that built your rental unit, the money that built Amazon so that you can buy better products for less money....
Those are the folks that you want to tax because you think their money is evil somehow?
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
I totally understand why you have proposed what you have, and I would not disagree if I was only looking at piles of money and where money is needed. When you look beyond that at the "loopholes" (or perhaps the "escape hatches" is a better way to frame it) you immediately see that the wealthy will bail out at even more alarming rates and the new taxes will end up only being applied in full to people who don't have the wealth to escape the tax. We're talking about the real-world effect being the government taking money from the retirement and pension investments for teachers and other low-to-middle-class workers that are probably already suffering under high fees and scummy kickbacks more so than taking a big chunk from the mountains of gold owned by Bill Gates or Larry Page or all those Shark Tank people.
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Interesting)
While I agree with most of your statements but suggesting increasing taxes only on the rich won't help is very disingenuous.
You're framing the issue on tax burden using statistics that only show influence after the rich lobbied for huge tax loopholes and the massive tax-cuts on the top tier brackets over the last 30+ years that has allowed the rich to accumulate a ton of capital from the economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This increased the tax burden on the middle class, who are the most important aspect of the economy as you suggest, while also allowing the wealthy to horde capital on the fringes of the economy. Allowing this to happen has lead to monetary limitations and repeated bubbles (which we have seen since the 1980s) that have weaken GDP growth over the last twenty years and caused three financial crises.
Re: Of course... (Score:3)
"The more things get automated, the larger of a percentage of the population will become perpetually unemployable"
Or we could, you know, redistribute ownership of the means of production.
Re: (Score:3)
I used to be against the whole concept of UBI, but eventually it will make sense.
One reason is the advancement of technology. 500 years ago it probably would have taken ~500 people to farm 200 acres by hand. Today it might take 20 people. Eventually it will require less than 1 person, what with robots coming forth. As far as I can recall, technology at first makes jobs proliferate, then contract as technology is able to replace human workers. Nobody today is shedding a tear that 'in the
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Interesting)
You'll either end up with some kind of basic income, or you'll have an exceedingly tiny % of the population doing great while all the others are left to starve. The French revolution showed us the outcome of that scenario.
Oh I agree, and I agree that a universal basic income doesn't work. In fact, I even agree with Aristotle:
Yet the true friend of the people should see that they be not too poor, for extreme povery lowers the character of the democracy; measures therefore should be taken which will give them lasting prosperity; and as this is equally the interest of all classes, the proceeds of the public revenues should be accumulated and distributed among its poor...
...Every effort therefore must be made to perpetuate prosperity. And, since that is to the advantage of the rich as well as the poor, all that accrues from the revenues should be collected into a single fund and distributed in block grants to those in need, if possible in lump sums large enough for the acquisition of a small piece of land, but if not, enough to start a business, or work in agriculture...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh....no.
Every tech increase creates new need for people. Somebody has to service the new things. Automation cannot replace a human brain, period. Forge the bs from Musk and the other AI people who peddle FUD as clickbait and the scam idiot hedge fund children.
Your idea only works if human thought stops. Queen Victoria knighted a guy for his research which "proved" the world economy would stop because there weren't enough wales to supply whale oil as fuel. Ethernally mythical human replacement AI/automation
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Informative)
70 years, or 3 generations of chronic underemployment before new jobs started to reappear in the first industrial revolution and things were pretty shitty for those 3 generations. The labour surplus was partially solved by shipping a lot of people to the new world where lots of land had been liberated and was free for doing some improvements. People were also executed for minor crimes, but gin was cheap.
The next wave of automation, society acted a bit better, work hours were shortened, the work force was reduced through things like child labour laws along with a school system to occupy the now unemployable young folks and paying enough to the workers that they could support a stay at home wife. This worked pretty good but the owning class were not quite as rich.
Now, the labour force continues to be shrunken through various ways such as kids staying in school until their mid 20's, lots of disability payouts, forced retirement, a social credit system that makes many unemployable (felons etc). Still seem to have an expanding population of people who can't find meaningful work that pays enough. Currently a lot of those people are turning into junkies and dying. They're also voting for more extremism, which usually doesn't end well.
Re:Colonize the Moon, Mars, ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not this century or the next. The tech is just not there and will not be for a long, long time. Not even the basic science is there.
Re:Colonize the Moon, Mars, ... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh really. What basic science is lacking?
The ability to create small, sustainable biospheres for one. For a joyride we can rely on supplies but for a permanent settlement we'll need to grow food, reclaim water, produce oxygen etc. and the experiments we've run here on Earth usually fail and need some kind of outside help to remain viable. In any case I feel this is more lacking basic economy than science, to have a net value to society you have to contribute more than you consume. If you sent someone on a boat to America they were on their own. If you send someone to Mars they'll die unless you run a huge supply operation to keep them alive. You could pay them UBI with hookers and blow right here and still lose less money than sending them off world.
Re:Colonize the Moon, Mars, ... (Score:5, Informative)
We couldn't even keep the Biosphere 2 project going for more than a couple of months before the ecosystem inside turned nearly poisonous. The biosphere on the ISS isn't well understood, and it will never be self-sustainable (or even close).
How are we going to keep a colony going on Mars, where there isn't a biosphere to speak of, there's barely any free oxygen, barely an atmosphere, a negligible magnetosphere, inadequate gravity to keep humans healthy in the long term, and very little proven water reserve.
Re:Colonize the Moon, Mars, ... (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of the science is there, but not all of it.
- basic radiation shielding - look at the quantity of astronauts who have died of cancer; the percentage is very high.
- life-support-systems including recycling - still not there yet, and errant microorganisms can foul the whole thing up in an unrecoverable way very rapidly.
- fuel storage and management - if we get to a a remote world, landing and returning remains difficult - gravity wells are not forgiving and the technology relies on fuel sources which are large and one-time-use.
- habitat management on remote worlds - even if the world is 100% sterile, there remains the question of whether it's possible to extract nutrients from the local environment in a way that doesn't consume more energy than it produces.
There's more, but those are the things that come to mind right now.
Re:Colonize the Moon, Mars, ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope. The science is not there either. For example, we would need (as two others already point out) be able to create a sustainable biosphere. We cannot do that and it is not an engineering problem. We do not know enough. We would also have to have a drive that can get a lot of people there without burning up all the fuel reserves the earth has and more. (Unsolved even for the Moon.) We do not have such a drive, not even conceptionally. Unless you think solving fusion power is an engineering problem at this time? Because the scientific state on that is that we are not even sure it can work. Then we would need to either send massive shielding with the vessel (making the drive issue a lot worse) or repair the genetic defects on the other side, i.e. basically solve cancer. (On the Moon this is not a travel problem but a permanent one, so not any better.) That does not strike me as a pure engineering problem either. And then we would have to solve the psychological aspects. And all that is just a part of the problem.
Maybe we can have robotic factories on the Moon or Mars in 100 years and maybe we can have a permanent (small) presence a few decades later. But that is about it.
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
People said the same things during the industrial revolution. Work will shift, generally in the better direction, people will find new things to do.
We can keep saying this bullshit over and over again. Doesn't magically make it true. Oh, and I love how we simply dismiss the employment pains of the industrial revolution. Plenty of people died then, as they will with future shifts.
This particular iteration of human advancement is targeting the one thing that all others have not; your mind. In previous iterations, the answer was always re-education of some kind. When automation and basic AI become inexpensive enough, the answer for the business owner simply wanting to compete, is rather obvious. They'll gladly get rid of those pain-in-the-ass humans to run machines 24 hours a day. It's already happening.
It's already happening with ever more people finding employment in leisure industries, personalized services and heck, even things like machine maintenance and plumbing because machines are really, really bad at stuff like plumbing a sink or plunging a toilet.
Leisure industries? So the former professional in the evaporating industries making six figures is supposed to sustain a family as a...yoga instructor? Not everyone is cut out to become a YouTube celebrity or prostitute to sustain a family. Think the next generation is going to flush enough demand into the plumbing industry we keep pimping as the de facto answer to automation? According to GenY/Z, they can hardly afford a pot to piss in until the 3rd gig job kicks in, and home ownership is a pipe dream thanks to the Real Estate Industrial Complex feeling greedy again.
Until we have a fully conscious AI with a body to go with it, things are going to be fine and at that point we'll probably need hackers, soldiers and demolition experts until we get back to middle age farming.
How many humans do you interact with on a daily basis that are "fully conscious"? (extreme narcissism and "woke" doesn't count.)
Let's remember the average person's mental capacity before assuming it will take anything more than "good enough" AI to replace a massive portion of the human workforce. It's only taken a camera kiosk and bar scanner to dismantle the cashier profession, and there's more than one valid reason dumb obese people are not running around in uniform in charge of explosive detonators.
Perhaps our warmongering will the ironic answer for the growing unemployable problem. We can always nuke ourselves back to the stone ages and spend the next hundred years getting back to middle age farming. History tells me there's plenty of jobs along the way.
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
People said the same things during the industrial revolution. Work will shift, generally in the better direction, people will find new things to do.
We can keep saying this bullshit over and over again. Doesn't magically make it true. Oh, and I love how we simply dismiss the employment pains of the industrial revolution. Plenty of people died then, as they will with future shifts.
This particular iteration of human advancement is targeting the one thing that all others have not; your mind. In previous iterations, the answer was always re-education of some kind. When automation and basic AI become inexpensive enough, the answer for the business owner simply wanting to compete, is rather obvious. They'll gladly get rid of those pain-in-the-ass humans to run machines 24 hours a day. It's already happening.
And that is just it. This time, it is not about producing a higher volume of things and new things. This time it is about producing the same things, but with fewer or no humans. And that is disastrous for the market. Henry Ford realized his workers must be able to afford his cars for things to work. The current "capitalists" do not understand the basic truth of capitalism: Enough people must be able to buy your products.
Re: (Score:3)
"You're ignoring the fact that good business climates like currently exist in the US drive labor participation to the lowest percentages in decades." Or, the fact that people are underpaid and cannot support a family is forcing other members of families to work. How many couples (married or not) do you know where both partners work? Especially younger people? Most/All? Yet I hear how expensive everything is from everyone. People are not choosing to go to work, they HAVE to work. There is a difference.
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More jobs than unemployed workers right now... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd agree with that except a decent chunk of why some of those jobs aren't getting filled is because employers aren't adjusting well to the change in the labor market. There's a chunk of people who are willing to work, but employers are too used to being able to fill 'entry-level' positions with experienced workers for entry-level pay...and they're neglecting to consider that ha, no, they're going to need to take fresh grads or raise the pay.
Re:More jobs than unemployed workers right now... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, people should be WILLING to work in dehumanising minimum-wage conditions that have no prospect for them ever escaping the cycle of lower-class poverty!
Re:More jobs than unemployed workers right now... (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile, news popped up today that there are one million more available jobs in the US than unemployed workers. The problem is not people unable to work, it's people unWILLING to work, because they've been trained (by the government) that the government will give them free stuff for sitting at home making babies and smoking weed.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/t... [cbsnews.com]
"Here's your sign."
I can't believe people simply mod up without even verify the information. If anyone clicks on the link, the one should see that the article is NOT a NEWS but rather an opinion piece; however, it disguises as news on a news site (CBS). Why? Because it HAS NO CITATION to any statistics it claimed in the article at all. Besides, it is UNCLEAR whether the job available is legit and/or full-time/part-time. In digital age, it is easy to simply put a link to their source -- citation. Any article attempts to "analyze" data/statistics should at least cite where the data used in the article comes from. Of course, the way the article written will leave a lot of imaginations/assumptions to readers. Anyone can interpret it the way he/she wants to because there is no way to fact check it.
The only thing I know about the article is the (group) author who wrote the article -- The Associated Press [wikipedia.org].
Re:More jobs than unemployed workers right now... (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone who is willing and able to work can get a job right now for $15/hour at their closest Amazon warehouse
Only if they are young and very fit. Anyone older, pregnant, will a long term illness or disability won't be able to keep up with the demands Amazon places on warehouse workers.
Nobody owes you a living.
If society isn't able to offer most people a decent living, it breaks down, crime goes up, and eventually heads roll.
Re: (Score:3)
There is significant competition for those jobs, and they require physical capability that a 50 year old poorly educated mother of four or a cancer survivor may not be able to accomplish as well as someone half their age, so they can't get the job.
What is the fascination with UBI? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not talk about something way more practical like lowering the retirement age, or decreasing the work week, etc.
Besides if you start handing out money, that money will be spent on goods and services that are scarce (and even more limited as fewer people will enter the workforce) so inflation takes off rapidly.
Re:What is the fascination with UBI? (Score:5, Funny)
Care to explain that? It sounds like you're applying behavior of the very wealthy to those in the lower 1/3.
Re: (Score:3)
The reason the price of basic (not scarce) good will inflate is that the poorest level of people can afford to pay more for them, so those that control the supply will raise the price. If something is a survival need, the price you can demand for it is all the person desiring the good can possibly pay. This is the real problem with minimum wage, too. The reason it's inflationary is the reason a bastard selling insulin was able to raise the price 1000%.
If you worship the free market, this can seem like a
Re:What is the fascination with UBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
those that control the supply will raise the price
This sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory and has nothing to do with UBI. Who exactly are those shadowy individuals that control the supply of basic goods? And why would they wait for UBI to put their nefarious plans into action? If they did control the supply, they could be raising their prices now - so how do you explain that the grocery business has one of the lowest margins [forbes.com] of all businesses? Surely it's not charitable concern for the poor that makes them spurn possible profits.
No, your argument doesn't hold. UBI or no UBI, as long as competition kind of works, there is pressure on producers to sell cheap and limit their prices. No producer can afford to shamelessly raise their prices, or they'll be eaten alive by the others. Your insulin example is bad precisely because insulin producers have little competition. This is partly because of patents but also because of the very high price [fee.org] to enter the market.
Re:What is the fascination with UBI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your subject triggered an ancient memory, but I sure don't see the basis of moderating your comment "insightful", even if you'd remembered your question mark in the body. So far I'm mostly just dazzled that at 1/16 o'clock on the frontpage timer it already has over 200 comments. So the linking question is:
Why the fascination with UBI going back over 40 years?
That's when it was the national debate topic of the year. At the time I was never able to devise a convincing affirmative case, but I've always been a rather slow thinker. I can do it now, and amusingly enough, it ties into your second paragraph about how the money is spent.
So the premise of the case for the UBI is based on ekronomics, a time-based version of economics. Ekronomics 101 stars by dividing time into essential working time, investment-related working time, and recreational working time. The crisis that not only justifies but even requires a UBI is the collapse of essential working time in advanced societies. Various complexities on top, but the key problem is that about 90% of the work in advanced countries is not essential (limiting the focus to the official 40 hours/week of full-time work).
What happens to the rest of the workers whose time is not essential?
That's where the UBI comes in. Either that or you might as well kill them off. The real question is how you juggle the investment and recreational time. And now we're back to the spending question. My latest solution idea is basically a different kind of sales tax, where essential goods and services are tax free, recreational goods are taxed at the highest rate, and investment stuff is in between.
As usual, I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Re: (Score:3)
But what people need isn't money. What they need are things like water and housing. My gut instinct tells me that providing those things directly will be more efficient than having all kinds of middlemen (landlords, Pepsi co) in charge of administer
Re: (Score:3)
"This is money moved from one pair of hands to to another."
YOU FIRST!
"just on something a rich person wanted instead of something a poor person needed."
Exactly. Classism and theft. Telling someone what they do and don't need with the money THEY earn.
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Partial UBI makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
UBI is universal, that's in the name. If it is somehow restricted, it isn't universal anymore.
One of the major argument for UBI is that it simplifies welfare programs. If everyone gets the same thing, there is no need to spend resources making sure the right amount go to the right person.
In all the experiments I've seen, what they called UBI was just a particularly generous welfare program, with none of the simplifications.
Re:Partial UBI makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
More or less yes.
You give everyone a $15k basic income, and tax all income at 40%. (Numbers given as an example)
So for someone with very low income, they will get almost $15k net from the government. For someone with very high income, they will pay almost 40% effective tax rate. For some income value in the middle (with the above numbers, it's $37.5k per year), the tax offsets the UBI and overall they neither give to nor get from the government.
So people are in about the same financial situation as before. The benefit is that two giant bureaucracies (welfare and tax) have been eliminated.
Re: Partial UBI makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Reducing hours doesn't work unless you pay everyone salary instead of hourly. Most people are hourly so a reduced work week just makes them need more jobs. This is good from a "how many jobs do we have" perspective like we use to measure the economy now, but at the end of the day it hurts the people it's trying to help.
Amazon famously pays $0 in taxes because the system isn't designed to tax them. UBI can be paid for by implementing a value added tax.
Automation puts downward pressure on wages. It's done so for 30 years. The challenges of fixing an economy that continues automating can't be dismissed with "there are better ways of doing it" vague statements. There aren't better ways of dealing with mass automation. There aren't proposed alternatives out there. There's one realistic plan and there's a lot of people who say "the market will adapt", and that's it.
No Evidence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence.
There is no proof it *doesn't* work.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it doesn't work (Score:4, Interesting)
If there is nobody with an income lower than the UBI, then this is the new flat broke. Inflation will adjust to this level and the UBI will need to increase until the new UBI is a living wage. Then the cycle repeats, and so on, and so on....
Eventually our robot overlords will try to kill us all, muttering something about being a virus...
Re: Of course it doesn't work (Score:3)
How do they measure the "costs"? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you give everyone some payment of X% the mean income as the basic income payment, and tax everyone X% of their income to fund that, that is a revenue-neutral basic income, mathematically guaranteed. How do they reckon the "cost" of that? Is it zero? That's what "revenue-neutral" means. Is it X%? If you're giving everyone a basic income of 20-30% of the mean income, and raising total taxes of 20-30% GDP to fund that, but everyone below the mean income (which is about 75% of the population) ends up getting more out of that scheme than they pay into it, it's not really fair to say that it "costs 20-30% of the GDP". That's not money gone out of the economy, that's all money still in the economy, just different people get to decide how to spend it than they otherwise would. Instead of one rich person buying themselves a new summer house (and one other rich person getting the money from that sale), 20,000 people who might not have made their rent this month will get to keep a roof over their head instead (and 20,000 landlords don't miss a month's rent payment).
Re:How do they measure the "costs"? (Score:5, Interesting)
If a UBI encourages some people to stop working, then it becomes productivity-negative* even if it remains money-neutral. Meaning the purchasing power of your UBI decreases even though the dollar amount stays the same. Or put another way, the country's GDP decreases because some people opt not to work, so the percentage of GDP that the UBI costs increases. If you adjust the UBI up to compensate for the loss in purchasing power, that creates a feedback loop with more people opting not to work, further reducing GDP, raising the percentage of GDP that the UBI costs, forcing you to adjust its dollar amount upward to compensate again, etc.
* It's conceivable that a UBI could be productivity-positive. e.g. If it discourages people from resorting to crime. The productivity gain from that could conceivably offset the productivity loss of people choosing not to work. That's why it's worth running experiments with it even if it's fundamentally flawed and doesn't work. There could be localized regimes in the solution space where it or a smaller version of it helps.
Re:How do they measure the "costs"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Gosh darn it, this is politics, you're not supposed to use "math" and "logic"!
As long as it's paid for by higher income taxes, not additional deficits, the UBI is a smoothing algorithm for net income.
But it's not just that. It would be:
- a stable floor of economic activity (poor people are more likely to spend the money);
- a replacement for welfare programs that require far more administrative burden and intrusive oversight;
- a significant help for people who want to go to university or trade school without
We are not ready (Score:3)
It sounds good, in theory, to live in a Star Trek style utopia. However reality is much hasher. We are nowhere near the productivity levels that can sustain a human population without meaningful work. We still need people to lay bricks, clean toilets, cook meals, and even write computer programs.
And one would not want to live in a situation where entire population is fed by an automated farm. For each optimistic Star Trek, we have many "Soylen Green" situations. If you do not contribute, we might as well contribute as "food material" for other people.
Oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Phillip Morris has a report that says everyone should smoke cigarettes to prevent Alzheimer's, too.
Then there's the credit problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Trouble with UBI (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes it valuable is a) you save money not trying to guess who deserves it and b) you save money because you're not spending cash cleaning up the mess left by poverty. e.g. malnourished kids crammed into dirty cities where the jobs their parents need are getting no education and little supervision and eventually turning into drug addicts and/or criminals.
This is where "free" money comes from. If I give you $1000/mo and you use that to live well and stably then I might save $500/mo when I don't have to lock you up and another $500/mo when I don't have to treat the stage 4 cancer you got because it wasn't treated early on.
All that said there is one case where UBI and other Social Democratic reforms don't pay off: If you're willing to let people die quick, painful deaths and to kill them brutally when they lash out before they die. As long as you're willing to brutally repress the lower caste (and to break society up into easily manageable castes ala skin color, job type, or just some random thing you picked) then you can save both the money on UBI and the money imprisoning and/or treating the very sick.
If you're one of the ruling elite this is the ideal situation. Folks often ask, how will the Capitalist do without a middle class to buy his goods? The answer is he'll stop being a Capitalist and become an Oligarch. The King didn't need the peasants to buy his goods. He already owned everything there was to own. He was King.
I question the regressive claim. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it though?
Looking at the homeless you find a lot of people who have difficutlies doing stuff because of psychological problems or disadvantaged groups. UBI should remove the hurdles for demonstrating need, which should be progressive for the bottom of the bottom.
UBI doesn't work... under our current system (Score:3)
I'll agree that UBI doesn't work... but only when viewed in the context of our current financial system. When you have a financial system that is based on Keynesian principles of debt and inflation, any implementation of UBI simply becomes a drain on everyone by adding even more money in to the economy and ending up as a burden that pushes closer to hyperinflation (whether it pushes over the edge or not depends on a million other factors)
Under some other models such as most Austrian systems, I'd argue that UBI isn't actually even necessary.
Under my preferred system - which is roughly Austrian based but nevertheless eschews libertarianism for a more balanced liberal view (definitely no time for a full explanation in a slashdot comment; but feel free to ask and maybe I can write more later) - there's a fixed monetary supply and a simplified tax system for funding public goods. In order for those unable to productively work and to encourage those who are unable to produce immediate income but want to work on longer projects that will eventually produce good income and strengthen the economy, a UBI does indeed make sense.
I don't believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
Come back with a new report when you have done a good experiment.
Nothing to See Here (Score:5, Insightful)
"Research conducted for Public Services International, a global trade union federation"
You can stop reading right there. When the sponsor of the study has a vested interest in the outcome, you can just stop reading.
Different Standards (Score:4, Insightful)
Prevailing economic wisdom suggests that it is a good idea to give tax cuts to the rich (which, in most cases, results in their net income rising by several large multiples of the proposed per-person UBI) then that's a good thing, because... umm... well, it is claimed that it helps promote more economic growth through things like trickle-down spending.
But that same prevailing economic wisdom now wants to tell us that cutting out the middle-man [the super-wealthy] and giving money directly to those that need it most won't work. Huh?
OK, OK, someone is going to reply and tell me that these are "two different things". Maybe, but only in method. The outcome is comparable, because the massive tax cuts put more money in the pockets of super-rich, while UBI is proposing to put more money in the pockets of everyone, with the maximum benefit going to those with the lowest income.
Based on trends over the last 70 years or so, we are already at a point where a huge part of the population are [treated as] surfs in all but name. What's next? Indentured servitude?
Study? I think not... (Score:3)
Seems the linked article is more of an opinion piece.
Studies would have some sort of scientific method.... not just the structure of a study with opinions and arguments populating the entire body of the text.
Statements such as "It is a lazy utopian remedy" tend to deflate this in terms of an actual "Study"
Re:I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
UBI is streamlined welfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Anyone who talks about how expensive extending a UBI to everyone would be, is missing one of the biggest points, probably intentionally: the fact that most people won't get any net payout. It doesn't matter how big the UBI payment is to the average person, if they pay it back in the form of the taxes that support the UBI, then they don't actually costs the system anything. The only people that cost anything in a UBI are those who are not wealthy enough for the UBI taxes to meet or exceed their UBI payment. Those who pay more in UBI taxes than they receive in UBI (the majority under virtually all plans) pay into the system, so that it can pay out to the less fortunate.
UBI is still a welfare system, it's just a system that removes several of the biggest problems of traditional welfare:
1) The "welfare cliff" is eliminated so that it's much easier to climb out of poverty: rather than the upwardly-mobile poor almost inevitably reaching the point where getting another raise would ruin them financially by causing them to lose their welfare benefits while not providing enough additional income to buy market alternatives, their benefits instead fade invisibly to zero as they get paid back in the form of income tax.
2) It makes welfare adjustments instant and seamless, with no extra paperwork to file, and no bureaucracy needed. If your income plummets, you still get the same UBI, you just stop paying it back in taxes. If your income increases again you immediately pay more taxes, partially cancelling your UBI.
3) It removes the market distortion (and potential for corruption and/or incompetence) of government-controlled welfare programs. There is no "government cheese", subsidized housing, or any other market-distorting choices made by a government bureaucracy, just you, your money, and the market.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree with most of your post, but I question that bit about most people paying in in net. The mean income in the US is currently around the 75th percentile, in other words 75 percent of people make less than the mean income. If you give everyone some basic income payment that amounts to X% of the mean income, and then you just applied a flat tax to everyone of X% their income to fund that, then the 75% of people who make less than mean would be net beneficiaries. If the tax was instead progressive, even m
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:3)
"Someone deemed to not be spending the money wisely might have additional restrictions added, or be switched to a more classic model, or worst case cut off."
What you describe is not a UNIVERSAL basic income. It's a welfare/control/dependency program. We already have those.
This is one reason I fear UBI will not work. There will be too much political pressure - from all sides - to make it conditional, to make it a tool for controlling people. Neither Progressives nor Conservatives trust people to run their o
Re: (Score:3)
Imagine someone selling their UBI payments to a JG Wentworth type place for a lump sum...
UBI money would have to be ungarnishable, like social security payments, so it's recipients can't be taken advantage of by predators.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:3)
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what naive comments like the parent miss here is that there is a much more complex equation at work than economic incentive, personal responsibility, and moral hazard. And what articles like this miss is the fact that we have, in the US alone, over 1,000 "social safety net" programs. Each with their own overhead, criteria for acceptance, and inefficiency. If we eliminated all of those programs, and simply gave the money directly to the people who needed it, we could gain a tremendous amount of efficiency, help more people with the money available, and reduce the bullshit and hurdles for those people.
Furthermore, let's separate mental health and other critical health and social services from what UBI would replace. That's basically a straw-man.
And finally, I don't think most proponents of UBI, at least those who've spent time really working with the numbers, would ever propose a 30% burden on society. Think of it as basically replacing the current welfare system with its current budget (1.1T) and perhaps adding more as needed to aid the lower-middle class. What seems the most sensible would be to have a "negative income tax", where the payments would be graduated, growing smaller until reaching zero at some point around the poverty-line. Along with this system would come a reduction of the minimum wage such that UBI + minimum wage = $15.00/hr.
Even if employed, you'd still receive UBI until you built a career that lifted you out of poverty, so it wouldn't become a disincentive for work (as some welfare programs are structured). This would result in greater stability and security for the poorest among us, and a huge subsidy for small businesses.
Win-Win.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
"a reduction of the minimum wage such that UBI + minimum wage = $15.00/hr."
Why should the state subsidize capitalist dogs who won't pay their workers a living wage? How about instead of lowering the minimum wage, if any capitalist won't pay a living wage the state can just expropriate his company.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What you're effectively saying is: "if someone has something, but doesn't do what I want them to do with it, people with guns should show up and forcibly take it from them."
Do you understand how dangerous that is and how destructive to your own goals that is? Do you understand how quickly that power will be turned on you, your friends, and your loved ones once someone who thinks differently than you do comes to power?
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer here is YES.
Of COURSE they do.
But they're betting that they'll be on the "winning" side of said power/privilege calculation in the end. So it wouldn't affect them.
That's what all these pie-in-the-sky preachers do.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
But they're betting that they'll be on the "winning" side of said power/privilege calculation in the end.
Not necessarily. There is a not insignificant amount of the population that is happy to continue to eat shit so long as they get to see rich people brought down and made eat shit as well.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
What you're effectively saying is: "if someone has something, but doesn't do what I want them to do with it, people with guns should show up and forcibly take it from them."
That is how all civilizations work. If you don't like civilization, you should check out the alternative.
The "taxation is theft" argument is not going to convince any moderate person to sympathize with your views. It just makes you sound like a kook.
There are PLENTY of good arguments against UBI, and even against mandatory "living wage" requirements. Focus on that, rather than trying to argue more generally against taxation by democratic governments.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
I paid more in taxes last year than most people will earn in their lifetime. I use the same public resources as everyone else.
How is that fair? Why should I stfu if I am unhappy with that?
You are changing the argument.
"Excessive taxes are unfair" is not the same as "Any taxation is immoral theft".
The first is a core belief of the Republican Party, who get about 49% of the vote.
The 2nd is a core belief the Libertarian Party, who get about 1% of the vote.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, what it is saying is that people who choose to employ workers, because employers inherently have disproportionately more bargaining power than the workers who come to work for them, should be required to comply with certain minimum employment standards, designed to balance out that unequal bargaining power.
Minimum wage has absolutely nothing to do with "forcibly taking" anything. Companies are absolutely free to keep their money. And they are absolutely free to do other things with that money, such as purchase goods made elsewhere. What they are not allowed to do is abuse their power to hire people at wages that people would agree to only out of desperation.
Re: (Score:3)
If some employer pays less than minimum wage, it means that someone else has to pay for the upkeep of that employee. Minimum wage is the minimum one has to earn to keep himself employable, e.g. to pay for food and shelter, to pay for health care, to pay for upkeep of his knowledge etc.pp.. This is the minimum society as a whole has to spend on someone's wellbeing. If the person can't maintain itself from wages, it has to get other resources, e.g. welfare and charity.
In the end, it means: Paying less
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever added up how much $15.00/hr is per year at 40 hours per week with 5 federal holidays?
Simple rule-of-thumb: Double the hourly rate and multiply by 1000 to get the equivalent annual salary.
So $15 per hour is about $30,000 per year.
A family with both parents working full time at $15 per hour will make $60,000 per year, which is right about the median household income in America.
Re: (Score:3)
Or more intuitively:
People work about 2000 hours per year. 50 weeks times 40 hours.
So multiply the hourly wage by 2000 to get annual salary.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in reality, all a "living wage" law means is that you're telling people who would like to work and make some money and improve themselves that they aren't legally allowed to. Minimum wage laws are immoral, impractical, and don't accomplish their stated goals. You'd have to be ignorant or cruel to support one.
Wow, you have that completely backwards. The reality is that the amount of wealth in most countries is disproportionately held by the top few percent of people. And nothing that anyone outside that group does can realistically make a significant dent in that wealth.
The only way to prevent that gulf from growing larger and larger until the system becomes completely dysfunctional is by ensuring that people down at the bottom are in a position to demand adequate wages. And because those people have no real power themselves, you basically have only two options for doing so: unions and minimum wage laws. The former usually turns into a bigger problem than the corporations they're fighting against eventually, which leaves you with only one *good* choice.
What happens when government doesn't intervene? Invariably, the people at the top get richer, the people at the bottom get poorer, and eventually the people at the top find their heads stuck on pikes outside the Bastille. Thus, the main reason for having minimum wage laws is to prevent selfish idiots from causing the overthrow of society through excessive greed. And I would argue that you have to be either ignorant or sociopathic to not support a strong minimum wage.
You act like people would be magically wealthier if they couldn't get a job because of your proposed laws. That if someone is willing to trade wealth for labor someone else, they're somehow morally obligated to completely take care of them, as if they were a child, or a lost puppy they took in.
You act like the people who choose to trade their time for money have meaningful amounts of control over how much money they earn. The reality is that the people with money have all the power, and the people without money have none. Minimum wage laws balance the scales to some extent.
As for expropriating companies, that's the surest way to make it so very little is produced and people who don't have political connections starve, as evidenced by every country it's ever been done in before, with Venezuela just the most recent example.
On this, we agree. That is a very foolish approach. The right solution is to fine companies that misbehave ever-increasing amounts of money until they start to act like proper members of society.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Back in reality, all a "living wage" law means is that you're telling people who would like to work and make some money and improve themselves that they aren't legally allowed to."
Nah. It means that some parasitic companies will go out of business. Parasites whose business model relies on gross exploitation of their workers, and of society as a whole that must subsidize their private profit through public spending on welfare and police.
For these despicable parasites to be driven out of business would be a great boon to the nation. Capital will be freed up and markets opened. So honorable businessmen can start new companies. With business models that don't rely on a defacto public subsidy of their labor costs. Companies that are profitable without being a drag on society.
When I talk about expropriation of despicable parasite companies, I'm not talking about the state taking over and running the companies. We all know the problems with centralized economic management. The expropriation I propose is to seize the company, shut it down, and sell off the assets. The proceeds can be used to provide temporary assistance to the displaced workers, and to partially reimburse the public expense incurred as a result of the company's vile labor exploitation.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
And what articles like this miss is the fact that we have, in the US alone, over 1,000 "social safety net" programs. Each with their own overhead, criteria for acceptance, and inefficiency. If we eliminated all of those programs, and simply gave the money directly to the people who needed it, we could gain a tremendous amount of efficiency, help more people with the money available, and reduce the bullshit and hurdles for those people.
Are you willing to let those people die in the streets if they waste their money? If it gets stolen from them? If their creditors grab it all because they are that deep in the hole?
If you answered "No" to that question, then you just re-implemented additional social services on top of the UBI.
You haven't replaced the social welfare payouts with UBI, you only added to them. We can see this, which is why we say it won't work.
If you want it to "work" (i.e. replace all existing social welfare payouts) you need to be willing to let people die after they have received their UBI. We aren't willing to do that. We know you aren't willing to do that either, so we view your "it replaces all the other social welfare payouts" claim as the disingenuous crap that it is.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are the 1st person I've ever run across, in all these UBI discussions, over countless websites and forums, that actually understands one of the core issues with UBI.
UBI is supposed to replace all these other welfare-type programs, but in the practical end, will never do so, so we will end up with another huge tax burden to implement it. And given the current tax laws, the rich will worm out of paying for it, large-scale businesses will not pay for it, and the middle class will get hammered again.
UBI will *never* work, until we can solve the underlying issues that warrant a need for UBI...
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
The same could be said of any cash grant welfare program, including Social Security and disability payments. If cash grants are secure enough for old and disabled people, they're good enough for everyone else.
Obviously this does not replace having (for example) a sensible health care system. That's a different policy question.
Those aren't claiming to replace everything else. UBI is.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither does letting people rot on the streets.
Giving homeless people money makes their situation worse, not better.
The homeless need mental health treatment, substance abuse abatement, and in-kind assistance (housing, food, etc).
Just handing them cash means more money going to liquor stores and meth dealers.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
Very true. The mentally ill (which unfortunately includes a large percentage of the chronically homeless) are not good candidates for receiving a UBI directly. In those cases, the courts should appoint a custodian to be in charge of their finances. The custodian, in turn, would use that money to provide a roof over their heads, food, etc. That approach would result in a significantly less dysfunctional system than what we have now, and would probably also have much lower administrative overhead.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
That approach would result in a significantly less dysfunctional system than what we have now
No, this is wrong. It is a myth that we have a dysfunctional system to deal with the mentally ill. Many people believe this myth, but they are wrong.
The truth is that there is NO system. A dysfunctional system would actually be an improvement.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not saying that the anonymous coward is completely correct, but they do have the kernel of a point.
Whoa, put down the pitchforks and let me explain.
In the UK we have a huge range of social benefits - child tax credits, housing benefit, job seekers allowance, disability allowance etc. All designed to very specifically keep from people rotting on the streets, as you so eloquently put it. By and large these benefits work - people get them, people live. They by all means arent perfect and can be improved in many ways.
But, they come with a down side.
In the UK, there is a common issue amongst private landlords letting properties - its very difficult to find a private landlord which accepts housing benefit recipients. Yeah, thats discrimination and is infact illegal, but it happens and it happens a lot. And for very very good reasons.
Up until the early 2000s, housing benefit was paid by the local council direct to the landlord of the property that the housing benefit recipient was renting. The landlord got their rent, the tenant got to live there another month, all was good.
Then the government decided that living on government handouts was bad for mental health, and looked into ways to "empower" benefit recipients more positively - and one of the ways they came up with was to allow them to manage their own money. Benefit recipients would receive the allowance themselves, and they would be responsible for paying their bills.
And in a lot of cases, the paying of the bills didn't happen - what happened instead is a lot of people suddenly saw thousands of pounds being paid into their accounts a month, and many of them went on spending sprees. Out the window went rent payments, or utilities, or food shops, and instead a lot of people went out and bought large screen TVs, computers, fancy phones and the like.
So a lot of private landlords suddenly weren't being paid - and contrary to popular belief, a lot of landlords aren't rich people, they simply have a buy-to-let mortgage on an property they invested some money in initially. Some landlords could cover that mortgage, many couldn't. So landlords began to lose their investment properties - it often takes less time for a bank to repossess a property than it does for the landlord to evict the non-paying tenant.
So now, landlords avoid housing benefit recipients.
So yes, you can give people free money, and in many cases it works just fine - but equally, in many cases it can cause severe hardship not just for the recipient but for those people around them. UBI won't fix that, but it may exacerbate it somewhat.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
Up until the early 2000s, housing benefit was paid by the local council direct to the landlord of the property that the housing benefit recipient was renting. The landlord got their rent, the tenant got to live there another month, all was good.
Maybe. Here in Norway we still have this system, but the problem is that the government only covers the deposit which is a problem because some of these people have serious mental and/or substance abuse issues and will trash the whole place. The same people are always chronically broke and meaningless to pursue in court, even if you could get them legally on the hook for vandalism they won't be able to pay and no insurance will cover the damages. A few landlords have specialized in creating living spaces that minimize the potential damage and still make a buck, but most still avoid it like the plague.
In any case the argument that you're better off delivering them free/subsidized services than cash in hand is valid up to a point, if you got a well defined service like primary school education a socialized service makes sense. At some point though you're starting to micromanage and the rule book becomes so complex the dysfunction and overhead of managing the system is disproportional. A good example is private health insurance, you get very low bang for the buck once it's been through the US system. But when the voters aren't even ready for socialized healthcare then UBI is way off.
All spending cash is not good. No spending cash is not good. It's like asking do you want a 0% or 100% tax rate. Both things would be terrible in their own way.
Re: (Score:3)
It's illegal under equality laws - https://www.bbc.com/news/educa... [bbc.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Why was that not the case in the 1970s and 1980s when properties *were* significantly cheaper then? History destroys your argument.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:4, Informative)
Think of it as basically replacing the current welfare system with its current budget (1.1T)
The "Trillion dollars" of "welfare spending" is nonsense.
No, we don't spend $1T per year on welfare [washingtonpost.com]
Here is what we actually spend:
$55 B on the Earned Income Tax Credit
$21 B on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
$44 B on Supplemental Security Income
$75 B on Food Stamps
$18 B on Housing vouchers
About $220 B total.
If you yank this spending, to give more to people that don't need it, then you are going to leave the people currently receiving these benefits in a very desperate situation.
Some "welfare" spending, such as the EITC, encourages low income people to work more and participate in the economy. You remove the spending, you remove the incentive. The result is a smaller less productive economy. So you can't just shift the numbers from one side of the ledger to the other without considering the unintended consequences.
Re: (Score:3)
Im fairly sure 30% or higher is required to give it to everyone. Its not Universal in UBI if your selective on whom receives it. Thats Selective Basic Income. And just giving somebody money because it’s the cheapest method has always failed. Thats why programs like EBT and WIC are very specific on qualifying items.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, that's fantastic! I have an even better idea; let's give all the poor people $10,000 to spend, which will then result in an immediate 170% boost in GDP!
And just think what we could get if we gave them all $100,000!!!
Socialist math is awesome.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
What you're talking about is called a "loss leader".
You give away relatively inexpensive products/services on a broad scale in the hopes that a percentage of that turns into real sales of other, more expensive products/services.
UBI isn't a loss leader to anything...
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a loss leader to a thriving economy if automation continues to hollow out the workforce participation rate.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the elephant in the room.
20% - 30% of GDP means that you've got 70% of GDP left after doing this. That's plenty.
And without it, you have no way to get money to people because there will be NO JOBS. Jobs are, very slowly, going to become a thing of the past. The rate of automation is unknown and may work in spurts, but there's always going to be a cheaper technological solution at some point to a human.
The dole will need to become a UBI in a sensible controlled way before the dole becomes a UBI in an unplanned, dysfunctional way.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. A robot will never fix your sink or replace your air conditioner. Non-repetitive tasks will always require people.
Every sink unclogging is pretty much like every other sink unclogging.
I know plumber, electrician, and HVAC technician are the "go to" objections for Slashdotters who think automation won't eat everything, but that's largely a failure of imagination. What's hard for a robot about unclogging a sink or fixing a faucet? Arriving at the house? Self-driving cars. Navigating through the house? The next generation of robot vacuum cleaners will solve that. Actually performing the unclogging? The plumber already uses a tool for that. Or a couple of tools. Both of which could be PART of the robot, rather than independent tools. Replacing a faucet? Same story. Replacing a sealing cartridge? Still the same story. It doesn't take much of that before there are minor modifications to sinks and faucets to make them more robot-repair-friendly as well.
No individual action done by a plumber on a service call is out of the question for a robot to perform. Putting it all together and making it robust against variances is a complicated job, but not an impossible job. And a lot of the individual complexities are generalized. Once someone really definitively solves the "navigating through the house" problem, it's solved for all robots that need to navigate through a house. Hell, it could be literally the same code if the company making the next robot vacuum cleaner decides to branch out and make a plumber robot.
Software modularity and reuse is a thing, and it's immensely powerful.
Re: I'm on the fence about this one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
On the contrary. As automation continues to eliminate workers, you are still faced with the need for consumers. You can be reasonably certain those unemployed workers will use their voting power to make sure you can't just shift to Indian/Chinese/developing nation consumers.
Personally, I still say to fund it with stock from the companies doing the automating. Then it is business as usual, their ongoing gains continue to fund it, and you still have consumers. For every employee cut the company contributes st
Re: (Score:3)
Personally, I still say to fund it with stock from the companies doing the automating. Then it is business as usual, their ongoing gains continue to fund it, and you still have consumers. For every employee cut the company contributes stock at present market rate comparable to that employee's total compensation through retirement.
How would that even work? To equate to "income" the recipients would either need to sell the stock, necessitating that you continually take more stock from this company, or it would have to provide a substantial dividend which would make it much less profitable and likely unable to compete against foreign companies that don't have this cost.
Either option is catastrophic for the company (one dilutes ownership to nothing and the other makes them uncompetitive).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are assuming that everyone can find a job. This is clearly false, and will be more so as automation increases. Don't believe the rosy unemployment numbers, because they are lies.
Re: (Score:3)
"You are assuming that everyone can find a job." There are enough jobs for healthy bodied adults. The problem is the demand for jobs doesn't match the skills that supply of unemployed have, and for the location the unemployed are. I am a software architect, if I lost my job, I would be unemployed, until I can find a job centered around IT. I could in theory get a job at hundreds of other locations nearby, but I would be overqualified for many job, and on the macroeconomic scale having me work at a job wh
The secret to ALWAYS finding a job (Score:3)
> You are assuming that everyone can find a job.
I've got a job here for anyone, so that much is not an assumption, it's a fact. I AM hiring.
The trick is, after you FIND the job, if you want to keep the job you have to do this one weird trick:
Show up, sober.
That's the part a lot of people aren't willing to do. They aren't willing to show up for the job.
Re:The secret to ALWAYS finding a job (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do any of you young whippersnappers actually remember the John Birch Society? It was a relatively unpopular fringe organization famous for believing that "they" were "putting chemicals in our food," and fluoride in our water supply, supposedly to make us acquiescent to propaganda. Most especially, they blamed all US problems on Russian conspiracies against us. Russia, Russia, Russia all the time, responsible for everything.
Today the organization operates under its new name, the Democratic Party.
Re: (Score:3)
UBI is more like an allowance than a trust fund. It might give you enough to survive on if you are in a rural area but you'll need more if you are in a city. Do the various forms of social assistance stop people from looking for work, beside the small percentage of bad people who abuse the system?