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If labor is being replaced by capital, then the revenue should come mostly from…

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10 pointsjoeyespo7 comments

A couple of years ago I was very much in favor of a universal basic income (UBI). But as support in the tech community grew, I became more skeptical of the idea. The election of Donald Trump has really solidified my opinion that it's a non-starter.

Lots of engineers, including myself, love the idea of a UBI. Many of us spend much of our free time tinkering and learning. And that time spent often directly translates into the improved marketability of our labor skills. For people out of work, what could be better than having enough income coming to support yourself while you learn new skills, pursue new business opportunities, or volunteer?

The thing is, software engineers are a self-selected group of individuals, generally much more self-motivated than most any other group in the country. This is especially true of American engineers, and of many of those who find themselves in America.

But most Americans are not that self-motivated. Worse, most middle-aged Americans are downright hostile to the idea of continuing education. (Even many software engineers are still hostile to formal education.) The echoes of the well-paying company job from the 1950s still reverberate today, and it's fubar'd most Americans' expectations. They expect to be able to find a well-paying job around the corner; without having to change their interests; without having to challenge themselves intellectually; and without having their self-esteem challenged by the inevitable failures encountered when you don't have the crutch of taking orders from someone else.

I don't think this is going to change anytime. Things are slowly changing, but not in the way we expected. I think there was a paper that came out recently that said younger people are less anxious about finding work than previous generations at their age, but mostly because they're more content playing video games. So, at best, a UBI will simply enable a more passive labor pool less reactionary and prone to voting for a Donald Trump. At worse we continue down the road of intensely bitter political warfare, with each party jockeying to capture the elusive "give me the same job my grandpa had" voter.

Also, engineers (including myself) probably have some pretty rose-colored glasses in how we view ourselves. We're probably not as self-motivated as we think we are. The differences are probably marginal at best, amplified by the tremendous growth of the past 20 years which, historically speaking, we shouldn't expect to continue indefinitely.

I do support the concept of UBI as the job servitude ideology is a thing of the past in a society past the age of abundance. But I support the Tobin tax as well.

I find the article a bit lacking and it left me with the feeling of surfing on a trend rather than giving a deeper thoughts about why we should move towards UBI.

But what you and I call job servitude many, perhaps most, other people see as economic and cultural security.

That could change in the future, but we're at least a couple generations away.

You might say that after UBI people will change. But look at Obamacare. Medical bankruptcies have plummeted. Number of insured are way up. And yet most ordinary voters are absolutely convinced that the nation is worse off than we were in 2008 in terms of health security, despite the objective reality.

Even if we got UBI, middle America isn't going to stop pining for the lost industrial base. They may even resent the economic system more than they do now.

Thank you for the down votes, presumably because of my Obamacare reference. It only proves my point.

It's an objective fact that, judging by the most widely used benchmarks (medical bankruptcies, population coverage, increase in premiums) to judge success, Obamacare is better than the status quo ante. Are there better alternatives? Absolutely, but that's immaterial.

And that's my point. No matter how good UBI will be, people won't judge UBI objectively. Like Obamacare, UBI is likely to highlight and exaggerate other inequalities and maladies in our economic system, and raise new ones. And from many people's perspective, perhaps even most people's perspective, UBI will seem like a horrible bargain. People will always judge a system against an imaginary alternative, not against the historic reality.

And maybe they'll be right in their assessment. It's probably misguided to believe that there really is such a thing as objective fact in matters of political culture.

I can even admit hypocrisy in this regard. When conservative pundits claim that we needn't address income inequality because the majority of households have refrigerators and televisions and are otherwise objectively better off than they were 50 years ago when income was more equal, I would instinctively reject that notion. I understood the validity of their argument in an objective sense, but I also understood that socially and politically people's sense of well-being is relative and contextual. People have an innate need to feel like they're being treated fairly, and "fairness" is a relative characteristic.

I apply that sensibility to my opinion of UBI, and I guess I should learn to apply that sensibility to the politics of Obamacare, too.

You can also view this more charitably: I think people advocating for UBI far away from the workers it would affect don't realize how patronizing and aggressive it is. If somebody has been working a job for thirty years, a difficult, skilled job that people depend on, and is then suddenly told "here's your allowance, now study hard" by someone who was lucky enough to get their studying out of the way when they were a kid, it's not just "hurting self-esteem," it's directly destroying their source of dignity. Moreover, those in power control the companies that they can spend their basic income at, and the elite institutions they'll need to suck up to if they want to enter that world: the income enables survival, but there's no real power there. If you go to "middle America," you'll find an awful lot of people willing and happy to find new jobs that require "changing their interests" and "challenging themselves intellectually," but face constant setbacks not just financially but from distant organizations that don't see their potential. People don't want the same job their grandpa had, they want a job--not a couple dollars to keep them alive and powerless.

  "it's directly destroying their source of dignity."

I understand that. Much of family is in that boat, and I understand their perspective. I grew up poor (homeless on a couple of occasions). I started working 20 hours a week at the age 14 washing dishes and cooking, and have always held a steady job, often to my own detriment (should have spent more time studying).

I understand that people in immobile economic situations struggle to maintain a sense of dignity and autonomy. But life will destroy your sense of dignity when you put yourself out there. Ask anyone who completed law school, as I did. Success and humiliation often go hand-in-hand. Poor people don't understand that well enough.

So I understand and appreciate the argument about dignity. But if my treatment of that argument seems less than sympathetic, it's because I've learned that people _should_ learn to disentangle their sense of personal dignity from their economic circumstance and social status. Appealing to their culturally-informed sense of dignity is the same excuse Islamic terrorists use to excuse their heinous acts.

At the same time, I know that that sense is real (however "wrong" it may be), and that it substantially effects the viability of UBI, just like it does peace in the Middle East. And there are similar issues that go unaddressed by UBI, such as the necessity to channel people into constructive activities. Bare economic necessity already does that, and it's not clear how that could be replaced. We don't want armies of citizen sleuths spending their idle time shooting up imaginary pizza parlor child pornography fronts.

> But most Americans are not that self-motivated

Most Americans don't really have a choice. There's just not enough time and energy for self-direction after a 40+ hour work week.

The evidence is in age (and those who do have the extra time). Children are incredibly curious and self-motivated. Teenagers are too, if you give them the opportunity and guidance. If you're lucky enough to go to college, you have a pocket of time to try things and tinker (in addition to the easier-to-find socializing aspect) before the realization of how much debt hits you. People in their 20s-60s aren't self-motivated because work occupies most of their time. Not the other way around.

Also, for being in a field that relies on creativity and changing people's perspective and habits, saying that it's a non-starter because people are cynical and won't change is not being very creative.

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