Are Universal Basic Income Proponents Making the Wrong Arguments? (yahoo.com) 456
An assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University criticizes the argument that technology "is quickly displacing a large number of workers, and the pace will only increase as automation and other forms of artificial intelligence become more advanced," specifically calling out Universal Basic Income proponents Elon Musk, Andrew Yang, and YCombinator Chairman Sam Altman:
The problem is, there's no indication that automation is going to make human workers redundant anytime soon. Technologists probably tend to believe in automation-induced job loss because they're familiar with the inventions that are constantly forcing people to change what they do for a living. But even as these new technologies have been rolled out, the fraction of Americans with jobs has remained about the same over time. Meanwhile, evidence that automation causes job losses throughout the economy is slim... [Some studies] fail to say how many new jobs will be created in the process, so they don't give any picture of technology's overall impact on the labor market.
Thus, when UBI proponents make the dubious claim that basic income is necessary to save people from the rise of the robots, they undermine their case. They also send the message that they think a huge percent of American workers are simply too useless to be gainfully employed in the future -- hardly an appealing message.
The second dubious reason to support UBI is the idea that it can replace traditional forms of welfare spending, like food stamps and housing vouchers. Libertarian economist Milton Friedman supported a negative income tax for this reason, and modern-day libertarians often espouse this view as well. But there are reasons UBI will never be a one-size-fits-all solution. First, it's expensive. Giving all Americans $12,000 a year costs a lot more than giving money to poor people only.
He ultimately calls UBI programs "an interesting idea worthy of more attention and more experiments," but argues that the current "flawed" justifications for UBI "serve to distract the public from the simplest, most reasonable case for UBI... [T[hey should simply emphasize the idea's simplicity and fairness."
Thus, when UBI proponents make the dubious claim that basic income is necessary to save people from the rise of the robots, they undermine their case. They also send the message that they think a huge percent of American workers are simply too useless to be gainfully employed in the future -- hardly an appealing message.
The second dubious reason to support UBI is the idea that it can replace traditional forms of welfare spending, like food stamps and housing vouchers. Libertarian economist Milton Friedman supported a negative income tax for this reason, and modern-day libertarians often espouse this view as well. But there are reasons UBI will never be a one-size-fits-all solution. First, it's expensive. Giving all Americans $12,000 a year costs a lot more than giving money to poor people only.
He ultimately calls UBI programs "an interesting idea worthy of more attention and more experiments," but argues that the current "flawed" justifications for UBI "serve to distract the public from the simplest, most reasonable case for UBI... [T[hey should simply emphasize the idea's simplicity and fairness."
Nope (Score:2)
"Simple" and "fair" are things you would test an idea against, but they're not root reasons for doing anything.
Re: (Score:3)
We already spend a lot on welfare programs. Better to spend the same amount using a system that's simple and fair.
It's a good argument. But we'd never replace existing spending in the US, we'd only add to it. And I don't support that.
Of course, what we spend on wlefare programs is small compared to what we spend on Social Security and Medi*, and UBI will never replace that, so the whole argument is more posturing than practical.
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If it was about welfare, it isn't anything new at all, and there isn't anything Universal about it.
Cash welfare doesn't have a very good success rate at achieving positive side effects in society.
You say that welfare is a good argument, but you don't support it. That puts you in no position to actually argue that it is a good argument, though. You agree you don't find it persuasive, so why do you want it to be a good argument? Because it is a losing argument, and you want to oppose it and win? That's silly.
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If it was about welfare, it isn't anything new at all, and there isn't anything Universal about it.
Just the mechanism. Mail everyone a check, and increase taxes (even on the lower brackets) enough to mostly offset the cost. If you set it up right, people not working get about what they do today, people working part time come out slightly ahead, and it's a wash for everyone else.
In the abstract, it's a clever approach and I like it. In the abstract.
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people not working get about what they do today, people working part time come out slightly ahead, and it's a wash for everyone else.
So some people get MORE, and NOBODY gets LESS?
And we no longer have to work if we don't feel like it?
That is amazing. You have convinced me.
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We already spend a lot on welfare programs. Better to spend the same amount using a system that's simple and fair.
And efficient. UBI is should be much more efficient than ad-hoc point solutions. That, to me, is the best argument I know of to replace welfare, food stamps, and all our other non-retirement social safety net programs with UBI.
Of course, what we spend on wlefare programs is small compared to what we spend on Social Security and Medi*, and UBI will never replace that, so the whole argument is more posturing than practical.
You're probably right. Were you thinking that was a bad idea or that it's just politically impossible? I'm in the "it's a great idea that will never pass" camp. But here's the thing. The stock UBI proposal ($1k/month to everyone) costs a lot. Like the entire US federal spending as of
Where's the money coming from again? (Score:4, Insightful)
You print the money. (Score:2, Interesting)
You tie UBI to inflation, then you just print the money and hand it out. The problem with inflation is that it makes things unaffordable (a problem itself) which leads to hoarding, but if you have a steady and predictable rate of inflation and you hand people money to account for it, then that problem goes away — as do most of the others. It can cause some inefficiencies, especially in B2B transactions, but the general increase in commerce may well make up for that on its own.
Meanwhile, increased infl
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You print the money. (Score:5, Informative)
You tie UBI to inflation, then you just print the money and hand it out.
That's how you get runaway inflation.
If the market cannot adjust to the value of the dollar then no one will accept the dollar as payment. They will accept only barter.
Giving people $15/hour as a minimum wage when it was $7.50 before doesn't mean people can buy twice as much stuff. It means that those that can't produce $15/hour in value won't find work, the value of commodities will double, or more likely something in the middle.
Giving people money for not producing any value won't mean the dollar is worthless, people will simply see the value of products adjust accordingly. If the amount of money given is adjusted to where that amount of money buys the same amount of stuff then that's just a downward spiral that may not have a bottom.
Re:You print the money. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation since 1968 (the high point of the minimum wage in constant dollars) it would be a little over $17hr. now, based on CPI data from the Federal Reserve. The Consumer Price Index (inflation, as commonly stated) is probably a bit high as an indicator, since it does not take into account consumers shifting around what they buy to the extent they can. The (Personal Consumption Expenditures index) is probably somewhat more accurate, and a bit lower. Still, however inflation is measured, the minimum wage has not kept up, even approximately.
If a UBI is phased in, I think the minimum wage should be set to whatever it would have been without the UBI, minus the hourly amount of the UBI, and at some (decades) later point, eliminated entirely. Say if the minimum wage would have been $12/hr. and the UBI is $1000/month, then the minimum wage with UBI would be set to somewhere around $6.00/hr. This would be perceived by employers as a reduction in the cost of hiring an employee, benefitting commerce.
Employers would notice one big difference however -- they no longer are their employee's only source of income, and they'll have to treat them better, however that gets manifested. This is in many ways a good thing, because while employers/owners do accept the majority of the "long term" financial risk, they almost always have far less immediate risk when negotiating with an employee. This kind of asymmetry in an economic relationship takes away a lot of the "freely entered transaction" aspects of it, and that's economically not a good thing.
So how does it get paid for? Well, for those who work they wouldn't pay a thing at very low income levels. At higher, but still quite low, income levels the IRS would start taking a bit of that UBI back, and that percentage amount would increase the more you made. (At no point, however, would working more get you less money, like welfare can do now.) At a certain income level, the IRS is taking it all back so it's financially neutral relative to the current tax setup. Above that level, you would be paying it all back and then some. If you work in software, for example, there's a good chance you do that now, especially if you have moved along in your career.
But you make UBI and all other non-healthcare assistance an opt-in either or proposition. If you are on some form of public assistance (again, not healthcare) you are given a choice, if you are provably a citizen -- take the UBI and we'll stop hassling you, or can choose to continue the way you are now, but not both. Making it a choice will largely silence the complaints about something being taken away. That will make it possible to incrementally sunset the existing welfare programs -- people will choose to on their own.
If you are a high-income taxpayer, then you are paying the leftover amounts for either the current public assistance scheme or the UBI one, for any given hypothetical beneficiary. One pays more people and is highly efficient (cutting checks and withholding wages, plus validation of citizenship, age of majority, and a pulse) and the other has a lower payout to the recipient, but a shitload of inefficiencies and government intrusion and perverse incentive associated with it.
If it is paid for (at least to the extent the government currently pays for things) and not funded by printing dollars, it will not increase the money supply, so it won't be inflationary in that sense, except as a short term "shock". What it may do is impede commerce/work by reducing the penalty for not working, but this is not a comfortable amount for anyone to live on, much less build a future on. Conversely, the reduction of the minimum wage as perceived by employers might increase commerce and consumption, mostly at the lower income levels. The demand curve for employment will shift, but the supply curve will shift too, likely not as much.
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Increased inflation solves another problem, your savings! Your savings are a problem because they allow you to be resilient against unexpected setbacks and might potentially allow you to retire.
You don't just save, you invest. This is true anyway.
If you have UBI and national health care, then you don't need savings. You're getting UBI. If you want to travel, or own a car, or do most of the stuff people want to do, you'll have to have a job. But you won't need one to exist after you stop working, or if you have a health problem.
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This is a completely empty argument against UBI. There is more than enough money in the existing social assistance and EI payouts that, if redirected, would cover almost all of the cost of UBI. If UBI was implemented you could also scrap other, related programs, like government pension plans. In the long run, maintaining one UBI program would actually cost less.
I'd also like to point out that running UBI for a decade would cost less than the F-35 program as so far. Yet no one is asking "Where is the money c
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$12,000 is not nearly enough in the US today
I foresee a new market of super low grade housing specifically for people with that budget. That's a very niche budget right now, so there's no reason to focus on it, but the U in UBI would change that.
Re:Where's the money coming from again? (Score:5, Informative)
People who are productive get saddled with paying for everyone.
How can you not see that's what we have now, where money accretes money, and the worker is receiving an ever-diminishing share of the profit? The people collecting all the money are not the people doing the work. They're just people who have money. Some of them earned it, but more of them didn't. Keep shaking your pom-poms for corporatism, though.
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The larger change has already happened, in the industrial revolution. UBI is the correction.
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Disagree. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, there's no indication that automation is going to make human workers redundant anytime soon.
Just look at self-driving car tech. Once it becomes reliable and trusted then it's game over for millions of truckers.
Perhaps there has been a failure of imagination but it's not on the part of the proponents of UBI.
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It's easy to see jobs that will be lost.
Yet, let me pose a thought experiment.
Would you rather the government just give a UBI to people to produce nothing.
Or would you rather the government continue/expand funding in areas that need human workers?
You'll end up with much the same issues. How do you fund it and organize it. If you think about most Western economies are probably *something* like 50%+ government run/funded today. Healthcare, Education, Transit, Police, Military, R&D investments... The exact
Re:Disagree. (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's no indication self-driving cars will become reliable any time soon.
There's plenty of evidence that self-driving trucks will be able to do long hauls better than current truckers, many of whom are poorly trained, and all of whom are meatbags. It'll be some while before they are able to handle the whole job, but they'll soon be able to do the highways [caranddriver.com], and the potentially well-organized jobs with slow motion [cnn.com] and lots of idling like port drayage.
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but they'll soon be able to do the highways [caranddriver.com],
Can they handle the cone zone?
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Can they handle the cone zone?
Google seems to be able to handle it, including hand signals. I don't see why the trucks couldn't.
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You haven't been keeping up with waymo's progress because that was a point of interest for them. Yes, construction zones are things they can handle.
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Just look at self-driving car tech. Once it becomes reliable and trusted then it's game over for millions of truckers.
That presumes a story where that happens over a short period of time. Another possible story is that it happens slowly over the course of 15-30 years, as parts of some routes are automated, some are manually driven remotely [wired.com], and others are human driven, with automation slowly taking over more and more of the routes.
Regardless, why should we enact a universal program for everyone in order to solve worker dislocations in one or two industries?
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That presumes a story where that happens over a short period of time. Another possible story is that it happens slowly over the course of 15-30 years
Simply put, it's the free market and truckers can't compete with machines that never tire and don't get paid. The company that invests the most heavily is most likely to get the most contracts to transport goods, get greater outside investment and expand the most. It's basic capitalism, dummy.
Regardless, why should we enact a universal program for everyone in order to solve worker dislocations in one or two industries?
There are many reasons, including simplification of the welfare system. For everything that can be automated, there is someone working toward automating it and nobody is keeping track of what may suddenly displace w
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...solve real problems when your solution is non-existent.
Made-up stories about an imagined future are not "real" problems.
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Perhaps there has been a failure of imagination but it's not on the part of the proponents of UBI.
The cannonical example is to back up 100 years. Some huger percentage (50%? 80%? 90%? I'm not sure) of the population farms. We've got this new invention, a "tractor", which is going to let Farmer Bob plow 10 times as much acreage as he did with a mule. And with this new "synthetic fertilizer" stuff the Germans invented, Farmer Bob can product twice as much food per acre as before. What are we going to do now that we only need 5% of our people to farm? I just can't imagine! We've always been farmers! There
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Who's going to maintain those self-driving vehicles?
Probably a group of people about 10% of the size of the people who are being displaced.
Um... what they heck are they talking about (Score:5, Interesting)
We've got 2 million cashiers and 2 million drivers who are likely to be made redundant sometime in the next 20 years. What exactly are they going to do for a living? And be specific. We can't all be HVAC repairmen and those Service Sector jobs everybody need a strong middle class to support.
Millennials are both spending less [bbc.com] and earning less [cnbc.com]. How the hell are they going to keep a service sector economy going.
This strikes me as another classic "Here's why it would be a mistake to do anything that would inconvenience the rich [pics.me.me] articles.
I remember an economist talking about how the economy was going to shit for the working class and he used a phrase that really stuck with me: Fragile Existence.
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Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not producing less, we've just lowered the value of labor by reducing the need for it. So you tax at the point of creation. Throw in a wealth tax (everyone reading this should be familiar with those since if you own a house you pay property tax, which is a wealth tax, and a regressive [wikipedia.org] one at that that) and you're all set.
Or just double down on "Taxation is Theft" nonsense and get ready for a Battle Angle Alita style dystopia of ultra wealthy and poor subsiding off the scraps like dogs. Your choice.
Re: Two words (Score:5, Informative)
And it worked very well in the past, isn't?
Yeah, actually it did. The last 50 years of decreases in tax rates on the upper quintile of the US population has corresponded directly to the decrease in wealth in the bottom 3 quintiles.
And why should we just hand over all the wealth (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about you? What will you do when they come for you? They won't take it by force. Sooner or later you'll get sick, lose your job, find your retirement's been gutted and Social Security's gone and then what? You'll do the same damn thing Ayn Rand did and accept any help you can get.
I don't blame you for accepting help, I blame you for not realizing you're gonna need it some day. You'd a shlep on
Speaking of which (Score:2)
UBI proponents' blatent reliance on bad info (Score:4, Insightful)
The lack of people becoming unemployed over time with more automation is a very fair criticism of the economic models UBI proponents seem to be basing their assumptions on.
A second and even more glaring error is the fact that even in this day and age, manual labor in high-volume manufacturing has not gone away. It has simply moved to places like China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mexico, and other locations that aren't immediately visible from the tops of ivory towers located in the West. So on top of the fact that there are no wide-scale job losses, the fact that UBI proponents point to automation as the cause of job losses in manufacturing that do occur when it is clear to anyone who wants to do half an ounce of research that the jobs didn't go away, they moved because of a combination of free trade policy, strict environmental laws and labor-friendly regulations in the US, and an unfortunate cultural aversion to manufacturing and the construction and maintenance of the necessary civil infrastructure for manufacturing that is found among the types of people who go to Ivy League schools and end up influencing public policy...that all shows that UBI is the wrong solution to the wrong problem, and the answer to why seemingly-smart people are pushing it is that they really aren't that smart, they've just bubbled up to the top of the chattering classes.
Are robots and AI getting significantly better? (Score:2)
Are humans getting significantly better (cognitive skills, manual skills) every 5 years? (Yes / No)
If you answered Yes, No
then we have a problem and UBI will be necessary.
If you answered other that Yes, No, you need to research harder and think harder.
Re:Are robots and AI getting significantly better? (Score:5, Insightful)
Contrary to popular imagination, we do not live in Gene Roddenberry's utopia, and we never will. You will always have to work for a living.
On the contrary (Score:2)
Of course, if we don't figure out the sustenance distribution, people will be playing war most of the time. But even at that, we will be pathetically lame compared to the automation.
Re:Are robots and AI getting significantly better? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, actually. AI is not getting better every five years. It is limited by the imagination of the humans programming it.
That answer is so wrong in so many ways.
The progress in AI in the last five years has been mind blowing. If you don't work in the field, maybe you aren't aware of all the things that have been happening. Look at the images at https://www.theverge.com/2018/... [theverge.com]. The ones on the left were generated by a state of the art deep learning system in 2014. The ones on the right were state of the art in 2018. Perhaps you'll notice a small difference. Or the amazing progress in computer vision [qz.com]. Maybe you just take it for granted that you can click the "translate" button in your browser to translate documents between languages, and you don't realize what massive jumps have happened in machine translation in the last few years, again thanks to modern deep learning techniques. Progress has been amazing, but if you aren't paying attention it's easy not to notice. Computers just do things they couldn't do before, but we're so used to that we take it for granted.
Then you claim AI is limited by the imagination of the humans programming it. Totally wrong. That used to be true back in the old days (before about 2012). To solve a problem, you had to design an algorithm to solve it. But today you just build a generic model, throw a lot of data at it, and it figures out an algorithm on its own. That's how all those advances I described above were done. No one wrote a program to generate faces or translate English to Japanese. They just gave it a lot of training data and it figured out a solution on its own. And that's why AI is progressing so much faster than it was ten years ago.
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Humans just aren't and will never be as good as Gene Roddenberry imagined we would be. Too many of us are too selfish and shortsighted for his vision of the future to come to pass.
To be fair, even Roddenberry couldn't imagine it happening without Aliens showing up and contacting us.
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manual labor in high-volume manufacturing has not gone away. It has simply moved to places like China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mexico
You haven't kept up with the times. Automation is coming to those countries too. It's easy to find recent news stories about that. For example, Why China is spending billions to develop an army of robots to turbocharge its economy [cnbc.com] Or how about, iPhone manufacturer Foxconn plans to replace almost every human worker with robots [theverge.com]. Or this one. How automation will impact garment workers in Bangladesh. [electricrunway.com]. It's happening everywhere, not just places "immediately visible from the tops of ivory towers located in
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And yes you can get a job digging ditches, yakking at customers at Lowes or Home Depot or Target, and whatever the hell else you can think of.
Finance vs tech (Score:2)
It's interesting how it's always economists and financiers telling us automation is great, and technologists telling us automation is a problem.
Either understanding the economy is stupendously difficult or technologists have the ability to see black swans that economists don't.
Poverty is a supply problem (Score:3)
If people are suffering from shortages of healthy food, housing, health care and education, it's a sign of there not being enough farms, construction companies, doctors and teachers. Or of production of these goods and services being insufficiently automated rather than too automated. What these problems are NOT a sign off is shortage of dollar bills. If you throw the later around in the wind, the best case is that you simply make a different group of people poor. The more likely case is that you suppress work and build up of production capacity, making humanity poorer than they could have been as a whole.
most jobs are already useless or harmful (Score:3)
I used to be a Libertarian but... (Score:3)
When I was a teenager at university studying Electrical Engineering and hoping to get a job working in Artifical Intelligence or at least as a computer programmer Libertarianism seemed like the fairest and most efficient way to distribute income. To each according to his ability to make money.
However after graduating and finding that there were no jobs available at all because of the 'can't get a job without experience and can't get experience without a job' thing my opinion has changed somewhat. The system corporations use for hiring is so unbelievably suboptimal and inefficient and unfair as well and that is the filter that every single human being must pass through before they can be a part of the system. So I do believe that some government interference that goes to the very core of the capitalist system of commerce is necessary. If left to their own devices corporations and even small private companies make completely short sighted and stupid hiring decisions such that the system as a whole does not work even close to optimally. I was hard working and smart (top 1% according to standardized testing) and I could not find *any* job after uni--not even working in retail. Almost everyone wanted previous experience and the very few companies that didn't require it certainly preferred it and since I did not have any work experience I would just lose out to those who had it.
I think some kind of UBI would be nice if it were economically viable. It is retarded to give it to *everyone* though and any sort of large amount is probably just not viable. What I would want to simulate on a computer is something like a UBI of 600-800 USD per month and only available to someone who does not currently have a job or to someone with an income of maybe 15000/year or less and yes they would have to quit their job to qualify for it making that position available to someone who actually wants it. Ideally the person might have to show that they tried to get a job but could not, but it's hard to prove that you really tried your best to find a job.
As far as the Robot Revolution that may happen at some point in the next 10,000 years I don't think we should be over-anticipating it. When it happens it happens and we will have to deal with it. Certainly we are not anywhere even close to that now as anyone who actually works in AI could tell you. Yes we have advanced robots from companies like Boston Dynamics, but they don't have the intelligence to replace humans in most cases. Actually the problem Boston Dynamics was having was that their robots were not even intelligent enough to do the stuff they showed in their videos autonomously. They had to be controlled remotely I think. But I don't think they were really trying to combine AI with their machines at that point. Maybe now they will get more involved with that.
Re:Voting (Score:5, Informative)
P.S. The Industrial Revolution was going to put everybody out of work too.
And people were right, it did. It took about 3 generations before the job loss due to the industrial revolution was offset by the new jobs created. And the people that ended up in the new jobs created, were usually not the same people that got fired from the old jobs. So yeah, the problem sorted itself out after a century or so, but that's hardly an optimal solution.
Re:Voting (Score:5, Insightful)
But even as these new technologies have been rolled out, the fraction of Americans with jobs has remained about the same over time.
Robots may not be taking everybody's jobs, but the threat that "we'll just offshore your job or replace it with robots" is taking away worker's bargaining power (to the extent that the killing of unions didn't already wipe most of it out). So 'Americans with jobs' and 'Americans with a middle-class living standard' are no longer the same thing.
I don't know if it'll get to the point that UBI is needed even if people can still find work - but it's not unthinkable. Look at all those Walmart workers on food stamps.
Industrial Revolution did put everyone out of work (Score:5, Insightful)
When you're in high school you read 2-3 paragraphs on the subject. College you might get a few pages. Because of that we gloss completely over the decades of misery from that timeframe. But that doesn't make them any less real.
We know Automation is going to replace jobs. Nobody automates to make _more_ work. So instead of just blindly asserting the next Industrial Revolution that's upon us isn't a problem how about listing off the new jobs that'll replace the automated ones?
Don't say Service Sector, btw. Unless you're gonna do basic income nobody's gonna have money to spend on services. And Biotech and software just don't need that many people. So now that manufacturing, retail and driving jobs are on the way out the door what replaces them? As an added bonus you've got to find jobs for folks who can't make it through college.
I've poised this question several times and I've yet to get a satisfactory answer. If all else fails people just say "Well the jobs are going to be so high tech you can't imagine them". Remember what I said at the start of this post? People in the 1800s couldn't imagine the internet, but they died without every seeing it. We can't wait 100-200 years for new tech tech to come along. People need to make a living _now_.
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dystopt (Score:2)
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dystop (Score:2, Insightful)
Please tell me exactly how much of my hard earned money is owed to you for doing nothing?
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dystop (Score:5, Informative)
We effectively already do that, it's called incarceration. And people who aren't gainfully employed or being supported tend to turn to crime or rioting.
It costs roughly $20-40k a year to put somebody in prison. Paying those people a UBI of even $15k to engage in activities that would allow them to contribute to society would be a net benefit for society.
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dystop (Score:3)
Please understand the topics you are talking about first and then their histories before opening mouth.
No one is talking about getting rid of prisons. The US has a very high incarceration rate for petty crimes (>50%). Crimes that most other countries charge a lower jail time, fines, community service, and quicker early release. The US also has a system that spirals a convicted person into more serious & violent crimes.
In that context, having basic needs met would reduce the petty crime population an
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dysto (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Please tell me exactly how much of my hard earned money is owed to you for doing nothing?
Enough to prevent violent overturn of the status quo.
If I had any reason to believe that UBI would replace all the other welfare programs (including a big chunk of useless government jobs), I'd be all for it. As TFS says, it's more fair, and it's simple.
Sadly, that's not how any of this works.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Enough to prevent violent overturn of the status quo.
Anyone with enough work ethic and organizational skills to overthrow the status quo could find a well paying job within the current system.
Go visit a homeless shelter. Those people aren't going to be effective revolutionaries.
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Sibling post said it well. In general, responding to "the poor have no bread" with "let them eat cake" just ends badly for everyone involved. History is replete with examples of why a safety net benefits everyone, not just those caught in it. It's more cost-effective protection than other approaches.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You give them money, it's not really that complicated.
We've already developed solutions to starvation, it's called foodstamps. You're not allowed to spend that money on anything other than specific items. And if they aren't taking care of their children, CPS takes them away until they can do better.
The point of giving these people money is that they'll spend it however they like. This narrative about the poor being irresponsible is largely not true. It's something that the right spreads to rationalize why t
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dystop (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose its to engender a change in attitude amongst people - whereas beforew you were told "the government will look after you and ensure that you have all you need", which results in people being highly dissafected that the government isn't giving them as much money as they'd like, into one of "here's a basic income so you won't starve, the rest is up to you" that should (haha!) make people start thinking about taking more responsibility for themselves.
Right now, once you're in the welfare state, ytou're practically encouraged to do everything to game that system by making yourself less responsible - have more kids = more money, better chance of free housing, less need to get a job, free healthcare etc etc. The moment you stop that and get a job and satart siupporting yourself, all the welfare drops away and you're way worse off.
I know someone who got a new job, did 3 days a week, and when asked "why not 4 days that they were offering" replied that the 4th day would mean his benefits would reduce, it was more lucrative to work 3 days than it was to work 4.
UBI fixes that dependency culture. Whether it can be introduced to a world full of people used to being dependant is another matter. In the UK we're trying to change benefits with a thing called Universal Credit that sort-of acts like a halfway house to UBI, and politicans (of the opposing side, naturally) are screaming about it constantly. Mainly because the government did a poor job with the introduction, because its a new thing to complain about, and partly because it encourages poeple to get into work whilst keeping some benefits.
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dystop (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you do when they misspend it, and are then starving
You provide the same way that Social Security benefits are provided, once per month.
added to the existing forms of welfare, rather than replace it.
You start out by providing the option to get other forms of welfare (not counting any healthcare here) or get UBI. UBI is no questions asked, no requirements, forever. But only if you are a citizen (and can prove it).
You get UBI whether you work or not. Minimum wage is eliminated. As you earn money, there are extra taxes that take the UBI back, until at some income level the IRS has taken all the UBI. This is where the bulk of the funding comes from.
Above that level, you're paying more in to support UBI than your getting from it every month. If you're in software, you're probably above this level, especially later in your career. Anecdotally, I know I'm way above the level where I personally get back what I pay in right now. I don't mind it (OK, at least not that much) because I'm well aware of the profound inefficiency of bureaucracy, I realize that it contributes to me not living in a shithole society.
You structure it so it's much easier and more reliable to just get the UBI instead of welfare, even though it may be just a little less. People shift off of welfare, are free to get a job, although it won't pay much at first because no minimum wage -- work and developing a skill at what you're doing becomes the only shot at living a life that's eternally kinda shitty, but you can feed yourself and maybe stay off of the street, even when you're unemployed for a long stretch.
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You do nothing, just like the current practice now for those who receive public assistance. They learn not to do that again. And,I realize Slashdot discourse is heading for the sewer, but there's no need to go on the attack with your response, I don't think I attacked you.
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I still don't get the connection between having a job (or not doing so) and being unable to handle money, care to explain?
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dystop (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you do when someone who is working does it? It's not like being unemployed equals being unable to handle money, quite the opposite.
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dysto (Score:2)
What do you do today? And why would it change with UBI? It's not like the amount of money you have determines your drug addiction or irresponsibility. It's not like a significant part of society is drug free because they can't afford it...
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Kids are easy, at least once they reach school age: free lunches, and possibly breakfasts as well. Bam! Just like that you eliminate starvation amongst school age children, for a pittance really. It also gives the kids (and their parents) strong incentive for them to go to school. In fact it's a strategy that has worked quite well at encouraging school attendance in many developing communities: a good meal or two is likely worth more than a child could earn by spending the day working instead.
If you wan
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dyst (Score:2)
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dyst (Score:5, Insightful)
Creating money is also a tax, because it makes the existing money less valuable. It doesn't create wealth, it just redistributes it.
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dysto (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually relatively easy to (mostly) short-circuit: don't pay them for having kids. You get a UBI - maybe enough to live modestly while supporting 1-2 kids, at least if you earn at least some money as well. And then don't increase benefits for kids. The more kids you have, the less spending money you have left over, so there's no point where it's profitable to have another kid. Adults get UBI, kids don't.
If you want the kids to not suffer for their parents' bad decisions, make sure school lunch (and possibly breakfast) is free, and that they get free medical care - things enrich them with no possibility of their parents converting to cash. Heck, fund it explicitly from the kids' (partial) UBI, held in trust by the government - as a minor you get free XYZ, with any left over perhaps going into a trust fund that matures when you reach adulthood, giving you a modest nest egg to start out with, regardless of how irresponsible your parents were.
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dysto (Score:3)
Planned Parenthood and easy abortions have done more to lower teenage pregnancy than anything else
Look at teenage pregnancy rates. NY, MA,CA all 8-9 per 1000 girls.
Texas and southern states? 35. Per 1000 girls.
Contraceptives and teaching do more to lower teen pregnancy than not talking about and pretending to save yourself until marriage.
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Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dysto (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Every story I read re: UBI is negative/dysto (Score:3)
Exactly out of the 5 teenage mother's I know. 2 have worked their way up and out of poverty. One became a nurse. The other's second marriage was to a guy who was stable.
2 of the others are stuck on welfare. The last isn't on welfare but can't break out much above the poverty line as her husband is a tradesman. And trade jobs do not pay all that well(construction depends on weather) no work no pay. 50 hours a week for the summer cancels 20 hours a week in the winter.
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Yes, the pay is the reason, but labor also gives you structured activity and socialisation, which can be a good thing.
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It's not just happening at the lower end. It's just that once people are displaced, they tend to end up at the lower end.
That said, it's definitely true that there isn't going to be universal displacement in the foreseeable future. But if 25-75% of the jobs have been replaced, and the others still need to be done, what's the just way to handle the problem? How about someone who trains for 10 years (counting college and, say, med school) to have his job replaced a year after graduation? He might be a dyn
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Well, you're right that all I have is personal observations. And a reasonable model of employment patterns. And knowledge of the time taken for retraining, when a skill is automated.
I will admit that one of those in my sample ended up with a higher paid job, but that required going through college again with a different major, and being supported until she had finished her masters the second time. Fortunately it was a work-related-injury rather than "job went away through automation" so she received gove
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Look at Amazon.
Given the choice that company would be Bezos surrounded by robots. The only thing holding it back is the tech isn't there yet. In 20 years, it will be too late to forecast what these societal changes will look like for labor.
All jobs eventually get replaced by automation, which is fine because we always want more, so there are always new jobs. The problem comes when things change too fast. It takes a generation or two for stability.
Thing is, most of the worry about robots replacing everyone overnight is just nonsense. Amazon has been trying as hard as possible to replace people with robots for almost 2 decades now, with billions to spend on that goal, and has barely made a dent. And they've admitted publicly that that's not
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The problem I have with a "benign communism" is ensuring that it remains benign. To do that you need to ensure that the people running it are the people who want to control it, but rather the people who would do a good job. Currently I feel that a random selection would usually pick a better person for the job.
Every government in history has expanded it's control to the limits of its capabilities. I challenge you to find an exception. Often the purpose of power was power, because those who wanted power
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"If you don't pay for it now, it will cost more later" is a common idea in these stories. It is usually very poorly justified.
What? It's how pretty much everything works. We can't build railroads now because people own things in between things now. Fixing the minimum wage, whether you do it by guaranteeing employment and raising the minimum wage or with UBI, is going to cause problems now because it hasn't kept up with inflation for decades. If the minimum wage had been tied to inflation in the first place, then it would still be functioning relatively well now, and the middle class wouldn't be vanishing up the rich's asshole.
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That's the same story in reverse: if you only did this thing in the past, we'd have a paradise now. The truth is that no one knows what would have happened due to any alternate policy. And wishing the past were different is the world's most useless mental exercise.
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The truth is that no one knows what would have happened due to any alternate policy. And wishing the past were different is the world's most useless mental exercise.
We can often take very good guesses based on what's happened in the past, and instead of wishing or whining we can actually do something instead of wringing and wailing.
Re:Not just ubi (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the people who want change have stories. But the people who want to preserve the status quo have stories too, don't sail west you'll fall off the end of the earth. It's hard and dangerous and uncertain and difficult, best not to try. Don't hope for a better existence or a different distribution of wealth, heads down and stick to the script. Even if people don't change much technology will change society for us, I feel it's very different today than 30 years ago and I bet that in 30 years it'll be very different again. We're on a river heading downstream, we can steer or drift but we're not going to stand still.
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Yes, the people who want change have stories. But the people who want to preserve the status quo have stories too, don't sail west you'll fall off the end of the earth.
So let's not believe storytellers and their stories.
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So let's not believe storytellers and their stories.
That's a good idea, death to the story teller.
It's a common theme because it's true (Score:2)
If you don't pay for healthcare now you pay for it when people with preventable diseases use very, very expensive end of life care and emergency room visits.
If you don't pay for diplomacy now you pay for it when the wars start.
Now, if you're willing to create a North Korean style winner take all dictatorship then yes, you can have your cake and eat it too as it were. You can send the brain damaged
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It's a common theme because the storytellers want money that other people earned. So the story has you giving the storyteller money now and you saving (or getting paid) more money later. A Nigerian prince once told me a similar story.
It doesn't always turn out to be false. Very often it does.
Re:Not just ubi (Score:5, Insightful)
No one seems to notice that attempts to engineer societies have poor outcomes generally, and more ambitious schemes to engineer societies fare worse than humble ones. The most zealous schemes have resulted in holocausts.
Man how does shit like this get upvoted insightful, you already live in an enginered society, roads, sewers, telephones, computers, electricity, sattelites... are you really going to tell me they are not artificial man made and enginered constructs? This idea that we do not engineer our society's is just fucking bullshit. This naive idea that helping people out is doomed to fail when the overwhelming evidence is the opposite. If we weren't helping out each other we'd have no sewers, clean water, roads, electricity, yadda yadda yadda.
The fact that propaganda (manufactured reality) works... so well that many people don't know the government doesn't work for them.
Princeton study
https://scholar.princeton.edu/... [princeton.edu]
Here are billions of dollars in energy subsidies, aka when politicians are saying social services need to be cut, they are speaking out both sides of their mouths because they know most people don't look at what companies are getting free handouts from subsidies.
https://www.imf.org/external/p... [imf.org]
Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. Science on reasoning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Crisis of democracy
https://youtu.be/glHd_5-9PVs?t... [youtu.be]
Manufacturing consent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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That's not what an engineered society is. Things can be engineered with great success. People can't.
LOL if you don't believe people can be engineered, what do you think genocide and domination and war was all about? AKA religious and resource wars of conversion. Plenty of people converted to the dominant religion of the dominating power. The idea that people can't be changed betrays the fact that when someone bigger then them shows up many human beings capitulate and prostrate themselves before the big kahuna.
I just don't buy it why do you think billionaires form think tanks to influence public opinion
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No one seems to notice that attempts to engineer societies have poor outcomes generally
Arguably all remaining societies are engineered. And while outcome is poor because we suck it is better than alternative which is dead and buried.
Society in the US isn't engineered much. There are a few basic institutions and a basic structure of laws and property, but beyond that people mostly go about their lives without some authority telling them what they should do. There's no grand social ambition in charge.
Other successful countries are similar. Failures like North Korea and the former Soviet block countries are much more organized and directed and planned. Places that lack minimal institutions also do poorly.
Re: Not just ubi (Score:5, Insightful)
"capitalism is bad because it sometimes works out bad for some people".
No. Capitalism is bad because it literally MUST NOT work out for some of the people in order for others to profit. Capitalism is a childish way to run an economy.
It's not a way to "run an economy" at all. It's the system that naturally develops when free people go about their lives trading with each other.
It is enabled by a foundation of laws and property rights. Those laws don’t require capitalism. You are free to start a collective and live together with your people in whatever arrangement you mutually prefer. Look at the Amish if you doubt that.
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You are free to start a collective and live together with your people in whatever arrangement you mutually prefer. Look at the Amish if you doubt that.
Or the Borg!
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Proponents of socialism* point to successful, happy countries like most of Western Europe...
And they ignore or handwave away every example everywhere else. And they ignore the fact that, if you ask these Western European countries whether they are socialist or capitalist, they don't say "We are not capitalist, we are socialist." In fact, rather than being socialist countries, they are capitalist countries with a generous social safety net.
The main reason we don't adopt a similar approach in the US is that a very large fraction of the population doesn't want it. People in the US have a different
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Those workers live in an old system where they expected to train for a job for life, UBI is equally backwards because it assumes this job for life culture which we don't have anymore or want.
Your understanding of UBI is backwards. People who have UBI can afford to retrain, because their basic needs will be met. You are also assuming a work to live culture which we also don't want.
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UBI is just simpler. You don't have to do so much administration work. All you have to do is determine whether someone is alive, and who gets the check if they're a minor, then send it out. Or put the money on the card, or whatever the scheme is, but I'd hate to see UBI turned into a government's-wet-dream cashless society scheme.
Re: Fairness? (Score:2)
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There are two elements to a successful company.
Labour (expertise)
Capital
[...]And most people with wealth did not get it by being lazy but by working and taking risks and creating products
The more money they have, the less they have to work. And the people who actually do the majority of the work are getting an ever-shrinking portion of the profits.
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You are so wrong it is staggering. The UBI is about keeping _capitalism_ going.
Re: How to do a UBI as unemployment benefits (Score:3)
Sounds exactly like the welfare & dependency programs we already have in place. I see no difference whatsoever except the incorrect application of the name "UBI".
Our current welfare & dependency programs are notoriously ineffective at helping those in need; and notoriously counterproductive at encouraging people to work. There's nothing new in what you propose, except the incorrectly applied name. More of the same old fail.
Personally I don't think UBI is all that great an idea. Redistribution of pr
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A $12,000 'Standard Deduction' does not mean $12,000 less tax, it means a lower taxable income.
In 2018 the top marginal rage(over $500,000) was 37%. This means that, a standard deduction could, at most, be worth $4,440 (0.37*12,000).
(much less in reality, as anyone making > $500K will almost certainly have more than $12K in tax deductions)
And in any case, this will only increase tax paperwork, as the 'standard deduction' is just a guesstimate on how much the average person probably has in the way of tax