Slashdot Asks: Do We Need To Plan For a Future Without Jobs And Should We Resort To Universal Basic Income? (vox.com) 917
Andy Stern (former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which today represents close to 2 million workers in the United States and Canada) has spent his career organizing workers. He has a warning for all of us: our jobs are really, really doomed. Stern adds that one of the only way outs of this is a universal basic income. Stern has been arguing about the need for a universal basic income (UBI) for more than a year now. Stern pointed out that people with college degrees are not making anywhere near the kind of progress that their parents made, and that it's not their fault. He adds: The possibility that you can end up with job security and retirement attached to it is statistically diminishing over time. The American dream doesn't have to be dead, but it is dying. All the resources and assets are available to make it real. It's just that we have a huge distribution problem. Unions and the government used to play an important part at the top of the market, but this is less true today. The market completely distributes toward those at the top. Unions simply aren't as effective in terms of their impact on the economy, and government has been somewhat on the sidelines in recent years.Making a case for the need of universal basic income, he adds:A universal basic income is essentially giving every single working-age American a check every month, much like we do with social security for elderly people. It's an unconditional stipend, as it were. The reason it's necessary is we're now learning through lots of reputable research that technological change is accelerating, and that this process will continue to displace workers and terminate careers. A significant number of tasks now performed by humans will be performed by machines and artificial intelligence. He warned that we could very well see five million jobs eliminated by the end of the decade because of technology. He elaborates: It looks like the Hunger Games. It's more of what we're beginning to see now: an enclave of extremely successful people at the center and then everyone else on the margins. There will be fewer opportunities in a hollowed out and increasingly zero-sum economy. If capital trumps labor, the people who own will keep getting wealthier and the people who supply labor will become less necessary. And this is exactly what AI and robotics and software are now doing: substituting capital for labor.What's your thoughts on this? Do you think in the next two-three decades to come we will have significantly fewer jobs than we do now?
Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger problem with this article though is that it really doesn't belong here. This is not a technology issue, or even a science issue. This is an economics issue, and a monetary issue. The jobs aren't going away because people here are being replaced by better technology, the jobs are going away here because people are being replaced by workers in other countries who can work for less. These actions are of course being rewarded by the boards of the companies who are doing this.
It is, of course, a fact that careers are a foreign concept to most workers now in this country. Few people who are in the labor force now will stay with one employer more than a decade at a time. Retirement is quickly becoming a passing dream for the majority of workers as well.
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
I am all for UBI if it can be implemented intelligently.
I am an able bodied guy and will continue to work. But I understand that there are others who are not as fortunate as me. I have no problem paying for their subsistence.
The only thing is, we have to do it well if we are going to do it right. Remove loopholes and incentivize productivity as much as possible.
But, I fear that something this radical is a non-starter for a lot of reasons, not least of which is because it is the much feared socialism which every Mercan knows is synonymous with evil...
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, Bernie was pushing Socialism hard and were it not for the entrenched and dirty DNC and the Clinton Machine, he would now be the candidate of the Democratic party. Not all Mercan's are afraid of socialism anymore, mainly because they noticed that the trickle-down policies of a demented B-Movie actor had no basis in reality.
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, Bernie was pushing Socialism hard and were it not for the entrenched and dirty DNC and the Clinton Machine, he would now be the candidate of the Democratic party.
As a Bernie supporter, I would like to respectfully disagree, with the following argument: When Bernie began his challenge, he was nearly unknown to the general voting population. I think that the Democratic Establishment was planning on an essentially uncontested primary season, conserving resources to prepare for what they were certain would be a ugly, expensive general election campaign. They almost certainly failed (*really* failed) to understand the power of so many people that were left out of the conversation during and after the Clinton Triangulation era. (I also Obama arrived with such a delicate economy that his hands were tied...)
I think that if Bernie had gotten going 2 months (or better, 6 months) earlier in the run-up to the primary, the actions of the party and likely the results of the primary would have been totally different.
Finally, while think Hillary is too centrist, she has remained standing in the face of attacks that would demotivate nearly everyone else, and to the best of my knowledge is a walking encyclopedia of policy. I am not sure Bernie really had the connections or the policy background. It seems like he has a very attractive philosophy which I had hoped would lead to greater detailed policy objectives and plans.
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I am all for UBI if it can be implemented intelligently.
The money quote:
Remove loopholes and incentivize productivity as much as possible.
Is that possible? Philosophically, I am attracted to the concept but have a concern that the UBI would be the topic of ugly political (or worse, violent) struggle: Those on UBI want bigger UBI, those whose work (or those whose AIs work) want smaller UBI. It seems fraught with subjectivity.
Some rational way to balance those two forces must exist or a society implementing UBI would ultimately fail.
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The problem is UBI is money not goods and services.
Unless UBI is essentially the government saying "X% of all production is to be distributed equally to all the population" then it's pointless - so essentially, UBI must be fractional (and a significant fraction at that) nationalization of all productive resources.
If it's not implemented that way, then the inevitable result of UBI is simply inflation.
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
"If it's not implemented that way, then the inevitable result of UBI is simply inflation."
Exactly that. Money, when working properly is equivalent to some sum of goods and services. Money without that backing of good and services is just inflation.
But USA is so afraid of anything resembling "communism" even in the slightest that something as obvious as that simply can't go through their skulls. You can tell that quite a lot of countries are half way there, as they already have socialized education and healthcare, with the result of lower social and economic inequalities and a healthier population with longer live expectancies (on top of all that which is already socialized everywhere so they don't even notice like defense, social peace, justice, etc.), so it's "only" a matter of adding food and shelter to the equation -they still will say something like that is utterly impossible.
In other words:
"Do We Need To Plan For a Future Without Jobs"
Maybe yes.
"And Should We Resort To Universal Basic Income?"
Surely not.
Basic Scrutiny (Score:3, Insightful)
BI will not work and will lead to severe social problems. Basic reasoning and logic is why people dislike the idea, not because of a political party or affiliation. Let me give a couple of the major points on why it would fail, but to be perfectly honest this is not a Slashdot discussion but a much longer debate.
1. Cost of Living: BI does not consider the variances in cost of living. A person in CA would need a BI of about 80K/yr in the Bay area, but a BI of 30K in Detroit. So simple you say, get it d
Re:Basic Scrutiny (Score:4, Insightful)
Cost of Living: BI does not consider the variances in cost of living. A person in CA would need a BI of about 80K/yr in the Bay area, but a BI of 30K in Detroit. So simple you say, get it done. Now you have humans being trafficked to CA to live in mass shanty towns to generate massive amounts of cash to be sent back to Detroit.
You answered your own question, sort of.
In New York State, Baltimore City, California, Washington State, and really all over America, there's a broad distribution of low-income neighborhoods with an average rent of $1-$1.06/sqft. Food in Seattle grocery stores costs approximately the same as food in Baltimore City grocery stores--for example: 10 pounds of Pinto beans costs $5.83 in Baltimore, MD and $6.16 in Seattle, WA. Flour, bacon, eggs, and other commodities are similar. The same goes for personal care items.
It's not so much that people will bus to Detroit as it is that they'll bus to the same low-income areas as they do currently.
BI exceeds the total GDP today or you don't have BI.
Using 2013 as a model, it's possible (although unpleasant) to create a single-individual budget from retail prices. Food is the riskiest, while clothing and personal care are the most flexible; housing is the most-complex.
It's possible to incorporate a serving of vegetables, meat, and large amounts of beans or rice into the diet each day in as little as $25 for 2000kcal/day for 30 days. That includes things like Sam's Club's rotisserie chickens, eggs, some bacon, pancake syrup, and a few other so-called luxuries that don't seem luxurious. I based the original budget on a $100/month food budget, and eventually altered that to use a combined food, clothing, and personal care budget, because the latter two are flexible and food is volatile (it's easy to overspend on food).
In 2013, that combined budget was $170; the 2015 number is $181, accounting for income and population growth.
Housing is trickier. Landlords face increasing risk as incomes lower: low-income tenants have no savings, and often face loss of hours or jobs. Evictions and empty units become more-common, and so the cost-of-risk goes into rent. For example: if for every 10 units you will face the cost of 1 empty unit (through the combined cost of all risks), then a $250 unit has to rent for $275 to maintain the same profit.
Risk-reduction is inherent in a UBI, notably in my Universal Social Security plan, because the benefit isn't counted as income. That means it can't be taxed, garnered, or seized. Further risk-reduction is possible, for example by entering into a two-party agreement mediated by the Social Security Administration: the exact rent is direct-deposited to your landlord, and you get the remainder; if either party cancels this agreement, both receive immediate notice. As well, tenants can buy their way out of the cost-of-risk by placing a larger security deposit as an insurance fund against their own risk.
All of this means we can rent stably to these people at a profit. I expect landlords with many units would invest cautiously, at first adding a few units for such tenants to see how the market works, then expanding when they've identified and learned to control risk--hence why transitioning is so delicate (you have to transition without disrupting current welfare e.g. HUD until the market adapts).
With a 224sqft single-occupancy apartment (I've done some designs), $300/month in my original budget gives $1.34/sqft. In 2015, that portion of the budget represents $1.43/sqft. The per-square-foot cost of construction is similar to the cost of building any other unit, although there might be $15-$20/month ($0.07-$0.09/sqft) of additional fixed costs (bathroom and kitchen), assuming everything has a 15-year life. The average life of a kitchen sink or cabinet is 50 years, while the faucet does last about 15; cheap countertops last over a decade and can be relaminated; and bathroom fixtures
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This one just isn't true. The whole point of a basic income is that it would completely replace welfare, social security, food stamps, and disability in one fell swoop. Why would you keep those programs if a basic income provides them with similar amounts of money? And if it doesn't, how can it actually be considered a survivable basic income?
While I am in favour, in principle at least, of UBI the GP does raise a good point on the issue of disability benefits. Whilst UBI will cover the basic neccessities of living an individual's disability might impose additional requirements beyond those basics, which will have a financial cost. Without a disability allowance, one above and beyond UBI, some disabled people will not be able to survive.
However, the fact that there are some concerns with the 'edge cases', and some uncertainty and disagreement as
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Very important to watch : Humans Need Not Apply by CGP Grey : https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
While I don't agree with everything, I like that video since it states a fact : human productivity increases and AI is a real game changer, so human needs will likely not follow.
What I also like is that he doesn't try to draw conclusions. The conclusion "hence we need UBI" is missing a lot of details (how do we transition, how do we still keep human productive, will we be able to live without a goal or work ?
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am all for UBI if it can be implemented intelligently.
Problem is, the math doesn't work. Lets say we pay out 100% of current federal revenue as UBI (setting aside the fact we'd still need Medicare etc). That's just over $10,000 per citizen. Is that even a subsistence wage? Will that even buy health insurance from the exchange? Heck, let's say all medical expenses are met by faerie dust. Is $10k really subsistence income in most of the US ? Even in rural areas, full time minimum wage is significantly more than that.
And of course we can't give all the federal budget to the UBI. And we can't handwave medical costs. So it all comes down to assuming that some future tax increase will raise federal revenue in a way that no past tax system ever has (that is, bring in more than 20% of GDP). Good luck with that.
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You're looking at it from an insufficiently revolutionary perspective. Sure, if we leave almost everything the same but try and implement a UBI, it'll be a colossal failure. But if we were to implement a UBI in a way that changes everything drastically, there might be a stable way to do it.
Look at it this way: If you tell businesses that the minimum wage is now $0, and they now have a %50 tax on revenue (not profit, revenue), and that they should take into account both that new tax and the fact that all
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's a realist. The world is being reinvented right now, and our silly play money is going to have to be reinvented to match.
Last time this happened the world changed entirely. We call it the industrial revolution. This time it's going to happen faster, and the changes are going to be much more drastic.
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But, I fear that something this radical is a non-starter for a lot of reasons, not least of which is because it is the much feared socialism which every Mercan knows is synonymous with evil...
Much like socialized medicine (we have the VA), the US already has UBI. We have food stamps, welfare, and a couple other subsidies. Socialism isn't what made these previous incarnations horrible failures. It's was the overseers that run them, and the people receiving them. If there is even the slightest manner in which a government organization can be abused, people will abuse it on both sides of the line.
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
You incentivise productivity the same way you always have, by paying for it. The UBI just moves the incentive from "I have to do this or I'll die" to "I can do this and make a better life for myself and my family".
I'm generally a pretty conservative/libertarian sort of person, and as such UBI makes me more than a little uncomfortable, but I definitely think it's worth thinking about, and disussing amongst people who won't react to it based on knee-jerk predispositions. And at some point, I think it may well become preferable to the alternatives. What kind of changes (both positive and negative) would we see if we used a UBI to completely replace welfare, SNAP, social security, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, and the minimum wage? It's hard to know, but from a basic trade-off standpoint, would the amount of people who decide that living on a UBI is enough for them and permanently slack off balance the amount of people who are afraid that if they get a job, their government checks will stop (whether or not that's a valid fear)? Would the economy find a new equilibrium where every job that Mike Rowe has showcased would suddenly become significantly higher-paying (and much more effort would go into automation for those jobs) because no one *wants* to do them, and people pre-UBI are only willing to if they have no other choices but starvation?
And how would people abuse this system? If everyone has a guaranteed income for life, will people take advantage of the UBI-only "poor" by giving them loans that eat up their entire UBI and leave them just as broke as before? (The answer to that is yes, they will, so the real question is more like "so how do we prevent that from happening?")
In the US, I've heard a lot of people talk about our "Puritan work ethic" that says that work is its own reward. I think a UBI would really put that to the test. If it's true (and I personally believe it is) then people will work, even for next to nothing, with a UBI to keep them afloat. Maybe we even get rid of some of the laws that were enacted to keep workers safe from abuse by their employers, because those laws presuppose that you *have* to work to survive and so if an employer is abusive you don't have the freedom to say "screw you, I quit." (Or the laws are based on the notion that work is a finite resource, so if I'm working 80 hours a week, I'm taking food out of the mouths of someone who *could* be working half of those hours)
All in all, I think it's a fascinating subject, and one that deserves a ton of thought. Unfortunately, it touches so many nerves and goes against so many deeply held beliefs that it's hard to have a conversation about it that doesn't quickly devolve into an ugly mess (see also: this whole slashdot post) And that's a shame.
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It is well known that the majority voice - both in staff and readers - at slashdot has leaned conservative for over a decade now.
It's not a conservative or liberal issue, it's a fringe issue. Gary Johnson is open to the idea [basicincome.org], and Milton Friedman supported something similar (he called it negative income tax). Bernie Sanders is ambivalent in his support for it [medium.com].
In a world where we are deciding an election based on whether to invade Russia, whether reality TV qualifies you for the presidency or not, whether it's worse to grope a woman or defend a groper.........and in a world where people decide the answers to those questions based on
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Except that it is a technology problem and that cheaper labor is a temporary substitute for eventual automation. Anything that can be off-shored can and will be automated, so especially the countries that are benefiting from offshoring will have a hard and quick fall due to automation. This is well explained in the book, "Rise of the Robots". https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Ro... [amazon.com]
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The bigger problem with this article though is that it really doesn't belong here. This is not a technology issue, or even a science issue. This is an economics issue, and a monetary issue. The jobs aren't going away because people here are being replaced by better technology, the jobs are going away here because people are being replaced by workers in other countries who can work for less.
To clarify the identified problem and purpose of this article being on Slashdot, TFS pretty much clearly stated that this is about the issue of technology replacing jobs, not shitty foreign policy. Yes, this and H-1B issues are related, but they certainly do not replace each other as we talk about what forces in play will ultimately reduce employment for all humans.
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the jobs are going away here because people are being replaced by workers in other countries who can work for less.
Bollocks. They're being replaced by robots too. [bbc.com]
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The jobs aren't going away because people here are being replaced by better technology, the jobs are going away here because people are being replaced by workers in other countries who can work for less. These actions are of course being rewarded by the boards of the companies who are doing this.
Simply not true. Improvements in automation have made it more economical to automate than to send jobs overseas. [fivethirtyeight.com]
Also, the world doesn't have an endless supply of people willing to work for pennies. Sooner or later, people in developing countries will demand a higher standard of living. When that happens, labor costs increase dramatically. [cnn.com]
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's currently 2016, getting close to 2017, so we're rapidly reaching the two decade mark.
I would say that Slashdot has a strong *libertarian* bent, not necessarily a conservative one. It's definitely gotten more pronounced in the last few years, going from grumbling about government to out and out hatred of government. Even the on-topic comments about tech have gotten pretty bad, with tribal shit-flinging drowning out the rare piece of actual insightful commentary.
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Even the on-topic comments about tech have gotten pretty bad, with tribal shit-flinging drowning out the rare piece of actual insightful commentary.
Even the smart ones are commenting with one half their brains tied behind their backs as the preconceptions inherent in us force us to be subjective despite our wish to deliver insightful, objective viewpoints.
However, much of the strength and insight of these threads is the diversity from which these preconceptions arise. We have liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and many more who are blends of the lot. You will still find yourself hard pressed to gain insight outside of your settled belief set an
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't fall for the false power of outrage given to words. The irony is that racism and race-baiting for votes are equally distasteful strategies.
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
This place was a huge hotbed of "Gore won!" and "BOOOSH is teh EVUL!"
Slashdot, like nearly every public forum, is used to bash whomever is in office. So during the Bush administration, we attacked Bush, and now we bash Obama. But that doesn't necessarily mean there was an underlying shift in ideology. People who are happy with the status quo usually aren't very vocal.
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On-topic... you can't have pensions without Wall Street; you can't expect your money to grow at exponential rates without ot
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no excuse for anyone on Slashdot, presumably in the well-paying tech field, to be living month-to-month.
Well-paying tech field? Tell that legend to the people who have jobs in the Bay Area but cannot afford to live there. Or tell it to the recent CSci grads all around the country who find the jobs they expected have vanished and there is no longer a way in to programming for most people with only a 4 year degree. Tell that to admins who are seeing their jobs rapidly outsourced. Tell that to techs finding their entry level jobs simply don't exist any more.
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Funny)
There's a story called the Ant and the Grasshopper. The basic idea is that if you save your money, you will be fine come retirement...you will even be able to retire early.
I remember that story. The ants worked hard while the grasshopper laughed. Then the grasshoppers formed a union and demanded equal rights "the ants are just too lofty, we will make them give us food". Then the ants moved to Galt's Gulch, and lived happily ever after with their perpetual motion engines. Odd story.
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I can't find Galt's Gulch in my Atlas.
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So if everybody thinks of themselves, everybody is taken care of? That is stupid, naive, egotistical and, and that is the kicker, does not work. In fact, this short-sighted narcissistic thinking destroys communities.
basic income (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I'd be in favor of an optional basic income. The plan is this: You can register to vote or you can register for the basic income. But not both.
Re:basic income (Score:4, Insightful)
This is when Libertarianism just turns into Fascism, where certain types of Libertarians actually show themselves to be wannabe autocrats who want to create a tiered society where, presumably, they're at the top, in possession of special privileges like voting.
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot has always leaned Left.
With the exception of the front-page articles, the staff, and the readers who comment on stories, perhaps. What would that leave that would represent slashdot, I'm not sure. Maybe the server itself has a Hillary sticker on it (which was likely placed there as a joke in response to the email controversy?)
I reliably lose points for expressing rightwing opinions of any kind
For some reason you post at zero. I'm not going to dig into your comment history to figure out why, that is for you to do. If you think you have been moderated unfairly, you can always take it up with the slashdot staff and they will almost certainly correct it. The conservatives I have seen who comment at less than +1 are all in that situation for being offensive trolls, not for sharing conservative opinion.
articles such as this that espouse leftwing dogma are regularly in the news feeds here
Regularly as in once every 6-8 weeks? I don't recall a single such "leftwing dogma" article on the front page more recently than late August. By comparison, we have pro-rightwing articles at least once a week - generally much more often than that.
and the SEIU can only be charitably called a leftwing brownshirt factory.
Here's a tip for you; that kind of blatant trolling does deserve down-moderation. When you approach people that way you are showing that you don't give a shit what they have to say and that you are posting only because you feel the need to be heard.
Re:Holy flamebait batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
You lefties simply have no tolerance for people who are being oppressed by you.
That is a very strange accusation, there. How are you being "oppressed" by "lefties"? You are posting angry, fact-free, offensive rants on a conservative-dominated board and you are likely being moderated down for being a trolling flamer. If you don't want to be moderated down for being a trolling flamer, try trolling and flaming less.
The entire look-down-the-nose attitude of your post is very revealing
You seem to be trying to see things that are simply not there.
And all of that vitriol is aimed at me,
I see vitriol coming from you. I responded by showing where you were completely disconnected from reality. I'd be interested in knowing where you think I directed vitriol at you. The closest I came to vitriol in my previous reply to you was directed at your nonsensical rant about the SEIU, yet anyone who viewed both what you said and what I replied with would certainly agree the anger came from your side.
Despite the fact that I see opinions I disagree with, I don't immediately harass the posters
You are attacking me in your reply. You haven't presented anything in your comments yet that is the least bit supported by facts.
or moderate them at all.
Perhaps you are an exception but I have never before heard of someone who had sufficiently terrible karma to post at 0 and yet was granted moderator points. I have excellent karma and almost never see moderation points.
I guess it's just you approach people in a way that shows that you don't give a shit what they think
Another strange assumption there. You have quite simply shown that you have no respect whatsoever for other opinions, or any facts that counter your opinions. I would be willing to have a discussion on these matters with you but you have not shown the slightest bit of interest in such a discussion.
and you post and moderate
I post because I have something to say. I do not force anyone to read what I say, they are free to ignore it if they so choose. As I already mentioned, I almost never see moderator points here. And if you know how moderator points work here you would know that you cannot moderate in a discussion where you have posted.
because you feel the need to exercise your authority over everyone
In what way does posting exercise authority? You are free to post just as much as I am.
it's what lefties do, sadly.
Wait a minute, didn't you just say before that someone else was spewing vitriol and wanted only to harass others? Didn't you accuse someone else of not giving a shit about what others think?
Accept the fact that technology moves on. (Score:5, Insightful)
How many people farmed in 1700? When everyone stopped being farmers did the world end? No we found other stuff to do.
Did the world end when punch card operators stopped being needed?
There's more than enough to be done that requires humans.
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Not anymore:
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Ro... [amazon.com]
Re:Accept the fact that technology moves on. (Score:5, Insightful)
How many people farmed in 1700? When everyone stopped being farmers did the world end? No we found other stuff to do.
Did the world end when punch card operators stopped being needed?
There's more than enough to be done that requires humans.
The only thing we have "more than enough" of on this planet is humans to employ, which does nothing but exacerbate the issue.
Oh, and stop painting history as if things worked out "just fine" for all those who did lose their jobs to technology decades or centuries ago. People lost their ability to work. They lost their ability to feed their families or themselves. People died because of it, so enough with the ignorance already.
Also, we as a society had time to adjust to the employment disruptions of yesteryear, and at least offer the unemployed a path to education and another career. We will not be afforded that luxury when A/I is the disruption, because there won't even be a valid reason to educate humans for employment.
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Your time estimate is way off.
Compare how good AI was 20 years ago with how it is now. Have you talked to google on your phone lately?
Consider how powerful your pocket phone is as a computer and context-aware oracle now compared to 20 years ago.
Consider how good facial recognition technology, and image recognition generally, are now compared to 20 years ago.
And consider that the rate of progress in such technology is not linear. It is accelerating as advances in hardware and software, and different areas of
No we can keep working instead (Score:2)
We can keep working instead. Just pass laws that ban progress and you are done.
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Nah, that won't work.
We need to repeal the last couple centuries of progress first. Drop back to, say 1800, and we'll be fine.
Well, except for the lifespans being reduced by ~30 years, and the diseases and regular starvation.
But that's a small price to pay to keep people working, right?
Seriously, we're heading into a period that makes the transition through the Industrial Revolution look minor. And, yes, we may find that a UBI works.
Note that a UBI should replace all the myriad existing government ha
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"Just pass laws that ban progress and you are done."
Close. Pass laws that allow people to work for "free". And by "free" I mean to get your UBI check. Example, why pay the cost of an restaurant's "order taking robot" and all its upkeep' when a business can get 2 or 3 "free" workers? Maybe two levels of UBI - UBI employeed (get an extra 10% or 20% over UBI unemployed).
There's a bunch of holes in my suggestion that I can see easily -- probably a bunch I haven't considered, too. But it's at least worth b
useful graph (Score:2)
It helps to try to see both perspectives before starting
A UBI can actually foster more jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
There will be a portion of people who sit on their asses with UBI on the dole, but anyone with even a hint of drive will strike out on their own and try to hit it big with whatever business idea they've been cooking up, knowing that there's a UBI safety net under them if the business happens to fail. Entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of a capitalist country and is the only way people can avoid being turned into wageslaves, and anything that encourages entrepreneurship can help keep business competition thriving. I have complete faith that the additional economic activity from people who would go for the gold will sharply outbalance the people who end up sitting on their asses, who quite frankly wouldn't have done much other than sit at their dead end job anyway.
Or how about recruiting people that we have? (Score:3)
Instead of allowing employers to have an entitlement mentality to perfection or desperation, why not make it harder for them to not hire citizens, especially the ones looking for work? Get rid of guest workers, make offshoring a royal PITA, and penalize anyone that overlooks the long-term unemployed/discouraged.
Entrepreneurship doesn't provide a steady income or a good upward path (unless you like casino-level risk), and UBI would serve to reward laziness.
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"I'm not really sure you can legitimately classify providing the necessities of life (which is the goal of a UBI) as a "reward"."
No. The goal of UBI is to provide INCOME. That is, money.
If they wanted to provide for the necessities of life (namely education, healthcare, food and shelter) they would be proposing so.
Except they don't. Think deeply about why.
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That's all fine and good but what you are proposing will only stave off the inevitable for at most a year or two. Automation is coming, it is already here and covering more ground faster and faster. Read "Rise of the Robots" it is an enlightening read.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Ro... [amazon.com]
How would you propose penalizing anyone that overlooks the long-term unemployed/discouraged? Who would you propose get penalized? What would be the mechanism for detecting and punishing these despicable beings?
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Note that with a UBI given to citizen and permanent resident, hiring locals now cost one UBI less than hiring a foreign worker.
Personnally, I see a UBI as a great way to sponsor the arts and community service.
Clearly I am not an economist so the numbers would have to be run (maybe they have been). But I think it is interesting enough to be considered.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree the US economy depends on entrepreneurship, it's not for the reason many claim.
You don't need new ideas to create demand. Human demand is almost unlimited and there are plenty of existing products and services we want, if we had the money for it.
The reason that US depends on entrepreneurship is because anything that becomes predictable or a commodity is offshored (if not automated), and we cannot compete with 3rd-world factory workers wi
Re: A UBI can actually foster more jobs (Score:5, Informative)
It's been the largest year over year increase because the recession produced the lowest nadir in entrepreneurship since the Great Depression. We're only just now getting back to 2005 levels, and per-capita we're still not anywhere close to normal historical levels. On top of that, small business employment among these smaller firms is low because business expansion is inherently risky; many of these businesses are simply self-employed persons, which is why the employment numbers for small firms is extremely low vis a vis historical trend.
Re: thriving entrepreneurship (Score:3)
Interestingly, Probably 90% of people in the private sector work in failing businesses.
The whole economy basically turns on undue faith in failing businesses, and the credit that keeps them alive for a while.
Plan B get into a nice club fed. MAX COPAY $3! (Score:2)
Plan B get into a nice club fed. MAX COPAY $3!
Question about U.B.I. (Score:2)
Apologies if I'm badly behind the discussion on UBI, but I'm curious about one aspect of its viability.
One limiting factor in human reproduction rates is our ability to afford food, housing, and healthcare. To the extent that UBI would meet those needs, I would expect human populations to grow even further, until other limiting factors imposed an equilibrium.
At that point, prices would rise, causing an unlimited inflationary bubble with the things UBI was meant to provide for. Because no matter what money
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Re: Question about U.B.I. (Score:2)
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Re:Question about U.B.I. (Score:5, Informative)
This is demonstrably false; developed nations have much lower reproduction rates than the undeveloped nation. Once the risk of childhood mortality is eliminated, our species preferred reproductive strategy appears to be to use additional resources to improve the quality of our offspring rather than the quantity.
UBI is a one way street (Score:5, Insightful)
That is fine as a temporary measure, but run the play through for a generation and see where it leads. The first thing that happens is that you have children growing up in an environment where there is no history of earning and no expectation of it. That leads to the question: why bother with an education? Once you start questioning that and consider the costs - books, all the stuff the "other kids" have, trips, the cost of transporting your offspring to school - it all adds up. And to what end? You don't have a job, the next generation is even less likely to have one - why expend energy and time learning stuff that will be no use.
After that we're really sunk: we have a generation who might just have picked up the basics: speech, a little counting, but who needs nothing more. Even if they are only a proportion of the population they are significant: not least because they will have a vote. But not only do they have no skills, they have no ability to pass on to their kids anything of themselves.
Sure, there would be machine learning available - but why bother, if you will never need that information or any skills.
Re:UBI is a one way street (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, it could be more like Star Trek. Where we essentially have reached a post scarcity society and people work for the self-actualization aspect of a job rather than the desperate need to struggle to survive. You might then have children who are raised by parents who have devoted their lives to perfecting some art form, advanced mathematics as a hobby, cooking or woodworking for the bliss of it. Then hey-lets-go-to-Mars because we haven't been there and I would like a challenge since I am not worried about a sickness putting my family in the poor-house for the next ten generations...
Economic malthusianism (Score:3, Insightful)
People have been spouting this prophecy for more than 300 years, and its never come true. Despite incredible technological advancement, more people are employed now than in any point in history. Some people mightl lose out in the short term, but in the long term, the number of jobs only grows.
A basic income may or may not be a good idea - I know in Australia, that the cost of the bureaucracy attached to our welfare system means that replacing it with a basic income (or better, negative income tax) is actually cheaper for the state. I don't know if the same is true in the US, bu t I wouldn't be surprised if it is.
Magic 8-ball (Score:2)
Companies will bitch and whine and complain about leaving the country, doom and gloom (even though 99% wouldn't/won't). Politicians will bark like dogs about how jobs will suffer (even though your job is already on the chopping block by doing nothing). Bill will die on the vine, because Joe Sixpack and Jane RocketScience don't care about the problem beyond their own self-interests (like we have since ever). Don't even get me started about the 'baby-factory cheats robbing us hard working citizens dry' ads wh
Cut full time down to 30-32 hours to start! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cut full time down to 30-32 hours to start! and then start to work on fixing the lack of salary OT or having some kind of limits.
After some time make full time 20 hours a week.
Re:Cut full time down to 30-32 hours to start! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a fantastic idea as well. It might be a way to start heading toward UBI. Maybe we'll never get there but it is a good start. How about German/EU length vacations rather than the paltry two weeks we currently get?
Re:Cut full time down to 30-32 hours to start! (Score:5, Interesting)
Extend overtime rules to exempt employees. That'll fix things in a damn hurry.
Should've been done a long time ago, really. I can't speak for other careers, but many IT folk, like the poster above you, work more than 40 hours a week. They're on call 24x7, they work long hours, etc.; there are many places where this is required. Translation: IT workers are being exploited. That they agreed to it does not make it right or ethical -- and those extra hours are hours that some other unemployed individual could be working, thus creating more jobs (that in reality should already exist, but companies don't really care all that much about their slave^Wcheap labor).
Glad I found a sane place to work that doesn't screw its employees.
Not sure why you posted anonymously though. Nothing illegal about what you said, and probably exactly what everyone would do bar alterations to exempt status.
Shorter hours (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to plan for a future where people work a lot less hours. Either 4 days a week, or the standard 5 days but with three month vacations. We already have examples of how this can work. There are plenty of YouTube channels of people who work for a while and then travel for a while e.g. Sailing La Vagabonde, Kombi Life, SV Delos (or at least they did before they became YouTube celebrities).
For people in NorthAmerica both of these options will sound shocking and impossible to implement in practice, even though Europe is not far from already having those in place***
*** This is not unlike universal healthcare, which works quite well in every developed country in the world, yet it is assumed to be utopic (or straight out communist) in the USA.
Andy Stem (Score:3)
Andy Stem should be unemployed and starving with that stupid pronouncement. Like all of us are starving since computer automation has done away with our office jobs....HA!
Just wait till we put everything on the net with the little rice-grain sized chips that are coming out, IT infrastructure will have to grow by a factor of 100.
Steve Jobs (Score:2)
Reading the titel: I know he mattered alot but Steve Jobs have been dead for half a decade by now and while it is clearly a huge lose of creativity (rounded conners and all) I do not think we need to transit to UCI over it.
Sounds suspiciously like Socialism to me . . . (Score:3)
Asking the wrong question here. (Score:5, Insightful)
"What's your thoughts on this? Do you think in the next two-three decades to come we will have significantly fewer jobs than we do now?"
I think we're asking the wrong question here, since the presented question (and answer) is rather obvious.
It's also rather obvious who will be paying for everyone else when it is only those who "own" who are employed.
Given that fact, the far more relevant question is quite simple; Recognizing history, what the hell makes governments think they will actually collect on the taxes they expect to get from the uber-rich in order to pay for UBI when they can't even properly collect taxes from the financially elite today?
Yeah, you're right. There is a huge distribution problem, and it starts with correcting the tax burden distribution.
This time is different (Score:3)
I suppose it's impossible to stop people from feeling that this time is different, but it's never different. According to Wikipedia:
In 1870, almost 50 percent of the US population was employed in agriculture.[16] As of 2008, less than 2 percent of the population is directly employed in agriculture.
The unemployment rate has shrugged off that "job disappearance", somehow. Now other swathes of jobs will also disappear, and people will find other things to do. There is nothing different about this new "technical revolution".
Technology and UBI (Score:2)
Over the course of human history, technology has made many jobs obsolete. But other jobs come available. We aren't facing a future of no jobs for people this time, either. What the latest technological advances have done, however, is make it financially viable to have goods and services performed by anyone anywhere in the world. What this means is that the western lifestyle is generally unsustainable. Global trade and manufacturing tends to raise the overall lifestyle of the country importing jobs (Chi
Jobs but not positions (Score:3)
There'll be plenty of jobs. What there won't be will be employee positions. Companies will increasingly replace employees with robotics and software. Work will shift to self-employment. A contract software engineer will contract with an accountant to handle accounting, with an advertising firm to handle ad placement, with their hosting services to handle routine administration of their servers and so on. An author would contract with someone to screen calls and mail and act as a secretary/receptionist, with someone else to proofread and edit their manuscripts and so on, and would publish directly through distribution channels like Amazon's Kindle Store. A seamstress would contract for advertising services and for janitorial services for the store. Lots of work, but no employees.
My argument in favor of basic income is that starting all of that requires a certain stability. You can't start a contract software consulting business, or start writing full-time, or start a dressmaking store, if you're scrambling to keep food on the table and a roof over your family's head. You can't get a full-time job to cover the bills because those full-time jobs won't exist. So what's the alternative to a basic income if you want people to work? If it's not there they won't be able to afford to spare the concentrated effort needed to get a successful business off the ground, it'll all be sucked up by the scramble to get enough cash this week to buy groceries. If they put in the effort, their family'll be out on the streets and starving in the time it takes for the effort to start producing results.
UBI? Often discussed but premature, IMO ..... (Score:3, Interesting)
As a libertarian, many people expect I'm going to be completely against the concept of a UBI. However, that's not really the case. What I *am* against is the premature pushing of it on people in still-functional Capitalist society, which amounts to an appeal to convert to Socialism.
The UBI makes complete sense as a way to handle the economy in a POST Capitalist world, which we're nowhere near ready to transition to. (Just because you have some fear-mongering about specific industries like trucking going away doesn't mean "all the jobs are gone".)
From what I've observed on the hiring end of the equation? There are actually a lot of decent-paying, respectable jobs out there that go unfilled for months because the quality of the applicants is pretty terrible. My wife recently helped interview over a dozen people for a computer support job at a local college, and she showed me the "best of the bunch" of 40 or 50 resumes they received. We were laughing at how bad several were, including misspellings and people who had NO clue how to sell themselves as having any useful skills.
When they finally did interview 4 or 5 people? One of them showed up an hour late. They agreed to reschedule him and give him another chance, only because he had an excuse about a traffic accident on the highway keeping him from making it on time. When he was due to come back, he waited until 10 minutes before the scheduled time to tell them he wasn't interested any longer. Another candidate was a woman who actually sounded like she had good credentials on paper and they were excited to possibly offer her a position, but she was so "ho hum" about the whole interview, they decided to move on. She not only made no effort to dress nicely for it, but when asked questions about what she did in her previous jobs, etc. -- she just gave really brief answers, acted like she was bored, and didn't do a thing to impress anyone.
I see evidence of a similar mindset in other areas too, including this uproar over a $15 minimum wage.... In reality? You should really be able to eliminate the "minimum wage" completely and it would make no real difference. Why? Because first of all, there's no one number anybody can quote you that *really* makes sense as THE proper starting wage to pay people that's "fair" instead of "unfair". Depending on where you live in the country, the cost of living is radically different, for starters. A very small percentage of people in America actually work for the mandated minimum wage, and when they do? A big percentage of THOSE are people who earn tips - meaning it's almost not even fair to count them in those totals to begin with. What you wind up left with are a lot of people who don't really need a "living wage" in the first place. (For example, many of the mentally or physically handicapped people are already receiving SSI benefits, and can't earn much of their own income or they lose those. Yet they want to feel like productive members of society and get out of the house. So they'll accept very low paying jobs, doing such things as putting advertisements in envelopes. They don't really WANT a higher wage because it'd put them in a much worse situation overall than what they get without it.) But people keep pushing for this with the mindset that by boosting the minimum by another $X per hour, that translates to "across the board" increases of about the same amount. And that, in turn, means they can do some minimally skilled job of limited real value to an employer but receive the type of pay you should really only get for doing something much more valuable to society. I don't believe that really works except in the short-term, before the overall economy has time to adapt to the changes (inflation).
At what cost? (Score:5, Informative)
The Adult Population of the USA [wolframalpha.com] is something like 194.5 Million people.
Let's say that you can get by on $25,000 per year, tax free.
Providing UBI for this many people will cost the economy 4.8 Trillion Dollars. Where is this going to come from?
OK, let's scale this back a bit. We will give every adult in the USA $200 per week - $10,400 per year. We're still talking about $2.02 Trillion - this is 11% of the entire GDP of the USA.
To put this in perspective, the USA spends $810 Billion on public education per year, $1.3 Trillion on pensions and almost $600 Billion on defence.
Re: Niggers ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't give poor people enough to satisfy them, they will come to your house and take your stuff.
UBI is to prevent a revolution, nothing more.
Alternative (Score:5, Insightful)
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We're still a long way from free production and losing all jobs. Most of the stagnation of wages has just been from moving most of the jobs to exploited labor countries like China. As the poor countries get better off and their wages get competitive, like has happened in South Korea and Taiwan, manufacturing will become healthier again in the US.
But more importantly, there is no excuse for a basic income until after the singluarity, and then it won't matter. Until then just have the government create jobs
Re: (Score:3)
Two words: Value Pricing. Things aren't priced based on what they cost to produce, but based on what people will pay. The absolute minimum price will be the total marginal cost of production, but in practice, a business will simply shut down if it can't get more than that. You don't really think it costs more than $1.00 to run 16 oz of water through a filter and put it in a $0.02 plastic bottle, do you?
One word: competition (Score:4, Insightful)
One word: competition. Only if they have a legal monopoly (e.g. patent) can someone charge what the market will bear. Once that expires, the market will be open and competitors will appear based on how excessive the first company's mark-up is. Once the mark-up drops to a reasonable profit level, no new competitors will come in. Then you have stable pricing. Like in laptops and desktops today, for example.
As to your beverage example, I'm pretty sure soda companies advertise. Yet a recent article said that 70% of marketing costs are spent to ensure shelf space. So there are plenty of other costs besides the bottle, flavors, sugar and things like RO filtering etc.
Re:One word: competition (Score:4)
There's one word for why competition is not keeping prices low in the US: collusion. It was a practice that the US government used to clamp down heavily but, enforcement has waned significantly since the Reagan era (both Democratic and Republican presidents have been responsible). For example, there is no way that a wireless carrier can change all their plans and prices and a competitor change to matching ones within 24 hours without collusion between the two as the billing systems take a few weeks to a few months to prep plus marketing materials needs to be submitted to advertisers days or weeks in advance. So, it is impossible for both to change within 24 hours of each other unless they agreed upon the changes in advance. If it were a case of spying on their competitors then they would come out with one that is better, or at least appears better, than their competitor instead of the same.
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Bad statistic, no attribution. Argument by assertion is invalid (so I assert).
Re: Alternative (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, the top 10% by income pays half the taxes, not the top 1% or the top 0.1%. Warren Buffet is a good example, his income is billions and according to the tax statement he just released he got his adjusted gross income down to about $11 million on which he only paid $1.5m in taxes. The doctors actually contributing to society working in even one small hospital pay more tax than that guy. Remove the top 0.1% from the equation and you likely won't see a big drop in the portion of taxes paid by the top 10% but take away their wealth and you'll see a massive drop in the portion of the nations wealth held by the top 10%.
Re:Alternative (Score:4, Insightful)
With deflationary money, the money itself increases in value as the economy grows this means you need to use smaller and smaller units to enable trade and the pressure to spend equates to need/greed either you need things bad enough you have to spend or you are greedy to reap profits at higher than the rate of deflation. With inflationary money (like ours), the pressure comes from injecting new money into the system, devaluing all existing currency which means you constantly have to get more in order to break even. That new money has to come from somewhere, currently we give it all to the wealthiest people who need it the least, I'm proposing we first use that money for the UBI and then let the banks have what is left the old fashioned with a fed determined higher interest rate.
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You clearly don't understand the basic premise: With increasingly capable automation, there is the potential for unlimited production capacity, totally unconstrained by labor availability (and no, there is no real raw materials constraint).
At that time, one's personal productivity becomes unrelated to one's economic well being. So we will then have a choice between a production controlling class ( the 0.01%) having everything, with no-one with the means to constitute a market, or we can find a way to pro
Re: Niggers ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Niggers ... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are sitting comfortably on your high (but rapidly disappearing under you) horse decreeing that no one but those able to find the very few jobs left will be able to eat and live. How will you feel when your job is automated out? No, seriously, it can and will happen no matter how skilled you think you are. Your friends, your family, your neighbors, all their jobs automated out. Will you still be have such a cold-hearted view when everyone that you care about that is around you is in dire straits? When the job-less crisis is a world-wide phenomenon?
What will you contribute when everything you could possibly produce can be produced better, faster, cheaper, with more creativity and flair by a machine? See: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Ro... [amazon.com]
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Everyone says that, until it's they who can't get hired
Re:Niggers ... (Score:4, Insightful)
So how about the people who happen to own the machines? Do they have to contribute
"Happen to own", yep. Contributed nothing to get them, nope, you did not build that. Just happened to own. Woke up one day and the machine fairy had left them a factory under their pillow. Just happened one day.
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Yes, because they happened to be born to rich parents. They probably got a small loan of a million dollars.
But that was yesterday. What are they doing today? You and cayenne8 seem to expect everyone else to do something today.
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The question at hand is "is it OK for people to receive value without doing anything". You and cayenne8 seem to be saying "only if they're fabulously wealthy". rather than the more consistant "No, put the rich parasites to work too" or "Yes, that's fine".
As for the rest, yes small scale automation is a good thing. So is large scale automation. The automation isn't the problem, it is a failure to adjust our social and economic policies to the new reality that is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Re: (Score:2)
No society can work without a Plebe class. The problem is equating income with worth. There are lots of really rich people who are nearly worthless as human beings. There are a lot of really poor people who are very much human. Equating wealth with desirability is the problem because all other traits we SHOULD be desiring go by the way side: honesty, honor, hardworking, gallant.
As for the Plebe class, someone has to jobs nobody really wants to do. And while these are not a desirable job, they are jobs someo
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Re:I don't think UBI would work out because... (Score:4, Insightful)
Progressive Redistribution models fail because eventually you run out of other people's money. There is no incentive to contribute to people who are otherwise able, but are unwilling to work. Our current formula is that about 1/3 of the American workforce is out of the labor market, any much more and it becomes even less sustainable than it is now. And for all Obama and the budget measures of the Republicans, our debt has more than doubled in the last eight years, with stagflation we haven't seen since Carter. Jobs growth is gone, economy is anemic, more and more people are simply giving up.
Meanwhile the Democrats answer is to "Tax you" more. (See Hillary's proposals) and increase government spending (see Hillary's proposals for job growth). Taxes, all of them, are regressive. The rich can avoid them (See Trump), and the poor don't pay them, the middle class always gets stuck with them.
The ONLY real answer is to get government out of picking winners and losers in the economy.
AND before you start, no, grandma wont starve, and no we don't need to be like Somalia. We have enough Fear Mongering going on with Trump and Clinton.
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