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Greece's Former Finance Minister Explains Why A Universal Basic Income Could Save Us (fastcoexist.com)
Charlie Sorrel, writing for FastCoExist: Next time you're having a fight with somebody who doesn't like the idea of a universal basic income, you might employ some of these arguments from Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger, he not only refutes the usual arguments against the concept that the government should give everyone a minimum check every month, but he makes them sound quite ridiculous. The interview was published ahead of the Switzerland's vote on a universal basic income (or UBI) in June. If successful, all Swiss adults would get $2,500 per month, and kids around $625 per month, whether or not they have a job. Here are some of Varoufakis's best answers.
First, on the need for a UBI: "For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created. Technical progress means that more and more high-paying jobs will disappear and thus shrink the middle class. This will in turn cause a further concentration of income and wealth in the upper classes. That's why I fight like a basic income for sociopolitical reforms. The robotization [of work] has long been underway, but robots don't buy products. Therefore, a basic income is needed to offset this change and stabilize a society which has an increasing wealth inequality." Then, on why you need a UBI if you already have a good job: "What good is a well-paying job, if you are afraid to lose it? This constant fear paralyzes."Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work.
First, on the need for a UBI: "For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created. Technical progress means that more and more high-paying jobs will disappear and thus shrink the middle class. This will in turn cause a further concentration of income and wealth in the upper classes. That's why I fight like a basic income for sociopolitical reforms. The robotization [of work] has long been underway, but robots don't buy products. Therefore, a basic income is needed to offset this change and stabilize a society which has an increasing wealth inequality." Then, on why you need a UBI if you already have a good job: "What good is a well-paying job, if you are afraid to lose it? This constant fear paralyzes."Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work.
Have to pay Greece?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I don't see robots doing work. I see people making pennies assembling iPhones in China, children working in sweatshops in Vietnam making Nike clothing. This man is a fool. The problem isn't robots. People are cheaper than robots are.
You do realize you actually need demand to outstrip supply to get inflation, right? You don't get inflation by paying down debt, saving for a rainy day, or using cellphone data...
I bring home less than that, albeit by just a hair, working my ass off at a full-time IT job in the midwest USA. So I can get a mid-$40k/year income just by sitting on my ass in Greece? I'm a Republican and have always been against handouts, but you know what, fuck it. I'm done, sign me up to sit on my ass and smoke dope and play video games. What the fuck does it even matter anymore?
How about we put a big fat asterisk next to the output of a resigned-in-disgrace former finance minister from a broke, crooked, can't-stop-capital-flight, had-a-coup-in-living-memory, too-big-to-make-Europe-fail country? Just a thought.
Greece's former finance minister probably has as much credibility in financial matters as Steve Jobs had on cancer treatment.
more jobs are destroyed than created
Is this true? Is it *really* true. Or did we just ship all the jobs to lower wage countries? If it is not true then the reverse is true.
It sounds right but is there actually any numbers to back it up?
It's funny to see all the comments dismissing the all article without even reading it. Oh wait, I forgot this is Slashdot after all.
"Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work."
It wouldn't be that difficult, given how little "basic income" would pay. Adjusting for the cost of living difference between Switzerland and the US (rent, groceries, etc), their proposal would work out to about US$1500/month, or $18K/year. (This is in the range of what people who are judged too disabled to work get from Social Security.) Yes, there are people who are content to live on that. But not most people. Would you?
Anyone who aspires to a middle-class lifestyle would at least get a part-time job to supplement basic income (maybe regular freelance work, a half-time office job, gig-economy stuff as needed, a creative project that they never had time for, that business they were otherwise afraid to take a risk on, etc) or a full-time job that they might not otherwise be able to afford to take (e.g. teaching, social work, performing arts). And the kinds of people who are used to taking home $1500 or more every week would undoubtedly stick with the jobs they have already, and treat the basic-income grant as "mad money" to spend on something fun.
The idea needs to be tested thoroughly, before being tried on the scale of, say, the US, or even the UK. It may not work as projected based on how it's worked in a few small-population experiments so far. The amount definitely needs to be evaluated. But if you're ridiculing the idea based on the assumption that a just-above-poverty-level income is going to be really attractive to the masses... I'm pretty sure you're mistaken.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
So? You are saying as if communism is automatically "bad".
In the USSR everybody had a job (it was actually mandatory for adults who are not studying), which means that 1) there was less time for drinking (showing up drunk at work was not OK) and 2) everybody had some money, there was no need to look for food in garbage bins.
Now that we are capitalists and free, a lot of people do not have a job. I guess one solution would be to let them starve to death, however, that tends to increase crime (since a hungry person is more likely to steal or rob) and some people oppose it for humanitarian reasons. So we have welfare - give free money to the poor. Most of that money gets spent on alcohol (well, you are poor and do not have a job, you have nothing better to do).
The side effect of capitalism is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, however, in the long run that is bad for the economy because more and more money is settling down in the bank accounts of the rich, which means there is less and less "active" money. The rich also find ways to avoid taxes and may end up paying less than a poor man who has a job (because he cannot afford to set up offshore companies for tax evasion purposes etc).
Technology increases productivity, which is great, now everybody can make more in the same time. Which means that in the future, everybody will be working for half the time and producing the same or more than we are now (a prediction from the past). Oh wait, currently instead of everybody working for half the time, half of the people are unemployed and those that have a job, work full time.
I personally believe that some communism would be great. That is, individuals should be free to do what they want (within reason) and private property should be respected, but large companies (companies, that have a too high influence on the market) should be kept on a very short leash - larger companies get a shorter leash.
Yes we can learn a great deal about the former finance minister of a bankrupt country. Almost as much as we can learn about world peace from the US Pentagon.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Do you think that wages will stay the same if everyone gets X per month from the government? I can imagine that every employee who doesn't have a contract with a dollar amount spelled out in it, would immediately get a letter from the CEO explaining why their pay will be cut the week UBI goes into effect. Lower private wages are one of the assumptions that the universal-basic-income model is based on.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The whole idea that people are inherently lazy and won't work without being forced to always puzzled me. Most of the people I know want to do something productive, but more often than not it's either not something they can get enough income from quickly enough to be able to drop their day job and start doing it full-time or it's not something they can get enough income from to keep the bills paid. Give them a guaranteed basic income and they won't sit around doing nothing, they'll start doing what they want to do (instead of the day job they have to have because it pays the bills).
And on the flip side, what does Donald Trump do exactly? I know he's rich and considered successful, but what work does he actually do? Or Kim Kardashian? It always seemed to me that the more successful you were, the more well-off you were, the less actual work you appeared to do each day. I know there's research involved in say running a major investment fund like Warren Buffet does, but he doesn't do the majority of it. 95% is delegated out to subordinates who do the legwork and write up the analyst reports, Buffet himself just goes over those reports and makes the final decisions. It's something only he can do, but he's not spending 40 hours a week nailed down to a desk poring over corporate reports and newspaper articles and stock trade data, running spreadsheet calculations to figure out what's behind the stock movements and what's likely to happen in the future.
To quote a mill supervisor, "I don't want the industrious guy who'll clean up the mess with a smile. I want the lazy bastard who'll figure out how to stop the mess from happening so he doesn't have to clean it up all the time.".
I've seen a few people say that they would start their own businesses IF they had a basic income to fall back on. It's understandable, because starting a business is a huge risk if you don't have family money to back you if it fails. This doesn't sound like promoting mediocrity to me at all, this sounds like allowing people to find their potential instead of withering away behind a desk.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
> In the USSR everybody had a job (it was actually mandatory for adults who are not studying),
Mandatory via the government, you say? Meaning the police would show up and drag you to work if you didn't show up on time? Sounds awesome!
> which means that 1) there was less time for drinking (showing up drunk at work was not OK)
Yeah NOBODY drinks in Russia. They don't have a HUGE problem with alcoholism.
> and 2) everybody had some money
1/9th as much as their peers in the USA, to be exact. (About $400/month)
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
You're seriously suggesting that cutting average income by over 85% is a good idea? You REALLY want to live on $400 per month? You can do that already, if that's what you really want.
Actually I don't think a massive taxation increase would be required. The reason is that in Switzerland there is already welfare support for people under the poverty line, which is exactly those 2500$ per month. The idea is basically to get rid of the "usual" welfare, including all the bureaucracy and costs involved and replace it with this "no question asked" basic income. This would basically affect only those under the poverty line, which is a very small percentage of the population, and it would in most cases just replace money they already get, only with a different label.
In the alternative universe where human beings aren't by nature racist xenophobes prone to rash overgeneralisation.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Of course, the article glosses over implementation details like that.
Sure, I wouldn't mind an extra $2,500 every month. But is it truly an extra $2,500? If the taxes on my normal income will also go up by that $2,500, it's a wash. If inflation makes it so I don't have any real additional purchasing power, it's also a wash. So why add the additional level of complexity in those cases? And won't there be bureaucratic and administrative costs?
Show me the numbers. Show me where the money will come from such that I really will have an extra $30K take-home every year... that I actually benefit from and that won't be vacuumed away in taxes, bureaucracy, and inflation. Show me real, solid, numbers, and sure, I'll support the idea. But in my experience, things that sound too good to be true, usually are.
Imagine all the people...
Whereas Capitalism fails only when human beings are no longer required to produce goods and services. i.e. real soon now.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Simply its this: the world doesn't owe you a living, get over yourself and suck it up. Live or die on your own efforts, not mine.
Fine. If robots take my job and I don't get to have part in the production gain I'll just grab myself a Kalashnikov and take what I want.
Glad we could clear this up so quickly.
' be seeing you soon.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Communism and Socialism look great on paper; it's when you get a bunch of people involved in administering it, that it gets all screwed up and corrupted. No plan survives first contact with the human race, intact.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Give them free money for VR headsets and caffeinated sugar drinks so that type two diabetes can solve the employment problem for you. Yeah that will work, but the unintended evil of it is undeniable.
Wrong. A UBI would put every worker, especially the ones on the lower end of the payscale, in a MUCH better negotiating position. If any fast-food CEO tried this he could expect to see every single bottom-level fast food worker quit instantly. This would be much more of a nightmare than even them all unionizing.
Most developed nations already have a UBI: It's called unemployment/retirement and in Europe it's fully funded by most states perpetually for anyone who asks. Greece is the prime example of what happens when you give everyone this UBI perpetually without creating any value in your economy.
Look at any inner city in the EU or in the US, plenty of takers of our current levels of UBI (and they're already at ~$2k/mo). The problem is that the majority of people will not work if they get free money, instead they'll spend it on drugs, alcohol or whatever and make their situation even worse by entering (seemingly) glamorous criminal enterprises, loitering and killing their boredom by harassing others, fighting etc. After a while they'll be asking for more free money to spend and complain about how they're being discriminated against without changing their lifestyle (something about learning to fish).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
We already have test cases for a universal basic income - some of the United Arab Emirates and to a lesser degree Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Citizens can have a public service job and choose to do very little work. It seems you need an army of serfs to then keep the state functioning, ridiculous ideas can proliferate or don't need to change (women driving in Saudi Arabia for example) as there is little pressure to change. Also about 60% of adult citizens in the UAE have diabetes as there are no challenges in life.
A proposal that gives everyone to give up on life in comfort is about as damaging as it gets.
The Greek had such a UBI from the EU and it allowed them to keep their semi-feudal structures much longer than it would have been otherwise possible.
Not recommended.
Productivity is soaring and has been for over 20 years. the benefits of that productivity are not being shared in part due to the fact that productivity gains from automation and robotics go straight to Capital.
The U.S. is at record levels (about 25%) of disengaged workers between the ages of 16 to 50. They don't count as unemployed- but they don't have jobs.
Projections are for 38% to 45% of jobs in the united states to be automated over the next 17 years.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Capitalism has always been around, even the feudal farmers were capitalists.
Capitalism doesn't mean what you think it means.
Here, here, here!
I actually did start my own company, and it wasn't such a big success that it would pay the bills, so now I'm doing freelance work which pays nicely (I'm an information security consultant) but is more stressful than a regular job.
I have a long list of things that I would like to do, both in my field and outside. I just don't have time for it, if it doesn't in some way end up as profitable, at least a little bit. With a basic income, knowing myself the first month or two I would do some shit that I've just wanted to do for a long time, but then all the articles I wanted to write, the speeches I wanted to give, the software I wanted to create would appear.
Giving people a survival is the #1 humanity thing that a western society should feel itself morally obligated to do. If we can afford private jets and million dollar wedding parties for the super-rich, how can you possibly make any ethically justifiable argument that the same society has people looking for food in trash cans?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You're forgetting something - 2-3 centuries ago, that would have been easily possible - as long as you find a little plot of land somewhere (even if in the middle of a forest) then you would have a good chance of a means to support yourself.
Now - find a place, where you are allowed to plant something of your own - at first, you'd need to find a plot of land that doesn't belong to anyone - and that, by now, in Europe is almost impossible. If land is arable, it is owned by someone. If it's a forest, it's owned by someone. The times where you could make a living for yourself without being "dependent" on someone else - namely, someone who is willing to pay for your services.
So, what will the future hold for the "lower qualified" jobs that robots eat up? They can't _force_ a company (or _any_ company) to hire them to work for a living wage.
But, before you try your line "live and die by your own efforts, not mine" - before you go as far as declaring whose lives are worth being kept or allowed to starve - just think about how secure your own job will be 10-20 years down the line. I've seen my net "middle-class" income being reduced over the last 12 years (through cut-downs by some employers - and other employers not willing to pay as much as the previous ones -- even though they make more profits; so it's not a cost necessity to go through the cuts -- it's just that it's possible, as there is a lot more competition from outsourcing jobs to lower-wage countries).
Another thing you should think about is the implications of what you're saying - "living and dying by your own efforts", this sounds "natural" in the most basic sense - it's what happens in the animal kingdom, but do remember that this is also what drives conflict in nature (the fight for survival). While your sentence seems to imply "either earn your living or go die quietly somewhere away from me" - rest assured, that it will rather create MORE violence, not less. (all the while also foregoing those "low-earners" as customers for your businesses - which might also be a chance for growth.
The current system of capitalism is too transfixed on "optimizing" (think: economies of scale; automation; ...) - and at the same time leaving governments unable to really care for their citizens, as more high paying jobs (and hence high income tax payers) get eroded, while at the same time, profits are being moved across the globe so that the companies also don't pay taxes that would make up for the shortfall from the eroding income tax base.
Your "fight for yourself" approach has only a very short term usefulness - so it's a great model as far as people in their 80s are concerned: the kind of people who do not need to care whether the whole system will break down 10 years down the line -- because they most likely be gone by then.
That really depends on what you use as predictors. Tech may have changed. I can assure you, we humans have not. Our basic human needs and desires are the same as they've always been.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It's a good thing that there are more than just the two choices then, right?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Consumption always comes after production. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. Consumption is down in the USA because production is not happening there. Americans are consuming 500,000,000,000 USD a year more than they are producing (trade deficit for decades has been ignored of-course). Chinese are producing, so now they are consuming more and Americans are building their version of communism, so they will starve
You can't handle the truth.