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Comment by ende | Hacker News Reader

A reduction in working hours does not equate to a reduction in productivity. We should be striving to minimize time spent working while maximizing productivity as a basic goal of capitalistic society.

Also this old argument about reduced work incentives is becoming increasingly invalid as an expansion in permanent structural unemployment due to automation, hyperefficiency, and globalized labor markets is spelling the end of industrial labor to begin with. Meaning that there simply are not enough jobs to go around, regardless of incentive. It's one thing to chalk unemployment up to laziness in an era of abundant opportunity, it's quite another in a post-industrial era of labor scarcity.

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Remember also that a well-known limitation of economic measurements of GDP, productivity, etc. is that it doesn't account for personal work when no money changes hands. For example, a man who works full time and spends 100% of his salary on a nanny gets counted in GDP. But if he quits his job and takes care of the kid and the nanny takes his old job, then GDP and productivity have been reduced. Nothing has been changed about the amount of work done, but you've replaced two people working for money with only one working for money, so the accounting systems show it as less.

If part of the effect of minimum income is for people to spend more time with their kids, then this would show up as less work, in part, because less of the work being done would be for money.

I hope you're right. I fear you're wrong.

I used to work in a job that I don't think was very amenable to automation. It was a terrible job and I don't miss it one bit. I doubt anyone would want to work it if they didn't actually need money.

Sure, maybe we can live without windows or something, I just don't know how many such products there are. Money isn't everything, after all--there has to be something you can actually buy with that money. And if nobody or almost nobody is willing to make those things any more, what then?

That's the part that scares me. I'm sure we can print enough money for everyone. I'm not sure how much of anything there will be to buy with it. And all the arguments for this are "it's the right thing to do" rather than "we know we can make this work because..."

Slow down a little bit. If people can't afford windows, they don't reasonably have enough money (where money is access to the economy rather than pieces of paper).

A simple thing to do to limit the unexpected economic consequences is to limit the size of the basic income. For example, give everyone $5 and you are unlikely to see any effects at all. Of course then the outcome isn't very interesting, but the basic mechanism isn't necessarily going to implode the economy.

Right, it's clearly a matter of degree and the thing is I don't hear economists talking about this, only the general public, who has some sort of warm fuzzy feeling about the idea of free money, but little actual talk about what's going to happen.

My feeling is that it will either be too low to be meaningful or too high and it'll lower the production of useful things to buy, such that we're actually poorer in some sense in spite of it. I certainly agree with you about the fact that the production of the things we buy with money being more important than the rectangular pieces of paper, though.

So I actually think it can work out for a country like Norway, that's small and rich and which imports plenty of physical goods from elsewhere with oil money, and therefore where it honestly doesn't change much of anything. It's what happens when everybody does it that I wonder about.

But maybe I'm wrong and it will just end up outsourcing all the labor to China / Mexico / SE Asia / wherever with a manageable inflation and we'll muddle through somehow. I don't really know, which is why I'm disturbed that I see so few people who seem to have any good idea about the actual effects talking about it.

I don't understand why people wouldn't be willing to make windows—to take your example—in exchange for pay, just as they do now. I might expect the prices of things to go up a little because the typical laborer's bargaining position would be closer (but still inferior) to that of the typical employer[1], but why would people stop wanting more money than they have/are getting?

[1] Specifically, their worst-case outcome in negotiating employment terms (i.e. failing to agree on terms and not getting the job, then not managing to get another offer fast enough) might improve from catastrophic to merely quite bad.

> I don't understand why people wouldn't be willing to make windows—to take your example—in exchange for pay, just as they do now.

Two reasons:

[1] There might not be much to buy with that money due to effects like this / inflation now that everyone has more money but there's only the same amount (or less) of stuff to buy with that money.

[2] The actual job is horrible.

Some of the aspects of the job can be mitigated. Others, not so much. There's a big tempering furnace that's really hot. There's really no way to avoid being uncomfortably hot around the quench, even with the nearby air conditioned room. It's running at almost 800F all day.

Glass is inherently dangerous. I know of people who have been killed on the job, in spite of lots of safety gear, etc. I personally treated some very serious injuries (e.g. cuts to the wrist causing permanent damage and massive blood loss).

There's a lot of grunt work that can't be very easily automated. It's boring as hell. It's very tiring work. I have lots of other complaints, but in theory, a different employer could at least fix some of those and they would presumably have to.

> [1] There might not be much to buy with that money due to effects like this / inflation now that everyone has more money but there's only the same amount (or less) of stuff to buy with that money.

If an employer raises wages, is that (in a small way) inflationary? Does average wage have a causal relationship with inflation (I wouldn't think so, but perhaps it does, serious question)? If not, why would basic income be inflationary per se ?

> [2] The actual job is horrible.

Jobs that are horrible might have to pay more, but probably not much more. I'd hope "do it or join the homeless" isn't a necessary stick for our economic system to function, but "do it or barely have enough money to survive" would suffice. If so, it's more awful than I'd already estimated. Hell, complete destitution isn't even really the stick now, since welfare is a thing, especially in OECD states that aren't the U.S.

I guess I don't find it clear how "only have basic income to live on" is a less effective motivator than "be on welfare" (in the broad sense of "welfare"). And since we already know modern economies function OK with the latter—some of which can include cash assistance—what substantial difference does the former represent?

[1] Because there's more money and the same amount (or less) of things to buy. Think of it a bit like someone issuing stock: yes, that dilutes your shares.

[2] It's not just pay. You CANNOT pay me to do that job again. I'm sick of being cut by glass. I don't like dealing with horrific bloody injuries, though I'm incredibly conflicted there--I mean, I did volunteer for it and I don't regret doing it and helping people. And I'm glad to be able to do it and that I was able to help people and I'd even volunteer again... but it's a horrible thing to have to do and I don't wand more of it.

Basic income is just welfare on steroids. The effect should be something that depends on the scale of how much money and how many people have their 'stake' diluted by how much. The scale of this is bigger than before (everyone gets money) according to what's planned--I don't seriously think anyone will implement it as $5 for everybody and if they did, it shouldn't have any meaningful effect.

Due to more money being issued, there should be more inflation caused by it, as we can't all suddenly start producing more windows and whatnot just because we're paid more. People are also likely to start charging more because everything costs them more and people have more money to spend now.

Now, all that said, maybe it could work as a replacement for welfare. I'm not sure about that, but it doesn't seem terribly unreasonable. Maybe everyone has an ID card and they can charge $X a month for food/rent/clothing, especially with the theory that people who don't actually need it might not use it. As I said, the main issue is the scale. If you get to the "work is optional" state that everyone seems to want, that's where I worry about the effects. But, there's obviously a long continuum between it being 0% optional and 100% optional and I honestly don't know what things happen where.

> [1] Because there's more money and the same amount (or less) of things to buy. Think of it a bit like someone issuing stock: yes, that dilutes your shares.

Why would there (necessarily) be more money?

> People are also likely to start charging more because everything costs them more and people have more money to spend now

It seems like all of this would work equally well as an argument for a policy of depressing wages as a way to makes everyone better off. If you wouldn't support that, why the concern about guaranteed income? Or, what is the difference, in terms of effect on the money and labor supplies? How would lowering wages not be the inverse of this, and (under this line of reasoning) be good for us? Unless you believe we're at some sort of maxima for the ideal share of money flowing to the bottom of the economic pyramid, and that sending more that way will make collectively less well-off. It's also possible I'm just not following what you mean.

Where else could the money come from, exactly? Anyhow, money creation is fairly normal, which is why I would tend to expect that if such a thing were implemented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation

But people have to be willing to exchange things for money, so if you create tons of it, it becomes toilet paper. We already know this can break down due to direct, empirical observation. Just look up past examples of hyperinflation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

And this is the sort of thing that worries me. All the past examples had to drop their own currency, which they could no longer be trusted with, and become dependent on a foreign power. All the past examples were governments that though the government's funds were simply unlimited and many were Socialist governments that wanted to tax from the rich and give to the poor.

That said, don't get me wrong. If I could actually believe that none of us had to work and robots would do everything, I'd love it. But having worked a crappy ass job, I know that some work can only get done out of necessity at present. I really hate that, and I don't wish it on anyone, but I don't know how to fix it either. I wish I could be convinced that some of the fine, caring people putting out these proposals had thought them through, but they've mostly helped me understand that they know less than I do, and I know almost nothing :/

I've never seen a better post for the old quote about the future already being here, just unevenly distributed. Web frontend devs with ivy degrees living in SV don't have much permanent structural unemployment, well at least until they get older. Its a bit more of a current issue for the other 7.3 billion people in the world.

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