Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Which is Better, a Basic Income or a Guaranteed Job? (timharford.com)
Barack Obama said this month that AI research is accelerating, making it harder to find jobs for everybody, and concluding "we're going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems, like a universal income."
But a Financial Times columnist adds that "an intriguing debate has broken out over how to look after disadvantaged workers both now and in this robot future. Should everyone be given free money? Or should everyone receive the guarantee of a decently-paid job?" An anonymous reader quotes some of the highlights: Psychologists have found that we like and benefit from feeling in control. That is a mark in favour of a universal basic income: being unconditional, it is likely to enhance our feelings of control. The money would be ours, by right, to do with as we wish. A job guarantee might work the other way: it makes money conditional on punching the clock. On the other hand (again!), we like to keep busy. Harvard researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert (UK) (US) have found that "a wandering mind is an unhappy mind". And social contact is generally good for our wellbeing. Maybe guaranteed jobs would help keep us active and socially connected.
The truth is, we don't really know... It is good to see that the more thoughtful advocates of either policy -- or both policies simultaneously -- are asking for large-scale trials to learn more.
He titled the column "The secret to happiness after the robot takeover." But what say Slashdot readers?
Is it better to be given a basic income -- or a guaranteed job?
But a Financial Times columnist adds that "an intriguing debate has broken out over how to look after disadvantaged workers both now and in this robot future. Should everyone be given free money? Or should everyone receive the guarantee of a decently-paid job?" An anonymous reader quotes some of the highlights: Psychologists have found that we like and benefit from feeling in control. That is a mark in favour of a universal basic income: being unconditional, it is likely to enhance our feelings of control. The money would be ours, by right, to do with as we wish. A job guarantee might work the other way: it makes money conditional on punching the clock. On the other hand (again!), we like to keep busy. Harvard researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert (UK) (US) have found that "a wandering mind is an unhappy mind". And social contact is generally good for our wellbeing. Maybe guaranteed jobs would help keep us active and socially connected.
The truth is, we don't really know... It is good to see that the more thoughtful advocates of either policy -- or both policies simultaneously -- are asking for large-scale trials to learn more.
He titled the column "The secret to happiness after the robot takeover." But what say Slashdot readers?
Is it better to be given a basic income -- or a guaranteed job?
Yes, a 'guaranteed job' pretty much means 'YOU better find a job you like, or we will find one you DONT'
Its just renamed 'work for your unemployment benefit', which it most definitely a stick, not a carrot.
Of course the powers that be LIKE people to be at their behest, and LIKE to have to control, so why am I not surprised they will try and sell that as a solution.
A real UBI system (and nearly every time we see those in power talking one it is NOT, it is just another benefit for people who 'need' it) is very different from that.
It is a reward for being part of a system, that is not dependent on your position in the system.
And, almost as importantly, it REPLACES most of the other parts.
It replaces benefit for unemployment, sickness (but not necessarily medical), old age, education, and many many more, thus removing the HUGE beuraucracy that is wrapped around operating and policing those.
Why do those in power hate it? because it reduces their control, and their ability to sell themselves as 'helping us' by endlessly making slight changes for how they give our own money back to us when they decide we need it.
But no, they must sell UBI as being a form of benefit for people who failed, because they think that will help keep it from ever happening, because they are sure the silent majority hate such things. That is why pretty much every proposed UBI 'trial' is not UNIVERSAL.
It will take a big change in the political systems before we ever see anything like UBI (and no, i don't mean to some kind of socialist nirvana, such people generally hate anything equal and universal with a great passion).
I not only think this could work out, I'm positive that it would actually be more interesting for businesses too. Because now you have to pay someone a wage that's enough to at least compensate the person for his time so he can live. With universal income, any minimum wage is off the table. We would move into a gig economy more than we do today already, at least for zero/low skill jobs. You need 300 bucks extra? Go work for a few weeks at the supermarket. Yes, they will mot pay more than maybe those 300 for full time for a month, because there's people who wouldn't mind working that, because it's EXTRA money, not money they need already to fulfill their basic needs. As an employer, you could probably get people for less than 300 a month if it's really just some zero skill job with no responsibilities like restocking. You wages would probably go down (at least for no/low skill jobs), and still people would not complain because the money they now earn is on top of what they need, it's not what they need to get food and shelter covered.
High paying jobs would probably change little to not at all, because whether you pay your employee 400 less per month is kinda moot if you already pay about 10 grand a month. Here, very little would change, neither in fluctuation (which would most likely increase a lot for low skill jobs) nor cost.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A Job is what you do to make money. A Career is what defines who you are. Sometime a Career may contain Jobs, some that you like and some that you don't.
Most jobs doesn't have you doing pointless tasks because that are paying you money to do them, so they should have some sort of value to doing the job. However many jobs are not really utilizing your full potential which makes them boring and at the end of the day you do not feel good with yourself.
You have to find meaning in your work vs. work giving you meaning. No matter what job you do in your career it will feel meaningless.
I work in Health Care I see Brain Surgeons and Cardiologist who do a fine job, but are worn down to the world, because for them it feels like they do the same thing every day, only to have the patients leave and abuse their bodies again. They are actually saving lives every day but they just don't feel meaning, because they have stopped looking for it.
The real problem I see is the lack of Empowerment in the modern work culture. I am stuck in a meeting with 2 VP yelling at me, because both of them Got yelled at by the CIO and CFO. Which in tern call me to often have to yell at the vendor because there isn't anything I can do about what they are yelling at me to do, Because the CIO and CFO chose the vendor and the product and passed it down to me to implement, then the Vendor just points to the contract conditions, which then I express back to the VPs which get angry with me, but afraid to to express their problems with the CIO and CFO because that product is their baby. So most everyone is unhappy, because no one has power to do anything to really fix it. And the ones who do done agree on a course of action.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Healthcare is not what I'm worried about.
With housing, government would be able to build a lot of it. But how would the free market landlords/builders compete with it? If the cost difference between a government provided 20m^2 apartment and a private 20.5m^2 apartment is a few hundred dollars a month, few people will choose to move. The same would be true with food.
The only solution I see is if the government is willing to provide an apartment/food OR provide the money for them - in this case a person that has a bit of extra income can use it to supplement their regular choices, rather than having to 'give up' everything that the government provides and be left entirely on their own.
I concur.
I think what businesses will offer in exchange for services will need to change radically, however. You won't be able to abuse your employees if they don't need to work to survive.
As an example, one of my first jobs was in some spare space in a basement. It wasn't really well climate controlled, ventilated, or lighted. But I needed the money. Had UBI been around, I wouldn't have done that job, and most other people wouldn't have either. Now, move that upstairs to a clean, nicely-lit space, and focus on skills acquisition to help me find a better job later, and I'm likely in. It would have been pretty much the same work, but the focus would be on making me happy, rather than getting the job done and fuck how the employee feels about doing it.
I see a lot of jobs running into the same issue. You need to make the employee want to be there if they don't need to be there. You're going to need to put good ventilation in your kitchen and staff it fully. You're going to need to revise your policy of "4:30 show, 5am go". Siestas are going to become a thing in the US because people aren't going to find working in 110F heat all that appealing. Either that, or the pay is going to have to go up a lot for many jobs.
On the flip side, there's going to be some real competition for "fun" jobs. Pretty much anything that someone might enjoy they can now do without requiring that it provide them a living wage. Dog walking, child care, creating art, music, literature, cooking for small amounts of people, gardening, interior design, mechanical work, hell, maybe even programming.
The cost of employees is going to shift a lot, and I bet in a number of very unexpected directions.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
So your morally fine with simply taking money out of someone's pocket and handing it to someone else. That's the crux of your argument. There's a source for money after all and it isn't the government.
you guys need to study economics and business. UBI is a pie in the sky dream. National economies are systems of systems. Mess with one aspect and the others are affected. To pay for UBI, you have to raise taxes. Raising taxes raises costs. The more it costs to live the more you have to pay out in UBI. UBI is an unsustainable model.
So what is your model?
So we have creeping automation that is working its way up the social-economic ladder. This is happening.
The why of that fact is that the users of that automation find it profitable to eliminate the cost of employing people.
Now it is pretty incontestable that if the trend continues - and it will - at some point, we will hit a unpleasant point where manufacturers cannot squeak more profit out of a system that has been made very lean, coupled with and overall economy in which most of the population is nothing more than a drain.
So if we use the current model, there will be a need for a massive culling of the non-employable. The method of achieving an 80 percent reduction of worldwide population has to be carefully managed.
The nuclear option is crude and injures the people who are deemed worthy of continued existence - it isn't to say we won't use it - humans can be remarkably stupid.
Natural die - off coupled with tight population control is very slow.
If we are going to use traditional thinking, we are going to have a creepy "final solution" applied to the population at large. It will be grimly amusing to watch people's racism as they choose who to eliminate.
But there will be billions lost as industries that were feeding those billions lose the source of their government income, which was providing food and shelter for the useless and now dead surplus population.. They aren't going to like that.
This is a massively complicated issue. 19th century economics will not solve it. Our lizard brain is not going to solve it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There's a difference between "cheap government housing" and "free government housing".
Cheap government housing should still require people to pay an actual cost, it shouldn't be subsidized housing, but paid for out of each person's UBI. An argument can also be made for access to food, communication, education, libraries, health care. Some should be universal, some should be by choice to spend some of your UBI on the cheap option or spend more on a "better" option.
If someone has an addiction or mental health issue, there still might need to be some level of intervention, but I don't need you telling me what I can use my UBI for, based on your concepts of what I "should" be doing.
A UBI can be funded with a flat tax combined with a VAT, and can be gradually implemented (e.g. at 5% implementation of a 50% flat tax, 25% VAT, $2000/month UBI, you'd have a 2.5% flat income tax, pay 95% of your regular income tax, pay 1.25% VAT, receive $100/month in UBI (not taxed), receive 95% of other benefits, minimum wage reduced to 95% of original value. Raise it to 15% implementation, then 25%, then 50%, 75%, and 100% once every 2 years, tuning numbers as necessary.
This is a perfect recipe for assisted civilizational suicide by capitalism, with an elite class of workers at the switch. The ever-shrinking working class would at some point simply opt to effectively or explicitly kill the UBI program. Historically, similarly terrible decisions to reverse societal protections that were put in place for good reasons have happened within 50~60 years.
It's far more practically hazardous to be able to vote for society's collapse for personal gain than to be able to vote yourself other people's money.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
One could offer a small guaranteed income and if you want more then a guaranteed job as well. It doesn't have to be either-or.
As for meaning full work the Depression era found many meaningful jobs. Every time I visit an older park I'm so grateful for the lasting staircases and bridges that were hewn into the walls of canyons for me to walk through. We don't have that scale of free labor these days. I'm sure it was hard work but it was meaningful and lasting. Many people were employed as artists and not only made epic frescos and such that we still have today but also produced temporary art like theater for the desperately poor folks of the depression. It was morale boosting and reminded people we are a society that can come together. It had great value to defining US culture. It was also a time when a lot of new ideas got explored too.
Even mathematical functions were enumerated and tabulated (before computers) so that people could knwo the zeros of the hypergeometric series functions for my gaussian quadrature integrals needed to compute the amount of concrete needed for hoover damn or the stress on an airplane wing.
Lots of meaningful work from blue-collar to academian occured in the depression era jobs programs.
Paying one person to dig a hole and another for fill it back in is unlikely to be what people mean by gaurenteed jobs.
In fact I would argue that compulsory public service is really a good thing for citizens. I certainly volunteer lots of time to causes because I can see the impact it has on my community. That impact makes me feel good inside. But it also binds me to my community too which is a good thing.
Finally, if you study the Gini index and consider which countries have the largest economic mobility (Do you earn a different wage than your father did?) then you see that countries with good safety nets actually have more economic mobility than those without. I would guess this is because people willing to take risks can achieve more, but they won't take them if there's a chance of losing everything. Thus just knowing there's a net helps even if you never need it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Incidentally, have you considered the numbers?
Someone did run the numbers for the UK a few years ago. They assumed a £10K/year payment (which is enough to live on outside of London - very comfortably in some parts of the country - and might help reduce the housing pressure in London), set the tax-free allowance to the same as the UBI amount (so you didn't pay tax on the UBI, but you did on every pound earned after that) and shuffled the tax bands around to make it revenue neutral (i.e. they absorbed unemployment benefits and so on, but assumed that the changes in taxes must raise enough to pay for it). As I recall, anyone currently on £20K/year or less would be better off, anyone earning more would be worse off. I'd be paying a noticeably larger tax bill each year, but I'm okay with that in exchange for a social safety net that means that no one starves because they can't find employment.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The entire AskSlashdot topic is wrongheaded because it started from money, not time. So I have to begin by reviewing Ekronomics 101.
In highly advanced societies the essential working time is quite small. Averaged over the entire population, perhaps 2 hours/week is actually required to produce all the food, clothing, and housing required. The real question is what happens to the rest of the time. The topic is assuming that the possible answers are "no work" or "fake work". (By the way, in an extremely poor society people work ALL the time and still starve to death. Take Yemen, for example.)
Ekronomics divides the rest of the time into investment and recreational. Investment is things like education and research and new infrastructure that increase productivity and actually reduce the essential time even more. There are also meta levels of investment time that improve investment time or contribute to new forms of recreational time.
Recreational time is the bottomless pit, but it has many interesting characteristics. For example, many recreational products are not consumed in use. The same book or movie can be read or watched by many people, or even be reread or rewatched by the same people. There is also a special category for people who create new recreational goods and services. They, too, are contributing to the economy and their work is highly valued, even though it is not essential. However, to improve the future status of the society in competition with other societies, it is important to convert more of the recreational time into investment time...
From this ekronomic perspective, the question looks very different. Fake work has to be regarded as a kind of recreational time, but the least pleasant, and the only possible rationale is if you think it will force more people to increase their investment time. (This is for advanced societies where the essential time cannot be increased.)
Anyway, that's already more time than I want to give Slashdot right now, especially since this article failed to pay me back with any recreational time in the form of funny comments.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Paying people not to work destroys the ability to achieve.
Fortunately that's absolutely not what we're talking about. People get UBI whether they work or not; with the UBI as a safety net, they can be more choosy about their jobs, or they can try this new idea they thought about but couldn't risk before because their kids would starve if it failed. Look at J. K. Rowling; she wrote the first Harry Potter book while on unemployment, but being on the dole didn't destroy her ability to achieve.
Surely, if UBI were implemented there will be some that would just sit on the couch all day watching TV. But, once you take basic survival out of the equation, people do like to work, if the job is interesting or meaningful to them. Comparatively few people retire after they make their first million(s), even though they could spend the rest of their lives comfortably on their couches. But instead they keep working, putting in crazy hours, trying new ideas, starting new companies.
For an example of this, see Elon Musk: after selling his share of PayPal he could have lived the rest of his life in extreme comfort, on the best couch money can buy. Instead, he started trying any number of new things, and has changed the world. Obviously, not all salarymen are potential Elon Musks, but I think UBI will free quite a bit of human potential.