On the bad job front, I think a UBI could resolve an imbalance that has always perturbed me. When I was travelling, I once got a job in a laundry - I hadn't realised that laundries have dirty and clean ends, and guess where new employees start! It was disgusting, and the only positive was the space everyone gave me on the crowded bus home. Then a contract job came through compiling a report that an overseas company had promised to carry out if they got some contract. I went from a horrible job on minimum wage to a plush office job at ten times the rate, and at the time it seemed crazy that I was paid more, not less.
A UBI would seriously shake this up. Society would have to pay more to incentivise people to do the the less-glamorous jobs, which to my mind would be fairer.
Boots stomping faces isn't the only thing there is.
I think you've just described government in general (and the propaganda that propagates among it's Stockholm syndrome-esque sufferers).
What I'm referring to is the kinds of phenomena that the parent poster was describing, ideas like, "Work hard and play by the rules" which seems like a good idea except that it actually turns out to be a way for people who are willing and able (usually by virtue of their membership in some privileged social class) to bend or break the rules to manipulate those who are unwilling or unable to do the same.
UBI lets you subsist so that you're free to drop off my groceries for beer money.
All of the other unicorn bullshit (automation will free us from want, etc) is the 2016 equivalent of the 1956 flying car or magical gourmet microwave dinner.
Note how wages have not increased as productivity has? UBI is what fixes that. Its distributes that productivity to people so they are not slaves to capital.
Cool, let's see it then ;)
During that same period, you broadened the scope of the workforce greatly by bringing women into the mainstream workplace and ending systematic discrimination against minorities.
...and then the scope of the workforce was globalized. Talk to any private sector union steward about the biggest roadblock in negotiations -- it's the ability to leverage the liquidity of the labor market to pick up to move to Mexico, China, India, etc.
In the public sector, unions don't have that problem -- you can't outsource the cops (yet).
This would push wages up, as employers would have to pay more for the privilege of utilizing labor.
It seems that your argument is that it (UBI) will increase wages with no (or minimal?) change in productivity. Are you counting the transfer payments in your increased wages, or are you implying that wages will start growing again in addition to the payments?
I don't know which'll happen. I'm surprised to see the degree of confidence exhibited by both sides of the debate, people who are either sure it'll result in entrepreneurial utopia or sure that it'll be the end of the world as everyone does nothing. My sense is that there's a good deal of projection here, where people who have successfully cashed out a startup assume everyone will build a startup, while people who wish they could do nothing but loaf around all day assume that's what everyone else will do. Personally, I just want to know, and so I'm waiting on the data before judging.
In a situation where people are given a base amount of money that covers their cost of living expenses but provides no extra money to obtain physical resources they will turn to the creation of intellectual property.
This endeavor is low cost in material but high cost in terms of time.
A huge difference is being at the bottom rather at the top. Status is a motivator.
But AI may "solve" thishttp://partiallyclips.com/comic/dome-house/
Well, technically, these are all anecdotes, but the plural of "anecdote" is "data" after all.
Regarding Google-millionaire data: what percentage actually does keep working? We hear about those who do, but not of those who don't (eg Minecraft's Notch). "Newsflash: multi-millionaire relaxes" And, confounding factor: people who succeed amazingly well often keep doing whatever made them wealthy, well beyond financial satisfaction. At least, one hears of those cases - I don't actually know the percentage of how often, vs. those who take it easy. [Guess this is what brbsix meant]
Anecdatum: when I made enough from something I created, I quit. Yet, turns out I was happier before... so was probably a mistake to quit.
Footage and notes from a conference talk discussing the aforementioned experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lanUMETOqWc http://www.guystanding.com/files/documents/Basic_Income_Pilo...
Early 90s immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union provide a window into social dynamics of multiple countries where the majority of population was largely employed by government, many in some meaningless occupations (the running joke was "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us"), others with lifetime pension guarantees - hyper-inflated currencies, general switch to barter for any meaningful financial transaction and endless parade of populist politicians promising to increase everybody's personal wealth by passing pension and government salary rate increases.
IMO, people want to work and be useful. Ignoring that drive and substituting bread & circus is a dangerous direction.
For example, like unemployment benefits, it gives breathing room to hold out for a better job. Or if they're in a union, it's something to live on during a strike. Or maybe they will take the casual job.
Who knows? How people choose to use their freedom can be hard to predict. That can be a little scary. But the point is it's their choice, not ours.
The context is important. Are these "options" given willingly or taken by force? The distinction is pretty important. It's the difference between making love (a voluntary interaction) and rape (an involuntary one). If this "unrestricted money" is to be collected by force (or the threat of it), it is most certainly coercive.
Compare with conditional transfers (you get the money but only if you meet certain requirements). That can be coercive in effect, if you need the money badly enough.
End of the day, it's sort of like social security for everyone. It may be a more equitable form of welfare, as men and intact families would be eligible.
IMO, resources would be better spent on housing subsidy, healthcare and publicly administered pensions.
If you mean "a basic income, offered by the same organization in multiple places, should be adjusted for cost of living", I disagree. Moving some "extra" funds towards lower cost-of-living areas winds up being a feature - resources are shifted (slightly) away from concentrations of wealth and toward concentrations of people, where those disagree.
Frankly if the only way you can make widgets is to pay your widget-makers just enough so that they don't die, or perhaps less, then in my opinion society should reconsider how valuable it considers widgets to be, or at least whether someone else can make widgets more efficiently.
Aren't externalities costs/benefits that accrue to third parties? But this doesn't seem to be in that category.
Obviously, when adults are trying to support themselves with this kind of job, we have a problem.
My point was that not every job needs to pay a living wage.
The only way to grow an economy is to grow the private sector.
That's not yet my hypothesis, it's just a plain fact as the government sector can only exist by the taxes paid by the private sector.
My hypothesis: The government believes that too many will simply stop working (thus causing a contraction in the private sector and in the end also in the government sector - which is supposed to use its shrinking resources to pay for UBI)
Furthermore, from historical data, most of the economic miracles/expansions have been a result of large scale fiscal policies by the federal govt. of respective countries. New Deal, Marshall Plan, War Spending for WW2 etc. all provided the boost that was required to kickstart the economic engines of the respective countries and military spending continues to sustain the US economy to this day.
I love this community but really dislike the simplistic acceptance of Randian theories of economic growth and the importance of the private sector. Private sectors are most definitely important and required. But only the Government has the capacity, the resources and the will to execute something like the Manhattan Project, the Moon Mission etc. We shouldn't dismiss any sector so easily.
If anything I am quite sure businesses would be more than happy with UBI because they would not get people who HAD TO TAKE THAT JOB and instead people who took it because they wanted it. A UBI would never be high enough to allow you to skip work unless it also provide absolute basic housing too and food.