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?
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.
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.
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?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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).
To quote a German comedian, I need money, not an occupation. I can keep busy all right myself, no need for that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Wake up idiot. It's the corps that already have you enslaved, not the government.
Also people don't choose slavery, by definition.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
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.
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.