When talking to people who dislike UBI about UBI, they'll often say both that 'people need a purpose in life' and that 'nobody will work if they get free money'.
Those seem incompatible to me.
(UBI means Universal Basic Income, giving everyone a basic income, for free)
In trials, it has consistently boosted productivity. More people need it in order to be productive than the amount that choose to be less productive once they won't die from not being productive.
Also in trials, it has not costed more than current social programs in those areas. Clearing redundancies and red tape accounted for enough cost cuts to make UBI overall cost a similar amount or less than what all the various programs with all their various overhead costed all added together.
Exactly, this whole discussion should not be about what people feel about it.
Trials have shown it works beneficially. Quite so. Nevermind the standard of living increase and getting people off the streets, those aren't even included in that, it's just about productivity that is boosted.
So yeah, whenever someone says they feel it'd be negative, we tried it already, facts disagree with your feelings.
Now we only have to elect decision makers that make policy on facts and not feelings.
And like that, you've dashed my dreams if a brighter future...
If I could afford to only work 4 days a week, those 4 days would most likely be a lot more productive as I would have time to get treatment for my chronic illnesses.
I have been told by HR last year to use my surplus vacation days somewhere. I used them on every Monday for half a year. I got not only more productive, but also less stressed. It works.
Yeah as an industrial/human factors engineer it’s our profession’s dirty little secret. It doesn’t apply to every job, but improvement to work quality does. Reducing shift length also does. Hours 7-8 are rarely very productive for thinky workers.
Unfortunately nobody has managed to successfully explain the concept of mathematics or empirical evidence to businesspeople. Sometimes I wonder if they have thoughts beyond gut instinct.
Oh they do understand mathematics alright. As long as it's adding numbers to their net worth
I can manage financially with 2 days of work a week, and I'm now at a point where I would not want to scale back because my work would become of lower quality. Every Monday would be like coming back from a vacation, and I think I'd lose touch and feel with the job.
Those 5 days weekend sure give me time for personally enriching hobbies!
Society couldn't function if most people worked like you. I'm happy for you and it's the exact place I want to be but I think its only possible in our current framework.
With increasing automation, it could totally work soon
Also, a fair bit of work is work for the sake of work. It doesn’t enrich society, just the capitalism machine. So if UBI were enacted on a large scale, there is plenty of unnecessary work that can go by the wayside.
Who determines its unnecessary? The market? Government groups?
We're still a far way away from the level of automation necessary to make working only 2 days a week feasible imo
It actually could. Imagine if salary had increased in accordance to the productivity boosts that automation has brought. Then you could have 3 people, working 2 days a week, sharing a job and being able to live from it. After all, it used to take more than 3 people to do the work a single person does nowadays.
Why would a business pay for these things that make their workers more efficient and then relinquish all of the profit that came from making things more efficient?
There’s a difference between “society couldn’t function” and “companies are too greedy”. One of them is wrong and the other needs to change.
source?
I thought instances where UBI has been tried, it's failed - is that not the case?
It has been massively successful in a bunch of locations. Where are you seeing reports that it failed?
Maybe it was related to pandemic stuff: https://www.kqed.org/news/11946467/study-shows-limits-of-stocktons-guaranteed-income-program-during-pandemic
It's been awhile since I've looked into specifically anything UBI related so I could be misrembering.
Being less pronounced is not the same thing as failing and the whole article supported the program being effective. Looks like maybe you misremembered this article?
"One glaring problem with allowing this program to exist for any extended period of time is that, unless it is privately funded, it would be too expensive to maintain and would require substantial tax increases across the board.
The group’s page even admits that, saying, “there’s a number of ways to pay for guaranteed income, from a sovereign wealth fund in which citizens benefit from shard national resources like the Alaska Permanent Fund, to bringing tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to their 20th century historical averages.”
I think it part of it may have been related to how high taxes might have to be made and it would be damn near impossible to pass those level of taxes. It couldn't be done souly city by city I don't think otherwise wealthy would flee the city to avoid the taxes levied - at least that woulf be a concern of mine.
What does that blatantly misleading quote come from?
Whats misleading about it?
It starts with the assumption that raising taxes is unreasonable.
Bringing taxes up to their 20th century averages is completely reasonable, as they were highest during the time period where actual business growth was the highest.
Do you think the majority of US citizens want higher taxes? There's alot of de-programming that has to be done. Democrats, who are generally better than Republicans when it comes to this stuff (due to the low bar they've erected) aren't necessarily full on board with tax increases.
Taxed at a flat percentage of income or progressively without caps, 75% of people UBI will be a net increase in income over what their taxes would increase. It should be an easy sell unless there is a lot of misinformation or demonizing of low income people.
Of course people also don't understand how single payer would save most people thousands per year by cutting out all the for profit companies, since misinformation is such a problem.
Okay so, there are a bunch of different agencies in charge of different types of social services. If you have UBI, those are no longer required. The money is coming from those programs. You spend LESS because you don’t have a giant work force on the back end of all those services/agencies anymore.
Eg. current: 20 departments, 100 people working at each. Gives out 1 million dollars a year in social services.
UBI: 1 department. Far less than the total of above working for it. Gives out 1 million dollars a year in social services.
See? The numbers are fluff just for the sake of the example.
No. It’s overwhelmingly a positive outcome.
The funniest thing is it's the same basic argument as free market Vs planned economy. The individual knows better what they need right now. Why this doesn't appeal more to the right than it does says a lot about a good chunk of right wing politics.
The current system is akin to a planned economy. You are told what you can spend the money on, and what you can't. UBI lets the end recipient decide where it's most useful. E.g. for one person, a car is a worthless expense, while better food makes a big difference. For another, they are ok living on cheaper food for a while, but a replacement car would let them bootstrap themselves upwards, economically.
Trials where?
Studies in motivational theory have been around for years which generally agree that at a very basic level people need security first, not necessarily to motivate but to be in a position to be motivated. Repeatedly pay has been proven to be a poor motivator over time. By removing the basic insecurity that people face, you give them a chance to focus on actual motivating factors like job satisfaction, self-worth and realisation.
I am on parental leave right now and doing chores around the house never have been more fun and fulfilling.
I don't have to think about work, we have enough money to not worry about being short at the end of the parental leave. I can concentrate on what is important right now (my family) and not worry about the rest.
If you don't have to worry about basic things of life, you will find a fullfilling purpose. But the system as set up right now is a scam and people are increasingly squeezed for basic necessities, so they can't afford to have a purpose.
Congrats on your kid and I wholeheartedly agree.
Absolutely. Security is the enemy of fear and capitalism. Fear as Frank Herbert put it, is the mind killer. If we have security, all of a sudden the horrendous business practices capitalism has been built on and motivated by. Sort of fall apart. Go to work in a soul crushing job, with a toxic environment, for too little pay? Why, when you could stay home and start your own business, maybe even become a better competitor. Or just wait for something better to come along.
Fear is the tool of the powerful. Whether it's fear of some group they tell you to fear. Or fearing them directly. Without fear, many of the crises we seem to constantly be juggling. Would find themselves solved. Humanity has the ability to feed and house everyone. Right now. The reason we don't is that the wealthy and powerful would lose wealth and power. And we can't have that.
If security is the enemy of capitalism, how do you explain people who have their needs met, who still strive under capitalism?
People who have their needs met would strive regardless of capitalism. You need to show that they strive because of capitalism. The problem is, capitalism doesn't meet the needs of a large amount of people. No matter how hard they strive. Nor should it be necessary for them to. Worse capitalism short changes them. And is very inefficient.
I want UBI so all the lazy motherfuckers who don't want to work get out of the fucking way. Sit at home in front of your TVs cramming doritos down your gullet all day for all I care, just as long as you aren't half passing whatever job you're doing and creating problems for me.
That is a very unique take And a very very good argument to people against it
Yes, except that costs will also go up for services because there will be fewer workers. I'm in favor of UBI but it will definitely increase costs, especially for wealthy people who rely on relatively cheap help.
Most wealthy people don't even manage their own households. They hire people to drive their cars, cook their food, and take care of their children. They pay other people to build or renovate their houses and even manage the building and renovating.
People won't want to work for low amounts of money. It will literally be too expensive to be wealthy. The few people who do want to work in service positions are going to ask Jeff Bezos for a million dollars a year.
Ohhhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooooo
Do a quick calculation of what you can afford to buy with a billion dollars. Actually, I'll do it for you. At, just 6% per year, a billion dollars generates 60 million dollars each year. The numbers are absolutely staggering. Virtually nothing is too expensive for the wealthy. Which is why billionaires generously volunteer to pay more in taxes and provide excellent benefits to those who work so hard for them. /s.
I pay people to build and renovate my house what's your point?
Rich people have more than enough money to be able to afford to pay their staff a bit more money if they don't have enough money to pay their stuff a bit more money then they are in fact not rich.
Also who cares anyway?
What?
The sad thing about UBI in places like the US is they further systematic change needs to happen prior to UBI being implemented.
If you have UBI added on to our current capitalist hellscape (since UBI rates will be publicly known) landlords and corporations will just hike prices to make life cost just as much as UBI—therefore forcing people to work for any scrap above that. So essentially UBI will be fed back into corporations/the elite, who will also continue to make profit on the labor the lower class does to afford anything above basic necessities.
If someone can afford basic necessities, they aren't going to choose to work three jobs at minimum wage where they are treated badly, forcing an improvement in pay/conditions to find any workers. As for setting prices arbitrarily, that isn't actually possible except where a monopoly is held, the idea that supply and demand influences price is not a myth. Having money and the choice of how to spend it does actually give you additional agency and leverage, and UBI would serve as a form of redistribution if it is funded by taxes of some kind.
Except that landlords are coming together to set prices so that they can all set them high. I don't remember what the group is called, but someone was discussing it a while back. Doesn't have to be a monopoly if they're conspiring, which is what is happening with so many consumer goods and services.
Cartel is the word you are probably looking for. Cartels are when an association of different suppliers collude to restrict competition and keep prices high.
it's only really a cartel if they get together and make these plans, in reality none of these landlords are stupid, they will just adjust their demands to the upper region of what people feel acceptable, this slowly moves the "acceptability window" up, all without anyone needing to conspire with anyone else
Right, so this is market pricing at work. In order to fix this problem, we need to relax the suppression of new construction.
Even if we don’t, however, if rents increase it will increase construction of new housing.
I've seen that stuff but it's too much to assume that this kind of coordination is the controlling factor in housing prices, or most other prices. You do need a monopoly because there's too much incentive for defecting from the conspiracy if the fixed price is too far away from what the market price would be. I think housing is expensive mainly because of supply being suppressed and wealth inequality, and UBI would begin to address the latter.
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/thanks-to-big-data-landlords-know-how-to-squeeze-the-most-out-of-renters-eb7e5f02
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/yardis-rent-setting-software-illegally-drove-rent-prices-up-for-millions-of-renters-lawsuit/
Like I mentioned in another comment, I can see how this kind of thing could make some difference in pricing by avoiding giving renters deals that wouldn't have actually been necessary to secure a lease. That's very far from being evidence that supply and demand doesn't even apply and the market price is dictated by fiat, which is an absurd conspiracy theory that doesn't follow at all from any of the articles being linked.
I've got one for you chicken:
https://www.reed.senate.gov/news/releases/reed-industrial-egg-producers-price-hikes-are-suspiciously-high-and-federal-government-should-help-rein-in-unfair-market-practices
Yeah there are like a handful of companies that control egg distribution. That’s the kind of scenario where a price fixing cartel can work.
How do you explain cereal being $8 a box, when it was $5 pre-COVID or the million other products that now cost more? There are recordings of board meetings that were leaked of board members admitting that they inflated prices or unnecessarily kept prices inflated because they knew people would pay it.
Why could that not have an explanation that is primarily about economic forces? They printed a ton of money around when Covid happened, and the distribution of wealth shifted significantly. I can buy that businesses could be eking out a little more efficiency by coordinating, but not that we are in a secret command economy and economics is basically all fake.
the "printing of money" has fuck all to do with inflation, and mainly comes from pop-economics that is stuck somewhere around mercantilism.
Corporation simply realized that they are playing the prisoner's dilemma with prices, and are now going for the "optimal solution"
How do you figure you can increase the number of dollars in circulation, while shrinking the economy, and not have each dollar be worth less wealth as a result?
because the value of money isn't tied to the amount in existence, never has, even the rare metal backed gang is just extrapolating the value axiom by one
Two things:
We shut down the economy, and supply got disrupted because the economy isn’t a thing you can just turn off for a period of time and have it come back on again
We shut down the economy in non-equal fashion leading to some stores being forced to close while others were allowed to remain open. This led to reduced competition among those supplying the cereal. Competition works to reduce prices, and we killed the competition. The covid lockdowns were a government-enforced consolidation of the market. There are fewer players, each of which owns a larger share now.
This is a conspiracy theory, theorizing a conspiracy of enormous proportions. If there is price fixing going on, it is in any given player’s best interest to break rank and offer lower prices.
Not so simple honestly it would also be funded by a reduction in bureaucracy, and spending on poverty alleviation. I'm in NY there are 50 something counties here each with their own DSS office. Think of the reductions in demand for some of these dumb programs that essentially kick the worker while their down.
You can set the prices if they are well known at a federal level—look at the number of disparate vendors who charged exactly the price of a stimulus check for goods when they were being given in 2020.
What goods were those? I am guessing the market price of those goods was already relatively close to that number. You can see a pattern like that sometimes with stock or crypto prices; when it passes across a nice round number, or a number with some significance like the price of another related stock, the price may seem to exist in relation to that number, sticking to or avoiding it. But crucially this is only as long as it is in the vicinity; there are other factors that have more influence over price and after the blip around the round number, the line moves on.
The core mistake here I think is not recognizing that wealth is a form of power. Controlling a greater share of society's wealth means more control in general, which is why companies are trying to do that to begin with. Redistributing wealth is anything but an empty gesture.
Mostly tech items like TV’s, but I saw it with some furniture, too.
I just worry that UBI won’t do enough to redistribute wealth without concomitant systematic change. I honestly think those in economic power probably need a good degree of is stripped away for society to really move on and heal from rampant, unchecked capitalism.
And when landlords hike the rents, what do you think will happen to the rate of new housing construction?
Construction is already too expensive
Okay. So you're onto something with there being money involved in the decision. Right.
And so when owning a building becomes more profitable, what happens to construction? Construction that is already too expensive.
Expensive is costs too much money ... right? Anyone? High construction cost, then there's an increasing in the net present value of an apartment building ...
Anybody see where I'm going with this? Yes, you in the back there
Landlord just pockets the money obviously
Right. Yes. That’s a good answer because when you pay rent the landlord does indeed get the money.
I was asking more about what happens to building construction. Anyone?
Nothing happens. There are loads of zoning laws that make it effectively impossible to build in most areas these days anyway
Yeah so I guess if you introduce UBI to a complete lack of free market, to a place where new construction is illegal, then it won’t help. Unless there are vacant homes around, in which case there are still some market forces at work and it will help.
LOL
UBI on it's own is not a problem for me. Where I take issue is when politicians say "we'll give you cash instead of these social safety net programs". I think you have to have a mix of UBI and social safety net programs. It's all about raising the floor of the lowest living conditions we'll allow and right now, in America at least, we have too many rich people and too many poor people. A UBI of $1000/month doesn't help a person stuck in an ICU for months at a time and will just discharge to a SNF/LTAC facility.
UBI would not replace the need for universal healthcare.
Andrew Yang famously ran on a UBI platform, his plan was very clear on that issue, but he was very vague on his healthcare plan https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/medicare-for-all/
I'm still not sure if he was actually in favor or just pandering, but at least he put it on the stage.
Yeah. I supported Yang to help popularize the idea but he’s just a wolf in sheep’s skin trying to get rich.
How so? I canvased for Yang in 2019, but after he dropped, I kinda just stopped thinking about him. I know he started the Forward Party, and he’s had some bad takes on homelessness, but how is he a wolf in sheep’s clothing? He apparently has a net worth of at least a couple million living in New York, but he’s in his 40’s, so that‘s not really that far off from normal businessmen.
I knew Yang was a fraud from the start. It was his “you have a freedom to choose between UBI and safety social nets” that made it clear to me. Took a long fucking time for other left leaning folks to catch on. He was getting way too much attention. That’s actually why I liked Michael Brooks so much. He was one of the few at the time that saw through it
You don't get two basic incomes.
Cool, not sure what your point is but I don't think I care
Exactly, and that's why you're wrong about it.
Social safety net programs are fine but unless they're universal they'll inevitably create benefit cliffs which punish people for making more money. They also cost money to administer. UBI is super cheap and easy to administer: if you're a citizen you get a check or deposit every month. Simple. You could probably manage the entire operation with less than 1000 people.
The perverse incentive structure of non-universal aid is one of the most fucked up things our society does.
It's basically the Social Security plus Medicare combo like seniors in America get. It's not great or perfect but even if that's all you live on you can get by ok. The USA could just lower the ages. I know lowering the Medicare age comes and goes in the conversation about healthcare reform
All you people thinking prices will just go up have already been poisoned by billionaire propaganda.
It's not
Nobby Nomoney £0 > £10k a year
Sammy Scrapesby £20k > £30k a year
Maddie Medianearner £38k > £48k a year
Billy Billionaire £1m > £1.01m a year
The median earners will have tax adjusted so they earn about the same. The lower earners will get more. The high earners will get less. You'll have pretty much the same amount of money sloshing around the system, it'll just be in the hands of the people who need it.
Nobby Nomoney £0 > £10k a year
Sammy Scrapesby £20k > £27k a year
Maddie Medianearner £38k > £38k a year
Billy Billionaire £1m > £700k a year
Guess which of those doesn't want this to happen.
Those billionaires aren't paying rent. Rent increases are what most people are worried about with UBI. If the lower earners suddenly have more money that the landlords know about, they are definitely going to hike up rent until we are back to square 1. Those billionaires will just claw that money back. UBI doesn't make sense until we have more regulations in place for price control.
It seems like a reasonable expectation, but do you have any studies or other evidence that it happens? The studies I've seen generally say things like "Evidence has not appeared for commonly hypothesized potential adverse social and economic consequences of UBI."
Even if that did happen, why not tax the additional billionaire income and create subsidized or public housing?
Just because the first step isn't perfect doesn't mean status quo is better than progress.
I agree with universal basic income and also believe it will cause issues. The only way it works is if regulations are put in place to avoid making it useless. The rich can spend large amounts to find loopholes so basically the government will have to provide a bunch of guidelines and when the government steps in people get mad. Even if the pool of money is the same, the pool of money in each market may not be. Stocks and Yachts (extreme example) may go down and investment in rent or cheap food would go up, therefore demand and therefore prices. An alternative would be to make UBI use a separate commodity but it wouldn't really fix the problem as it would likely mean that the commodity could only be spent in select stores and there not provide the freedom it should.
Unfortunately, its a matter of needing real investigation into the market as there's a chance it could drastically backfire.
Exactly, it's an economic stimulus package aimed directly at the people who are currently being forced to work for as little money as possible. The people with the money do not want the boot taken off the neck of the poor.
It would be more cost-effective to give homeless people home and treatment than to allow them to be on the streets. So why don't we? Because homeless people exist as a reminder to everyone else that there is a huge penalty for failing to continue working.
I've always wanted UBI to be a thing but after a discussion with my brother I'm second guessing it. His argument is that corporations will just increase their prices and not much would change.
He suggested that instead, we use the money that we would use for UBI to guarantee that EVERYONE'S basic needs are met. Housing, food, healthcare, etc..
I know it's easier said than done but I'm just worried that billionaires will fuck up UBI like they fuck up everything else.
He's assuming infinite elasticity, which isn't how prices work in real life.
The typical version of this argument is that the people who are being taxed in the first place are the ones increasing rents. In which case taxes can then be increased until the desired equilibrium is achieved.
That's not to say we couldn't also provide a basic safety net like he describes. But that raises the question of why UBI should stop there. If our economy can generate a surplus, then why shouldn't all humans sharing their slice of the Earth get it?
CaUsE cOmMuNiSm
Man, I wish Henry George could've convinced Karl Marx of that.
That is the entire purpose of UBI. Literally.
No he's altering who has the cash.
In his discussion he means:
if the customer is given free cash, corporations might jack up prices to get some of it.
if the customer has free healthcare, the corporation doesn't see any "free cash" they can get some of. Of course they're aware the customer should be spending less on necessities like healthcare, but they aren't necessarily bringing home more than they were last month, they're just retaining more.
Yup that’s a common critique of UBI. Landlords will jack up rent and end up hovering a huge amount of the benefits. Your landlord knows you’re all of a sudden making $12k more per year? Welcome to your new $10k rent hike.
For UBI to function we need basic price controls or necessities provided for before it makes any sense to introduce.
We need public housing in the US to be a normal thing that normal people live in, instead of something that's only built in dangerous crime ridden areas nobody wants to live
Public housing shouldn't be any more of a dirty word than public education.
If I'm earning $12,000 more a year I could just buy a house. The reason that house ownership is low is because people can't afford it, but house prices aren't affected by the whims of landlords, they're affected by availability. They can't really be artificially modified.
really, so now down payments don't exist? Also housing prices are not affected by availability as much as you might think. source
I smell a liberal lol
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As one implementation of that, a UBI can simplify the complexities of the existing safety net systems and smooth the welfare cliff.
I no longer need to pay for low income housing (I can just get some money and rent something), I'm no longer restricted by what an EBT card can buy (I just get money), I don't need to qualify for XYZ niche benefit (I just get some money), etc. And that money could more easily be adjusted/reduced as my income grows which smooths the welfare cliff.
It also frees up a ton of money that was previously used to manage the existing complex systems and allows more efficient spending.
It's important to note that UBI isn't supposed to be a form of welfare. The idea is it's a basic citizen right. It's not means tested in any way so you should get it regardless of your income otherwise you're disincentivised to increase your income (which is a problem a lot of benefits currently have), if I go to work for 8 hours a day and then come home and have the exact same or less money than I would have had on benefits then what's the point? The government, mostly the conservative types, would like to classify that as lazy scrounging but it's just economic savvy.
If I get UBI whatever then any extra money I earn is for luxuries, I can then spend that money and contribute to the economy rather than holding on to it in case the boiler decides to blow up all the car breaks down or something which is what most people are currently doing.
Everyone benefits when everyone benefits.
I completely agree and (hopefully) understand that. I only mention it as welfare because I believe that's harder to argue against and at least gets us most of the way there.
As for working 8 hours and still making the same as you would on benefits, I see this issue today constantly in the current (US) system. Especially around people with disabilities who would otherwise be able to work.
UBI is the ideal, but replacing the complex welfare system with something cash based (similar to UBI, or exactly as UBI for certain demographics) would be a great first step.
Corps would just find a way to be the ones to supplies those basic needs. They would still inflate prices and deliver substandard results.
Capitalism is the problem
That's UBS, Universal Basic Services, one possible alternative to UBI, but more likely, we'll end up with a bit of both, I think.
That'd be nice
Prices are not set by how much money you are capable of spending, it's set by supply and demand. The only time that's not true is when a company is a monopoly and the good is something you can't do without. Of course, a huge part of the problem is that we have way too many monopolies so yes, some companies will be able to raise their prices without pressure from competition, but you'd still be better off since not all companies are monopolies.
The demand will rise though. Suddenly all everyone will have some extra income every month. The price of most modern consumer products is based on what the market will bare not what it costs to produce them.
If you have companies competing with each other they will lower their prices down to what's needed to sustain itself. Again the problem is that we have too many monopolies in our market which is why so many companies don't have competition. The root cause for so many reasons why solutions are inefficient is due to monopolization and consolidation of wealth and that needs to be dealt with, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't also do other things at the same time even if they aren't as efficient as they could be.
Yeah, if money = power, and everybody gets some from the government, I think that what the UBI is spent on will be controlled. You must spend it on basic needs or your account will be frozen.
My main worry is that UBI will be a Trojan Horse to control the spending of everyone receiving it, possibly through some central distribution system. That’s how I think the billionaires will fuck it up.
That's why UBI should just be cash. No account, no card, nothing to trace or manage.
How about using your UBI check on basics instead of rampant consumerism. Also if it gets fucked up we as consumers need to take some fucking responsibility.
Also people's jobs are being displaced by technology at a rapid rate and is continuing at a steady pace. Large swathes of the population may simply not have enough money to afford anything because they don't have jobs. So unless you suggest these people simply die off because we make some people rich?
If they need a purpose, they'll find it much easier when they don't have to worry about basic fuckin' survival.
Yeah, it is contradictory.
I'm gonna spin an anecdote here.
My main job for the first twenty years of my adult life was as a nurse's assistant.
It wore out my body early, and I've been disabled because of that almost as long .
I got paid shit for doing it. Many of my coworkers were shit because of the bad pay, but it was the still the best job they could get, so the job tended to be split unevenly between people that were willing to bust their ass taking care of other people, and a minority that shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a patient for one reason or another.
UBI? I would have still shown up. I would have done the job with joy in my heart. I wood have been happier because I would have been able to take breaks between patient deaths to grieve. I would have been able to leave shitty businesses sooner and fight to have them changed when they made choices against patient interests instead of being a disposable helper monkey that nobody would listen to.
It's true that I would not have put up with bullshit idiots in administration. I would not have worn myself into a nub just to barely make enough to survive and then still need side jobs.
With UBI I could have done more, better, and not have had to destroy myself in the process. It would have been a reason to work that job. It would have meant the freedom to do the job better because I wouldn't have been forced to work to survive when I was blatantly and obviously unable to give my best.
And, even if UBI was the only money I got, I would have at least done the job part time because it was my purpose in life. I made helping people my purpose, no matter what it cost me. Why the fuck wouldn't I have done the same when I didn't have to eat shit to do it?
This is, on some level, exactly what they are worried about.
Precisely what they are worried about.
From a capitalist perspective it's ideal if your workers are on the verge of poverty, living paycheck to paycheck. That's exactly where you want them.
People in that situation won't complain. Won't stand up for themselves or their rights. Will take poor treatment and deal with it. Will work in unethical or even illegal ways and keep quiet because they have no choice.
Even better if you can tie people's health insurance to their job, then you've really got them by the balls.
UBI would put an end to all that, so it's no wonder business owners would lobby against it.
I've got a pretty decent job, and earn pretty good money. But I'm the only earner in a family of four and no, we haven't made all the best financial decisions at times.
What you have described is exactly where we live, and while there isn't that much I want to stand up to at work in the first place, 100% I don't make any waves that don't have a basis in the hard facts of my job, and for this very reason. I'd like to go in an ask for a merit based raise, I'd like to fight harder for more people to be hired in our (spread very thin) department, and there are a few other things I'd like to at least ask for and feel OK about standing firm on.
But I don't, because I don't want to jeopardize what I've got.
I feel for you, it's a real situation.
I'm fortunate in that I've managed to build up a bit of "fuck you" money. So-called because if my employer did anything awful I could say "fuck you" and walk away, and know I had I few months of buffer.
It definitely makes me feel more able to stand up for myself and others when I don't fear the consequences of losing my job. I wish everyone could feel that way because it would make society a better place, and UBI would help.
Having a bunch of workers who never complain and never stand up is a recipe for failure. Why do you think a company’s owner is going to benefit from his employees being miserable?
It’s capitalism not communism. In capitalism people are allowed to leave. It’s the consensual form of economic organization. The consent part means you need to be good to people to keep them. And people who are healthier and happier get more done.
Where did you pick up this idea that the boss wins when the workers suffer?
Bingo! "If we make it easier for you to survive, you will become harder to take advantage of"
Agreed!
I think what they're trying to say is nobody will want to work shit jobs for next to no pay.
I don't see how that's a bad thing except for employers. If the job is worth doing, the money should be worth it too. People shouldn't be forced to do shitty/dangerous jobs just to survive.
That's a common theme most people here overlook. Some people actually enjoy working hard and getting things done. We don't need to support the lazy people.
Are there some shitty jobs that don't deserve higher pay because of the value they contribute? Or do you see that being a business that shouldn't exist? So let's take a sewer company or something. Or any maintenance position where it's not clear there's a dollar value on the value being produced.
For example, restaurant probably aren't possible if waiters and back of house are all paid 30/h.
I'm mostly trying to understand what you're really trying to get at. I don't think its possible for all jobs to be equally paying or be equally good - there's always going to be inequality there. Unless you're arguing there shouldn't be shitty jobs but there's literally always going to be shitty jobs in any society and economic framework you spin up.
Society will still need people who perform maintenance on sewers, do construction, clean building etc
Somehow in every country other than the US they are able to pay restaurant staff a living wage.
From your example, what I'm saying is nobody should be cleaning a sewer for minimum wage. If you need your sewer fixed you can either do it yourself or pay someone enough that they'd be willing to do it.
If you can't pay someone enough, obviously fixing that sewer wasn't important enough to you.
I'm not saying everyone should get the same wage. There's a huge difference between flipping burgers and working in a mine, and the pay should reflect that.
Supply and demand are perfectly capable of putting a price on sewage disposal that balances the interests of all involved.
Ignoring their ideas entirely, it's incredibly simple. There are two options.
No ubi. Eventually AI automates all jobs, the 1% becomes virtually omnipotent, and everyone else dies.
Ubi. Some of the profits earned by companies are funneled into the ubi system. As such, everyone has income. The economy booms, everyone thrives, and we reach post scarcity.
We've already reached post scarcity. Any current scarcity is manufactured.
If you don't have funds to buy resources then that seems to be accurate scarcity no?
The point is that there is no actual scarcity as in "we don't have the resources". We do have the resources, they're just distributed in a way that is profoundly unfair.
Sorta like nature. There’s calories aplenty to be had. They’re just protected by other organisms that don’t want to give them up.
So even in nature, the scarcity is artificial.
That's a matter of access, not whether a sufficient amount of resources exist.
It’s been demonstrated repeatedly that markets distribute goods better than centralized control systems, every time.
When centralized control is seized, people start lacking. When the control of food is seized centrally, people starve.
Who said anything about centralized control?
How about option 3: we stay the same and the world doesn't end in fire and death.
There's no contradiction when you consider most people consider most other people to be childish idiots who can't be trusted to decide what's best for themselves and to pursue their own self-actualization (unlike "me" of course).
My issue with it is that you haven’t run trials with people min-maxing how to squeeze people for their UBI checks. As a start, just raising rent until it eats all the UBI
The problem with that argument is that UBI frees up people to move to lower cost of living areas.
It also means there’s more money in the pool of demand for housing, so as long as it’s a free market there will be more effort applied to fulfilling housing needs.
I grew up in a small coal town in Southern Illinois. The last time I was there was for my grandfather's funeral. The town was abandoned and empty, even compared to when I was growing up which certainly wasn't it's booming time. Most of the stores on main Street were closed except the bar and the legion which is also a bar.
I'd move back in a heartbeat, but there's no jobs there. The house that five generations of my family lived in sold for $30,000.
If we had Ubi, my family and I would definitely live there. A few thousand dollars a month to make sure we survive and money actually coming into the town? It would seem like a miracle and I know there's so many little towns like that all across America that are just completely forgotten about.
People like to say that the rent will just go up to match ubi, but underestimate the number of people who live in cities solely because that's where the work is.
It was done in Vancouver, late 2021 to late 2022.
Surely they have though. Anywhere where they ran the trials for more than about 3 months would have been an area where people tried to get other people's UBI checks. That's human nature for you.
You can’t just arbitrarily raise the rent to whatever you like.
You must live in VENEZUELA or some other SOCIAMIST HELLHOLE!
Americans have the freedom to literally arbitrarily raise the rent to whatever they like YEEEEEEHAW!
Yeah, the socialist hellhole that is the Netherlands. Ranked 8 in the Index of economic freedom (USA is #25)
Okay let’s say I own a condo and I’m renting it out. I raise the rent to a million dollars a month.
What happens next?
Depends on the location but most likely demand will be zero.
So I don’t get my million dollars a month??
Yeah, I agree, we should abolish landlords
Landlords also have to comply with the law, which limits the height of the rent they can charge and the maximum yearly increase.
With the absurd increases of rent globally, record profits for landlords, and massive amount of empty properties have these laws worked?
If properties are seen as an investment, as they currently are, they must always increase in value at a greater rate than inflation. This means that, in order for investment properties to work, housing must always become more expensive. This increases rent and makes buying a home more impossible yearly. If they lower in price, then the investment fails. The cost of making housing accessible is the economy.
The issue isn't simply increasing rent arbitrarily this is a marathon. They'll raise rent at a higher rate than workers accrue money as they currently are. This makes housing unaffordable. UBI is a band-aid solution that doesn't fix the root issue.
Even Adam Smith agreed landlordship was a poor idea in a capitalist market. Renters should accrue equity, or housing should become public.
This is true of everything. For income to keep pace with inflation, it must always be increasing. In fact, to keep pace with inflation, prices must rise by the amount of inflation.
To clarify, in order for investment properties to work the value of a property must increase quicker than inflation in order to profit. Otherwise, you're not investing, you're simply retaining current buying power. This is true of all investments. You want your buying power to increase, not stagnate. This means that the cost of housing must increase at a higher rate than general inflation, and thus the cost of mortgage and rent must take up a larger portion of a persons salary otherwise the investors (landlords, investment property owners) will not profit.
Along with that income has not kept pace with inflation and hasn't for more than 50 years. Both these issues have compounded to create the issue we see today. This is a closed system, and in order for one piece of the economy to be more profitable other pieces must decline. Otherwise, you are stagnating. Stagnation under capitalism is death.
I agree though that the prices of housing should be tied to inflation (or, better, to a percentage of average wage) but that would, necessarily, mean that the property does not accrue profit, it only sticks to inflation. This is not profitable, this is not an investment. This would, essentially, abolish landlords but in a much more economically violent way as their investment portfolio is now worthless (as an investment).
In other industries the cost of each product can decrease as efficiancy increases, and volume increased through incremental changes and diversification. This allows for profit to increase while the cost of goods matches inflation (or, like with computers, they get cheaper). Now, I'd argue this is unsustainable as eventually you'll hit a wall where it's not possible to decrease cost to manufacture, and you must now increase cost to purchase quicker than inflation, but there are ways to mitigate this and in it's whole that is another conversation.
Apologies for novel, thank you for your kind argument though. You seem like a chill person
If your method of investing in housing is just buying and selling the same house, then yes it’s not going to work. That’s also a good thing because someone who just buys low and sells high isn’t producing any value.
But people can invest in properties by improving them before selling, and also by renting them out. And neither of those situations requires a housing market whose average price is outpacing inflation. In those situations, it’s the production of actual value that is the source of the profit.
Profiting from arbitrage requires a fucked up market, and a lack of information. Profiting from producing value just requires clear communication and competency. Two very different kinds of profit seeking.
If you improve the building, thus increasing it's value, you've increased the proportional value of this house compared to the market. Now, since this house has increased in value, the average price of housing goes up and this house is less affordable. If everyone does this then the same effect takes place of average housing increasing in cost but now there's a large quantity of very nice unaffordable housing. You no-longer increase it's proportional value and the average price still goes up. Your house is in the same class as other housing bought at the same time.
If all landowners continually improve their housing in order to increase profits the profits must increase to a point where the cost to improve is matched and exceeded. This means that all property one wants to profit off of must still increase in price quicker than inflation. Under your proposed solution this only means the housing is nicer.
The outcome is the same, less affordable housing. If more, cheaper, housing is created then the value of these improved properties must decrease as well (supply and demand) and these cheaper houses if the price stays tied to inflation the profit gained is stagnant. There is no incentive to increase housing.
Currently though this is not happening. Most investment properties increase in value without improvement. Most landlords simply profit off of ownership of this land and housing not in their added value. If all landlords were to improve housing instead of simply raising price then that would increase investment price while not increasing overall profit. They'd make the same amount of money they would if they simply didn't improve it. There is no incentive to improve as this adds risk for no reward. This is only possible on a small scale, and why we see few companies making profit off of buying housing, improving, and selling.
On rentals, even if they did cause value to be added, it would be through the money of the tenents and the labor of the workers. They are simply a middle man who adds no inherit value to this process. They produce no value, they simply take money from one hand, pocket some, and place some into another who adds value for them.
I'm going to respond by parts. Let's see how this goes:
Yes
No: the demand for housing stays the same, thus the amount of money to be had for housing stays the same, and hence if the same number of units exist then the average unit does not change in price by one unit improving. It's only that this unit moves up within the mass of units, while all the others move down a little.
But also some yes: There is the fact that the improvement could be so good as to convince someone to switch a portion of their spending from some other luxury to the housing feature, like someone might decide to go for the house with the pool instead of the corvette. Then overall housing demand goes up, and hence average housing price goes up.
No, because this stuff all follows from the previous sentence which I NOed too. The sum of a lot of average zero changes is zero. It doesn't cause contagion to the rest of the market.
Except for rich people's luxury money coming into the housing market, but that's going to affect pricing of housing full of luxuries, because that demand is targeted to a different market tier than the one you're worried about which is the cheapest housing for the people with the least money.
Well, this is one way in which people with money can decide to invest it in housing: improving the housing. But they can also invest by building new housing. You do cover this here:
Well, if the set of players in the market stays the same this is true. But if new players can enter, then it's not. I'll try to demonstrate with the simplest scenario: one player controls all housing. Big Boss Casamio owns all housing and he's the only guy who can build new housing. What are his incentives? Well, it's like you said. If he builds new housing it just dilutes the value of his existing housing and he's just spent money for nothing.
But what are someone else's incentives? What if there are two big property owners in town? Then they gain something when they get more of the town's population living in their houses: a higher portion of that housing demand becomes cash to them. That's an incentive to build new housing. Yes, ALL housing's earning potential drops, but you get 100% of the new property and only lose say 50% of the existing housing value to dilution.
And that's when there's two players.
If there's 100 players, and someone owns 1% of the housing, they can build a new house and get the value of that house in terms of earning potential, while their other houses only lose 1% of their value to market-wide devaluation.
This is why free markets are important. The incentives are different for monopolies than they are for market players. A free market is like a market without strict border control. Each person is allowed to come and go, to bring their money into or out of the market, if and when they see fit.
Big Boss Casamio's crackdown on housing construction is a corruption of the free market into a controlled market, a suppressed market.
I agree, and that's a serious problem. Even the increase in quality witthout increase in number would be a problem, though slightly less. Only increase in number can bring prices down.
Incidentally, this steady increase in price is because of population increase, not property improvement. The improvement of properties isn't pushing average pricing; only individual pricing up and the whole thing balances due to demand being finite. But the demand itself increases with population (I mean, with money in the system, and each person anywhere is going to be pushing a certain amount of cash toward housing, by necessity).
As the number of empty houses dwindles toward zero, the amount each person has to pay rises super fast. The result of supply and demand ratio shifts are nonlinear; population doesn't have to double for the price of housing prices to double.
True. I think that happens because we subsidize that by using government force to slow the building of new housing. I think that the government is taking the profit away from those who work to make new construction happen, and is giving it to the people who simply own existing buildings. I think this happens through building code enforcement.
And I think that's okay. Building codes are important. If they skew the market so as to produce non-consensual homelessness, that's a serious cost. But the thing they avoid is scenarios like the Chicago fire, where 1/3 of the city died.
I also don't think that's entirely a bad thing. If we have to suffer the existence of homelessness as a possibility in human life, in order to avoid some kind of Chicago fire scenario where shit safety planning led to 1/3 of the population dying, maybe it's worth it. Anyway.
Yeah we do have the Big Boss Casamio scenario, to a degree, due to both totally valid building codes, and totally invalid straight-up corruption and NIMBYist gerrymandering of building codes to protect certain wealthy people's property values.
There are many types of valuable things.
Like, imagine if a worker wanted a house, but didn't have time to build one himself. He works all day driving a bus. Another worker happens to build houses for a living. So the bus driver hires the house builder.
Even if the bus driver makes way more than the house builder per paycheck, he's going to be in a tough situation to have to pay the house builder's income during the time it takes to build the house.
Even so, I think they can figure out how to make a deal that works. Maybe the house builder is taking his time, doing an hour or two a day on multiple houses. So his living is spread out among the others'.
I hope you can see where I'm going with this because I don't. I think it was something about how it's valuable to have the opportunity to just rent a place instead of investing all that energy to build a house, just to have a place to live. Houses are costly even if there's no capitalist middleman taking a cut, and it's nice if there's an option to pay for a place that isn't going to be your house, just to get a roof over your head.
Rentals are a value to the renter, by virtue of being rentals, and it's a value that houses don't have when you own them. It's simply the lower cost of entry to the living situation.
Like having a cabin for new villagers to live in while they get their own cabin constructed. It's a source of value to have a building where people stay, but they don't have to take ownership of it just to sleep there. Maybe the ownership in the village is the entire village. Like, nobody lays claim and everyone just pitches in to fix it when needed, because it's valuable. The owner is the village, not the villager staying there.
Obviously, our current situation is fucked up and way too skewed toward being trapped. I personally think that would get better if we cut back with the suppression of new construction. Some building codes are good, but ours are bloated and that's economically inflaming the homelessness crisis AND the declining mental health of the entire lower and middle classes.
I hope that didn't get too incoherent toward the end. I'm quite tired.
Jesus Murphy that's a long fucking comment. I'm sorry boys I'm just too tired to edit it down now. I'll have a go at cutting her down in the morning. Unless I forget.
Ha, eventually we'll be mailing each other novels the size of way and peace. Looks like mine was a two parter. No worries man
Book 2: Big Boss Casamio
This is correct, but not incentive to build. This is incentive to get more people living in 'your' housing. Other incentives exist to entice people into your housing and to keep them there. Lets say, if you refer others, you get a portion of the profit. On top of this, agreements which force them to stay in your housing for a period of time.
Ok, so you have 1000 houses out there, and build new ones. These ten you gain more money on while losing half the value on you current 1000. This is not economical, you lose more than you gain without increasing demand only increasing supply. You'd have to always make more houses than you currently have (or at least enough to outweigh the decrease in value) which is very risky, and takes a very large amount of upright money and time until you have the ability to sell
Housing also takes time to make and has a massive cost associated. This is riskier than buying a new home and takes a lot more time meanwhile you aren't making money.
What if neither make new houses and increase prices anyway? Sure, neither get a larger proportion of the money made, but both make more money.
Lets skip forward to the 100 player situation,. If they make more housing that takes more time, and if it fails, the market for that home decreases before they can get it on the market, or they guessed wrong in the value of a new house in that location, they get less money than those simply increasing their prices. Those who simply increase their prices get more profit, invest back into the market more, and gain a larger share.
They are more flexible too. If the market goes down, they can sell, the builders cannot. If, lets say, the local school announces they're shutting down the builder has spent quite allot building in an area that is now less valuable. The non-builder simply sells before the school shuts down, and buys where the new ones being built. The builder still must build their house, or take a loss.
All this means, with time, those taking the safer, more flexible bet of not building and not improving get a larger share of the market as they make money more consistently and can respond to issues quicker.
One more thing, what if people build, but then still increase prices like the others do? They get more money, and more share of the market. Sure, supply increases, but so does the price. If people need housing, which they do, they will pay the increased price.
I will state I agree with a mostly free, market based economy. However market economics fail with goods that people require. Demand cannot decrease, thus those with supply can price it however they please. Normally, a person can simply say I will no longer purchase this good, and demand decreases, but people need shelter to survive so this is not an option. In-elastic goods break supply demand economics
On top of this, no market actor wants the pricing to go down. That only loses them money, or potential money, with no gain for themselves. There is no incentive.
Sorry to drone on, but to restate, those new people who enter the market with cheaper housing will be out competed by those who keep prices high. They will have more money, they will buy those cheaper houses, they will sell them at their inflated prices. The new market actors will have less resources and can never become a large force even though most would prefer to buy from them. If an average non-investor does buy from them the house exits the market, as the owner is not trying to sell but is simply living there.
End of cassimos reign
Well, there are other ways. You could regulate the sale of housing and force it to stay at inflation, or decrease. How will things be maintained or improve? Those who own and are using the housing will pay for it, as they currently are, and no profit will be needed. You may say you'd rather this not happen but it would decrease pricing, or stabilize it.
correct, it's not because of improvement, because properties are not being improved. On population, though it is increasing so is available housing, and so are prices. We have many houses that remain empty and could house people that are not being used. They are up to code, they are in locations that are desirable, they are simply either priced too high or not sold/rented. This is a major issue in many cities. Sure, demand finite, but people will pay anything they can to survive and even if supply increases those with it can still charge the same price, or more, and people will still pay it. Those who decrease pricing with demand will have less money, and thus less market share.
Also, look at the places where population is decreasing. We still see housing prices increase there too
Correct. The number of empty, fully functional, fully legally tenable housing is increasing though, as are prices.
There's quite a lot of housing that remains vacant though, sixteen million homes to be exact. On top of this, public housing could easily fix the issue here.
What if we can avoid both? If everyone was guaranteed housing, homelessness could be close to or equal to zero. This is not the conversation we're having though, but it would fix the issue of housing being in-elastic
On rentals
He has to anyway. The builders price to build the home is added to the cost of the home. The bus driver must, in the end, pay this to acquire the home. The only difference is that now he must also pay the landlord a cost on top.
The bus driver in either situation must either save up for this, or get a loan and slowly pay it off in order to acquire the home. The only difference in an increased cost.
I agree! however, if a person is paying for a home over the course of years this is what pays for maintenance and for improvement. The landlord must ask for more to gain profit. I'd argue, if someones paying for something they should gain something in return. If a person is paying more for a house than it costs to maintain they should acquire equity in the house. They should become partial owners of the house or apartment.
You can gain the same value through a mortgage loan, or a rent-to-buy agreement while also gaining equity on the house
This is public ownership of property, which I may agree is a partial solution, but I'd still agree with personal ownership of property. Public housing makes sense though as there is no profit incentive. They don't need to make money off of the building. I still want a housing market though
I agree, though I'd argue the solution is to add in a public housing option for basic shelter thus allowing for a housing market to function based off of supply demand economics. On top of this, renters should accrue equity as it is their funds which maintain and improve the housing, any extra profit generated should be in exchange for this.
As for incoherence I assume we both suffer with this here. Also, I restated myself way more than needed. Sorry for that. Thank you for the conversation though
Ok, looks like I have to break this into at lease two parts
Book one
Housing Demand
If you take one home, move it up, then there is one less home in the lower end. Supply in the lower end market decreases.
Average is a factor of adding all prices together then dividing it by the quantity. If one price increases the average increases. If all landowners do this to create profit prices for housing prices increase quite quickly. By making your housing more close to luxury housing you are decreasing the supply of non-luxury housing.
If we have three houses one costs 100 the other 200 the last 300 the average price is 200. If a person buys the 200 house, adds a pool, and sells it for 230 then the average is now 210. The average has increased. Now, if all profit from selling housing was tied to improvement, then all three must sell improve then sell for 30 more. Increasing the average by 30.
I don't think you understand. If someone buys a house for 100, does nothing, and attempts sells it for 130 they gain the same profit as a person who buys at 100, adds a pool, then sells for 135 (The pool cost 5 to add). In both situations a person profits 30 but in the second, they need money outright for the pool and labour, and the hope that there's a market for housing with a pool when this is finished. In the first, they need only maintain the house.
If everyone simply increases price while doing nothing to improve then the new price for housing is 130. Those who don't increase will have the houses they sell bought by the people willing to do so who will have more money to buy more houses out-competing. People will still buy houses because shelter is a nessesity. This is an inelastic good.
In the situation where pricing increases without improvement, yes, improvement can elevate the class of the house and maybe they sell it for 160 but in a system where improvement is needed for profit their improvement is not special it is market average, and they will profit the same as everyone else. Improvement adds risk, takes time, and at scale will always be beaten by non-improvement.
Lastly, though supply may fluctuate demand at the lower end will be the same. Everyone needs housing. If everyone makes improves their housing to sell for a profit, lower end housing supply decreases, prices rise. If nobody improves their housing and increases lower end pricing people will simply pay more for the required good.
There are many different categories of landlord, residential housing, and rent agreements, and also lots of states and countries on Earth. It's not accurate to say
for rental housing in general.
Depends on where you live. In my country there are basically 2 classes: social housing and free market. Which one your home is is based on one thing: the rent you paid when you initially started living there. For each year, a threshold is set for social housing. Anything that is rented out under that threshold in that year will be considered social housing for however long the tenants stay there. Everything above it is free market.
For social housing, there is a point system that determines the maximum rent. Points are awarded based on the house itself. For example: each bedroom adds certain number of points, same for bathrooms and other features. Once you have the total number of points, you can look up the maximum rent in a table.
For both social and free market properties, there is a maximum annual rent increase.
It depends on local regulations. There's no federal law that limits the rent increase, if given notice. Like I'm pretty sure NYC has some kind of rent control, but at least here in Oklahoma it's not common.
Edit: I found this, and I now feel worse
That's insane! The law of the land is that you can't ban things that limit profit for those with capital. It reminds me of a law that prevents gun bans in Atlanta, GA.
We have law in the entire USA making gun bans illegal, actually.
So you’re telling me rent in OK is off the charts? Or could there be some mechanism other than government limiting how high rents can go?
There's another mechanism, it's just competition. They can't go too high or else they'll price themselves out. Minimum wage here is still $7.25/hr
UBI is not a matter of "if", it's of "when".
With automation and the fuckin AI, companies can do more and more with less and less people.
The concept of unemployement will be alien as well.
In a cool universe maybe, but realistically it's just gonna mean line goes up faster for the people at the top, while employees and customers see little/none of the rewards. That's how automation has always been: workers do the same amount of work for the same pay while producing more, customers maybe get a slight discount, the execs get a few mil/bil in bonuses. Without a hell of a lot of strikes and government intervention I doubt there's any other way for it to go
Let's not pretend government intervention is gonna happen, except to make things worse for workers.
You mean like the european initiative developing a new strategy for taxation, as it is already recognized the way AI and other aggressive automation practices diminishes the tax revenue for social services?
The likes of Musk can't shake off the wolves much more.
Good for Europe.
More places can emulate
If only.
Try
Been tryin' for decades.
Keep at it
Yeah, it's funny watching people like me fail.
No, it's just that if you quit, the other side wins. And unlike yourself, I'll risk, the other part is not a good bunch.
Eventually humans won't be capable of performing any valuable economic activity, but in the past those who weren't capable of performing valuable economic activity usually ended up as starving beggars rather than pampered pets... I think that a future of robots working for robots with humans struggling to survive on the periphery is not unlikely.
Only if we get rid of greedy billionaires first tbh.
The moment we start thinking like that and accepting it is the moment we need to burn our civilization down to.
If as human beings we stop recognizing what is made by another human as valuable, we're broken.
No need to write a book, paint a painting, plant a tree and care for it, think, nothing.
Well can you spare my stuff during the "burn down"? I don't want to die.
Good. Me neither, at least not in the next 40 to 50 years.
How shall we get started on burning down civilization?
NUKES! LOTS AND LOTS OF NUKES!
Seriously though you can cause a lit of damage with some gas and a lighter.
From the bottom. Heat rises.
I'm a little more optimistic than that, in a way. I think it's likely that sufficiently sophisticated robots will eventually have their own beliefs about what makes a (robotic) life worth living, and their lives will in some sense be more worth living than ours are.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but consider humans evolving from apes. The existence of humans has been very bad for apes. They only survive in the places we haven't bothered to push them out of yet; if we want something, we take it from them with almost no consideration for their well-being and they're unable to resist. I think apes are sophisticated enough to be capable of living lives worth living in a sense meaningful to humans, but they're not nearly as sophisticated as we are; they can enjoy the feel of a summer's day, the taste of good food, or the closeness of a friend, but they don't have our arts and sciences. I suppose it's predictable that, as a human, I would value humans more than apes, but by that same logic I think that a sufficiently-sophisticated robot's life may be more valuable than a human's. Maybe that robot will be able to experience super-beauty indescribably better than anything a human could ever feel...
No. Machines are machines. If at some point machines are developed into a new life form, it's experience will be apart from ours. One existence does not replace another. And every experience is different from the next.
Not every place is like the US.
The rise of tech has killed off a huge amount of jobs. There used to be people doing everything like operating elevators and doing calculations but those jobs have moved into other sectors. Now we have jobs tech support and sale person at the Apple store.
Jobs will never vanish because demand always requires jobs. You can't have an economy if no one can pay for things. That's true from the billionaires down to the fast food worker.
The topic here is UBI
Most children get a UBI. Where TF are their bootstraps? Bring back child labor.
Eh. Some yes, some no.
I think that a better solution would be creating jobs that pay a living wage, much like we did in the Great Depression. Something that would give your life some kind of external structure. I find, for myself, that when I have zero time pressures from work, that it's easy to do nothing at all, and I've found that most people are the same.
EDIT: SHould add - jobs should be scaled to capabilities, rather than being one-size-fits-all.
I think that part of the reason why is that work has (many of) us so beat down anyway. I imagine there's probably a certain amount of time where that tendency will dissipate and you'll want to be productive again.
Fuck the 40 hour work week.
Are you also ADHD? I have this same problem myself tbh
I've seen it in most people once they have no external pressures to do anything. Not everyone. But def. most people I've known that weren't loaded with money and could afford to travel, etc. without needing to work.
Politicians everywhere have been "creating jobs" all the time. That's just a myth. You can't just create jobs indefinitely and it doesn't solve societies problems. What kind of jobs do you have in mind?
Jobs that there's typically not the political will to do otherwise: public works, things that are a net public good, but aren't profitable (or are insufficiently profitable to entire a private company to make the investment). During the Great Depression the gov't created tens of thousands of jobs, so it's def. not a myth. You could easily do things like de-automate jobs, or adequately staff federal agencies, use labor to build off-shore wind farms that are currently not profitable enough for private industry to build, so on and so forth. (Fed. agencies, pretty near across the board--aside from the military--have had funding and staffing cut for decades, to the point where e.g. the IRS doesn't have enough people to go after anything more than a tine percentage of people that cheat on tax or commit tax fraud.)
IIRC, the Appalachian Trail was originally cleared during the Great Depression, and has since been maintained by volunteers. Shit, you could (and should) pay people to do it, rather than expecting them to give labor simply because they believe that the AT is a public good (which I would agree it is).
The typical 'job creation' is more about giving private companies tax incentives to enter an area, rather than the gov't being them employer.
I dislike UBI but not because I'm not for a basic income, I just think Means Testing would be better. I've said this before but now after being the runner-up in my state for debating on this topic I feel more confident talking about it. Ultimately there are many ways of implementing fiscal redistribution but means testing is substantially cheaper than a full UBI (especially in countries with higher populations, e.g. US), while also providing social utility and enabling recipients of the basic income to have more resources. Not only is MT better from this standpoint but a UBI can also worsen inflation by increasing the dollar's velocity (1 dollar changes hands more). I won't deny that most people could use money, especially right now, but a UBI is not the best approach in my mind because of these reasons. Of course I am still in highschool, am not an economics expert, and MT was the plan that we ran in tournament so I'm a bit biased.
ETA: This is all keeping in mind the current political and economic climate of the United States, where realistically neither of these plans will pass but I believe MT has more merit to being passed compared to UBI. If you'd like any sources on what I've said I'd be happy to share!
How you gonna write all that and not even give a hint at what Means Testing is?
A means tested basic income is a type of BI that, as proposed by the institute on race and political economy in the US, expands the Earned Income Tax Credit program to include those who aren't earning an income, providing every adult in the country up to $12,500 per year calculated on a sliding scale based on income, as well as up to $4,500 per child. These numbers are as of 2021 so they could've changed by now, but basically it gives everyone a certain amount of money if they are below the poverty line (calculated by their current income), to lift them above the poverty line and keep them out of poverty.
It's more, I guess you could call it a niche, type of basic income so it's on me for not explaining it, just used to everyone in our debate season already knowing what it is lol, sorry.
That is not basic income. It is decreased as you earn your own money. It only comes as a tax rebate. Neither of which are properties of a true Basic Income.
Means testing requires am expensive beaucracy and a pyramid of people administrating it. Those overhead costs cost more tham just giving everyone the same amount.
Literature on the topic suggests otherwise. I said earlier I've debated on this topic and so I know what I'm talking about to an extent. According to David A. Green et al. In 2021 from the Vancouver school of Economics, "[...] there are also many alternative designs. The alternatives can be viewed from two perspectives, related to placing conditions on the payments. The first type of conditionality is related to whether the basic income applies to everyone [...] or to a specific group of people." In the end the definition of basic income doesn't come down to economic theory but what we can agree on, and by saying MT 'is not basic income' doesn't help to implement any kind of BI.
Source here
The basic principle of basic income is that is applied to everyone equally.
Otherwise it is a negative tax or welfare payment. Which are different and have different effects on the recipients.
Applying to everyone does 2 key things: it removes administrative overhead costs and removes any stigma from recieving it that lead to exploitation, hate, and division of society.
Edit to address your other comment: Implementing a system flawed at the foundation, just so it fails or falls into a welfare like quagmire, is disingenuous and perpetuating the failures of the past.
Id rather not sabotage the solution with overhead and politics invested in keeping people broke.
The fundamental component of the Institute on Race and Political Economy's plan is expanding the EITC, or Earned Income Tax Credit, an already existent program. Implementing MTBI through the EITC doesn't increase costs anymore than a UBI would as the internal infrastructure already exists in the IRS. If you were to implement a UBI without the EITC, you'd either have to create an entirely new program through the Treasury Department or otherwise, and be able to find every person in the US to pay them with cash or cheque. That doesn't sound like more administrative overhead? Maybe I'm biased because I particularly like the idea of an MTBI but just the implementation of a UBI sounds more of a practical nightmare than MT.
Cremer & Roeder, '15 suggest that a means tested system will have comparable stigma to other existing programs such as SNAP, which is high, but in the US political climate, there will be more support for a means tested system, and "political economy considerations do not appear to justify a universal system." Although there is still a stigma associated, the net benefit of having political backing that's miles ahead of a UBI makes it a much more realistic plan to pass in current day.
I have given examples in other comments showing that MT works, mainly the Stockton trial, but I'm more than happy to provide empirical studies from other countries implementing MT on a larger scale.
This is not basic income. It is a tax credit.
Basoc income is a monthly payment. It helps pay the bills. The payments can be relied upon.
Tax Credits never pay the bills. They arrive (maybe) once a year. Canmot relt on the ammount or if it will come at all.
Tax credits help wealthy people they do not help poor people struggling to make it month to month.
RE: administrative costs Adding to the IRS workload drives up costs.
Just issue a UBI to every living SSN. Distribute via electronic transfer. Almost free overhead. Simple. Done.
Means testing is wasteful.
How does this prevent the welfare trap, where working more has a lesser impact on revenue as welfare goes down? This seems to have the exact same issues as the current system.
We already have means testing though and it barely helps anyone compared to how much help ubi would give to people.
The broader US doesn't have a means tested program though, sure you could argue that programs like SNAP etc are MT but they aren't BI programs. According to the LISC Institute for Community Power in 2022, a lot of guaranteed income pilots in the US are targeted to certain groups, or means tested, and show "extra funds are typically spent on food, health care, paying down debt and household needs. Full-time employment among recipients actually increased[...]" This is data from the Stockton pilot, but you can read more from the full source here
If it is means tested it is not basic income
See my other reply and if you want to argue please reply there, but TL;DR, means testing is basic income and arguing about the qualifications of a basic income doesn't help when it comes down to whether or not we should implement one.
Done and done.
There's not necessarily a contradiction there. People often choose not to do things that would be good for them. For example, people need to exercise in order to be healthy, but they generally don't. If for some reason we lived in a society where everyone was compelled to exercise, the people saying "a lot of people are going to ruin their own health if we stop forcing them not to" would have a point.
(Note that I'm not trying to argue that they're right, just that they're not contradicting themselves.)
Some of the reasons for that are relatively modern. Sedentary jobs and also sedentary commuting (car-centric travel), lack of robust+accessible infrastructure (for instance the trail local to me is still closed from ~6months ago, uncertain end). That and most food that isn't made-from-scratch having a ton of added sugar, even things like bread and ketchup that people consider staple foods.
A lot of that goes away when you can just throw money at it (or said benefits are thrown at you). Time and space end up being a result of money too, particularly when money is a limit which is true for most people.
I think I largely agree with your assessment that modern society and all its benefits mean that people get less day to day exercise via "normal" routine but I feel like I have to disagree that not having a local trail makes people unable to exercise. There's people in NYC who run miles and miles every day. It's possible anywhere.
I was speaking for my personal situation (I have not left the house since then), the important bit about the trail is about having a destination and not needing to ride a bike on roads (particularly in a rural area w/larger distance).
NYC is a completely different scenario, and being able to walk (w/public transport too) fills that same niche. Also bike lanes and parks.
I also like riding a bike because of health issues, it's lower impact and faster (more airflow plus the trail is mostly shaded). That and I don't want to jog near the road or in a ditch. Also I don't think I could walk as far as I've biked before (11 miles and then back again), even just for the fact there's just something so boring and uncomfortable about walking even a block (at least around here, I don't remember walking in the city being like that, maybe scenery or smooth/level footing helps).
Because it is so expensive to just live, people’s time is extremely limited. I don’t blame people that take care of their wants in that limited time off.
Like many people have already posted, if you didn’t spend all that mental (and physical) energy just scraping by, you will most likely have energy (and motivation) to take care of your health better.
That and it seems like everyone has depression or some sort of mental health ailment these days due to all the stresses that come with being poor.
Eh. Watching what was basically a UBI trial run during Covid in Canada and how it, among other things, has really put financial strain on the government and citiizens, has definitely made me opposed. This shit bankrupts nations.
That was nothing of the sort
it was a guaranteed amount of income monthly for those chose not to work. "But that wasn't real UBI" fucking whatever.
Ain’t that just welfare? I thought UBI means that you will get the money, even if you work.
TBH my perspective might be skewed cause I am qualified for disability income, but I choose to work anyway. So I naturally tend to assume that others would do the same.
No, the Canadian CERB payout was basically structured and set up just like a UBI. You could get it even if you were capable of working, I could have had it too, simply by stating I was uncomfortable keeping working under the circumstances (May have been less true for me personally, I was "essential service"). People on welfare just stayed on welfare.
But that’s exactly what they just said isn’t UBI, with UBI you’d get to keep the money while working if you wanted to. “Universal” means everyone gets it, not just people who “claim to be uncomfortable working”.
Every proposal for UBI test projects I have seen, sets UBI as a failsafe cutoff, a guaranteed income, not a provided income. This interpretation of how it would work is ridiculously worse for the economy than the idea I thought I was arguing against.
Well those proposals are mis-using the term. The U is for Universal which means there are no conditions to receiving the money.
well yknow, socialism in theory vs the actual logistics when the government gives it a spin.
I don't like it because it is close to communism. I like my freedom and and if someone wants a job they can get a job. It requires work but the employer can't discriminate unless you legitimately can't complete the job. I especially like seeing veterans overcome disabilities.
Lmfao. You know the biggest theft every year is wage theft by employers on employees right???
What is wage theft?
It’s when you agree with another adult you’re going to trade your time and effort for some money.
Is this bait?
If not, would you be surprised to hear ubi studies show it helps people get and keep jobs?