Basic income

Six million Americans report food stamps as their only source of income

This made me so sad.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/02/labour-markets-0

genuinely interested in whether or not a guaranteed minimum income can be more than an idle policy daydream

https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/20798745-cb9fbb39?utm_content=buffere7efe

Then came that fatal discovery: the number of divorces in Seattle had gone up by more than 50%. This percentage made the other, positive results seem utterly uninteresting. It gave rise to the fear that a basic income would make women much too independent. For months, the law proposal was sent back and forth between the Senate and the White House, eventually ending in the dustbin of history.

Later analysis would show that the researchers had made a mistake – in reality the number of divorces had not changed.

http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/10/swiss-parliament-opposes-popular-initiative/

The "potential epidemic laziness" quoted in the article is the big lie at the center of our economy imho, and disproving it would be the biggest deal since the Reformation. Go Switzerland.

Also watching "Bridge on the River Kwai" helps understand where many unionists' problems with a basic income stem from.

Can anyone point me to good economic writing on the idea, e.g. addressing how it would be calculated, what its economic effects would be, whether it would cause inflation or why not, etc.

ill post some links when im not on my phone hurting

this is a pretty terrible idea imo. why not just have a negative income tax? why waste money sending checks to middle class & above? also i don't think a lot of proponents of ubi realize you would have to cut other spending to afford it (if it's a basic income that gives someone w no market income a decent living); it's like a (left) libertarian policy (Milton Friedman advocated it!) which isn't nec a bad thing, but a lot of casual proponents these days just add it on top of their pile of govt spending

the laziness thing isn't a lie, it would reduce labor supply. but that's the point? and any proponent of ubi should account for some supply response, you can't just confidently say people won't react to unconditionally not having to work to make a living

yeah flopson i would love some good args

I frequently explain my support for UBI by just asking "aren't there some people you'd rather pay to stay home?"

This is remarkably effective

lol

basic, income

Just watch bridge over kwai its all in there

I still think there's something about being industrious that people need. Or at least a unit does. I'm not sure if the family can fulfill that role anymore for a society. If enough money is circulating of course who knows how industrious people might end up being, or how different the definition of the word industrious might end up being.

In my estimation - somebody should do the research, but it's probably impossible for more than one reason:
1. there are a frightening number of white collar salaried employees who do basically nothing more than commute, badge in, make meetings, badge out, and commute.
2. there are a frightening number of creative, talented people who waste colossal slices of their lives just scraping to make rent in the service industry.

I'd like to send them both home with UBI - it's hard to see how they would end up being less productive that they are today.

Srs ring of truth there

I think a lot of people in group 1 probably don't want to admit to themselves that they are in group 1

cross-reference with boss thread

group 1 would be...interesting...it's probably easier to accept that you're not a productive white collar worker than that you're not creative or talented

There's a lot more ppl imagine themselves in group 2 I'd reckon. Also cross ref to management thread.

you can only accept 1 w/ the help of the facade that the 1-life lets you hide in

White collar privilege

the pre-condition of a facade is something i've read about

Well yeah you wanna make sure it lasts through the tough winters around here

i could be so industrious at things where i would never be paid

i already was for 7 years, it's called ONLINE FILM CRITICISM.

also whoring

interview with the guy who designed the finland natural experiment. seems to have been widely misreported (it is not a universal basic income, they're testing it out on ~100,000 people) so read this if you read anything about it. super interesting & exciting

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3052595/how-finlands-exciting-basic-income-experiment-will-work-and-what-we-can-learn-from-it

bring it

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/americas-need-for-a-family-allowance/420123/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link

From the Capitalism C/D thread

http://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income

50 years from now, I think it will seem ridiculous that we used fear of not being able to eat as a way to motivate people. I also think that it’s impossible to truly have equality of opportunity without some version of guaranteed income. And I think that, combined with innovation driving down the cost of having a great life, by doing something like this we could eventually make real progress towards eliminating poverty.

Hallelujah

this is certainly an unexpected development

kudos to them

i think basic income is a fantastic idea whose time has come and i agree that we might see it in our lifetimes but i'm not sure why i should be excited about Y Combinator trying to fund a study of it?

So it would be good to answer some of the theoretical questions now. Do people sit around and play video games, or do they create new things? Are people happy and fulfilled? Do people, without the fear of not being able to eat, accomplish far more and benefit society far more? And do recipients, on the whole, create more economic value than they receive? (Questions about how a program like this would affect overall cost of living are beyond our scope, but obviously important.)

this is still some extremely inhumane captain of industry ass thinking tho tbf

50 years from now, I think it will seem ridiculous that we used fear of not being able to eat as a way to motivate people. I also think that it’s impossible to truly have equality of opportunity without some version of guaranteed income. And I think that, combined with innovation driving down the cost of having a great life, by doing something like this we could eventually make real progress towards eliminating poverty.

this is good tho

i think basic income is a fantastic idea whose time has come and i agree that we might see it in our lifetimes but i'm not sure why i should be excited about Y Combinator trying to fund a study of it?

― Mordy, Thursday, January 28, 2016 11:36 AM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can be excited by like whatever you want i guess

i disagree. first if basic income is going to work politically we're going to need to demolish the randian idea that communism makes ppl lazy and the only way to do that is disprove it. second even w advanced technology society is still going to require a certain level of productivity from its citizens. if food + shelter eg are extremely cheap than the reciprocal productivity from citizens will be much smaller to balance, but you can't give out more than your society produces? xxp

why are you excited by it?

i disagree. first if basic income is going to work politically we're going to need to demolish the randian idea that communism makes ppl lazy and the only way to do that is disprove it.

that's what they're gonna study, smarty pants

yes correct.

(that post was a response to "this is still some extremely inhumane captain of industry ass thinking tho tbf")

something can be necessary politically and also be inhumane in fact they often go hand in hand

it's not inhumane to set out to disprove a toxic idea

well i guess depends on if youre looking at this from a human rights stand point or just a cool economic widget pov not that either of those is wrong per say but just that paragraph has some some certain assumptions baked in and i dont think its exactly asking does communism make people lazy anyway, also obvs people will work and "contribute to society" less under basic income which is part of the assumption of the machines are taking our jobs in the first place, which im not at all convinced is true anyway fwiw

i mean a lot of people work in order to play video games already def some of them will just play video games

i dont know if communism makes ppl lazy it def makes them toil futilely which is one reason i dont think we shd have communism

no one has ever really tried a low regulation high service economy but i think it cld be right for the USA! lets give it a shot folks

Do people, without the fear of not being able to eat, accomplish far more and benefit society far more? And do recipients, on the whole, create more economic value than they receive?

Imo a better question would be "Do people suffer less?"

but aside cost, how do supporters of UBI envision it becoming politically feasible given that 1) people get to vote 2) people don't like their taxes being given to other people unconditionally

also the OG basic income/negative income tax idea was proposed as a way to replace the entire welfare state, otherwise it's not affordable. is that what yall itt want?

there was a hilariously bad thing in jacobin about ubi written by some sociologist grad student this week that seriously said 'if we had a UBI, we could go on strike all the time' lol

My theory is that there's a large enough unemployment / low wage crisis from automation that a radical policy shift becomes feasible. I don't know how likely this is - seems like we can always find jobs for ppl.

i mean many of the jobs we find are stupid office work that produces little tangible value but still

yeah i don't buy that one. paradoxically automation tends to result in more jobs in medium-long run not less

i'm fascinated by how it's captured the political imagination lately, i don't know why a VC firm is studying it we already have lots of research on how labor supply reacts to welfare

personally i wish the low-skill labor policy that had a movement behind it was for a wage subsidy (embiggened EITC) rather than 15$ minimum wage, universal basic income and job guarantee

if it becomes politically feasible itll be because of extreme wealth inequality prob, ppl wondering if they cld put that money to better use than a handful of richy riches

the universal part is obvs also extremely important poltically welfare programs for the poor dont fare vary well in this country but welfare programs for everyone are sacrosanct

i'm fascinated by how it's captured the political imagination lately, i don't know why a VC firm is studying it we already have lots of research on how labor supply reacts to welfare

― flopson, Thursday, January 28, 2016 12:17 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah idk theres not a lot of information about just unconditionally giving everyone money it wld prob have pretty different outcomes than say our current system where only the extremely poor get money then if they start making money they dont get it anymore, obvs there are tons other way we give people money but theyre all contingent on certain somethings, data on just giving everyone money is pretty rare, tho not sure how y combinators going to address that

wasn't some south american country putting a basic income policy into practice? brazil maybe? can't we study the impact there?

anyway imo its p cool that an organization from an industry that generally thinks software and being smart can solve everything is very publicly saying this is something worth looking at, being mean to them on twitter is paying dividends

i've never heard of this org before but/so maybe it is p cool

theyre a very big deal in the startup scene

YC-backed cannabis tech company hiring front-end devs in Bay Area (angel.co)
14 hours ago

what abt instead of free money, free weed

yc runs a very well read and horrible message board if anyone wants to see what startup ppl are thinking abt this announcement heres the thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982340

I think the traction of the UBI idea is coming from a combination of a lot of poorly-managed office and service industry work that feels unproductive, increasing usage of gig economy jobs to boost discretionary income "whenever I feel like working" and increasing income and wealth inequality.

Yep.

Surprised nobody has brought up West Berlin here.

u cn just start talking abt west berlin if u want

feel like some UBI researcher isn't gonna come to any amazing insights but the fact that this is an issue that's in vogue in silicon valley is still a very good thing esp since they'll be paying for it. the real hurdle isn't figuring out how the system could work, the real hurdle is getting the majority of americans to agree w/ the statement 'maybe some people just shouldn't work and that's okay'. that's not something that even the far left really believes today. kinda have to break some core american values before we can have a politician saying 'eh let's just let people be on welfare forever'. maybe kids who take a self-driving car to work won't see the world the same way.

feel like you have to lay the groundwork of institutions and activism decades before anything can happen and this is maybe a small piece of that

it feels intuitive to me that beyond some point, automation and AI will be replacing more jobs than can be created. how far off that is i have no idea though

yeah idk automation has been replacing jobs for ~150 years and hasnt caused mass unemployment yet, like pre industrial revolution ~90% of jobs in america were agrarian now its like one percent but there are other jobs

a lot of the dissatisfaction were seeing now with the job market has to do with a long term trend of replacing high paying stable jobs w low paying unstable ones which has mostly to do w the decline of labor unions imo

i say fine gut unions totally but replace them with just giving ppl money and lets call it even

i'll be honest, i'm one of the people who would sit and home and play video games under UBI

Isn't this the point of technology?

i wld play online poker

the next wave of american values we're gonna have to break will include 'shame people who sit home and play video games all day under ubi'

hard working video game players deserve our respect

we won't have an army anymore probably so it can be the new support the troops

yeah, eventually everyone will be grinding money in VR MMOs while robots do all their work irl

btw twitch streams look pretty great on my teevee

I get to watch other people get frustrated at ridiculous games like Destiny instead of hurling my own controller across the room

I'll take the twenty hour week, free education, free healthcare and good social welfare as a middle ground here but I'm p conservative so

pshh ya'll are so basic

Incoming

seriously though, I can't read a thread like this without thinking of that TNC reparations article, idk i think I typed some stuff above but that's all I have to add rn

I can read almost anything without thinking of tnc and its a very fine mode of existence indeed.

careful, some might call that privileged

Oh they'll be along I'm sure.

LOL!

idk i think I typed some stuff above but that's all I have to add rn

― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Thursday, January 28, 2016 5:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mm yes noted

i'm fascinated by how it's captured the political imagination lately, i don't know why a VC firm is studying it we already have lots of research on how labor supply reacts to welfare

― flopson, Thursday, January 28, 2016 12:17 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah idk theres not a lot of information about just unconditionally giving everyone money it wld prob have pretty different outcomes than say our current system where only the extremely poor get money then if they start making money they dont get it anymore, obvs there are tons other way we give people money but theyre all contingent on certain /somethings/, data on just giving everyone money is pretty rare, tho not sure how y combinators going to address that

obvious point that I suspect you understand but only poor ppl would receive positive net transfers, as you make more money your tax receipts exceed the value of the transfer. so it just depends on how progressive taxes are.I guess the only difference between welfare is you don't have to sign up for it

I think the traction of the UBI idea is coming from a combination of a lot of poorly-managed office and service industry work that feels unproductive, increasing usage of gig economy jobs to boost discretionary income "whenever I feel like working" and increasing income and wealth inequality.

gig economy is not actually a thing fyi

obvious point that I suspect you understand but only poor ppl would receive positive net transfers, as you make more money your tax receipts exceed the value of the transfer. so it just depends on how progressive taxes are.I guess the only difference between welfare is you don't have to sign up for it

― flopson, Thursday, January 28, 2016 7:52 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it doesnt matter rich ppl still like social security and so forth

a lot of the dissatisfaction were seeing now with the job market has to do with a long term trend of replacing high paying stable jobs w low paying unstable ones which has mostly to do w the decline of labor unions imo

that "imo" is doing a lot of work lol. also that framing is kinda wrong. there are more very well paying jobs than ever (there was some census chart a couple weeks ago everyone was freaking out about showing that the share of workers in the middle class shrunk, but most of the shift was into jobs above middle class). but there are also more low pay unskilled service jobs (why I think wage subsidy is best) and less middle class manufacturing jobs (which has more to do w outsourcing (which is good if you care about ppl outside of the richest country in the world)) and other white collar routine/easily codifiable jobs that were replaced by computers which, idk it's prob good that people aren't like typists anymore). if anything unions would decrease the # of mid class jobs by raising the wage, that's like the point of a union; my dads union has voted to increase current workers pay to the max every year instead of hiring more ppl, they only hire when someone dies or quits. unions are still good imo (though more problematic than leftbros will ever admit) their decline just isnt solely responsible for these massive long term labor market changes (that also happened in other countries that didn't see a decline in unionization rates)

the place where youre drawing the line of "well playing is doing a lot of work here http://i.imgur.com/i8nGznp.gif

not to mention like ever wonder why low paying service jobs are low paying

cause anyone can do them

right unlike work in a car factory 50 years ago

which took the incredible skill of walking out of a high school and into a factory

why are some non unionized jobs well paid?

youre so close the world is about to open for you

btw I obvs believe in the union wage premium, but you can't say that's all that determines wages, or that well paying jobs only exist because unions restrict supply, if you extend that to the whole economy prices would blow up. one reason those factories paid well is cause they were really productive in a way a cashier isnt

they paid well because they organized and demanded to be paid well, before that they were not paid well

the country is a lot richer than it was then yet a lot of people who used to be middle class are falling into poverty, walmart is the biggest employer in the world and the walton family is the richest you really think they cldnt pay their ppl a living wage, they cld instead they took the money themselves this is not hard to understand

costco which arguably has thinner margins even than walmart pays their employees many of whom are cashiers a living wage

http://i68.tinypic.com/98woix.jpg

Explain this graph to me using unions

yet the reaction is still to throw ones hands up in the air and say globalism as a handful of people accumulate unimaginable wealth, great

they paid well because they organized and demanded to be paid well, before that they were not paid well

When did software engineers get organized?

I feel like ur trying to mix five different debates in here some of which I don't disagree w you on

Explain this graph to me using unions

― flopson, Thursday, January 28, 2016 8:37 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

were we talking abt the united states u smug piece of shit

so good paying middle class jobs disappeared in all the other countries for, some other reasons?

I'm glad I'm getting you riled up though, sick of having this argument with mh and dr casino

its weird how the making the shittiest banal neoliberal arguments in the most possible condescending tones will rile people up

(though more problematic than leftbros will ever admit)

combined with terrible online tics

you might consider that yr arguments just suck and are bad and are presented in an awful well then explain this (offers no explanation of what youre talking about) manner

like saying software engineers make good money when home health aids do not does not actually support yr argument you know

oh god "neoliberal", gimme a fn break dog. The only policy I've argued in favour of itt is giving low income workers wage subsidies (I also happen to think a minimum wage at about 50% of median wage would complement that well) but because I'm not unions uber alles I'm neoliberal? Sweden and god damn Norway have the same pattern of losing middle class jobs that you're attributing to decline of unions in the USA. You prob need to explain that for your theory to be convincing

yet youre like "hmmm what abt software engineers... eh??" as if youre holding some gem of knowledge no one has yet stumbled upon

well i dont know too much about finland and norways economy do you? do you really think manufacturing jobs are the only unskilled labor that could possibly pay a middle class wage

cld possibly the same problems be affecting europe as us in that as they lose manufacturing jobs ppl are tending towards work where their labor is exploited, seems like it cld be true

many unions in construction for ex contributed to occupational segregation well into the 60s/70s, that's what the "problematic" was referring to, which is something leftbros who are all " it's all about class maaan" seldom admit. sorry for using an annoying online tic, Internet guru dad

leftbro

that "imo" is doing a lot of work lol. also that framing is kinda wrong. there are more very well paying jobs than ever (there was some census chart a couple weeks ago everyone was freaking out about showing that the share of workers in the middle class shrunk, but most of the shift was into jobs above middle class).

having no problem with a two tiered society as long as more boats are being raised than lowered is one of the core beliefs of neoliberalism

[the middle class is hollowed out] haha those idiots dont see its okay cause more ppl are rich now

xps -- Did I miss something? Are Sweden and Norway immune to having their manufacturing jobs threatened by the rise of cheap (non-union) offshore labor, the near-global lowering of tariffs, and the free (almost instantaneous) flow of capital across borders? Or immune to replacing jobs through the advent of robotic automation, used to offset that competition from cheap (non-union) offshore labor?

Factory jobs always paid shite before unionization. Now with globalization, unions in developed nations have far less bargaining power and most factory jobs pay shite again, except they are paying shite to Indonesians, Cambodians, Bangladeshis, or Mauritians. Again, did I miss something here?

well flopsons argument is that the new unskilled work people are doing instead of manufacturing cldnt possibly pay a living wage because of efficiency chart chart leftbro globalism

i think there are lots of reasons to think that minimum incomes are preferable to wage subsidies perhaps the foremost of which is that the idea that every person shld be given X amount of money, where X is enough to feed and shelter and care for oneself is clearer and more appealing to more ppl than w/e labor-efficient econbro fixes you might suggest.

also i think wage subsidies/minimums dont fit as easily into ~the future of work~

my pt was technology + globalization are more impt for the trend of 'no more middle class jobs' than unions. showed that same thing happened in a lot of countries that didn't experience decline in unionship. I don't think unions are bad (as I said pretty early on) I just don't think they are good at explaining this particular trend. Unions could even be part of the solution, like the SEIU is trying to organize service workers, still a long way to go but that's potentially an amazing thing. I personally think wage subsidy + moderate min wage is a good way to put money in poor workers pockets in the short run

also programs that target purly the poor are a non starer and if they somehow do become a reality will forever be in danger of being eliminated where programs that are for all last forever, and while the wealthy will effectively be paying in more than they take (tho there are exceptions upper middle class kid take a year off to go abroud and so forth, dad is out of work for a year etc) out its still the case that ppl like getting a check in the mail

my pt was technology + globalization are more impt for the trend of 'no more middle class jobs' than unions. showed that same thing happened in a lot of countries that didn't experience decline in unionship.

― flopson, Thursday, January 28, 2016 9:07 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you did not show that these countries did not experience a decline in union membership, also like "more than" how much more than, what piece of the pie, what wld the difference be if unions werent purposely decimated, what if fast food workers had been unionized in the 1970s, how do these neo liber just so stories match up to leftbro alternate history

if our government/society was at all interested in directing money towards unskilled workers you really think it cldnt have done so, average wealth in this country has gone nowhere but up, the money exists

having no problem with a two tiered society as long as more boats are being raised than lowered is one of the core beliefs of neoliberalism

you didn't ask my belief and I didn't say it. I believe in progressive taxes and redistribution, that as society gets richer and more unequal we should funnel the money back down. That's the opposite of trickle down or neoliberal. the country I live in had a similar increase in pre-tax inequality (among the 99% which is what we're talking about) but we offset it with transfers. USA should do that too

(there was some census chart a couple weeks ago everyone was freaking out about showing that the share of workers in the middle class shrunk, but most of the shift was into jobs above middle class).

this certainly seems like its cld be p easily read as mocking those who were freaking out at the hollowing out of the middle class no

is that but doing a lot of work

I don't think ubi would have the same popularity as social security. The people who pay into it would try to get it defunded

its not just social security literally every program that everyone has access to in the usa is untouchable medicare etc

also necessarily the tax burden wld primarily fall upon high earners, especially when you consider that the majority of the country either doesnt work or doesnt make much money and then a good chunk of people getting soaked wld be for it too youd have more than the consistency to ensure its survival

flopson dont you think that wage minimums and unionization are less effective in the face of globalization/automation? like how will those help protect app developers? uber drives? twitch streamers? with more 'work' being contract, freelance, semi-autonomous in nature isnt it better to just provide a baseline income to ppl?

dude you have totally used "that x is doing a lot of work" before gimme a break

i just thought it was a good avatar for yr overall bad passive aggressive condescending not bothering to explain what youre talking about tone

ok I apologize I actually care about making this argument convincingly and non-condescendingly so I appreciate your constructive abuse. shit just got heated plus I just got an iPad and the text box is fn tiny and every time I hit Post it gives me the you=too slow page 18 times

ok im sorry too

i still yr arguments are straight out of the encomiast tho

::screencaps this lame shit to eye-rolling rt::

online discourse is bad but its not my fault im going back to reading books

flopson dont you think that wage minimums and unionization are less effective in the face of globalization/automation? like how will those help protect app developers? uber drives? twitch streamers? with more 'work' being contract, freelance, semi-autonomous in nature isnt it better to just provide a baseline income to ppl?

so far work becoming freelance is a media narrative and not in the data (can't google but Larry mishel ran the numbers on this) and no one knows to what extent it will become more prevalent. there are pros and cons to it too, like working 9 to 5 is a drag it would be cool if future jobs were more choose your own hours (also we need to break down the 40 hour work week norm, it's fucked that every good job just presumes you wanna work full time) (also in the future more people will work from home or wherever they want, that's cool)

i still yr arguments are straight out of the encomiast tho

there are subtle but impt differences imo (economist is against taxing rich, thinks education can solve all problems) but idk, economists are the ppl whose job it is to study this stuff and I find most other people's attempts to think about it incoherent. you should read the paper that chart I pasted is from, "why are there still so many jobs" by David autor. It's a masterpiece imo

was he just looking at freelancers all categories of 'contingent workers' or w/e? my loose understanding was that temp/contract/part time employment was on the rise but i guess i could believe that isnt tru

i mean i do think from a human happiness pov having some dumb-ass regular job with dental that pays you enough to buy some cool stuff and feed yr kids that you go to for a bunch of years is probably pretty great overall but how much will firms need to employ ppl like that in the future seems like a good qn to me? i mean most corporate hr and marketing jobs are just welfare for the professional class, its not hard to imagine a future where firms no longer can/want to pay for those positions...

the being payed enough and your kids having dental part is good, I guess the qn is will the future jobs pay well and keep your kids teeth from falling out

I have always thought we should just replace all our teeth w/ fake teeth anyway, that way you never have to brush your teeth. I hope the ycombinator people are reading this.

were already funding an app that will allow you to use yr phones camera to scan yr mouth and then send you a list of all needed fillings, crowns, &c as well as quotes from any tooth dr. in a 20 mile radius

working title is 'cavity search'

I think those economics papers that always go off historical evidence for why automation is nbd don't leave room for there being something different about current technological advances w/ machine learning etc. like I think there's a big difference between mechanizing routine factory work and automating every car in america (which could eventually, on its own, put something like 10% of the country out of a job).

the move from an agrarian economy to an industrial one was so much far greater a disruption than anything weve seen since, which is not to say something bigger isnt coming who knows, but it hasnt happened yet

one the great things abt basic income is its not tied to work fwiw its just for everybody

we have a program like this already called social security btw

that ppl think they pay into and get money out of lol

but idk, economists are the ppl whose job it is to study this stuff and I find most other people's attempts to think about it incoherent. you should read the paper that chart I pasted is from, "why are there still so many jobs" by David autor. It's a masterpiece imo

― flopson, Thursday, January 28, 2016 9:50 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol economics is so wildly ideological, you really think theres such a huge left/right divide because the economists studied stuff and came to different conclusions, which is not even getting into the ideology called economics itself

you keep saying you find ppl attempts to grapple with this stuff incoherent yet are unable to explain why which is pretty... incoherent

btw i didnt say yr views are out of the economist because they are economics-y lol, i said it because they align neatly with the neoliberal thought therein as far as the causes of wealth inequality, which m/l boils down to globalism happens whatre u gonna do, when of course these people are the very architects of inequality or at least their spokespeople

like the fact that u look at that chart and see that times r tough all over instead of wonder why the outcomes are so varied is somethin, i mean like no one is disputing a lot of previously well paid unskilled labor is now poorly paid unskilled labour elsewhere but how did governments etc react to that did they take opportunity to try to make new high paying unskilled jobs did they try to protect their workers, did they mastermind the whole situation in the first place embarking on a massive wealth transfer to the already rich or something else or nothing

mostly our government responds by propping up the higher education racket and using public money to benefit private education "service providers" and management consultants to help manage the service providers and generally not giving one shit about actual labor or the people who do it

I think a huge thing that UBI could help is letting people have the cushion to get out of a career they hate and try doing something that actualizes them; I think most if not all of the incompetent hateful people we all encounter in office work are just stuck in a job that they need and can't find the time or cashflow to bootstrap into something that might be fulfilling. So many people come to work and make everybody around them miserable and less productive because they're paycheck-to-paycheck with no other options.

otm they shd be playing video games

^^^ this is THE key thing about UBI for me. It would create some layabouts (possibly including me), but it would also kickstart so much innovation and risk-taking (possibly including me) it would stagger the planet.
xp

jobs are literally bad, and a basic income would let a bunch of people not have to do jobs, vote basic income

i think jobs are good but so is freedom man

If people didn't need to compete for the most terrible jobs possible, employers would have to actually offer something, not just offer not-nothing.

yup

did someone summon me?

imo, which probably comes with its own package of biases, one of the problems with income disparity is career mobility. like flopson said, a number of jobs that existed in the middle class have been pulled upward by a tier of corporate management positions and the like, but few industries that have factory workers are promoting from within. some unions, especially in construction and mechanical trades, are good at ongoing training and determining career path, but there's a ceiling hit when all management is from the upper middle class and is hired directly into that level -- they were never union, they're making a parallel move from a college engineering degree into management

I also kind of wonder if there's some strong self-interest going on with techbros when it comes to basic income. There'd likely have to be an adjustment to the income based on geographic location, so an itinerant programmer settling in, say, the bay area would have to receive a larger basic income to make ends meet than someone in the midwest.

What happens to entry level wages or internships when there's a basic income? Would employers be able to actually cut the wages for the lowest-tier employees since the cost of living in some areas is consuming the majority of their salaries? like if I'm paying my new hires $100k (when they'd make half that in other parts of the country) only because rent is catastrophically high, would I be able to pay them $50k if there was a basic income if I screw around with the numbers?

who knows man wld be interesting to see and ultimately maybe no one wld care cause they know they cld always just go live in a yurt and play video games

this is a long time coming. thomas paine: "A one-time stipend of 15 pounds sterling would be paid to each citizen upon attaining age 21, to give them a start in life."

nixon talked abt doing basic income

tbh i'd probably go back to being a musician, something i enjoy but have never been able to balance against a full-time day job. i could live in a yurt too if that becomes compulsory

i love the tent life

i would probably have a long list of fun, ambitious projects that i would like to do and then either end up working all the time anyway at some dumb job or stream myself playing japanese srpgs for 14 hours a day

basically no matter what happens i will be making spreadsheets whether its for work or to track stat progression in tierinu ni soma: radiant angel saga

I would work part time and learn the trumpet and french and get a dog and take it for lots of walks and cook more labour intensive food

not so sure about this since everyone who came from money i've ever met is harder working, smarter, with better taste and generally more deserving of the best opportunities than everyone else. UBI might be unfair to them. what if they stopped being so productive and making life better for the rest of us? it could spell disaster

they can still be productive its ok with me

if there's one thing I can't stand, it's the undeserving poor ruining the lives of the hard working inheritors of wealth

if it weren't for the hard working inheritors of wealth everything would fall apart. let's make sure they stay protected and comfortable

i love the tent life

― lag∞n, Friday, January 29, 2016 12:21 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pvmic

the 'will people still work?' concern is kind of silly for at least a couple reasons.

1. if everyone just wanted a subsistence/hair-above poverty line income and the desire to work cuts off at that level more people would, like, only work enough to achieve that income. the vast majority of people want considerably more money than that. people want swimming pools in their backyards, they want to travel, they want to spend money on their stupid kids' hobbies. they also just want to be middle class because it gives them a sense of validation. since the middle-middle and upper-middle class would be net-paying into the UBI, they would have to work even more to achieve the same status.

2. giving people money for nothing sounds bad relative to the hypothetical of not giving anyone any money for nothing. but that's not what we currently we have. the current system is getting money if you earn nothing, and then we take it away pretty quickly once you start earning money. that actually has a worse anti-work incentive than UBI, where no one takes away your money if you work more. that's why UBI is popular on the right; one of the first American advocates was Milton Friedman (although iirc the welfare system is much less bad in this regard than it was in his time).

also, the people who do choose to work less will be better off; they're the people who hate work so much the only reason they were previously working was to not die. people who want to earn more than subsistence but couldn't find work won't suddenly not want to work, they'll just have more money during the periods when they're not working.

btw if anyone is not too spooked by the work of 'wildly ideological' economist, this is a good paper that compares Earned Income Tax Credit (poor people pay negative taxes on their labour income) with a UBI (he calls it Negative Income Tax but they're virtually identical) and how they are effective depending on the behavioural response to transfers/taxes. if it helps, it is written by a prof who is French, teaches at Berkeley, and who co-authored papers with Piketty saying that the top marginal tax rate in the US should be 70%. it gets a bit technical but the first five pages give the main idea and have no math.

http://www.uib.cat/depart/deaweb/personal/profesores/personalpages/hdeeasp9/workingpapers/bibliosecpub/SaezQJE.pdf

another fanciful labour market policy that i have been thinking about recently is to give UI to workers who quit their jobs: http://democracyjournal.org/arguments/quitters-prosper/

good post flopson :)

bad post flopson :)

oh shut up

btw, a previous Minimum Income experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

[consumes politics, thinks its science, pats self on back]

this is also intuitively appealing to the right because a basic minimal commitment to their fellow citizens not being dead and homeless requires minimal state architecture to implement, and would create tier of hateful people who admit no desire to work, a sort of elective caste of vocational losers who elect not to be economic agents, they could be disparaged as flatliners or basics or whatever

that dutch city trialling basic income, utrecht i think, claimed that social security admin costs are 18% of the total expenditure of the program

flopson, I'd appreciate yr takes on subsidy programs/grants and how those are diminishing (but still exist) in Canada, especially compared to the US

i hung out w/a couple canadians in montreal who were taking advantage of the french learning program. from my understanding, quebec will basically subsidize your living in quebec for a short period as long as you attend the french language program in the hopes of retaining your residence. pretty good deal, imo

basic income is literally the worst nightmare of the right

the american right, sure

xp lagoon- you think you can come closer to the truth about best way to raise income of poor people by, what, ignoring research on it and just saying 'unions lol'?

1. if everyone just wanted a subsistence/hair-above poverty line income and the desire to work cuts off at that level more people would, like, only work enough to achieve that income. the vast majority of people want considerably more money than that. people want swimming pools in their backyards, they want to travel, they want to spend money on their stupid kids' hobbies. they also just want to be middle class because it gives them a sense of validation. since the middle-middle and upper-middle class would be net-paying into the UBI, they would have to work even more to achieve the same status.

this is all based on the idea that people have infinite consumption wants / that there aren't alternate ways for people to achieve status. it's a pretty narrow view of history.

doesn't have to be infinite, just has to be > subsistence

anyway basic income is a good aspiration, and has to remain so due to reality

clarity and intuitive appeal is exactly why basic income is much better as a teleology than whatever expanded scheme of tax credits etc

flopson earlier was arguing how basic income would be implemented in america in 2016, which is not really any less pointless than arguing about whichever third way subsidy program that also will not happen in foreseeable future would be better

the US does have an earned income tax credit! it helps a little

lagoon- you think you can come closer to the truth about best way to raise income of poor people by, what, ignoring research on it and just saying 'unions lol'?

― flopson, Friday, January 29, 2016 4:07 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

acknowledging that whats happening is a political/ideological struggle wld be much more enlightening that yr prosumer totemic relationship to research is

or you cld continue read the economist like its a text book, a tragic customer of sophistry

flopson, I'd appreciate yr takes on subsidy programs/grants and how those are diminishing (but still exist) in Canada, especially compared to the US

i hung out w/a couple canadians in montreal who were taking advantage of the french learning program. from my understanding, quebec will basically subsidize your living in quebec for a short period as long as you attend the french language program in the hopes of retaining your residence. pretty good deal, imo

― μpright mammal (mh), Friday, January 29, 2016 4:04 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't know much about it. a few friends have done the get payed to go to french class thing and some artists i know make use of the grants. the music grants tend to go to people who make really bad music with notable exceptions

actually, that's an interesting post, flopson. ignore lagoon and his twitter hot takes

lol saying "twitter hot takes" while throwing "idiot" around

cant u guys make a pretend economist thread or something

figure i'd speak the language of yr trbe

dont try to act too smart

i'm just always kind of amazed by this outpouring of united states economic talk and am thinking you are a really studied dude and then i hang in mtl and think about how it's such an outlier when it comes to cities of that critical mass that are affordable and think maybe you have figured out how to game the system somehow

teach me yr flopways

the united states is economics

we're so much more, we have some nice bars

for all the talk of craft beer, you really can drink a lot cheaply

acknowledging that whats happening is a political/ideological struggle wld be much more enlightening that yr prosumer totemic relationship to research is

or you cld continue read the economist like its a text book, a tragic customer of sophistry

― lag∞n, Friday, January 29, 2016 4:11 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://yuq.me/achievements/01/116/SqoYFcH0hf.jpg

i've long know ilx overall was but i genuinely never suspected you were this corny. as someone who admires you a lot it's kind of eye-opening tbh

my serious answer to this patronizing admonition (tragic consumer of sophistry lmao) is that there are political/ideological and non-political/ideological parts to poverty/income inequality/teh struggle. i think partisan leftists tend to ignore the non-political ideological parts and yeah for sure a lot of economists and technocrats ignore the political/ideological parts. i try to be open minded and read both critically because i care and am very interested by this stuff and always have been

Most economists and technocrats are heavily invested in and committed to the neoliberal hegemony, that's how they got to be technocrats.

hence my skepticism of the ycombinator ppl even muttering the words "basic income," they are very idealistic in that they think they can address any problem from the bay area/cloud, but they tend to see only the things that exist in their sphere as problems

there's always an angle

When is Bnad going to come back and talk about West Berlin?

flopson you do not at all seem to be placing the ecnommics you are citing within any ideological context, and in fact seem completely unaware that yr views align perfectly with certain ideology, if you werent all i am the first person to ever look at a chart about it it wld be easier to take

i meanyou realize that theres tons of research that indicates that the decline in unions are a huge part of the decline of the middle class right, its just not the stuff you like

tim o'reilly's response and editing of that paul graham essay isn't perfect but it gets at the core of the way tech figureheads word things -- any time problems with economics or labor are brought up when it comes to income inequality they instantly think it's either an indictment of their wealth or a call to action for them to personally weigh in on the problem

it's like the classic relationship stereotype where one partner comes home from work and lays out the issues of the day and their significant other, instead of being a sympathetic ear, thinks they need to break down the problems through conversation and address them all personally. maybe it's time for them to be supportive

Most economists and technocrats are heavily invested in and committed to the neoliberal hegemony, that's how they got to be technocrats.

― petulant dick master (silby), Friday, January 29, 2016 4:21 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

many are for sure and large parts of it still have that culture. but krugman and stiglitz are prob the most prominent public-facing economist, so that's good i guess. and imo the neoliberal consensus within the profession is cracking. there's also been a huge tendency towards empirical and away from theoretical work within the profession, which has allowed a lot of smart leftists to rise to the top of the profession (people like Suresh Naidu or Arin Dube, whose minimum wage research is a huge push behind the current wage of increases)

do public-facing economists have much actual sway on the market

imo the most influential economist in the US is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chair_of_the_Federal_Reserve

i appreciate flopson in this thread (which may be more damning than lag∞n's condemnation). tbh i don't even really get a sense of lag∞n's objection to this discourse except "lol economist" (?) and "unions" (ok)

I mean, I like pointing to Krugman articles and acting like he's being listened to by heads of industry but uhhh remember Alan Greenspan?

isn't the entire idea behind basic income that you get to keep capitalism/neoliberalism and just have a comprehensive and robust safety net?

i appreciate flopson in this thread (which may be more damning than lag∞n's condemnation). tbh i don't even really get a sense of lag∞n's objection to this discourse except "lol economist" (?) and "unions" (ok)

― Mordy, Friday, January 29, 2016 4:36 PM (6 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes the ultimate lol chart v lol unions battle of 2016 great contribution mordy

you're lashing out but i'm not your enemy lag∞n. look within.

the Fed chairperson is probably the 3rd most powerful person in DC, so yeah

omg what is with this thread and lo qual passive aggression u guys r so bad at it

btw my earlier point about their being an upper-bound for promotions in union-led workforces (with management being non-union) applies in the corporate world, too. since i've been a wage slave post-college, the number of people in management who started at the entry level (most of whom are still college-educated in my industry) who worked their way into upper management has shrunk, to be replaced by people who started in business management and worked upward

isn't the entire idea behind basic income that you get to keep capitalism/neoliberalism and just have a comprehensive and robust safety net?

I mean that's a possible idea but not a very ambitious one. The authors of Inventing the Future, a provocative book I just read/am in love with, advocate the basic income as a platform for a counterhegemonic left to pursue politically. Like the neoliberal consensus and austerity politics are premised on the artificial maintenance of scarcity. Basic income is a post-scarcity policy.

the government could create the money to give to people as a basic income for free but chooses not to because of the ideological dominance of neoliberal austerity.

I don't disagree but even then it's an outgrowth of capitalism. It doesn't entail nationalizing any industries and there's a clear precedence for it already in welfare. wasn't this marx' theory of history? technology cures scarcity, it becomes more profitable for capitalism to feed ppl for free than to charge them and it ushers in the end of history?

yeah while the initial pitch wld be keep everything the same just give everyone money one has to think that it wld end up being a pretty socially transformative thing

things dont have to be socailism to be radical

i think it's valuable for this reason tho - zizek claimed "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism" so this allows for radical change w/out forcing ppl to imagine the impossible

nb i agree 100% that it's a radical and fantastic idea and i'm in favor 👍

It's probably a mistake to imagine that the end of history has happened or is imminent. People have been wrong about that repeatedly.

history is... constantly ending... think abt it

just a continuous, unending now... history's ended.. war to win all wars

the technocratic paper of record examines the silicon valley-basic income connection http://www.vox.com/2016/1/28/10860830/y-combinator-basic-income

other hypothesis: ppl figure out how to get paid under the table more easily, cash transactions flourish

i love cash tbh feels good to hold

cold, hard, stinky cash

its good

dean baker:

First, the robots taking all the jobs story is almost absurd on its face. How fast do we think productivity will grow that demand and reduced hours cannot keep pace? Productivity grew at a 3.0 percent annual rate from 1947 to 1973. We saw rapid growth in pay and living standards and very low rates of unemployment. Do we think the story would have looked worse if annual productivity growth was 4.0 percent?

It is almost impossible to imagine a story where productivity growth suddenly jumps from its current rate of less than 1.0 percent annually to a pace so rapid that we are losing jobs left and right due to improvements in technology. It is possible to tell a story where the Fed raises interest rates to slow the economy and job creation even as technology is displacing more and more workers.

That is a plausible story given that we have had several members of the Fed’s Open Market Committee that sets interest rates who have been worried about hyper-inflation. But the problem in that case is crazy-bad Fed policy, not robots taking jobs. And, we do the country a horrible disservice if we imply that the problem is somehow technology rather than the people running the Fed.

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/cheap-thoughts-on-productivity-growth

Still have no idea the difference btwn this and yknow adequate unemployment benefits

About 10k/annum to you and me.

Looking at the green party's policy document and it's more like 5k. Great, the magical unicorn that no-one has promised me is already failing to live up to expectations.
https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/Policy%20files/Basic%20Income%20Consultation%20Paper.pdf

shd be owgg

lol shd be pegged to just above the poverty line imo eliminate poverty altogether

otm

you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get unemployment benefits and the state workers reviewing crap are way overworked. likely to get some notice a year after you stopped collecting benefits related to some arcane piece of paper they think you didn't mail in triplicate

just gimmie the cash! damn

if we make it too easy for people to survive, will there still be any exceptionalism in america? will excellence itself become extinct, like hereditary aristocracy?

do we have that much exceptionalism now? how many people are working a job they're exceptional at rather than the first one they were offered when they needed to pay rent?

doesnt matter america has fulfilled its destiny of inventing the internet now its time to kick back in ones government issue yurt and game

I imagine that a universal basic income for adults would fuel a boom in additional housing units, as more young adults can afford to live on their own. Also could spark increased migration to small towns, where cost of living is cheap, but well-paid jobs are few.

yeah my yurt is definitely gonna be in the middle of nowhere in northern new england or the upper midwest i've got this planned out already

feel like u might want to think about somewhere a lil more temperate

i mean i know mongolians live in them in extreme cold but those are hardy folk

no its ok climate change will make those places good by the time this all enacts

ya good point

i heard of this again recently, paraphrasing: proposing a basic income non taxable: people would be free to go out there and add to their basic situation to improve their situation if they swing that way. groovy!

wait this is not a drunk chat? ok.

I imagine that a universal basic income for adults would fuel a boom in additional housing units, as more young adults can afford to live on their own. Also could spark increased migration to small towns, where cost of living is cheap, but well-paid jobs are few.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Saturday, 30 January 2016 21:05 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

From a country with rent supplement and social welfare payments where there exists great disparity in rents within very short distances, this has not been the experience. People on these benefits do not move to less popular areas for cheaper rent.

you could see towns competing for the new tax base, offering free wifi or something, dog parks. not totally out of the imagination. i know we're trying to set up free wifi here

https://medium.com/@morganwarstler/guaranteed-income-choose-your-boss-1d068ac5a205#.ttqiaqsml

feel like you guys would hate this stuff cause it's a bit too tech-posi but i find this kind of speculative thinking up different welfare systems stuff interesting at the very least

choose yr own bossventure

something like a quarter of all impoverished people in this country are disabled and many other have other things that make it difficult for them to work like responsibilities caring for disabled relatives

not to mention that one of the really attractive things about basic income is its simplicity it removes the job of interacting with bureaucracy

lmao k

Using Paypal and an OPEN SOURCE MASHUP of Monster.com and eBay, the US govt. should block grant / waiver states (likely Texas first) to establish a Guaranteed Income, wage subsidy welfare system.

yeah you would still have to have disability

this is not even getting into the whole liberation from coercive capitalism aspect which is kinda the best part, instead its just the government guaranteeing everyone 7 dollar an hour jobs, i mean fine if youre just interested in dystopian fiction but this is a terrible terribly half assed plan

does the person who wrote this know that ppl who are able to work can generally get 7 dollar an hour jobs

except that theyre illegal in many place being below the minimum wage

Anyone who wants to work registers, receives a Paypal Debit Card, and each Friday at 5PM has their GI deposited.

still dying at the inscistance on PAYPAL

we shd go venmo imo

lol

i think the idea is there's a lot of desirable jobs that are priced out by min wage/not profitable enough for employer, so the govt subsidizes them and lets people choose. so instead of the only min wage/7$ per hour available being hellish jobs at walmart or scraping pool scum you get to do more enjoyable stuff that someone wouldn't actually pay you 7$ an hour for and the govt pays the difference

the really bad part abt $7 an hour jobs tho which btw is less than the federal minimum wage is that they pay $7 an hour, youre still gonna work yr 40 hours and have not enough to live on and have no time to say care for your child

i think a lot of ppl on various forms of welfare now make less than equiv of 7$/hr, and it goes up to 400/wk which is 10$/h

also i think the idea is by expanding the choices to low wage workers, who currently choose between mcdonalds harveyrs and burger king who all pay the same wage, you put more pressure on employers to raise wage or improve working standards etc

u cld raise the minimum wage or just give ppl money instead of giving the money to businesses

which is not even to mention that this whole scheme wld be an extremely obvious vector for fraud

u cld create an enforcement agency and pay $7 an hour

if this plan paid $15 it wld have more promise but u wld still be failing to help a lot of ppl who need it the most and failing to address the more profound underlying problems

Serious minimum wage increases ($15 and inflation indexing) are the thin end of the wedge imo, it's a pretty palatable populist message across demos that working full-time should pay you enough to survive. (Demonstrably so, it's passing in cities and by ballot initiative in lotsa places.) Get people on board with that and "not working at all should pay you and your family enough to thrive" starts seeming more attainable and attractive.

Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare

also the idea that service jobs are less vulnerable to automation is demonstrably ludicrous, Uber is gonna be all robots within a decade and I don't know why every McDonald's isn't taking orders exclusively on iPads already.

Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare

― karla jay vespers, Friday, March 4, 2016 12:06 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare
Uber for Welfare

Prob should post on the AI thread too...

https://medium.com/basic-income/deep-learning-is-going-to-teach-us-all-the-lesson-of-our-lives-jobs-are-for-machines-7c6442e37a49

Very simply, think of Go as Super Ultra Mega Chess.

computers still cant be poker haha idiots

This article was written on a crowdfunded monthly basic income. If you found value in this article, you can support it along with all my advocacy for basic income with a monthly patron pledge of $1+.

LOL

what do you guys think of the idea of making basic income a loan (albeit one that is never expected to be paid back, but if you hit the lotto or something, people will look at you weird if you don't)?

don't really see why that's necessary but if it helps it to happen sooner by being framed that way then sure whatever

if you hit the lotto you'll start net paying into BI fund with your taxes

i think framing it as a loan makes it easier for people with means to forego it -- thinking of it as a free money kind of makes you automatically a chump for not taking it.

idk about loans but all welfare can be framed as insurance for unborn babies

Anyone with sufficient means would pay the whole value of basic income back in taxes. Like a negative income tax is one bandied-about way of implementing a basic income.

Why not have them pay that whole value in taxes as a given, but not take the distribution if they don't need it?

Part of the strategic value in the Basic Income agenda is its universality. Anyone who works for a living could find themselves un- or under-employed any given year, or want to take unpaid leave, or whatever. Even if someone with a $250,000 annual income would pay the whole value of a $35,000 Basic Income in income tax, they should get their check on the 1st of each month like everyone else. Anyone who doesn't have to work for a living won't really care how it's structured.

Universality would help lessen the stigma as well

wouldn't universality be satisfied by it (the loan) being available to anyone and everyone? wouldn't there be less stigma as a loan (vs what would perceived to be a handout)?

no

i dunno, i always get a little twinge of anxiety when getting free samples at costco.

its extremely essential to the whole concept that everyone just get a check, these are the type of programs that succeed in the usa, im saying this as if this is something that has any chance of happening in the near future

There are several convincing arguments that a simple check cut to every citizen of the United States in the wake of the financial crisis would have been far far more effective than QE at stimulating the economy

I don't know about the US but in Germany you could start paying every adult EUR 1000 a month *right now*, without raising any taxes, by dismantling the evaluation bureaucracy for the unemployed (Hartz IV), which is broken anyway. But, everyone seems to believe that people would quit their job immediately if you gave them free money. And by "everyone" I mean bullheaded rural protestant fundamentalists.

oh u have those too?

somehow tying the arguments for UBI to the inevitable robot takeover of all work just seems to taint it with even extra fringiness. I may have to start distancing myself if the techno-utopians start seriously adopting basic income as a plank. it's like when frat boys started liking techno

no one tell tom abt edm

'robots/AIs taking our jobs' is a dumb or at least overhyped reason to be pro-UBI imo however some degree collective economic anxiety is a necessary condition for it being implemented politically. welfare is unpopular because people who pay into it don't see themselves as ever potentially being beneficiaries. the middle and upper middle classes who will pay for it need to feel that they may actually someday need it, so it becomes like insurance. or we lift the wreath of false consciousness and shed all individualism, whichever comes first

imo robots taking jobs is untrue in the sense that machines have been taking jobs for ~150 years and there have always been new jobs for people to do, but robots taking jobs is true in the sense that they disrupt stable jobs and toss ppl out mid career into an uncertain world where they are often poorer than they were before, if robots started taking jobs faster than ever before then it really cld add up to some sort of calamity even if its not the end of work

yeah like obviously the computer revolution and automation in manufacturing displaced a lot of people, but didn't create enough widespread economic anxiety for a mass popular movement for universal social insurance. the next automation wave would have to an order of magnitude larger, and technology-wise they are really far away from getting robots to do the stuff people in rich countries do now. also part of me wonders like, if they just hadn't named it Machine Learning, would people be so freaked out? it conjurs the image of a machine that actually learns stuff when it's just clever statistics

werent you arguing that the majority of 'the stuff ppl in rich countries do now' is economically unnecessary garbage? i mean theres a whole host of automation that hasnt happened not because its technologically impossible but because its not economically (or sometimes in the case of high-prestige white collar work culturally) practical. i mean i think the real fear for workers shouldnt be machines getting smarter, its machines getting cheaper

machines getting sexier imo

haha i read that post and remembered there was a spike jonze (?) movie about a guy that wanted to fuck his iphone and just started laughing out loud. the future man, crazy

they don't know how to make a robot that can fold a t-shirt in less than 36 hours or walk up a flight of stairs or cut hair and those problems are considered exponentially more complicated than getting a computer to add two numbers together or to repeatedly insert identical pieces of metal into each other. humans just come pre-programmed to know how to do these things (thx God!) but even our genius engineers don't know how to teach a robot how to do it

i mean there's no point for us to speculate on the future of technology except that it's amusing but in terms of automation we've already picked a lot of the low-hanging fruit and the next automation revolution is far away, not necessarily in terms of years but like conceptually, computationally. best hope for UBI is economic stagnation not technological singularity IMO

tbh maybe the outsourcing/min-maxing of efficiency will take place in the government someday and we'll outsource taxes/welfare processing to a northern european company that just institutes it for us

xpost

Actually there have been a string of tech breakthroughs in the past three years meaning that all the t-shirt-folding/truckdriving jobs are gonna be wiped out in the next 15. Like: you're right about this set of qualitatively different automation problems, but it just so happens that many of those nuts finally got cracked in the past 24 mos or so.

all future productivity gains will be offset by ppl spending more time on facebook, its defacto basic income only you have to goto a place called "a job" everyday, once there u go on facebook

werent you arguing that the majority of 'the stuff ppl in rich countries do now' is economically unnecessary garbage? i mean theres a whole host of automation that hasnt happened not because its technologically impossible but because its not economically (or sometimes in the case of high-prestige white collar work culturally) practical. i mean i think the real fear for workers shouldnt be machines getting smarter, its machines getting cheaper

― extremely online (Lamp), Thursday, March 17, 2016 11:50 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

can't remember when the last time we talked about this stuff was but probably before i had a white collar corporate job. i do think if the CEOs were badass enough they could make a big investment in labor-saving technology and have my whole dept run by like 5 people with PhDs instead of 100 people with BComs punching away at excel spreadsheets with their two index fingers.

reminds me of when i was a kid watching back to the future ii, there's this scene where the doc has built a rube goldberg style contraption with like conveyor belts and springboards that cooks him breakfast. i asked my dad why we don't have technology like that yet, and he said we could if we wanted to it's just stupid to build a machine to make you breakfast because it's easy to make breakfast, which seemed really deep and wise to me at the time

that was back to the future the original

ive heard this theory that many white collar workers are just larping their jobs but idk corporations love to fire ppl if they cld get away with it they prob wld

xp actually i think it was part three when they're in the wild west

Actually there have been a string of tech breakthroughs in the past three years meaning that all the t-shirt-folding/truckdriving jobs are gonna be wiped out in the next 15. Like: you're right about this set of qualitatively different automation problems, but it just so happens that many of those nuts finally got cracked in the past 24 mos or so.

― sean gramophone, Thursday, March 17, 2016 12:11 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cool if true (link?) but i feel like you could have read an article like this every 6 months in WiReD for the past 20 years, just easy for journalists to hyberbolate about this stuff and obvs we eat it up

ive heard this theory that many white collar workers are just larping their jobs but idk corporations love to fire ppl if they cld get away with it they prob wld

― lag∞n, Thursday, March 17, 2016 12:19 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah david graeber 'bullshit jobs' is the one that gets cited. i mean, the people i work with are def working their butts and creating value (well other than me who is posting about this to ilx LOL) it's more like could the company make a big investment to replace them with a combo of smarter ppl + machines/computers? personally i think yes but then you could counter with: then why didn't they, if it would increase their profits? and idk what to say to that

there are only so many smarter ppl and theyre extremely hard to identity

v true

ive heard this theory that many many white collar workers are just larping their jobs

for 5 years i have edited a weekly video series where entrepeneurs and CEOs give speeches to business students and im convinced upper management spends most of their time justifying their salaries. i'm sure they are "producing value" in the abstract or fiscal sense but yeah they mostly produce entertainment for their financial peers.

everyone wants a slice of the pie is why things aren't 100% automated

ive heard this theory that many white collar workers are just larping their jobs but idk corporations love to fire ppl if they cld get away with it they prob wld

its not actually that easy to fire lots of people! i probably have a particularly jaundiced view of this because finding inefficiencies in back office processes was my job for awhile but theres just insane amounts of unnecessary labor happening in firms. stuff like loan-processing or insurance claims or w/e - lots of ppl employed doing not very productive work that are deeply entrenched and hard to fire. like i can think of entire departments i wouldve just fired that firms kept for various politcal/cultural reasons

I think a lot of white collar jobs tend towards significant stretches of larping in between brief periods of solving actually difficult problems and creating value / avoiding disaster / minimizing disruption. the problem is from an organization's macro view of itself it's very, very difficult to figure out which is which or which are the right kind of educated people you need at what time.

a comparison could probably be made to modern air travel i.e. you got a three person crew, who knows which one or two of those are totally necessary or even if they ever will be on like 99% of flights, and then one day boom Qantas Flight 32

The tipping point for automation comes when the capital cost required to automate a process is obviously cheaper than the operational cost of paying cheap labor to do it. The movement to increase the minimum wage is part of the post-work platform because labor must become more expensive to drive increased automation.

Like there are onion-picking combines but migrant workers still pick onions because plenty of farmers can't or don't want to blow capital on it. (I bet mh has better anecdata about this sort of thing than I do.)

but yes there are also huge amounts of legacy back office processes like Lamp says, and they really are almost impossible to get rid of unless you outsource the whole thing, and even then you've probably just hired somebody else's back office because nobody is interested in blowing a bunch of capital on a massive SAP / Oracle IT consultancy smorgasbord that is relatively high-risk and low-reward

that's the other reason I don't believe in this AI gone take my jawb silliness, the investment would be huge and the reward could actually end up being very low if you still need minders to keep the system "learning" the right things and doing error correction in exigencies. Everybody's seen The Desk Set, come on

Even the deepmind guy in his interview with Verge admitted the only reason the UK NHS was engaging their help was because they were doing it for free

what silby said

agriculture and mass production of food is such a weird thing when it comes down to labor, automation, and consumption. things are definitely weighted toward min/maxing the amount of easily harvestable biomass per acre, to the point where peak production years have definitely led to the push for alternative uses. bioplastics are definitely a big thing, might be bigger if the economy ever shifts from being petroleum-based.

the automation of white collar jobs discussion is interesting i guess, but those will be the last jobs to be automated. the more pressing concerns are things that could plausibly be automated within 10 years. like, there are 3.5 million truck drivers in the US. i know this is a very anti-AI crowd but you have to have your head in the sand if you don't think self-driving vehicles are coming at some point. not to mention all the service industry people, healthcare receptionists (though i'm biased against them because some of the most enraging experiences i've ever had have involved healthcare receptionists in nyc, so fuck 'em imo), on and on. technology has always displaced jobs to some degree, and people have found other jobs, sure. but the scale of this might be kind of unprecedented. anyway there are interesting arguments on both sides but to dismiss the whole AI/basic income thing as silly is really...silly. if something so huge has evem a small chance of occurring, it's just common sense to consider the scenarios, and i'd say this has more than a small chance of occurring.

Yeah it's almost blatantly obvious that Uber's strategy is to bide its time fighting off employment regulation until it can fire all its drivers and have robots pick people up.

The movement to increase the minimum wage is part of the post-work platform because labor must become more expensive to drive increased automation.

― petulant dick master (silby), Thursday, 17 March 2016 16:36 (7 minutes ago) Permalink

i don't like this way of thinking, too accelerationist or whatever you call it. pt of minimum wage should be to give low wage workers more money imo

the unequal global distribution of large-scale farming and the eventual leveling of that field is going to be huge over the next couple decades. for better or worse, the meat consumption is on the rise in china's growing economy and they harvested as much corn as north america last year.

maize is a staple in mexico/central america and since it's a direct-to-mouth thing and not a feedstock, it's still fairly low yield. people are starting to get into hybrid maize in mexico, which is like... 1930s technology

no i said it first, give me the credit. i mean i think what really crystallized this for me was the idea that there are mostly automated factories sitting idle in california because its just cheaper for a subcontractor in china to hire a bunch of prisoners and migrant workers from the interior to make iphones. people are cheap af. theres lots of us.

but yeah its also incredibly disruptive for firms to just fire a bunch of ppl. even w/private equity its rare to just gut entire workforces, even when its probably justifiable. (uh, economically justifiable). what i think is interesting is that firms and managers realize this and a large part of the reason that hiring is slow is because these jobs are just being waited out. its easier to just not replace ppl or transfer them to other roles and slowly automate than do it all at once. in a way i think this is worse for workers bcuz the process is mostly invisible, or exists in a way that generates anxiety but not political or social pressure to change the conversation abt work.

xps Well, yeah, it's both. I mean my premise here is that work is bad, the neoliberal consensus was based on convincing everyone that work is good, or at least obligatory. We can improve material circumstances now by giving people more money for the work they're doing, we can improve material circumstances in the long run by breaking the connection between laboring and thriving.

haha i was distracted by the high-value work i do at my prestigious professional-class job so theres a bunch of xps

currently doing knowledge work

seems paradoxical how cheap labor is both an enemy to the left (chinese cheap labor stealing jobs! industries moving to the southern states where minimum wages are low! exploitation!) yet at the same time the main thing keeping the automation nightmare from happening, and also that in the US cheap laborers are not a left voting bloc (since nixon)

Automation "nightmare?" Why do you like working so much?

for 5 years i have edited a weekly video series where entrepeneurs and CEOs give speeches to business students and im convinced upper management spends most of their time justifying their salaries. i'm sure they are "producing value" in the abstract or fiscal sense but yeah they mostly produce entertainment for their financial peers.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, March 17, 2016 12:30 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

upper management def exists in some altered reality demonstration of dominance but they represent such a small slice of the workforce and arent really representative

xxp depends on how you define cheap and which labor, but basically, yes. that's part of what's driving weirdness in the current election cycle, with trade and ppl demanding great american factory jobs

Yeah it's almost blatantly obvious that Uber's strategy is to bide its time fighting off employment regulation until it can fire all its drivers and have robots pick people up.

― petulant dick master (silby), Thursday, March 17, 2016 12:46 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one good thing abt driverless happening way slower than the industry wld like is hopefully uber will go out of business first

I want driverless cars now. Commuting sucks.

yeah that will be a truly beneficial technology, not any time soon tho

taking an app car will be so cheap too ~75% of yr current uber/lyft/et al fare goes to the driver (big chunk of that obvs vehicle maintenance/gas/etc tho)

i think the big hurdle with driverless cars is getting the car to recognize things that have changed in the environment, like a jaywalking pedestrian or a closed lane or a tree that fell. they seem to have got it p down in extremely controlled environments

They are driving all over the place here in the valley, with only one driverless car-caused accident so far.

they are driving with people who can take over if anything weird happens

the technology is pretty useless until it can reliably drive someone who cant drive

Well, even the limited stuff like what Tesla has already (drives itself on the freeway) is pretty sweet. I just don't want to spend two hours every day with my foot hovering over the pedals in stop-and-go traffic.

yeah thats good for sure but the holy grail is automated taxi service

and all the lil problems like heavy rain or figuring out where to park to let someone out or dealing with a temporary stop light are very difficult to solve, i suspect that the current map based approach just will never work

clothes folding now takes robots only 5-10 minutes!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/laundry-folding-robot-folds-laundry-thank-you-japan-1.3263516

xp yup

i want the laundry bot

the technology is pretty useless until it can reliably drive someone who cant drive

By the time it's perfected we'll all be heads in jars, Futurama style.

we will be uploaded to facebook

I just don't want to spend two hours every day with my foot hovering over the pedals in stop-and-go traffic.

Move closer to work.

Google just put BD up for sale fwiw

walk up a flight of stairs

― flopson, Thursday, 17 March 2016 16:03 (20 minutes ago) Permalink

i was under the impression that asimo was able to ascend and descend a full flight of stairs

I like this piece at LGM that just went up

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/03/capital-mobility-and-trumpism

And while people may support dreamy ideas like Universal Basic Income or more politically possible ideas that would help around the margins like an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, none of these things are happening now while all the manufacturing jobs are in fact disappearing. And whether that is because of capital mobility or it is because automation, we have zero concrete plans on what to do with millions of working class people. At best, we might give slight subsidies to retraining programs for careers that pay less and may not have a future anyway. At worst, we start drug testing for people who get on public assistance or slash those programs to nothing anyway.

...When you give working Americans no good options, we might think they would turn to socialism. And a few have, as the Sanders campaigns demonstrates. But without widespread leftist organizing in working-class communities, which in working-class white communities largely does not exist, the appeal of racial and class prejudice added to the appeal of seeing someone tell off the forces that have doomed them to stagnation and poverty, that’s very powerful. That’s the Trump voter.

UBI isn't going to work if there are no dignified jobs for people to do even if they don't "need" to do them. And we're never going to get anything close to a basic income if we just destroy the middle class and let the resentment fester.

i don't understand how restricted capital mobility is going to bring good middle class jobs back to the white working class

also it's important to remember that Trump will lose

the point I took from it is that even if we had any options to legislate UBI into existence it doesn't solve for having literally nothing to do all day

im hella in favor of guaranteed public jobs programs

ppl can still have jobs if they want with basic income, or just live in a yurt <<< smart ppl

but what abt when ppl want a sick job, having copious yurt experience is not going to look good meanwhile "i buried and dug up gold for the us govt" is gonna be like wow u have some great experience with the shiny metal gold u r hired

the yurt economy is gonna be huge

more like the hurt economy is gonna be yuge because ppl wont have meaningful work opportunities

the butthurt belt

i mean in all seriousness basic income "solves for having something to do all day" much better than out current system or a guaranteed work scenario cause it allows greater flexibility, u cn do things that dont pay or things that dont pay that much or work on things that will give u the experience for yr career or just play video games in a yurt, rather than working in an amazon warehouse or doing deadend government ditch digging

i think we shd have both honestly

yeah not everyone is cut out for twitch streaming from inside the hurt yurt. some people want to sign up for that government jobs program, so they can look down on those other people, living off the government

guaranteed work just seems like the bad socialism to me

hmm *tents fingers*

it seems like one of those things that could demonstrate the value of the "laboratories of democracy" bullshit about state sovereignty, like, new hampshire could do guaranteed work and vermont could do straight UBI, and see how people feel after a few years

actually probably need it a lot more in Louisiana and Mississippi but you know

One of the intended outcomes of a UBI would be to encourage people to exit the labor force. People who don't feel good when they aren't working will likely be able to take some jobs vacated by people who adopt the yurt lifestyle. But like one of the talking points in Inventing the Future is that diminishment of the (Protestant) work ethic is important to the goal of emancipating people from toil.

In previous basic income experiments, some people did quit working, and that's a desirable outcome imo. "Dignified jobs" is a policy goal that presupposes working is necessary for a dignified life, and I really don't think it is.

we could always socialize the commons -- oil, etc. -- like they do in northern europe to provide the basic income thomas paine advocated centuries back but you know freedom and jesus and all that. we also wouldn't want to trouble the comfortable positions of the winners

yes duh I mean my MAIN argument for UBI has always been that there are a lot of people working who would be better off not - for the rest of us who have to try and work with (around) them

politically and realistically though the so-called protestant work ethic (because you know those jews and catholics are just lazy) has been part of the bedrock national identity even back to colonial times so yes, GLWT, that's why any approach to achieving something like a UBI needs to be tempered with jobs programs and EITC expansion

political feasibility is so far from necessary to speculate about

on reflection it is kind of funny how I go on the AI threads to just shit all over "if it has a nonzero chance of happening then we have to consider seriously worrying about it" and come on this thread to be like "guys UBI how do we get there it could happen"

imo ubi has a much grater chance of happening than sentient computing but nether of them r prob happening anytime soon, from a practical perspective how u lay the groundwork for it to be a reality in 20 or 50 years is start to build the institutions of activism academia and so forth and i think at that stage preemptively negotiating with the system youre trying to change is counter productive and prob fatal

the point I took from it is that even if we had any options to legislate UBI into existence it doesn't solve for having literally nothing to do all day

― El Tomboto, Saturday, March 19, 2016 3:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what you do on a daily basis should be your call. it is up to each person to find meaning in their lives. purpose should not be reliant on having a job or not.

people would still create, they would still consume, they would fall in love, they would play, etc. "having literally nothing to do all day" is an capitalist-apocalyptic strawman.

also kinda interesting how ppl looove complexity

imo ubi has a much grater chance of happening than sentient computing but nether of them r prob happening anytime soon, from a practical perspective how u lay the groundwork for it to be a reality in 20 or 50 years is start to build the institutions of activism academia and so forth and i think at that stage preemptively negotiating with the system youre trying to change is counter productive and prob fatal

― lag∞n, Saturday, March 19, 2016 4:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's actually a bright side to it prob not happening for a long time which is the longer you wait the richer we get and if you hold the poverty line fixed that means it gets cheaper and cheaper to provide a UBI. even though you can make a case for UBI now, it gets easier and easier to do so as time and economic growth progresses

Don't see anyone currently considering it but i would like to see a country go full Left-Libertarian, just have the state provide public goods and a UBI, that's it. cause knkow that we can afford a generous UBI at current rates of taxation and income per capita if you swap out all cash and in-kind transfers. like in Canada for example the total value of transfers is about 15-20k per capita. but that includes everything: health care, education, pension, disability, EI. not saying i would vote for it but i'd like one country to do it just to see what happens

cause *we* know that we can afford a generous UBI

also kinda interesting how ppl looove complexity

― lag∞n, Saturday, March 19, 2016 4:48 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk if people like complexity and intentionally design complex transfer systems or if those insanely complex welfare systems you read about just kind of slowly grew over time because it's hard to remove them once they're in or something like that? it would be interesting to read about their history. but like, i don't think that LBJ or someone was like, ok so we're gonna have 126 different programs

"having literally nothing to do all day" is an capitalist-apocalyptic strawman

When the society around you sees productive work as self-actualization and you've been raised your whole life to become a "productive member of" then having literally nothing to do all day is a very real problem for people's wellness. The key part of your statement, though, is that people would still consume, and hopefully that would feed back into jobs for themselves and others (back to the whole "stimulus package would have been more successful as a series of household helicopter drops"). Acting like people are all going to just abandon literally everything they've been taught about the meaning of work because they no longer have to take a job they might hate is just as much of a strawman.

readjust income to 'actual' as opposed to 'inherited' productivity and our UBI would prolly be super-generous. americans are the hardest working suckers in the world, after all

bureaucrats don't love complexity, at all. It arises from poor communications and personalities and all the other reasons people do stupid stuff, and then it becomes entrenched. But with sufficient political will and a remarkably small amount of effort lots of complexity can be simplified in a remarkably short amount of time - just takes somebody noticing and giving a shit at the right level (i.e. the WH)

Acting like people are all going to just abandon literally everything they've been taught about the meaning of work because they no longer have to take a job they might hate is just as much of a strawman.

yes it totally is. has anyone said that "people are all going to just abandon literally everything they've been taught about the meaning of work"?

besides we are kind of already seeing it in the new internet economy. people being paid to play video games all day. people being paid to surf the internet. bloggers. content aggregators. many of these new economy jobs are effectively the things people would do all day without "work".

taking an app car will be so cheap too ~75% of yr current uber/lyft/et al fare goes to the driver (big chunk of that obvs vehicle maintenance/gas/etc tho)

― lag∞n, Thursday, March 17, 2016 5:08 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but... then uber have to own a whole fleet of robot cars, that just sit around when they're being unused. kind of changes their business model?

When the society around you sees productive work as self-actualization

hey if that's the only venue for self-actualization then that is society's problem. but that's okay, they will get used to it.

also i think paying a UBI out of labor income is kind of a hard sell cause it creates its own political opposition as well as making it more expensive per payer if people react to it by working less. would be cool if you could fund it through like a carbon tax or a land tax or something. like if you fund it through a carbon tax and people start burning less fossil fuels that's a win-win. and if you fund it through land tax, well people as a whole can't stop owning land the way they can reduce the amount they work, so the revenue is stable

v much in favor of land taxes

but... then uber have to own a whole fleet of robot cars, that just sit around when they're being unused. kind of changes their business model?

You've noticed the writing on the wall! Avis Budget Group, Toyota and Daimler AG are going to eat Uber alive because they actually already do massive fleet management. Basically every business that lives off of skimming drivers instead of renting fleets is toast.

also i agree with lagoon that guaranteed job is the bad kind of socialism. whereas the specifics of UBI are crystal clear aside from a few impt technical details (clawback rates, eligibility, what to tax, what to remove to make the money for it, etc) job guarantee is a huge mess of unanswered questions that almost inevitably releases the ghost of central planning from the box. how will the govt figure out what jobs to give people? how will it know how many jobs to provide? will people have a choice of which guaranteed job? how many choices? plus it just seems like something govts would bungle so bad to forever sour people's opinions of large scale utopian welfare systems

guaranteed jobs:
-- video game beta tester
-- bikini inspector (at an actual textile factory, get your mind out of the gutter)
-- play for the spurs when pop rests his starters

literally nothing to do all day is a very real problem for people's wellness

people have friends. they like to walk or go jogging. they like to play or watch sports. they like to make art. they like to read. they like to eat and maybe even cook food. they like to surf the internet. they like to watch movies or see a bad. they like to drink and do drugs. they have relationships. they go to birthday parties. none of these things require "productive work" if there is a guaranteed income. all of them are meaningful experience if you like them. every time i see "literally nothing to do all day" i just imagine people sitting in a dark room not moving.

maybe some people will do that. some people do that now! "productive work" hasn't solved depression.

psychologically you could argue it would be tremendously healthy for everyone to not be dependent on "productive work" for their self-actualization. but imo better to face yourself now and explore what you really want from life than just ignore that for 40+ years and defer meaning to the accruing of a paycheck. by making people confront themselves rather than giving them a comfortable yet shallow and ultimately meaningless "purpose" in life, maybe society as a whole would be a better, less paranoid, less narcissistic, more honest place to be.

No, I get it, you put words in my mouth so you can have someone dumber than you to argue with - not everybody has such an easy time self-actualizing

dude i quoted exactly what you said. im not trying to argue w you either, actually i agree with most of what you are saying here. i just really don't buy the "what will people do?" defense.

yes duh I mean my MAIN argument for UBI has always been that there are a lot of people working who would be better off not - for the rest of us who have to try and work with (around) them

― El Tomboto, Saturday, March 19, 2016 4:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

No, I get it, you put words in my mouth so you can have someone dumber than you to argue with - not everybody has such an easy time self-actualizing

― El Tomboto, Saturday, March 19, 2016 5:51 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

B-)

my genuine confusion here is that I am postulating that UBI probably needs to be part of a combo package that includes a certain amount of WPA type stimulus jobs and this is being taken as me saying that no we need to guarantee 100% employment because shitty jobs are what make people real, or some other indefensible nonsense. So I'm left to make the assumption that you've decided to characterize my position in the stupidest way possible because what's the fun in arguing with someone who agrees with you?

lol i agree with you 100%.

the only think i don't agree with you is that we are arguing.

so what did you mean by "literally nothing to do all day"?

I was trying to say there are some people, quite possibly a significant percentage of people, maybe even whole communities (like the former company towns being gutted by globalization, as in the article referenced) that aren't just going to suddenly be healthy happy places if UBI gets implemented. To some extent demand created by UBI cash will revitalize some things here and there, for sure, but I don't think it's helpful to assume that there are just natural entrepreneurs or undiscovered showbiz talents lying all over the country just wishing they had more time to work on their dreams instead of making stuff at the plant. Again, SOME people leave the workforce in UBI experiments; certainly not all, so why would we assume it's okay that in those places where almost all of the jobs are disappearing, UBI is a panacea?

I don't think it's helpful to assume that there are just natural entrepreneurs or undiscovered showbiz talents lying all over the country just wishing they had more time to work on their dreams instead of making stuff at the plant

see i strongly disagree here. i feel like this approach drastically underestimates the creative value of millions of people. for one, this is the whole reason we have the personal computer revolution in the first place. people dropped out of the standard workforce to focus on a passion project, playing with computers, which had very little practical application at the time. now they are running the world.

where by standard workforce you mean undergrad

also it's important to remember that Trump will lose

what will you give me on this?

I think probably as much as there are people who measure their happiness and worth by whether they're traditionally "gainfully" employed, there are people whose jobs are killing them who would happily stop doing them in order to raise children, look out the window, get enough sleep not to be sick all the time. And probably a lot of the people in the former category are men, because patriarchy is bad for everyone. And likewise a lot of the people in the second category might be women.

If you want to have a job so badly for your self-definition and you live in a place with no jobs, at least with UBI you won't starve to death or become homeless while deciding to either re-envision your self-worth or move.

Imagine having enough time to post in threads like this all day

It is glorious.

Although I worked a few unpaid hours this morning unfortunately, because my employer squeezes extra productivity out of me without compensation as a condition of my employment.

there are people whose jobs are killing them who would happily stop doing them in order to raise children, look out the window, get enough sleep not to be sick all the time. And probably a lot of the people in the former category are men, because patriarchy is bad for everyone. And likewise a lot of the people in the second category might be women.

― If authoritarianism is Romania's ironing board, then (in orbit), Saturday, March 19, 2016 7:07 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a really good point. domestic work has long been defined by capitalist patriarchy as not "real work" for it does not produce surplus value/capital. some socialist feminists argue the division of labor actually began with child-breeding, introducing concepts of property (child and wife being property of the husband) which are now repellent to us but have survived as law for hundreds of years and is still practiced to this day.

as traditional gender roles are challenged and society as a whole grows less patriarchal we are going to have to completely redefine work in the future, UBI or no.

Yes. The idea that "sitting at home" and "having nothing to do" are at all synonymous has got to be a function of moving all work outside the home, including devaluing childcare and domestic work and also the fact that agriculture and manufacturing are p much only done on an industrial scale in our time. For people with children, farmers/gardeners, home owners with significant upkeep responsibilities, and people who make or do things by hand, there's no idleness associated with being home.

Tbh I feel like Americans, with our mostly invented history of pioneering and our glorification of frontier self-sufficiency and blah blah whatever, should be even easier to sell on the idea of going back to making and doing as valuable and admirable!

One of the things I find most attractive about UBI is that guaranteeing some basic life needs would give ppl the time to spend caring for each other and being in community. Which is also work that capitalism erases, because it requires you to believe that caring is something you should buy.

One of the things I find most attractive about UBI is that guaranteeing some basic life needs would give ppl the time to spend caring for each other and being in community.

Ugh. I'll be at the office.

Caring for my demented dad (24/7 because he tends to get lost taking a walk, or shit himself, or both) pays EUR 123 a month. And it's the nursing care insurance that pays; you don't get unemployment benefits from the state if you don't prove you're looking for paid work. So I have a job interview for a part-time job next Friday, the same day my dad gets released from the hospital because he also has diabetes and is getting a toe removed on Wednesday.

Putting my dad in a nursing home otoh would require one signature and zero future investments, because I live in a cushy welfare state. I don't know, I'd rather have the UBI.

strangely basic income might happen as a result of us living longer and longer lives. when most people died by 30 there maybe wasn't enough time to wise up to "success" and "innovation" mostly coming from inherited privilege. but if you live long enough you see the game of musical chairs better for what it is? thus leaving you more susceptible to the logic of absolute egalitarianism? although i guess the evidence of elderly americans so often voting 'republican' kinda dispels the basis of that hope

hang on I just need to make sure EUR 123 a month wasn't a typo. What in the hell.

Mainly robots xp

"Personen mit erheblich eingeschränkter Alltagskompetenz – das sind vor allem an Demenz erkrankte Menschen – erhalten in der sogenannten Pflegestufe 0 Pflegegeld... Das Pflegegeld beträgt 123 Euro im Monat."

"People with significantly limited everyday skills - especially those suffering from dementia - are rated 'care level 0' and receive a care allowance... The allowance is 123 euros a month."

xpost

christ

i'm on some sort of UBI, i get paid 1000$ (CAD) to work on my own film projects 20 hours a week, I'm assigned a mentor who checks on that (learning a lot from that mentor). Plus it gives me time to fill in other hours with more lucrative jobs (sound recording on advertising shoots, directing some corporate videos). Since I got that program a few months ago, it gives me a base to invest in recording material and I can take the time to build a proper portfolio and network that now allows me better jobs, I'll probably even make the provincial union! Honestly, if one day I kinda make it it will be thanks to that little modest program, the idea that something like an UBI will automatically make people lazy seems a bit odd from this (lucky) perspective. Maybe i'm way off base, i don't know.

i would definitely just sit around at home and read

I had about two years off that I funded with severance/savings and some freelance stuff, and I used it to sleep, read, cook, garden, talk to people, and get deep into volunteer work with 3 different organizations. After 15 years of going full corporate and struggling to get by while ALSO never having enough personal time, it was a beautiful revelation to just be in control of my day. Also when you have TIME, you can do things on a lot less MONEY ime--my life was totally cheap except for NYC rents.

Overall it was way healthier and more humane than any other period in my life. I had perspective, I had peace, and except for financial emergencies near the end, I had a blissful time. Highly recommend! UBI! UBI! UBI!

discussion itt is more on a utopian wavelength but good longish read on how much a ubi may cost

http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2014/01/13/could-we-afford-a-universal-basic-income/

seems like the most thorough example of these i've come across so far. he calculates that at current levels of tax revenue the US could afford a UBI of just under $4.5k. wouldn't give you 'liberation from coercive capitalism' as lagoon put it upthread but would help the shit out of the working poor and low-income families, and he makes it sound like a good chunk of the middle class wouldn't be too much worse off, too

To summarize, our proposed funding for the UBI comes from these three sources:

Eliminating most existing means-tested welfare programs—Temporary Aid to Needy Families, SNAP (food stamps), the Earned Income Tax Credit everything else other than Medicare and CHIP would raise about $500 billion per year.

Eliminating middle-class tax expenditures and the personal exemption would add another $635 billion in funding

Giving Social Security beneficiaries of all ages the choice between the benefits to which they are presently entitled, or the UBI, but not both, would add about $18 billion in funding and reduce the number of UBI claimants by about 57 million.

Those three sources of funding would be sufficient to provide a UBI grant of about $4,452 per person, or 17,800 for a family of four, which is about 75 percent of the official poverty income for such a family. Who would win, and who would lose from this proposal?

The number of families and individuals who fell below today’s official poverty guidelines would decrease greatly. Healthcare programs for low-income families would be unaffected.

Replacing today’s jumble of means-tested programs with a UBI would sharply decrease marginal effective tax rates for poor and near-poor families, thereby providing enhanced work incentives. The ranks of the working poor would fall effectively to zero.

Most middle-class households would receive more from the UBI than they lose in tax benefits. No Social Security beneficiaries would suffer a loss.

Those currently receiving the smallest Social Security benefits would be able to increase their incomes by opting for the UBI.

Financing the UBI in this way would not require raising anyone’s marginal tax rates. Some middle- and upper-income households that currently have large itemized deductions could experience an increase in their average tax rates.

Let me emphasize that this is not a research paper. The numbers in this post come from official sources wherever possible, but I have not crosschecked them thoroughly for internal consistency, and in some cases, I have filled in the gaps with back-of-the-envelope estimates. Furthermore, all of the tax and expenditure estimates are static, that is, they assume no changes in earned income as a result of introducing a UBI.

the connection between UBI and arresting climate-threatening industrialism seems way too obvious for so many to ignore, no? shouldn't that always be one of the primary points, obviating whether or not "we" can "afford" it?

i don't follow

pay ppl to stay home - fewer cars on the road?

back of the envelope calculations of the number we could get to for "free" by eliminating means-tested programs and middle-class tax expenditures are useful thought experiments I guess but are already conceding pretty much the entire game to the current conventional wisdom. US GDP is like $18 trillion, we have the collective national cashflow to afford way more than $1 trillion in basic income.

Yeah, figuring out how much we could "afford" by eliminating all current "entitlements" misses the point.

what's the point?

I think the point is that in order to keep the ball rolling as jobs disappear, we will need massive wealth redistribution, not just a re-jiggering of the current allocations.

Yes but $4450 per person is nothing to sneeze at and we could do that right now by repurposing existing bureaucratic infrastructure

xp- oh, the robots thing again. zzz

can't find it now but i read some tax guy recently saying the gains from cutting red tape aren't that big, that if you removed them and put the money back into transfers it would add something like 50$ per person per year. he was also saying income testing just requires writing a few lines of code.

$4450 isn't nothing, but it's not an "income." I mean, I'm pretty out-of-touch out here in the Bay Area, but I don't think $4450 goes very far anywhere in this country.

I guess I'm fine with re-jiggering, if that makes sense (and it sounds like it does), but I wouldn't call it a UBI.

HHS poverty line in 2015 was $11,770 for a single person and each additional household member adds $4,160

the gains from cutting red tape are going to come out to $0 unless you wanted to fire a shitload of government workers as part of the plan and pretend that would actually increase effectiveness, which it wouldn't, and seems like missing the point entirely

Also most of that money comes from politically impossible stuff like ending the mortgage tax deduction and closing other middle-to-upper-middle class tax loopholes

imo that's one of the tensions in all anti-poverty/welfare programs. like, we already raise way more than enough tax $$$ to end poverty, but so much of it is holed up in exemptions & benefits needed to sweeten the deal for the middle class to get em on board in the first place. and even libs in the middle class only care so much about the poor when it comes down to it. like even nordic countries have like 5-8% child poverty rates and govt spending is like 50% of gdp

The Tax Justice Network estimates the global elite are sitting on $21–32tn of untaxed assets. Clearly, only a portion of that is owed to the US or any other nation in taxes – the highest tax bracket in the US is 39.6% of income. But consider that a small universal income of $2,000 a year to every adult in the US – enough to keep some people from missing a mortgage payment or skimping on food or medicine – would cost only around $563bn each year.

A larger income, to ensure that no American fell into absolute abject poverty – say, $12,000 a year – would cost around $3.6tn. That is a big number, but one that once again seems far more reasonable when considered through the lens of the Panama Papers and the scandal of global tax evasion. Because the truth is that we have all been robbed, systematically, by the world’s wealthiest people, for decades. They have used those stolen dollars to build yet more wealth for themselves, and all the while we have been arguing with ourselves over what to do with the leftover pennies.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/07/panama-papers-taxes-universal-basic-income-public-services

if we raised taxes, though, grover norquist might have to get a real job. we can't have that; surely, the entire western project would collapse

he could become a vape spokesman

ratchet income

Any opinions on this book?
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1989-inventing-the-future

silby mentioned it upthread iirc

It's good. Hand-waves intersectional politics as you might expect but in a way that acknowledges they know that's what they're doing and feel bad about it. It's polemical in a good way.

Just finished this, really liked it, and would strongly encourage anyone who hasn't to give it a read. Articulated a lot of the problems I felt with Occupy and contemporary leftism in general without ever condemning or really even diminishing them. Ditto electoral politics, even. I was already on board with the UBI, but it definitely convinced me that simply yearning for a return to and expansion of social democracy just isn't going to cut it. Casual googling hasn't produced much discussion; I'd be very interested to read some strong critiques.

Assorted links here, clicked a couple, one combining withering slams on their style with a lot of aca-Marxist lingo.

https://www.urbanomic.com/rocket-men-left-right-ordinary/

http://futurism.com/images/universal-basic-income-answer-automation/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/business/economy/universal-basic-income-poverty.html

i claim no expertise on any of these things, although i am interested in UBI and i don't think it's an idiotic idea. but this seems like a shitty, misleading article:

Its first hurdle is arithmetic. As Robert Greenstein of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put it, a check of $10,000 to each of 300 million Americans would cost more than $3 trillion a year.

well, yeah, but what about a check to 210 million americans a year ($2 trillion)? that's the # of americans above the age of 18. although giving $10,000 to an infant could lead to interesting results. apropos of nothing, last night I enjoyed a DIPA beer, one of the heaviest DIPA's in New York state, i believe.

Where would that money come from? It amounts to nearly all the tax revenue collected by the federal government. Nothing in the history of this country suggests Americans are ready to add that kind of burden to their current taxes. Cut it by half to $5,000? That wouldn’t even clear the poverty line. And it would still cost as much as the entire federal budget except for Social Security, Medicare, defense and interest payments.

http://i.imgur.com/L7MBjsB.jpg

the FY13 budget was about 3.5 billion. social security (808 billion), medicare (492 billion), defense (625 billion), and interest payments (221 billion) add up to $2.1 BILLION!!!! that's almost 2/3 of the budget! so gtfo with this sentence that says that cutting a $5000 check to everyone (and remember, that's 300 million everyones, not just people of working age) "would still cost as much as the entire federal budget"...except for the 2/3 of the budget you chose not to include. wtf at that. honestly that's the most of the reason i'm even making this drunken post. fuck that, and fuck whoever failed to edit this at NYT. wtf

Thinkers on the right solve the how-to-pay-for-it problem simply by defunding everything else the government provides, programs as varied as food stamps and Social Security. That, Mr. Greenstein observes, would actually increase poverty. It would redistribute wealth upward, taking money targeted to the poor and sharing it with everybody, including you and me.

As Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and onetime top economic adviser to President Obama, told me, paying a $5,000 universal basic income to the 250 million nonpoor Americans would cost about $1.3 trillion a year. “It would be hard to finance that in a way that wouldn’t burden the programs that help the poor,” he said.

cool, it's larry fucking summers. so now the choice is framed between defunding everything else (food stamps and SS), or nearly doubling taxes. (earlier in the article the only mention of the possibility of raising taxes is framed as: "Where would that money come from? It amounts to nearly all the tax revenue collected by the federal government. Nothing in the history of this country suggests Americans are ready to add that kind of burden to their current taxes."

Work, as Lawrence Katz of Harvard once pointed out, is not just what people do for a living. It is a source of status. It organizes people’s lives. It offers an opportunity for progress. None of this can be replaced by a check.

this probably isn't worth mentioning but i really hate all of this, this line of thinking. the word "worthless" to describe people is emblematic. fuck people who think this way.

How about subsidized employment? The government could subsidize jobs as varied as school repairs and fixing potholes. “This would provide employment while doing things that improve productivity and improve people’s lives,” Mr. Greenstein said.

Perhaps we could expand the earned-income tax credit, the country’s most successful antipoverty tool, which increases the earnings of low-income workers. Or take the idea pushed for years by Edmund Phelps from Columbia University: Instead of providing a subsidy to workers that phases out as their income rises, why not subsidize workers’ wages instead?

these aren't terrible ideas, but aren't they subject to the same unbreachable obstacle mentioned earlier in the article, that it would raise taxes?

anyway, as always, please school me, i don't know much about all this. but if NYT is going to trash UBI every few weeks, they should bring on someone who can make good points.

more drunk Karl Malone in this bitch imo

Paul Campos fisked this one too: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/05/bad-arguments-against-a-universal-basic-income

He calls them out for the same issue re: counting the eligible population, also blows up the nonsense about the labor force and how many people are working (hint, it is not eight out of ten people).

The NYT apparently felt the need for this piece because of UBI ideas percolating in the tech sector, which IMHO is basically the snake eating its tail of dumb economic discourse in this country

nytimes editorial pages increasingly off the rails, seemingly no basic standards of competence required for its contributors

i guess some of the numbers in that nyt piece are misleading. UBI skeptics gotta step up their game. this guy, an ecumenically polite canadian tax/welfare economist, is currently my favourite https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan. imo an actually good robust welfare state is better than UBI, but question is if that's politically realistic/sustainable

re: the nyt article, while it seems bad, it's not trivial to calculate and impossible to do in short space. there's always something you can leave out to make it seem cheaper/more expensive. i expect future pieces to be met with endless tedious rebuttals over whether prime age labor force participation is 81% of 76% and such, but that isn't really a zinger either way.

i posted some longform good faith/show-your-work efforts to calculate cost of a basic income upthread fwiw

One trouble with the actually good robust welfare state is it is means-tested, and the 1/3 or so of the US electorate that are white supremacists will never support it. UBI is in part a Trojan horse to help the most marginalized by helping everybody. I probably posted this point already but whatever.

Drunk KM OTM

and the 1/3 or so of the US electorate that are white supremacists will never support it. UBI is in part a Trojan horse to help the most marginalized by helping everybody.

yup

"this probably isn't worth mentioning but i really hate all of this, this line of thinking. the word "worthless" to describe people is emblematic. fuck people who think this way."

ok, yeah, but capitalism inherently conditions people to think this way! ubi is not simply an economic equation, but requires a radical reshaping of the structure and values of western society. so we'd better get started!

hearteningly even within capitalism it is kind of off-putting when salaried professionals talk about about the soul food of Work as if everyone in a call center or a mcd's rejoices each day to have escaped the brutalizing corruptions of leisure, and ime even those born to the hu$tle can tell

a few weeks ago in chipotle the team leader made all the frontline staff do a cheer. it was terrible for everyone in the building

tbf just guessing about that salaried professional thing because for all i know nyt economic op-eds are now tenuous piecework, so maybe they're down here building character with the rest of us

One trouble with the actually good robust welfare state is it is means-tested, and the 1/3 or so of the US electorate that are white supremacists will never support it. UBI is in part a Trojan horse to help the most marginalized by helping everybody. I probably posted this point already but whatever.

Drunk KM OTM

― Sean, let me be clear (silby), Wednesday, June 1, 2016 10:58 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and the 1/3 or so of the US electorate that are white supremacists will never support it. UBI is in part a Trojan horse to help the most marginalized by helping everybody.

yup

― de l'asshole (flopson), Wednesday, June 1, 2016 11:05 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

should add: the same white supremacists are also libertarianish/don't want to pay 15% more taxes. between a racist rock and a libertarian hard place

my grandparents, who lived most of their prime age working lives in raw dog pre-welfare capitalism, talk about work that way. but i think division of labor-driven alienation has probably increased (or polarized) since then. my parents don't like work

i believe in the 'work is good for the soul' thing to some degree, i think everyone does tbh. but i don't think that precludes sympathy for people working shitty jobs or even support for UBI. also just practically if ur trying to convince ppl of this policy that will be paid for by raise income taxes on those who do work it's probably not a good idea to be like 'and then we'll lift false consciousness and everyone will stop working!', strategically

A robust welfare system should always be preferable given the choice. UBI runs the risk of the state abrogating any responsibility to make society better. Yes, we could build cheap, good quality subsidised social housing but here is $10k now run along and find a private landlord to take half of it. Yes, we could implement universal health care free at the point of delivery but here is $10k and we'll let you decide whether to spend it on food or medicine. We may have created an environment where rewarding paid employment is a pipe dream for millions but at least we're giving them enough money to avoid dying of 19th century diseases, etc. If there is no political alternative then you can take what you get but it should be resisted where welfare systems exist, as should most ideas tech bros and the Swiss agree upon.

Leaving aside self-worth through work, which is a real thing irrespective of whether people think it should be conditioned out, one of the key issues would inevitably be social mobility. Work is a hugely flawed system for solving intergenerational poverty but it can help. Unless social change goes radically beyond the simple provison of basic necessities as a right, there would be a huge risk of entrenching social divisions even further.

Youse guyses takes on this?:

https://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income

I view UBI as a both/and plank in the post-neoliberal platform. Universal health care and the systematic redress of institutional racism are also important things to accomplish. UBI in the form of cancelling the existing US safety net and cutting everyone a check is not the point (or isn't my point, and isn't e.g. S+W's point in Inventing the Future which for better or worse is my manifesto on this topic). I view UBI as an important policy effort because mandatory participation in the market for labor is a shitty kind of freedom, and in developed countries the going rate for labor is approaching zero.

I think the ycombinator project has a good chance of setting the political momentum behind UBI back by a decade when it blows up.

That might get the tech bubble crowd to move on to more useful and practical efforts like the robust welfare system discussed above, but it also might make them flounce off and resume the usual neo-feudalist bullshit

in developed countries the going rate for labor is approaching zero.

― Sean, let me be clear (silby), Wednesday, June 1, 2016 1:53 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what?

i don't really get the experiment. what do you expect to learn from it? giving people money for a few months or even years, see if they quit their jobs, we've done that and not too much happens. but that's not really what a ubi is. it's the permanent and universal parts of it that make it interesting.

in developed countries the going rate for labor is approaching zero.

― Sean, let me be clear (silby), Wednesday, June 1, 2016 1:53 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what?

― de l'asshole (flopson), Wednesday, June 1, 2016 10:58 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like, capital is going to stop having a use for people who are new to the world of work and don't happen to have whatever the skill du jour is. Uber has a billion-dollar valuation because speculators think they can avoid getting regulated into oblivion long enough for self-driving cars to drive their labor costs down. Every fancy new factory being built in the US is heavily automated. Being "able and willing to work", to use a familiar canard, is increasingly less likely to be enough to ensure a person an autonomous, stable, and healthy life. (It never was sufficient, but it's what people seem to be talking about when they talk about the postwar period.)

It is weird that you had to explain that

my progress toward death is not going fast enough to outlast my economic independence.

Mass unemployment may be the inevitable result of market economics but it's not, in itself, inevitable. The infrastructure of the U.S. is crumbling around your ears but there is no political will to invest in large-scale public works that could bring millions into employment with the right training. An ageing population is going to require millions of carers and nurses, whether it is profitable or not. At the moment, most countries seem to be assuming that an endless supply of migrant labour will fill that gap but there is no reason why, with proper investment in education and decent rates of compensation, domestic workers couldn't meet those needs. Barring an unprecedented level of automation, people will still be required to do stuff. There needs to be a strong safety net but the idea that 'full employment' is no longer a realistic goal to fight towards doesn't seem like something to give in to.

like, capital is going to stop having a use for people who are new to the world of work and don't happen to have whatever the skill du jour is. Uber has a billion-dollar valuation because speculators think they can avoid getting regulated into oblivion long enough for self-driving cars to drive their labor costs down. Every fancy new factory being built in the US is heavily automated. Being "able and willing to work", to use a familiar canard, is increasingly less likely to be enough to ensure a person an autonomous, stable, and healthy life. (It never was sufficient, but it's what people seem to be talking about when they talk about the postwar period.)

― Sean, let me be clear (silby), Wednesday, June 1, 2016 2:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It is weird that you had to explain that

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, June 1, 2016 2:17 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's weirder to believe it imo. 200 years of technological unemployment fears being wrong doesn't give you pause?

if any of that that actually happens UBI will be a shoe-in... but in the same way marxism would have been a shoe in had wages never risen above subsistence and the profit rate tended to zero

200 years of technological unemployment fears being wrong doesn't give you pause?

not what anybody is actually talking about! Developed economies are exporting "labor" jobs in a race to the bottom and even knowledge work that has traditionally required years of formal training and education is being cost controlled by similar globalized outsourcing, by pushing temporary work visas to their very limit and by turning education systems into more and more "focused" (read: restricted) vocational gymnasiums. Technological unemployment fears are not what anybody is talking about when discussing the income inequality problem, it's the fact that working is now a subsistence activity and less and less a means to upward mobility.

There needs to be a strong safety net but the idea that 'full employment' is no longer a realistic goal to fight towards doesn't seem like something to give in to.

I don't disagree but the work opportunities you point out are seasonal-ish; there's not always a necessary demand gap for useful work that needs publicly funded intervention to solve.

a better welfare system and jobs programs are great though I'm not trying to argue with any of that

that all seems wrong. sounds like the story ppl infer that Trump supporters believe or something. i'm not really down with the style of Left nationalism, generally think more people should be given work visas and/or allowed to immigrate. i know there is a lot of pain and rancor about outsourcing but do you have any evidence that it/globalisation is causing permanent net unemployment in developed countries?

(xp times two)

imo SV libertarian types want a basic income because they think there's a finite amount of economic power in the system and more people drawing a basic income means less protest about the automation and outsourcing or well-paying jobs.

the difference between UBI and a job's current market rate would be money in the tech overlord's pocket

flopson, the net unemployed is the rural/semi-rural worker base Trump has as part of his target audience!

'some rural and semi-rural people lost their jobs' is a far cry from 'it's weird that we have to explain why wages will go to zero in the developed world'

OK, I'll give you that I didn't take "cost of labor approaching zero" literally because, uh, that would bring back all the jobs instantly, and even the robots can't compete with free

if you have some stats to prove that the middle class is doing just fine in first world economies please share

*posts utubue to built to spills perfect from now on*

so the swiss vote on sunday

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-swiss-are-about-to-vote-no-on-basic-income/

Tombot: most of the damage from trade to middle-class jobs has been done, reversing PNTR now wouldn't bring the jobs back. middle class not doing well = incomes stagnating, not falling. middle class incomes would have to fall precipitously for significant portion of the current middle class to be net-receivers of UBI money. a UBI large enough to eliminate poverty is not a middle class program because most of the middle class will pay more into it than they receive. the argument for is that you need to exploit a cognitive bias where people are happy to be getting money and don't notice that they are paying more for it, i.e, social security is popular even among rich old people who paid way more into it throughout their lives than they will ever get back.

imo SV libertarian types want a basic income because they think there's a finite amount of economic power in the system and more people drawing a basic income means less protest about the automation and outsourcing or well-paying jobs.

For me, as an SV-type who supports a UBI, it has nothing to do with these shitty, self-serving motives (although I'm not a libertarian!). I think it's that we all watched Star Trek, read Iain M. Banks, and are in a hurry to get to one of those utopias where people don't have to work if they don't want to.

isn't Star Trek a post-scarcity society and relatively money-free, with some cultures holding on to currency policy fetishistically?

I had to google SV there, thought you were accusing ShariVari of being a libertarian!

sorry, there's a little cross-pollination between this thread and the silicon valley ideas thread

I feel like UBI right now is very necessary right now as a cure to the broken welfare system, which is in some ways the opposite of the motivations espoused by people trying to realize egalitarian future visions

Seems like potentially a bridge/first step toward those futures, though, right?

if you are taking Star Trek as inspiration, basic income would be a distraction, not a bridge, to abolishing money.

I disagree. You put a UBI in-place, and then when enough jobs disappear/become automated that most people are living on a UBI, you take the step of moving to a post-scarcity-type system. I mean, it's not the only way to get there, but seems like A way.

To run an essentially planned economy you need to build the kind of bureaucratic infrastructure that can wisely allocate resources (even in Star Trek there are so many ships that can be built, so many slots for incoming freshmen at the academy, so many lots of vineyards for Picard's family to make merlot), and basic income runs opposite to that -- "we gave you money so how about let's dismantle everything that stands in the way of free markets"

Maybe UBI should be tied to GDP rebranded as "product-sharing". Alaska-style. Like all citizens are entitled to their fare share of what we collectively earn as a nation.

with low wages, which could be supplemented by a basic income, there is no incentive to automate those jobs. things like harvesting fruit and certain vegetables (but not grain plants and cotton) is highly labor intensive but very difficult to automate. that's just one example -- with support for people at the lowest rung of earnings and no economic incentive to make their jobs easier...

I guess maybe I'm thinking that UBI could bring us a Star-Trek-style world (where one is free to pursue one's interests without having the constant burden of working to survive), but with a more realistic structure than a utopian, wisely-planned command economy.

However, it sounds like what UBI is more about (at least in some circles) is destroying the welfare state and imposing a libertarian UBI that sounds more like a choose-your-own-benefits deal. Not sure how down I am with that. In one sense, it would probably mean more competition and lower prices for benefits, but I'm sure it would also be accompanied by the usual casino-capitalist crap (HSAs, for example) that already plagues us.

I guess I want a UBI + a welfare state. I'm a communist?

Yeah. The trick/hard part of the UBI as a counter-hegemonic political goal is to not sell it out to the false compromise of replacing all other welfare and entitlement programs with it. For me at least the premise is "one should not have to work to have a stable, healthy, autonomous life" and if a version of UBI gets us closer to that I support it, and if it gets us further from that I oppose it.

This is why as I think I've said upthread I see the $15 min wage movement as a wedge and not a distraction. My political project (as far as labor goes) is that work isn't virtuous, and the USian idea that citizens can be reasonably expected to work as much as they are able for whatever they can get in order to merit consideration or assistance can be dismantled. I'd rather get to UBI slowly, through attainable victories decoupling survival further from labor, than all at once by striking a corrupt bargain with the neoliberal establishment and declaring success.

I just want lagoon to have plenty of time to post pictures of beers and coffees to ilx and not worry about a job

For me at least the premise is "one should not have to work to have a stable, healthy, autonomous life"

how do you justify that? we're part of a community. it is only by working (defined broadly, as providing value to others) that we contribute to the health, happiness & success of the whole. if no one works, the community dies.

therefore, this isn't a question into which "should" enters. the community requires work in order to sustain itself. we shoulder that burden in order to be of use & value to others, to be not just nominal but functional parts of the collective. anything that makes us useful & valuable is our work, but the value of that work remains for others to determine.

i don't see any grounds for the argument that one should not have to work, unless it's based on the idea that we've somehow literally rendered work obsolete.

SONIA. What can we do? We must live our lives. [A pause] Yes, we shall
live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days
before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the
trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest,
both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall
meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have
suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on
us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful
life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender
smile--and--we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate
faith. [SONIA kneels down before her uncle and lays her head on his
hands. She speaks in a weary voice] We shall rest. [TELEGIN plays softly
on the guitar] We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see
heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink
away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will
be as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have
faith. [She wipes away her tears] My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are
crying! [Weeping] You have never known what happiness was, but wait,
Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest. [She embraces him] We shall rest. [The
WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden; TELEGIN plays softly; MME.
VOITSKAYA writes something on the margin of her pamphlet; MARINA knits
her stocking] We shall rest.

The curtain slowly falls.

comments on the WSJ article? I just lurk ITT and don't really have the economic background to contribute but my skim-take on it was "most people use way more than $3K of Medicare a year and this article doesn't say anything about fixing health care" but I may have missed the part where the author just assumed that would happen.

i.e. what schwantz said

Tracer otm

the community requires work in order to sustain itself

There's 'work' and there's involuntarily giving away a third of one's waking hours - at a bare minimum - to someone else to do something very probably boring, irritating, outside of one's interests and of doubtful benefit to the community.

Is there not a risk that, in the absence of full automation (or full communism), the irritating, unpleasant work would just increasingly fall to immigrants who, through the necessity of their labour to the functioning of the system, would be kept in perpetual limbo - forever denied citizenship that would give them equal access to basic income?

How would we ever value 'benefit to the community' eh

As ShariVari indicates some people may define 'community' more narrowly than others.

Switzerland seems to have voted against it by a margin of four to one.

comments on the WSJ article? I just lurk ITT and don't really have the economic background to contribute but my skim-take on it was "most people use way more than $3K of Medicare a year and this article doesn't say anything about fixing health care" but I may have missed the part where the author just assumed that would happen.

Give the author is the racist crackpot libertarian Charles Murray, of Bell Curve fame, and has spent his entire career trying to find ways to destroy the welfare state I wouldn't assume he intends to fix anything.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/05/john-mcdonnell-labour-universal-basic-income-welfare-benefits-compass-report

A personal essay from the interior, amongst people not finding work at any price

https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

How Giving Free Money Actually Saves Money

https://medium.com/utopia-for-realists/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions-f05d84c44f1a#.321hdio18

have we gotten this rolling yet

basic income is basic common sense at this late date in human habitat despoliation imho

lol this thread really brings it out, flopson jerking off to economic speculative fiction completely divorced from the real world suffering of the situation, tombot wanting ubi so he wont have to deal with incompetents who dare inhabit the same space as his genius

I just want lagoon to have plenty of time to post pictures of beers and coffees to ilx and not worry about a job

― μpright mammal (mh), Saturday, June 4, 2016 6:17 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thank u for yr support lol

icymi

"During the decades after World War II, wages went up hand in hand with productivity. Since the mid-1970s, as union membership has declined, that’s largely stopped happening. Instead, most of the increased wealth from productivity gains has been seized by the people at the top.

Even conservative calculations show that if wages had gone up in step with productivity, families with the median household income of around $52,000 per year would now be making about 25 percent more, or $65,000. Alternately, if we could take the increased productivity in time off, regular families could keep making $52,000 per year but only work four-fifths as much – e.g., people working 40 hours a week could work just 32 hours for the same pay.

So more and better unions would almost certainly translate directly into higher pay and better benefits for everyone, including people not in unions."

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/05/happy-labor-day-there-has-never-been-a-middle-class-without-strong-unions/

lol this thread really brings it out, flopson jerking off to economic speculative fiction completely divorced from the real world suffering of the situation, tombot wanting ubi so he wont have to deal with incompetents who dare inhabit the same space as his genius

― lag∞n, Wednesday, July 20, 2016 9:12 AM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bring it bitch

he brought it a month ago but you weren't home, maybe if u look he left it in the mailbox or something

can u just.. not post

Still floppin

I'm the only good poster in this thread.

it's possible that you could schedule a redelivery from lagoon

My posts might not be good but I still deserve your basic attention

https://amp.businessinsider.com/givedirectly-basic-income-experiment-unexpected-trouble-2016-9

Basic income as charitable international aid is way more fraught than as a domestic policy for what I think are obvious reasons

There have already been countless RTCs with unconditional cash transfers, idg how this one is suddenly testing UBI, it's neither universal nor basic

otm

it's not like people turn down tax credits

the problem with ppl turning it down is it creates selection bias into treatment which is supposed to be random. but trust is a big problem with all these Development RCTs not unique to this one

also maybe I'm wrong Actually and maybe 1$ per day is basic

https://salon.thefamily.co/enough-with-this-basic-income-bullshit-a6bc92e8286b#.kj46ek8mv

Basic income is to the social state what the flat tax is to the tax system. It flatters the engineering mind with its apparent simplicity.

if that guy got hit by a bus i would be ok with it

Too much emphasis

what's so attractive about basic income is that you don't have to actually organize collectively with actual dispossessed human beings to grab wealth back from elites, you just have to install BASIC_INCOME.EXE job done let's organize a conference to explain how we did it

That article was a mess. Seems like the writer was for a basic income + universal healthcare, but worried that it would be a political non-starter. Well yeah! No shit. That's why we're talking about it. If the jobs really do start drying up permanently, then maybe it becomes more possible.

yeah the article is terrible. the quote i pulled out (and tracer's point) is fair though imo.

Yeah I guess so. I'm an engineer, and I admit I am drawn toward simple solutions. However, libertarianism is just plain stupid. I feel like there are a small (but loud) minority of libertarian engineers that:

a. Have horrible ideas
b. Make any idea that comes from techies instantly suspect

Which is too bad, IMO. OTOH, techies seem to be running everything and hoovering up all the money in the economy these days, so boo hoo.

A basic income party (Bündnis Grundeinkommen) was founded in Munich two weeks ago; the platform consists of establishing a nationwide UBI, and disbanding the party immediately afterwards. UBI.EXE, now with installer cleanup utility, just in time for next year's Bundestag election.

Simple. Elegant. Powerful.

http://zdnet1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2015/06/11/c6ae5747-100b-11e5-9a74-d4ae52e95e57/jobs-headshot-chin-102011.jpg

Having a basic income and rallying the dispossessed are not mutually exclusive imo.

I quite liked the article myself. I don't agree with all of it, particularly where he's coming from with his digitization of all work implications, but I thought it was far from a "mess".

it's like a roaring geyser of missed points and false premises. you may enjoy his other recent work "actually trump is smart and tax avoidance is good" and "actually brexit is good"

posted to the Netflix thread. There's a new French show called Trepalium which takes place in the near-ish future, about a society where there is only enough work for 20% of the population. A massive wall is built separating them from the other 80%. The latter live in rags and misery. The former live in sleek apartments and wear ridiculous outfits. A reforming politician strikes a deal with terrorists from the 80% who have been holding a government minister hostage for the last 10 years. They release the minister, and in exchange the elites agree to take 60,000 "non-workers" to live on the other side of the wall (doing what is not quite yet clear). it promises to be, at least in part, a meditation on whether work is what makes someone valuable or not.

I've come across two articles recently that show people in the know acknowledging this world is on it's way.

Michael Bloomberg

https://www.cnet.com/news/michael-bloomberg-trump-represents-the-scared-tech-taking-away-jobs/

Elon Musk

http://fortune.com/2016/11/06/elon-musk-universal-basic-income/

There examples of such worlds in many different science and pop fiction. Mega City One in the Judge Dredd comics is one example.

Mick Farren used this type of world in quite a few of his novels. There is one where people get into obsessively dressing up in period costuming that is kind of like cosplay as a way to get around the boredom.

Kurt Vonnegut's first novel seems pretty prescient in some ways, considering it was before the computer age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_%28novel%29

I <3 me some Elon, but this is a little o_O

“Ultimately I think there will need to be some sort of improved symbiosis with digital superintelligence,” he said, “But that’s a pretty involved discussion.”

He also has come out and said he thinks it's highly probable that we're living inside a simulation

people who think we're living in a simulation are just indulging in a variant of believing in divine providence, but with less beneficence.

im p sure what Musk believes is that if such a simulation could ever be invented the possibility that we are in one is close to 1, because most universes would be simulations

altho I recently saw some headline about him wanting to break us out of it lol

don't do drugs

i mean, the logic is sound. the question is how you want to react to it. "breaking us out" is the actually demented part

ya exactly

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Moby_Dick_final_chase.jpg/220px-Moby_Dick_final_chase.jpg

http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund

The author makes a bunch of good points. One passage that spoke to me:

Another frequent question is if everyone will stop working once they have that ability. That is another question I’ve studied in-depth, where the answer is basically that very few people want to earn and spend only $1,000 per month, and that basic income is not giving people money to do nothing, but enabling people with money to do anything. Immigration is another big concern for people, usually because they’re assuming UBI will be given to everyone instead of only citizens, and therefore the potential for UBI to actually incentivize legal immigration is missed.

There are many other questions, and most all have likely answers for those willing to spend the necessary time to study the available evidence, but for me personally, these questions are translated in my brain at this point to sound more like, “What are the potential downsides of abolishing slavery? Will cotton get more expensive? Will former slaves just kind of sit around reading and dancing all day? Will the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free decide to walk in greater numbers through our lamp-lit golden door?” This is what I hear as someone who already has a basic income, so it’s not to say such questions aren’t valid, it’s that the very fact we’re asking them is itself something to question.

Why should only the lucky few have any choice but to do paid work? What is our infatuation with work, and why is it only paid work that seems to matter so much? What about unpaid work? Why is it considered valuable work worthy of pay when two people are paying each other to watch each other’s kids, but not valuable work when they’re each raising their own kids? If one concern is that people given basic incomes will work less, and another concern is that there will be half as many jobs due to automation, then everyone working half as much is exactly what we want so as to better share the available employment, isn’t it? Plus productivity tends to increase as hours worked decrease, so we’d accomplish more with less as well.

Perhaps most curious of all is the question of consumption without production – this fear that people given basic incomes will do nothing but consume. Why is making bread considered valuable but eating bread considered frivolous? Bertrand Russell once questioned why getting money is good and spending money is bad. He wrote, “Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad.” So if people decide to use their basic incomes to just buy what’s being produced (by lots of machines mind you) and we have a problem with that, what’s the point of producing it all?

Some of the linked supporting material for questions that he says he studied in-depth are a bit simplistic tbh:

Rising rent is a particularly worrisome fear for many when first introduced to the idea of basic income. However, two very important things in particular need to be understood when it comes to housing.

There are five times more vacant homes than homeless people in the United States today. This represents a large unused supply that need only be made available. The reason many people are not living in these homes is because they were at one time but couldn’t afford to keep them. Basic income rectifies this and puts people back in homes.

Technology represents a major factor in future housing prices, especially a future where everyone has a basic income. Everyone will receive a monthly check to afford rent, and will want to spend as little of it as possible on rent. Meanwhile, owners will want to compete for this money with other owners. Those offering the lowest rents will win. One example of this would be Google deciding to create Google Homes and leasing them out to people for a fraction of what people are paying now. Another example would be super affordable WikiHouses.

"WikiHouses?"

i dont need to live inside a wikipedia house i just want a government issue yurt with good enough internet to play league of legends

See "Exhibit C" at https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7

He then has the cheek to say:

For these two reasons in particular, in combination with the ability of everyone to truly live anywhere for the first time in history, a nationwide market for ultra-affordable housing will be created, and smart businesses will step into this space in hopes of dominating it.

All of this represents theoretical evidence to counter any fear of inflation.

There are many other questions, and most all have likely answers for those willing to spend the necessary time to study the available evidence, but for me personally, these questions are translated in my brain at this point to sound more like, “What are the potential downsides of abolishing slavery? Will cotton get more expensive? Will former slaves just kind of sit around reading and dancing all day? Will the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free decide to walk in greater numbers through our lamp-lit golden door?” This is what I hear as someone who already has a basic income, so it’s not to say such questions aren’t valid, it’s that the very fact we’re asking them is itself something to question.

"Won't the jews get cold if we take them out of the oven?"

a UBI paid for by printing money would cause inflation, a UBI that was part of the tax and transfer system would not be. it's like asking "does social security cause inflation"?

http://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/17/13245808/andy-stern-work-universal-basic-income-technology-artificial-intelligence-unions

Martin Luther King speaking about the need for Universal Basic Income nearly 50 yrs ago

https://twitter.com/TheBpDShow/status/817791147548561410

This is a terrific write-up of a recent debate/event on UBI

epic entrenched nepotism at all upper reaches of american society, not least academia, are hard to overcome. if we survive, our descendants will regard us in a thousand years as they would any other feudal society, with trumps and so forth pissing all over the rest of us

happy easter!

I have a feeling that a thousand years from now our descendants will regard us with a mixture of awe at our technological feats and stark incredulity at our fecklessness.

if we make it out of this alive i would submit that most of modern western history will be thought of as a branch of "dynastic" humanity - where family, and the connections and wealth that family can provide, is the main prism through which success refracts

It’s not accurate to say the United States has the highest tax rates in the world. Americans for Tax Fairness pointed out that only one dollar for every nine dollars in tax revenue is currently coming from corporations because they have so many methods of dodging taxes, shifting them overseas. In addition to not having very many details, in addition to not having Donald Trump’s tax returns, we have two former bankers from Goldman Sachs announcing a plan that from the details that we do know will dramatically cut taxes for big banks like Goldman Sachs. I think this tax plan is a huge giveaway to corporate America. It’s not going to put more money in the pockets of American workers. What it’s going to do is it’s going to enable giant corporations to do more mergers, to get even bigger, to extend their concentration of power, and it’s going to enable them to pour more money back into their already-wealthy shareholders pockets.

an acceleration of the ghost-towning of america

it's crazy the number of small towns that are just disappearing, nothing there any more, no post office, no local businesses just fucking nothing

at least advantaged americans have superior aesthetic taste they can use to shield themselves from widespread agony

this is where my great-grandfather lived his entire life.

https://www.google.fr/maps/place/Martha,+OK+73556,+USA/@34.7259955,-99.3912028,16z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x87ab708c70784a9f:0x34dea63d069ec6d8!8m2!3d34.7253436!4d-99.3870318

there was a general store, a post office, a baptist church, a methodist church, a baseball team.

the general store was called "martha merc." which i always thought was kinda snazzy

i doubt it ever had more than like 300 people there but at least there was something THERE you know

Ontario is experimenting with this: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/what-is-basic-income-and-who-qualifies/article34795127/
We've been discussing it a little on the Canadian politics thread.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/letter-from-ray-supporting-universal-basic-income-as-step-in-world-progress

I like the idea but it seems like Republicraps woudl never allow this

I think I'm a good example of what people fear about basic income. I already dropped out of the workforce to make my pointless shit, and I have zero interest in working anywhere and helping others make money. I'll keep doing it until I can't anymore (should only be a few months I guess). If I got a free $5000 a year I'd just keep doing it the rest of my life and never be worth a damn to society

In other words we want UBI and we want it now

I think it could actually happen as long as it was in the form of vouchers for certain companies, like you could get free vouchers for Walmart stuff, as long as the powerful can keep the money cycling towards them in some way it could happen. Or "no more medicare but here is a voucher for MEDICARE INC. the new privately owned medical facility from blackwater"

Yeah, that sounds all too plausible.

But yeah, it'll never happen as long as there are people like my dad alive. He recently stated, in a eulogy for my grandfather, that welfare was worse than slavery.

https://thenewinquiry.com/universal-basic-bullshit/

summary: ubi is pie in the sky, also could be implemented tomorrow and millions of lives would be radically, gloriously improved.

That article would be readable if the author had cut back on the scathing adjectives and repetitive scorn to about 10% of its present amount. Contrary to the author's belief, seething with anger is not a persuasive argument in itself; it must be added sparingly, but strategically, to acheive maximum effect.

ledge's summary is excellent

There are some conceptions of UBI that sound great but the libertarian/tech bro types' version is generally horrifying

p hard to read that article through all the unearned cynicism and bad writing but i take it the point is that it's better to let people starve than risk agreeing w/ the tech bros about anything, also reforms are bad because everything is bad

also something something "the revolutionary potential of the working class"

new inquiry sucks so bad lol

interesting critical-left take on how basic income in ontario is working out. seems to confirm my instinctual fears that, under the current deregulatory, technocratic conditions, UBI might well be an excuse for cutting other basic social provisions and creating a permanent underclass who keeps head just above water. I suggest skipping to the "Ontario’s BI Test Run" section

http://rankandfile.ca/2017/06/29/ontarios-basic-income-bs/

I was thinking about UBI when one of the politics threads started discussing how 'welfare reform' turned into 'fuck it, throw everyone on disability'

https://joincircles.net/

https://github.com/CirclesUBI/docs/blob/master/Circles.md

Universal Basic Income is one of the most cross-culturaly appealing political movements of the modern era. It has attracted the support of thinkers from every background including Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Elon Musk, Martin Luther King Jr, Stephen Hawking, and Noam Chomsky.

uh

me not having the economic nous to critically assess UBI, plus it attracting people like that, is why i'm deeeeeeeply suspicious of it.

The only way UBI would be fair and equitable would be if there were an additional safety net for people who cannot meet their basic needs within the given basic income and cannot possibly supplement that basic income to cover their needs. Otherwise you could call it GED (Guaranteed Euthanasia for the Disabled).

And that is absolutely the future the tech-libertarians want.

The eugenics/T4 element that could easily be allied to UBI would explain why lots of appalling people rep for it. And I'm guessing the same people would say the Universality of it would need a bit of fine-tuning as well.

I'm not entirely on board with Andrew Yang, but he's raising the issues.

Mr. Yang, a former tech executive who started the nonprofit organization Venture for America, believes that automation and advanced artificial intelligence will soon make millions of jobs obsolete — yours, mine, those of our accountants and radiologists and grocery store cashiers. He says America needs to take radical steps to prevent Great Depression-level unemployment and a total societal meltdown, including handing out trillions of dollars in cash.

“All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society,” Mr. Yang, 43, said over lunch at a Thai restaurant in Manhattan last month, in his first interview about his campaign. In just a few years, he said, “we’re going to have a million truck drivers out of work who are 94 percent male, with an average level of education of high school or one year of college.”

“That one innovation,” he continued, “will be enough to create riots in the street. And we’re about to do the same thing to retail workers, call center workers, fast-food workers, insurance companies, accounting firms.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/technology/his-2020-campaign-message-the-robots-are-coming.html

Seems obvious there needs to be a system by which the gains reaped by automation are distributed to all people on Earth (break it down to world=primitive small village. If we all rely on Joe to reap and harvest corn, but now robots can do that, Joe shouldn't be the only one to have his workload diminished or eliminated, while everyone else has to work same amount performing the other tasks that make society function). Also seems obvious that is very unlikely to occur.

unless we force it

i mean this is what society has been doing more or less if you take the long view. how many people grow their own food or build their own computers?