I kind of get that, but on the other hand, you could say "Existence is like having a gun to your head. You do what you've got to do."
Because you need food and shelter to survive. There's been no point in time where we didn't have to acquire it. We're just now getting to the point where the production of it requires nominal effort.
You're inferring more than I'm implying. I'm not saying "existence is suffering". I'm saying existence requires maintenance and for all of human history, it's been up to one to do that maintenance on their own.
We've never lived in a time where the majority could exist in the non-working class. Having the majority be in the non-working class raises certain issues. Like, who is going to be in the minority.
I'm not worried about what happens at 100% automation. I'm more worried about what happens when there are too few jobs to reasonably distribute among the people. There's an icky issue of essentially slavery we're going to have to confront.
I wasn't given a vote when we decided to hand out all of the land and resources to them in the first place, so I hardly see how the system as it stands is in any way voluntary.
If we made it voluntary, almost no one would volunteer, certainly not enough to be viable. Taxation and the rule of law aren't opt-in for the same reason.
Because we are not living in an era of such abundance that we have the liberty to do that.
Do the math: 300M people, $2k/mo, 12mo/yr is 7.2 trillion dollars. Even to first order that is unaffordable, and that’s without factoring in that UBI would decimate the tax base that’s supposed to support it, or the consumer price inflation that would result in that $2k not going as far as you’d expect.
> if salaries for essential, dirty jobs must go up, i am all for it
so all goods and services that require said "dirty job" in the supply chain will go up in price. This eventually negates the UBI benefits, because the level of UBI no longer can sustain purchases of all the goods and services that it originally could due to the increases in prices.
So do you increase UBI to counter this? Or do you let it be, and UBI no longer pays enough to maintain the same level of living standard. In which case, people are now once again, forced economically, to work "dirty jobs" despite not wanting it.
>so all goods and services that require said "dirty job" in the supply chain will go up in price. This eventually negates the UBI benefits, because the level of UBI no longer can sustain purchases of all the goods and services that it originally could due to the increases in prices.
Isn't this the same argument that's used to argue against increasing the minimum wage? "if you increased the minimum wage, then the costs will go up for those businesses hiring minimum wage workers, making the goods more expensive for those workers, and canceling everything out!". But empirical evidence has shown this has not been the case[1]. Because of this, I'm wary of any hand-wavy arguments like these that just mention some effects without attempting to quantify the magnitude of those effects.
"Change in employment: -500k" It's not just that costs could go up, it's that jobs could also disappear. What's the hardest part about entering the job market? Proving that your labor is valuable. It's hard to build a resume when the wage floor is set so high.
Unlike UBI, minimum wages don't affect everyone and aren't purely inflationary. Some workers earn more gross income, some get fewer hours and earn less, and some get laid off. I think I support UBI but it clearly cannot be raised to fully compensate for every price increase.
Perhaps partially. But you have no evidence to support your implicit assertion that it happens totally, or that your argument defeats UBI on the merits
You make some interesting points here, but I think your logic is fundamentally limited. There are alternative, imaginative ways to solve this problem that don't necessarily involve capital. In _The Dispossessed_ by Ursula K. LeGuin, for example, able-bodied workers are required to perform essential work like agricultural work and other "dirty jobs". Much like we conscript people in times or war, we could do the same with regards to needed work that isn't getting done.
if garbage person labor shortage is a blocker, i will personally sign up for 1 day per week garbage duty. if that’s the cost to pay for a more equitable society, why not leave the keyboard for a day and perform that noble and necessary duty. i’m sure i’m not the only person on HN who feels this way.
the world isn’t all bad. it’s getting better. but it only gets better insofar as we ourselves become better. it is this striving towards higher harmony that propels us forward.
so do you currently volunteer your time for social work (or any other work for which there is a shortage of people due to low pay and hard to perform)?
Even if you _would_ do as you have proposed above, most people won't. A labour shortage is still likely the result, esp. if said labour is not high paying, but the doing of which is still relatively important to a functioning society.
I'm not against UBI - i would want it, even if it means a higher tax! But i just don't see how it is implementable atm, and also whether there are any negative consequences.
The unemployment benefits that have been paid out in the USA so far has many talking about how it is a disincentive to go back to work - because they are paid more than their original job. I can't see how this won't be the same under a UBI system - so the only way for a worker to _do_ work they wouldn't ordinarily do is to pay more!
To me, it seems like man's constant fight against the brutality of mother nature will never end. As long as we need food, need medicine, and entropy destroys what we create, we will need a lot of people working to solve problems.
Any conception of basic income where we can freely give out $2000 a month to everyone has a net present value roughly equal to giving each person a lump sum payment of $500,000. There's not enough wealth in the world to sustain it.
Sure, give someone 500k and they might try to buy some luxury goods and inflate prices of various things. Give someone enough to not be destitute on a monthly basis and you’ll have a huge boon to the economy - because they’ll buy the essentials. People will always want more than just the basics and thus work.
Money is not equal to wealth, money is a device. That's the first and most common mistake in economics.
UBI is a way to reshuffe the cards of modern economy and hope that'll fix some of the current problems. It certainly won't allow everyone to drive a Ferrari.
As is often the case in economics, the scarcity is not an absolute lack of resources, but a result of inefficient allocation.
The world's mean income is about $18000 adjusted for purchasing power parity so it's not a complete stretch to get to $2000 per month for the whole world https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040
The USA has a mean income of about $72,000 so in theory UBI could be $6000/mo without bankrupting the country.
It would be very interesting to see what kind of crazy spending-led boom you could achieve by redistributing wealth exactly evenly across every American citizen.
I don't understand what you mean by this. UBI redistributes income - wouldn't it obviously be funded via taxation? USA would be able to afford a much higher UBI than Sierra Leone would because US income is higher. What determines how much UBI can be issued if aggregate income is irrelevant?
If you fund by a 100% income tax, everyone would quit instantly. There would literally be no point in working for money. UBI cannot be funded by the thing UBI would eliminate.
American households own $98 trillion in net worth. Averages to about $340,000 per person. And this is just household wealth. So yes there is enough money out there.
the only wealth that isn't "household wealth" is public assets. I guess there might technically be enough to give everyone $500k (or $2000/month), but do you want the government to provide any services?
$2000 per month is with wealth right now. It will be more than affordable in the future since the country will have more wealth in the future. Pretty much everything in current economics relies on wealth growth (pension funds, 401ks, etc), so adding this into that mix is very reasonable.
the relationship between the two figures is that $2000/month is roughly the safe withdrawal rate for diverse $500k portfolio (ie, the most you can spend without risking that you use up the principal over several decades). if you use the almost all the returns from the nation's capital to pay out $2000/month, there isn't much growth to speak of. of course, it's sort of a naive analysis to treat a nation's wealth like a retirement account, but the idea clearly doesn't pass the "back of the napkin" test. there would have to be some powerful knock-on effects to make it halfway viable.
Growth where? If you "pay out" returns from the nation's wealth to its own citizens, the wealth still stays inside the nation and wealth growth still happens.
poverty is like having a gun to your head. you do what you’ve gotta do.
if salaries for essential, dirty jobs must go up, i am all for it.