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?

Comments

Work has to be meaningful to give meaning

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing a pointless task or showing up to do nothing in order to earn a living is soul-crushing.
In a low-job boom economy we may need to encourage people to get out and socialize, but there are many better ways to do this.

Re:Work has to be meaningful to give meaning

[GameboyRMH]

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.

Re:Work has to be meaningful to give meaning

[ceoyoyo]

Nah, everybody loves doing pointless busywork. And we all know people who don't work for some corporation never find anything productive to do, just sit around and watch Oprah all day.

The last of the hard core believers in the protestant work ethic are having their shark jumping moment.

Re:Work has to be meaningful to give meaning

[TheRaven64]

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.

Universal Income.

[YukariHirai]

I'm definitely in Camp Universal Income. Everyone gets enough to live comfortably enough on, and if you want more income on top of that, you can work. Guaranteed jobs for everyone on the face of it doesn't sound like a bad idea, but it will wind up being the case that a lot of people are given pointless makework. As much as people do like to keep busy, no-one respects being given work that exists only for the sake of keeping them busy.

Re:Universal Income.

[martyros]

Worse yet, if you're "guaranteed" a job, can you be fired? If not, then for some people it's the equivalent of basic income, because they can just show up when they want, do what they want, and not worry about the consequences. Worse, because the people who *are* trying to work will be demoralized and understaffed. And if you can be fired, then it's not really guaranteed, is it?

Re:Universal Income.

[Mr D from 63]

Guaranteed jobs for everyone on the face of it doesn't sound like a bad idea, but it will wind up being the case that a lot of people are given pointless makework.

Yeah, and you can only have so many slashdot editors. Maybe they could work for Facebook and Twitter, deleting offensive posts.

Re:Universal Income.

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Universal Income.

[ColdBoot]

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.

Re:Universal Income.

[Karmashock]

The guarenteed job assumes people show up and make a token effort to do their work.

You can not be fired and not paid at the same time for all sorts of jobs.

Take jobs where you're paid by the hour... if you show up but don't work those hours... should you be paid for them? Depending on the employer you may or may not be paid excluding being fired as an option.

Various jobs pay according to some observable labor... Let us say I pay you to pick baskets of cherries... I may pay you by the basket of cherries you bring me... not by the hour. Bring me ONE basket or no baskets... or a thousand baskets. Your productivity will scale with the income.

These are just ways of dealing with stuff like that. We have thousands of years of experience managing people in manual labor. Your worries about how we'll deal with X or Y presumes that we haven't seen this before.

Take a peasant farmer from a thousand years ago. These people were generally not fired. How were they encouraged to work?

All sorts of feedback systems typically... where in more or less work would have different consequences. Whether or not you'd get food for example was often contingent on labor. If you really went out of your way to be useless such societies would typically write you off naturally. But the feedback loops are pretty good at keeping people active.

The UBI etc presumes to maintain the economy whilst destroying the feedback loops. It is a suicide pact in many ways. I wish it most seriously upon my worst enemies. I have enough cruelty in me for that. But upon those I love and care for?... I would spare them the consequences.

Re: Universal Income.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a peasant farmer from a thousand years ago. These people were generally not fired. How were they encouraged to work?

Starvation.

Re:Universal Income.

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

Re:Universal Income.

[king neckbeard]

Actually, this is the point where it's pointed out that between the existing expenditures in social safety nets (welfare,unemployment, etc.)m the fact that most UBI systems involve tax rates that make middle class jobs essentially neutral, and the increase in the velocity of money, it likely costs more to NOT have UBI.

Furthermore, if rich people are rich because they are smart instead of just opportunistic bastards seeking power, they would probably prefer having the streets clear of dying people over having more money doing nothing in an offshore tax haven.

Re:Universal Income.

[w3woody]

As originally conceived by Milton Friedman, UBI (or rather, a "negative tax") would replace all other programs--welfare programs, middle class tax deductions, Social Security, etc., etc., etc.

And the point was not to add a new, generous welfare payment. The point was to replace the existing welfare system with a new universal system which requires almost no administrative overhead. The program would be paid in part from the existing welfare system (which is scrapped), from increased tax receipts (from middle-class and upper-class tax deductions which are eliminated), and from the salary of the old welfare program (whose salaries you no longer have to pay).

Ultimately a UBI may not necessarily pay a "living wage", depending on where you live. (But then, already in San Francisco, making less than $100k/year is considered the poverty line for subsidized housing. So "living wage" isn't a constant anyway.) In fact, for the poorest, the idea was that UBI--as originally conceived--would pay out about as much as welfare does.

But it does make welfare "more fair" in the sense that you get to keep your UBI even if you are an upper-middle class individual. (Of course at that point the UBI replaces that mortgage tax deduction, the deduction for your kids, and other middle-class tax deductions. So for someone in the middle-class with a mortgage and a couple of kids, UBI should be a wash.)

And that implies that if you do go out and get a 'gig' job, you get to keep your UBI. Which--oddly enough--incentivizes the poor to work as it eliminates the extremely high implicit marginal tax rate the poor suffer from which cause the poor to be "taxed" at a 140% marginal tax rate in some cases. (My wife used to work for a dialysis center that treated the poor--and she knew several folks on welfare who could not afford to work, because the only jobs they could get would put them into that 140% implicit marginal tax rate--meaning for every dollar they could make, they'd lose about a buck-fourty in benefits.)

Re:Universal Income.

[Paul Carver]

Everyone gets enough to live comfortably enough on

Who sets this level? Elected representatives? If not elected then it will inevitably be an entrenched, connected elite. If elected then we have a big problem and here's what it is:

Suppose you live solely on UBI and aren't comfortable "enough", what's your best, easiest way to get more money? Simply vote for whoever promises the biggest UBI increase in every election. Even if you work a little for some money in addition to UBI, how likely are you to vote for someone who will reduce, or even hold steady the current UBI? Would any candidate even dare to express the idea of not boosting the UBI?

Once more than 50% of the voters are receiving UBI we have a runaway system, an engine without a governer. There aren't enough economists and mathematicians in the population to counterbalance the people who vote in favor of every "increase my UBI payout" at every opportunity. Without a feedback loop, "Everyone gets enough to live comfortably enough on" isn't a fixed amount calculated by sound economic priciples, it's "bread and circuses" that grows without bound until it exceeds the available production capacity and the system collapses.

Meanwhile there's no incentive to do any of the "dirty jobs" that are hard, messy, smelly and dangerous and nowhere near being automated. Lots of unpleasant work ceases to be economically viable and stops getting done once people have the option of just voting themselves more money.

Without a "benevolent dictator" to ensure that the idle can't vote themselves too big a share of the total and to ensure that enough people are forced into doing the unpleasant jobs that can't be or haven't been automated, the whole system collapses eventually.

Even if the voters can see that collapse eventually, they'll never vote as a block to prevent it. Enough of them will always vote in their short term self interest that no candidate will be able to win on a platform of near term austerity to avoid a long term collapse. There's no way to right the ship once it's taken on the critical percentage of UBI voters.

Re:Universal Income.

[drinkypoo]

Furthermore, if rich people are rich because they are smart instead of just opportunistic bastards seeking power, they would probably prefer having the streets clear of dying people over having more money doing nothing in an offshore tax haven.

Even the smart ones (who do exist) tend to get corrupted by money to the point that they lose sight of the fact that they can never spend all the money they've made, and they get an immense sense of entitlement. If rich people ordinarily came to that realization, they would have done so already, and the world would look very different. Instead, they really think that they can create a situation where the undesirables will die off, somehow without affecting them. Nobody is in more denial.

Re:Universal Income.

[Solandri]

I'm definitely in Camp Universal Income. Everyone gets enough to live comfortably enough on

It doesn't work like that. The value of money isn't fixed. It fluctuates based on the ratio of productivity to pay. When you screw with it, the value of the currency rises or falls. In other word, productivity is what's conserved (everything that's consumed must be produced), not money. So if you set an arbitrary consumption level (UBI) which doesn't match the amount of productivity the country is generating, there's a mismatch between the number of things available to buy vs the number of things people have money to buy. When that happens, more things for people to buy do not magically appear out of thin air. Instead, the value of the currency changes to reflect the new ratio. So if you set the UBI at $50k/yr per person, but people are only producing $25k/yr of goods, the economy corrects this mismatch by devaluing money by 50% (everything becomes twice as expensive in dollars). So your "$50k" UBI now only buys the equivalent of $25k of goods and services, guaranteeing that productivity and consumption are equal. But breaking your condition that the UBI be "enough to live comfortably on."

If you try to fix the value of the currency to thwart this, you end up in the situation that Greece was in and Venezuela are in. Greece overpaid its workers. If they had still been on the Drachma, all that would've happened was the value of the Drachma would've fallen compared to other currencies. But because they were on the Euro, the value of their currency was fixed. As a result, their economy responded by generating tremendous amounts of debt. Until they finally the other countries on the Euro eventually forced them to accept austerity measures (reduced pay, increased productivity). Venezuela tried to halt changes in the bolivar's value by fixing prices. As a result people stopped selling goods (on average, you're not going to sell something for less value than what it cost you to buy/produce it). And as a result people started selling and buying stuff on the black market - bartering or using other currencies like the US dollar.

In other words, you don't set the UBI. The economy does automatically. Without a UBI, the average income (standard of living) is simply the average worker's productivity. With a UBI, it becomes (the average worker's productivity) / (pay given to workers + pay given to UBI recipients). The larger the ratio of money received as UBI vs money received for productive work, the more your currency devalues and the less the UBI is able to buy. If your economy is only producing enough to sustain a $25k UBI, and you set it at $50k, the economy will simply devalue your currency so it's able to buy half as much (prices will double) so your $50k UBI becomes equivalent to a $25k UBI. (It's actually worse than this, as the amount workers are paid will also inflate. So the economy will respond to a UBI by attempting to correct the value of the currency so the amount of income people are receiving correctly reflects the productivity they are contributing. That is, it tries to converge on the UBI's value towards zero. So after enough time your UBI will be $50k but the average burger flipper will be making $10 million/yr, and burgers will cost $1000, and your UBI is no longer enough to live on.)

So you can't just declare "we will set the UBI at a level which allows everyone to comfortably live on." Everyone first has to produce enough for everyone to comfortably live on, before they can consume enough to comfortably live on. So a UBI by itself won't work. It needs to be coupled with some way to coerce or guarantee people meet the desired productivity target.

To get this to work, the UBI needs to be decoupled from the currency. Instead of giving people money, give them the produced items directly. e.g. The government gives everyone a free bag of staple foods once a week. New clothes once a year. A UBI apartmen

Re:Universal Income.

[swillden]

The UBI etc presumes to maintain the economy whilst destroying the feedback loops.

Most economists disagree, particularly the libertarian ones you'd expect to be really opposed to such universal forced redistribution programs. This is because they believe UBI would do far less to distort incentives than minimum wages (which say that some people's labor is worth too little to allow them to work and some jobs have too little value to pay for them to be done) or needs-based welfare systems (which are often structured to degrade as much as assist, and to actually disincent work).

We really need some large-scale, long-term tests of these ideas to find out for sure.

Re:Universal Income.

[Karmashock]

Its slavery to not pay people when they don't work but also not fire them?

Let us say you didn't come into work on Tuesday. And I say "well, I'm not paying you for that day because you didn't show up but I'm not firing you"... Is THAT slavery? I kind of think you're reaching for a hyperbolic moral argument that is sadly making you seem silly.

That or you simply misunderstood. I was very clear in my original post but if people are inclined to cherry pick sentences and take them out of context... what can I do? :)

As to mindless economic activity, it is only mindless in that YOU don't want to do it. It is not mindless in that it serves no purpose. Many menial jobs must be done. That you don't want to do it doesn't mean it doesn't have to be done by someone.

Listen, comrade, come your silly revolution... which I am cruel enough to wish upon you... you're going to be worked like a dog by the oh so politically correct commissars of your great moral society.

You have utopian dreams of unicorns and fairies? Super. Enjoy eating dreams and being warmed by rainbows.

Re:Universal Income.

[Highdude702]

If you talk of replacing *ALL* Welfare programs with UBI and not increasing taxation to do it, I think you may have a bunch of people behind this idea. The problem is that still doesnt leave enough money to have *REAL* UBI(the livable wage you all claim) so then you will want more tax money because "Its not enough to live" not to mention when people get money for nothing it fucks with the economy(or so everyone claims that donald trumps tax cuts will, why not this free money?) causing mass inflation. Now not only do we no longer have welfare for the people that need it. the people that just barely had their head above water, are now drowning.

Re: Universal Income.

[jpaine619]

And if he doesn't want to clean the sewer main? How long until liberals decide that everyone should be guaranteed a nice job? That's my issue with this... It never ends.

Of course, as soon as we make robots to clean the sewers, we'll hear how automation is stealing jobs...

Never mind that automation has been doing this for 2000 years.. I can't imagine a group of people whining that the horse stole the plow jobs...

Neither.

[Chas]

Both are "shit sandwich" choices.

Paying people not to work destroys the ability to achieve.

Putting people into do-nothing jobs destroys the desire to work.

Both damage the economy.

One by raising cost of living to compensate for unearned payouts.
The other by depressing wages.

So, which shit sandwich will YOU take a bite of?

Re:Neither.

[Opportunist]

Paying people not to work destroys the ability to achieve.

How does eliminating a demeaning "you want fries with that" job and leaving the person to pursue something they consider worthwhile "destroy the ability to achieve"?

Re:Neither.

[nine-times]

Don't we need someone to do those "you want fries with that" jobs?

Maybe McDonalds will completely automate those specific jobs at some point, but there will always be some low-prestige jobs that need doing. We all can't be rockstars.

Re:Neither.

[GameboyRMH]

They're still around, we call them trust fund babies now.

Re:Neither.

[Chas]

Because YOU have an agreement with your employer to do the demeaing "fries" job. Only IDIOTS stay in that job and don't progress.
Hell, the major franchises have PROGRAMS to help you advance your career beyond "Want fries?"

Shit jobs like that teach you, as a kid, one thing.
Those types of no-skill jobs SUCK. And if you don't wanna be stuck doing that forever, YOU IMPROVE YOURSELF.

As for paying people not to work.
It's not sustainable. It just isn't.

Re:Neither.

[Chas]

Yeah. And where does the money come from?

UBI works on the economy like school loans. Prices simply inflate to encompass the available money.

And I'm sorry, I'm opposed to any program that basically pays people not to work.

Re:Neither.

[ChatHuant]

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.

Distopian future..

[thesupraman]

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).

Re:Distopian future..

[Opportunist]

Yes, a 'guaranteed job' pretty much means 'YOU better find a job you like, or we will find one you DONT'

This is staggeringly a lot like it was in the former Soviet Union. Find a job, or we find one for you. Somewhere in some godforsaken backwater town in the middle of Sibiria, there is always a shortage of ... everything. So no matter what you can do, they need you there.

Re: Distopian future..

[phantomfive]

You shouldn't be rewarded for being part of the system. That's retarded. You should be rewarded for *contributing* to the system. (And yes I am aware that there are a great many rich people who are a net drain on the system. If we can figure out how to get them separated from their weather I highly favor it)

Re:Distopian future..

[teg]

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.

This is the part many don't like. Today, many of these benefits are dependent on your income and thus how much you pay into the system. If I'm sick, my wife is on maternity leave etc, these benefits replace the paychecks so that you don't lose money. If these are replaced with UBI, suddenly getting a child will lose you a lot of money - all of your pay check . Getting sick? Same thing - no pay, but you have UBI at the bottom.

For people actively contributing, today's system works much better than UBI.

Re: Distopian future..

[CaffeinatedBacon]

That's not just in time. That's just missed out. If it was there in time I'd be taking it home with me now.

Re:Distopian future..

[fluffernutter]

others _must_ work and have their money taken without any kind of compensation or benefit.

That's an unpreventable cost of maintaining a civilization. Either pay these people not to go out and commit crimes, or pay police to clean up after. I much prefer the former myself, because it results in the least deaths and violence and is probably cheaper.

Re: Distopian future..

[Applehu Akbar]

I would rather see UBI than make-work, because so long as the salaries for real jobs are significantly higher than UBI, people will be motivated to take them. Just characterize UBI as 'unemployment comp for life."

Re: Distopian future..

[west]

You shouldn't be rewarded for being part of the system.

Why not?

I'll happily declare that my fellow Canadians deserve many rewards simply for being Canadian - free education, health-care, various welfare systems if they are in need, free roads and other infrastructure, free defense at the expense of the lives of my fellow citizen, and a myriad of other services. None of those are dependent on their contribution to the system.

And yes, as a Canadian who's doing reasonably well, I pay a fairly substantial tax for the privilege of sustaining those services that benefit me and every other Canadian.

And this is not selflessness. The benefits that I gain from having these services available to my fellow Canadians far exceeds my contribution.to the tax pool. (If I was selfless, I'd be trying to extend those benefits to the world. I'm not as the benefits aren't great enough.)

Anyway, I'll just say that a society that doesn't place a strong inherent positive value on its members is one that's falling apart.

Re:Distopian future..

[evenmoreconfused]

I also disagree that it is a more fair system. Someone who is sick and unable to work has much greater need than someone who has a good job. Why would they receive the same sum?

Because it is both fairer and bureaucratically cheaper to pay them both and tax it back from the one who is doing well enough to contribute.

If you simply give everyone a basic amount, there is no niggling, maneuvering, or fraud about eligibility for fifty-three different entitlements. And if you (actually) tax everyone based on their real income -- including said basic amount -- then you eliminate much of the niggling, maneuvering and fraud about seventy-one different tax loopholes and exemptions.

It might even wind up being approximately the same result as we have now, just with 80% fewer bureaucrats and 50% less fraud.

Re:Distopian future..

[w3woody]

The funny of it is, if you add up how much we pay administering the current welfare system--the thousands and thousands of bureaucrats who administer things like Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, who determine what items you are allowed to buy, who determine if you qualify, who police the system--we could provide a reasonably generous UBI to everyone with nearly no administrative overhead.

Remember: a proper UBI replaces EVERYTHING, including tax deductions normally enjoyed by higher-income individuals, such as tax deductions for children (as children also receive a UBI), mortgage tax deductions, tax deductions for retirement savings, tax credits for paying for college. The idea is to eliminate the unfairness that is intrinsically tied into all of these separate programs, each which have their own target audiences, administrative bureaucracies and qualifications.

The UBI would also replace Social Security--both the OSADI and SSI disability funds.

Imagine how much smaller the administrative state becomes when your tax return is essentially four lines: A: gross income, B: tax (from tax tables), C: UBI D: Tax owed (or refund due).

This is why I don't think we will ever have a proper UBI. Because there are just too many people--both working for the government, and private companies (like Intuit, who constantly lobby against simplifying the tax code) whose jobs rely on the massive administration of hundreds of government programs which would all be wiped off the map by a properly designed UBI.

Tthat's part of the problem: we pay nearly as much in administrative overhead administering the current welfare state and the current tax code as we do paying out benefits. If you consider those bureaucrats as beneficiaries of the welfare state, that's a lot of jobs which would be wiped off the map. And they make a very powerful lobbying group--which is why in government corners, "UBI" is always reframed as yet another program for them to administer, rather than a new program that would cost them their job.

Re: Distopian future..

[phantomfive]

The crucial question really is, how many people can go onto UBI without society collapsing? That is, how many people can choose to be supported only by UBI without the system being overloaded?

Obviously if everyone decided to only be supported by UBI, it wouldn't work. The question is, how many people can be, what percentage? If you can't answer that question with some level of accuracy, you have no business implementing a UBI.

Re: Distopian future..

[Anonymous Coward]

The chinese already have such "social credit score". You would not like it.

Re: Distopian future..

[west]

Of course if no one contributes, the system will fall apart.

But why would no-one contribute? After all, the contributions benefit the contributor as well as every one else. And having every one else benefit is an additional benefit to me.

Now if contributions were optional, as is the Libertarian utopia, you might have a tragedy of the commons problem. Bu that's not the case.

Re:Distopian future..

[w3woody]

The number of bureaucrats you need to administer a system is in proportion to the complexity of that system, not the size. The idea of UBI (as it was originally conceived) was to reduce or eliminate nearly all the decision making (and thus, complexity) inherent in the original welfare system by replacing it with something much simpler--and inherently much more fair, as simplicity strips arbitrariness from a system.

Re: Distopian future..

[w3woody]

We're already there today; it's just the debate spans across multiple different programs and ranges from a debate on "welfare reform" to "tax reform" to "child support" to debate on a "living wage," with all sides making a pitch for their own favorite program.

The one nice thing, I guess, about concentrating all of this into a single simple system is that it would crystalize the debate over wealth redistribution into a debate over the two aspects of the UBI system: the marginal rates of the tax tables and the size of the UBI payout itself.

Re:Distopian future..

[w3woody]

You're joking that a UBI replaces everything, right?

I'm not. That was the original idea, floated by the likes of Milton Friedman and others. And his reasoning was not about redistribution or about "fairness" or about providing a better welfare program to the poor. It was about eliminating the arbitrariness of the existing federally- and state-administered programs by replacing the existing complex welfare and tax deduction systems with a simple payment scheme.

You think fraud goes away like magic?

Of course not. There will be plenty of people who try to continue to collect a deceased loved-one's UBI, for example.

But the fewer rules and the fewer decisions that have to be administered, the fewer decision makers and administrators are required to police the system. And when the only rule for collecting a UBI is "are you alive?", it makes administration and policing far easier than, for example, the current system which may require an investigator to determine your salary, if you were paid under the table, if the child you declared as a dependent actually lives with you at least 181 days out of the year, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

Re: Distopian future..

[radarskiy]

"so long as the salaries for real jobs are significantly higher than UBI"

By definition this is true. Those working get their wage plus UBI and those not working get just UBI, so those working always get more money. No roll-off of benefits, no weird discontinuities where if you earn more you wind up with less.

Re:Distopian future..

[Toth]

I think there can be a conservative case for UBI
One advantage to employers with this plan is that folks who don't know how to work will be out of our way.
It is much better than make work.
One day I left for work and some vehicles pulled up loaded with workers (about 8) who started cleaning the trash out of the roads and gutters accompanied by two white-hatted guys (supervisors) who sat in their town provided SUV.
When I came home for lunch, they were still at it along with the idle supervisors.

I know I could have sent two of my guys to do the same job, they wouldn't need supervision and would be done in two hours.

If we can get rid of all the government workers who check to see if there aren't any men's shoes under the bed and provide grants to companies that locate in areas that they wouldn't choose without the subsidies and all other "make work" bureaucrats we could probably cover the costs.

Also a group of folks who came up with an idea for a business could live off the UBI while they built their company.
It should go to everyone. Poor people and millionaires should get the direct deposit and it would be taxed back starting at 30k or so.

Re: Distopian future..

[TheRealMindChild]

But what if rather than a credit score we could look up some score based on your net contribution to society?

Not everybody can contribute something positive to society. That is just how it is. Also life isn't fair.

Re:Distopian future..

[quantaman]

The funny of it is, if you add up how much we pay administering the current welfare system--the thousands and thousands of bureaucrats who administer things like Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, who determine what items you are allowed to buy, who determine if you qualify, who police the system--we could provide a reasonably generous UBI to everyone with nearly no administrative overhead.

Remember: a proper UBI replaces EVERYTHING, including tax deductions normally enjoyed by higher-income individuals, such as tax deductions for children (as children also receive a UBI), mortgage tax deductions, tax deductions for retirement savings, tax credits for paying for college. The idea is to eliminate the unfairness that is intrinsically tied into all of these separate programs, each which have their own target audiences, administrative bureaucracies and qualifications.

I don't think it will be that easy.

To me the big unsolved problem with UBI is still going to be people at the margins. There's always going to be a portion of people who are really bad at managing their money, only 39% of Americans can handle a $1k hit right now, presumably most of the remaining 61% are employed, meaning that even with a UBI they'd still be $1k away from financial trouble.

Think about what will actually happen with a UBI. Some people will spend it on a big mortgage, or they'll find a way to borrow against it by building up credit card debt, or they'll have a substance abuse problem and spend everything on feeding their habit. Or they'll just have zero savings like most people do now and a major expense will come up and cause ruin.

So even with a UBI we still have homelessness, we still have kids going hungry, we still have families with their heat and power shut off, and we're still going to need programs to deal with those people.

Re:Distopian future..

[w3woody]

UBI recipients will demand more.

As I noted elsewhere, we're already there today; it's just the debate spans across multiple different programs and ranges from a debate on "welfare reform" to "tax reform" to "child support" to debate on a "living wage," with all sides making a pitch for their own favorite program.

UBI recipients will inevitably mismanage their funds and safety nets will have to be reestablished to cover medical and other needs.

Certainly UBI cannot replace medical aid (Medicaid), since the cost of health care for someone on dialysis (for example) far exceeds what any but the wealthiest individuals could pay out of pocket. (As I recall, the cost of dialysis out of pocket is in the low six figures annually.)

But this hits on a core philosophical difference about the poor and about people in general: are people too God-damned stupid to manage their own affairs, and thus must have their affairs managed for them?

It's not to deny the fact that there are demonstrably people out there who lack the logical or social skills necessary to function in our current society. And certainly we need to have social workers out there who can help them.

But when you make the de-facto assumption that all poor people are stupid and require their lives to be managed by those of us who are "better" than them--you walk right into an aesthetic argument. (At what point does your inferiority require us to treat you as a ward of the state? Does being poor mean you must be a de-facto ward of the state? What's the threshold? Is it abject poverty? Is it just being lower-middle class? Do we by default assume you're making poor decisions because you're barely scratching out a living? Do we pass judgement because in our opinion you drink too much for your socio-economic class? Drink too many empty calories in the form of fast food soft drinks? Eat too often at McDonalds? Should you become a "de-facto" ward of the state because you live in the wrong area? And I'm not being snarky; I've heard each of these given as a reason why those "less than us" need to make "better decisions", or who should have their rights limited.)

Worse, you walk head-first into an authoritarian argument: if "those people" can't "make the right decisions" that are made by "their betters"--how far away are you from simply taking away all of their decisions?

As a Native American I've seen these arguments play out over history on the reservations.

They never end well.

So your statement "UBI recipients will inevitably mismanage their funds and safety nets" strikes me as overly authoritarian. And distasteful.

Me, I'd rather just hire a bunch of social workers (and we may not need to hire any more since we have a lot of them already), and task them with the job of helping people who seek help, or who are referred to them by police officers, with making better decisions. Kinda like what we do today, but without the "nanny state" authoritarian bullshit.

Remember: from where you stand, unless you're Warren Buffet, there are people at a higher socio-economic level than you looking down at you as part of the hoi-polloi--part of the unwashed masses, an uncouth individual who can't seem to manage your life to the level they can.

Re:Distopian future..

[w3woody]

Your argument essentially is an argument for taking away individual freedom.

I mean, consider the statistic that only 39% of Americans can handle a $1k hit right now. By your implication, this suggests that 61% of all Americans lack the sufficient wherewithal to be making their own financial decisions.

And if they can't make their own decisions for themselves, who make it for them? The State?

Ultimately I find arguments like your an aesthetic one, because often, when you explore the boundaries you find arguments like "he shouldn't eat at McDonalds because those are empty calories" or "she shouldn't spend her time out partying because she isn't spending enough time making home-cooked meals."

And down that rabbit hole is authoritarianism--one where only 39% of Americans are trusted with their own money.

Re:Distopian future..

[TheRaven64]

You think fraud goes away like magic?

Do you think it's easier to spot fraud in a system with thousands of rules and exceptions to the rules that decides who gets paid what and how much, or in a system where everyone receives exactly the same amount?

Re: Distopian future..

[ceoyoyo]

The reason UBI is being proposed is because automation looks like it's going to come for an unprecedented number of jobs. It's not really much of a stretch to see how one day it might be virtually all of them. Every person who loses a job to automation is one who can be supported by society without working.

Automation is *more efficient* than having people doing the job. Otherwise you'd use the people.

Re: Distopian future..

[ChatHuant]

If UBI is too good it will turn into a lifetime subsidy for do-nothings.

This statement pretty clearly shows your philosophy. You define a person's worth by the work they do, and look down on people who don't satisfy your criteria. This puritanical mind set is slowly becoming incompatible with the modern world.

First, as productivity advances, more and more wealth is being created with less and less human effort. We're at the cusp of producing enough to provide basic living support to everybody with almost 0 human effort.

Second, as technology advances and things change more and more rapidly, the requirements for jobs are starting to grow beyond the average human's capabilities. New jobs need a lot of adaptability, enough intellectual capacity and a lot of study. There are quite a few people that simply won't be able to find meaningful jobs. What then? Would you have us revive the workhouses for the poor?

when was the last time you saw benefits decreased? Almost never. Increased? Almost always.

And this is exactly the way things should be. Not, as you seem to imply, because the "do nothings" are clawing more and more from the worthies (whichever way you define them), but because global productivity has been growing continuously, because more and more wealth is being created, and it makes perfect sense to use this extra wealth to increase programs that benefit the most people.

Re:Distopian future..

[liquid_schwartz]

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.

UBI is completely incompatible with mass immigration. The people generally prefer to take care of their own but business wants cheap labor and Democrats need more voters so we end up with mass immigration. Thus UBI will never happen shy of a major reshuffling of priorities.

Why do those in power hate it?

See above. With regards to the original question, I'd favor a guaranteed job over UBI. I've seen people who get money for free and it rots their brain and saps their initiative. At least social security has to be earned, UBI is paying people to breathe.

Re: Distopian future..

[sjames]

I suspect very few will choose to live solely on UBI. Think about it, on UBI you can afford a basic apartment, clothes, an OK car, and decent food. But if you do some work, you can afford a nicer apartment, better food, a nice car, designer clothes and/or a nice vacation.

Under UBI, you will see more artisans and more freelancers. You will still see some 'day jobs', but the bosses/managers will tend to be polite to employees and reasonably accomodating out of necessity.

Even under our current system, it's not that unusual for someone on unemployment or welfare to do some work "off the books" for a little spare cash even when they can't get a proper job that would actually remove the need for their benefit. They might do more and do it openly but they can't afford to lose the benefit unless the work would be steady enough and pay adequately..

Especially at first, there will likely be people who will just sit on the couch and veg. However, like retirees who can't or won't find something better to do upon retirement, they will tend die off fast from natural causes.

Re: Distopian future..

[greenwow]

We've heard that claim before. When, for example, a cotton gin could replace a year of work every single hour it runs, people panicked. Instead of that being a problem, it freed-up people to do more productive jobs.

Re: Distopian future..

[djinn6]

To answer your question, for a country like the US, 90% or more can be on UBI. The country is only 2% farmers, yet produces more than enough food for it to be a major export. Of the remaining needs, water, clothing and electricity production are almost completely automated. The only need not automated yet is shelter, but that's not a consumable like the others.

Now that's not to say it would be a nice place to live with 90% of the people on UBI, but in reality that won't happen. Most people don't want to merely survive, they want to live in luxury.

Re: Distopian future..

[lgw]

What's the difference between "roll-off of benefits" and taxes? It works out to the same thing. And without a seriously high tax rate on almost all workers, there's no way to fund any sort of UBI.

I expect there would be a lot of jobs that pay next to nothing, because there's no need to pay enough to live on, and people get bored, so of course that will be exploited.

Also, UBI fails to take into account that old people just need more money to get by than young people - what you used to be able to do yourself, now you must pay others to do. So are we paying different groups of people different amounts (inevitably based on political influence), or are we keeping Social Security?

Meh, the math just doesn't work at all.

Re: Distopian future..

[yusing]

Freed, huh? For jobs like being paid shit to dig coal, with a mandatory target to reach each day not matter how sick you are? and get thrown on a boxcar or even shot (along with your family) when you strike for a better wage? Take a look at history once.

'Productive'. Most people in the US today have no idea what 'productive' work is. And no idea what 'labor' is. Sitting in front of a stack of paper or a computer, working a phone, 'customer service'?

Didn't need a gym or jogging to keep fit. Ate real food.

Freed for *shit jobs* for *shit pay*. (Currently, at least $7.50 per hour) Keep celebrating as you lie to yourself, or try showing some feelings for people who don't have it as good as you do.

Re: Distopian future..

[west]

Nobody will contribute, people will not work, will steal, will drink themselves to death.

Are you telling me that you had a UBI, you'd quit your present job, steal, and drink yourself to death?

I'll guess no.

Okay, then your family? Your friends?

Again, I'll guess no.

Usually when claims like this are made, it's because there's this huge mysterious, shadowy mass of humanity who we've never really met (but read about in blog posts or seen in movies) who apparently are lazy, shiftless, and awful (and probably have a different skin colour). The people we actually *have* met are, on the whole, reasonably hard-working, reasonably decent people.

I'll go with making pronouncements based on observed data. My measurement of all the people in my life (and that encompasses a number of different walks of life, many different colours, many different cultures) indicates that the *vast* majority are, when given the opportunity, contributors. Again, mostly to benefit themselves, but because of forced contributions, benefiting their fellow citizens as well. Some unfortunates aren't in a position to contribute due to health or other issues. Most wish they were.

I've no doubt you can cherry pick for awful people - they do exist in small numbers. But the idea of basing my society solely around the awful people? That sounds like a recipe for... well... awfulness.

Re: Distopian future..

[dgatwood]

As for the "homeless/ghetto person converted into fruit-picker" concept (note that there would be a need for many other types of ancillary and logistics-related labor required as well, from machinery repair to transportation/delivery/warehousing/storage related occupations, etc, etc), that actually does have some merit and *does not* require any sort of forced relocation or other drastic authoritarian actions. Just simply offer the jobs with good pay, job security, health benefits, ...

And right there, in only six words, you summed up why that will never happen.

It's conceivable that, if done right, such a plan could almost eliminate involuntary joblessness, massively increase agricultural production

Agricultural production isn't going to go way up because you have better-paid people hand-picking crops, nor because you have more people picking crops. There really isn't much spoilage caused by crops going unpicked, percentage-wise. We might get double-digit millions of dollars in additional yield. That's like a hundredth of a percent of our country's net agricultural exports. It would have such a tiny impact on the total agricultural production in this country that it would be lost in the noise.

And you can't really increase the amount of land used for fields easily, because there's not enough fresh water for irrigation, not enough fertile land, etc.

and through the massive increase in supply reduce food prices

First, you want to pay a reasonable wage, then you want to reduce food prices. That can't work. The money to pay all those workers a reasonable wage has to come from somewhere, and it can only come from the food prices. The reason crops go unpicked is not because there aren't enough workers, but rather because above a certain level of production, prices fall to the point where the wages you can offer won't attract enough workers, and you can till the plants under for less than you would lose by bringing the crops to market.

Raise the cost of workers and you'll end up with a new equilibrium point; either way, the cost of food has to go up, not down, to pay those wages. Farm owners will limit production as needed to keep the price high enough to be able to pay those wages. And because the cost of food coming from the U.S. will be so much higher than the cost of food coming from other countries, we'll end up importing more and exporting less, which means there will be fewer picker jobs at those higher wages, producing a lower total output, not more.

Basic income

[Opportunist]

To quote a German comedian, I need money, not an occupation. I can keep busy all right myself, no need for that.

Re:Basic income

[cascadingstylesheet]

To quote a German comedian, I need money, not an occupation. I can keep busy all right myself, no need for that.

That's actually the problem, not the solution.

We have been experimenting with giving people money and then they find stuff to do. For quite some time.

The results may make for exciting movies and rap videos, but aren't real good for society overall.

Re:WTF is a guaranteed job?

[Opportunist]

Slavery. Slavery is a guaranteed job. As long as I don't have to pay for it, any work you do is making me richer, so I will employ you. And that's also the only way you can guarantee a job, because as soon as I have to pay you for it, it has to be something I can sell for more than I pay you.

Re:From those two

[TFAFalcon]

But who will evaluate the housing/care/food provided?

If everyone has a guaranteed room, you can be sure that the government will be quite happy to pay 10$ a month to Hovel Towers to provide them, although a much better room could be rended for 11$.
The same will be true for medical care and food - the cheapest provider will be picked. And the people relying on these services won't have the ability to work a few hours a month to afford something better - if they want an upgrade they have to the entire expense on their own.

On the other hand, giving them money and letting them make their own choices means that the providers still need to compete on both price and performance and upgrades are not an enormous cliff, just a slope.

There will be some people that spend all the money on alcohol and drugs, but that is their choice - just stop preventing them from commiting their slow suicide with charity.

Goods and services must be produced

[Karmashock]

The dream of something for nothing is not sustainable.

The guaranteed job has problems but fewer problems than a guaranteed income. The job has a potential of you doing SOMETHING of value to the system. You finding it meaningful is not the issue. Things need to be put in boxes. Inventory has to be checked. There are lots of jobs held by billions of people on this planet that are hard to cite as "meaningful".

The job concept at the very least has you doing something. It need not be dig a ditch and then fill the ditch in with the same soil.

That said, EVEN IF the job is that bad it is at least motivating you to get another job. If I give you income there is no motivation for you to do anything. You got your income. If I require that you do something annoying to get the money then you'll be interested in finding a less annoying way to get the money... perhaps getting a better job.

We can iterate on the problems these these concepts quite deeply. Entire books have been written on these issues from many angles... moral, logistical, social, political, ethical...

However, many seem to take the complexity as meaning it is arbitrary and thus "there is no wrong answer" because its complicated.

This is why I like to keep it simple.

The simple inescapable point here is that the goods and services that people want to obtain in exchange for money must be produced by someone. And if you're not producing stuff... then where is it coming from?

Someone else? Magical fairy land?

A wealthy society can afford a certain amount of wealth spent on non-productive things. But that account is FINITE... not IN-FINITE. Which means there is a limit. The amount you can blow will be relative to the wealth of the society. So you have a paradox where the richer a society is the more money you can throw at welfare but... you have to be very careful with your taxation and regularitory policies otherwise you'll make the society poorer... not richer.

Its the goose and the golden eggs. And you have to be very careful that you eat ONLY golden eggs and no geese.

This balance is inherently unsustainable. It requires wisdom and restraint to the point of personal political self sacrifice on the part of politicians to maintain this balance. There will be a short term personal benefit to exceeding the balance and eating geese for the politician. He can promise the moon and the stars... and deliver it for a year or two at the price of economic collapse after five or ten years.

Do you trust your politicians to sacrifice their political power by not over promising, slaughtering the geese that lay the golden eggs, and then leaving their nation to rot after the politician retires to a private island somewhere?

This is not cynicism... the examples of this happening are easily accessible.

All of these concepts people are coming up with to slight of hand the magical money into pockets... it... is short term thinking. And the difference between short and long term... the difference between small and big picture is the difference between good and evil.

Literally.

Good and evil is a matter of scope.

Every act of evil seems like a good idea to the man that does it. And every act of evil seen from a wider perspective is seen for what it is.

Take every act of theft, murder, battery, abuse... etc... and contract it to a moment and the man doing it... and the act will have a "rightness" to it. I'm excluding literal insanity... consider acts of theft, revenge, etc. It all can be justified if you collapse the entire world to the man doing the action.

Then expand the perspective out... to include friends, family, community, strangers on the street... expand it in time as well as space by not merely considering a moment but days, months, years, and generations. The act takes on a different character in different contexts.

Guaranteed income seems like a good idea from a limited perspective over a short period of time. If you look at it in the context of millions or

Re:Goods and services must be produced

[sjames]

If I give you income there is no motivation for you to do anything.

Have you quit your job to live on welfare? Why not?

Why not both?

[Indiana Joe]

A hybrid system might be best. The UBI provides for the base level expenses, but only just. If you want a more comfortable lifestyle, you will be able to work for it.

It's better to just find your own happiness

[guruevi]

If you want UBI, go work a job and/or invest what you earn. It's Universal, it's Basic and it's Income.

Automation/AI isn't going to change things, it hasn't in the past it won't in the future.

Re:From those two

[teg]

Health care works pretty well for the purpose of UBI, outside of the US. Of the developed countries, only the US lacks public health care. Given the results on a population basis, as well as the actual cost as part of GDP (the US is 50% higher than #2) the non-US approach seems to be dramatically better.

Career vs Job

[jellomizer]

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.

Basic jobs vs basic income

[bluegutang]

If the choice is between basic incomes and basic jobs, there are a number of massive problems with a basic jobs program which don't exist for a basic income program. Specifically:

1. Basic jobs don’t help the disabled
2. Basic jobs don’t help caretakers for sick family members, or parents of children
3. Jobs require massive personal expenses - transportation, rent in desirable areas with manageable commutes, babysitting for when you're away from home - wiping out much of the salary received
4. Basic jobs may not pay for themselves by doing useful work
5. Private industry deals with bad workers by firing them; nobody has a good plan for how basic jobs would replace this
6. Private employees deal with bad workplaces by quitting them; nobody has a good plan for how basic jobs would replace this
7. Basic income could make private jobs better to work in; basic jobs could make private jobs worse to work in
8. Basic income supports personal development; basic jobs prevent it
9. Work sucks, and basic jobs would make huge numbers of people's lives suck

Full discussion here

Re:Neither...?

[DethLok]

"Free" and relatively cheap healthcare are achievable, just look at, well, pretty much any other western nation that's not the USA. Yes, it's paid for via taxes. Just like unemployment benefits (in Australia, very easy for an employer to set up, as it's paid for via taxes, so there is nothing to set up).

Sure, there are problems, but that's the case with anything.

Re:From those two

[TFAFalcon]

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.

Re:From those two

[tricorn]

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.

Re:Exactly.

[tricorn]

If there's no work, it's because efficiency has gone so high that very few people need to work in order to provide for all.

Rather than leave all the wealth (= control of resources) in the hands of the lucky few who ended up on top, a UBI ensures everyone can participate. There's still plenty of room for people to excel, and through hard work be rewarded. It's very much a free market idea, without the coercion of "you'll do this shitty job for low pay because we can make you miserable or dead if you don't", or the "congratulations, you were born rich, you can be a total zero and still have a great life" inequity that's an alternative.

Re:Third option

[Plus1Entropy]

Wake up idiot. It's the corps that already have you enslaved, not the government.

Also people don't choose slavery, by definition.

Re:From those two

[Calydor]

Massive complaints outside the US vs. massive lawsuits inside the US? What's the difference?

The US is a laughing stock for the idea that as soon as you've been treated by a doctor or hospital, lawyers are asking you to turn right around and sue said doctor or hospital for any tiny mistake they might have made. "Thanks for saving my health," indeed.

Re:From those two

[Immerman]

I agree, you could even go so far as let the government provide the money to everyone, and then rent out non-profit minimalist housing operated just to cover projected lifetime capital and maintenance expenses. Same result, less bureaucratic overhead. Be really easy to auto-debit rent from your incoming dividend payment - especially if you had a government-operated non-profit bank account designed specifically to handle everyone's dividend payments with minimal overhead. If the free market can do better, GREAT! Less demand for government housing and its bureaucratic inefficiencies, but there's always a backup option to keep the free market honest.

If it costs $X for the government to build and maintain a Hovel Tower apartment at break-even expense, then a private operator can probably do at least as well, and will have no reason to charge several hundred more unless they're offering genuine added value in terms of the quality of the environment, except for pure rent-seeking profiteering - and there's no reason we as a society should encourage such usury behavior. In the worst case, if If that means the residential property market is largely abandoned as an investment vehicle - so much the better, let people go back to being able to buy their own homes - a guaranteed income should help with that, and helps spread real long-term wealth into the hands of the masses.

We could do something similar for food - let the government produce K-rations or Soylent or whatever - something inexpensive with a long shelf life that's sufficient to keep people healthy, if bored, sold at cost. If you want to save some of your social dividend for other pursuits, you've got a nice baseline to fall back on - you probably can't get complete nutrition for cheaper than this.

Heck, we could even do it with medical insurance - let everyone buy into Medicare at projected average cost - if the free market can genuinely offer a better deal, or worth-while supplementary options, wonderful - but there's a solid baseline to keep them honest. Getting the profiteering out of the medical industry is likely to be a long, involved process, but giving Medicare the ability to negotiate prices and demand minimum quality of service would probably be a step in the right direction - they would have outsized bargaining power, but also no profit motive, positioning them perfectly to strongly advocate for the interests of patients themselves - nobody wants to pay too much, but paying too little is even more expensive in the long run. "Breaking a leg in Europe costs the system $X to fix to everyone's satisfaction - over the next 10 years we'll be reducing the payout here to 2*$X, so you'd better start reorganizing to deliver at that price if you want our business - otherwise you're welcome

Why not both guarenteed income and jobs?

[goombah99]

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.

Re:Why not both guarenteed income and jobs?

[Opportunist]

It wouldn't even have to be a "guaranteed job", but what I could easily see is some kind of gig-economy for what's now low-end jobs where no to very little training is needed. People who don't work could take such jobs for expenses they have (like getting a new washing machine or TV), for a few weeks, i.e. as long as it takes to get the money together. I could well see some sort of online service come into play where employers could post their requirements, people could post their resumes and a matchmaking service bringing them together, complete with thumbs-up/down votes for good/bad employers and employees that are honest with their abilities or claim some they don't have.

Not so much like Xing or LinkedIn, it would probably be closer to uber-for-jobs. We are already essentially in a gig-economy for some jobs, why not go all the way if that's where we're heading anyway?

Wrong question because it started with money

[shanen]

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.