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Comment by jclulow | Hacker News Reader

You can't give people a tax break if they earn literally nothing. There isn't necessarily an economically sensible job for every single person, and it seems ridiculous to invent bullshit or demeaning jobs just so that people can work to eat.

I reject the idea that working any deadend awful job just to get by is somehow virtuous. I love what I do, and I would do it even if I didn't need to work -- but being able to say that is an extremely privileged position to be in.

We're automating away industry after industry. There already aren't enough jobs to go around, and that will only get worse from here on out. I have no idea what the future should look like, but we have to start by accepting that the value of working at a job to feed yourself is not irreducible or axiomatic.

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No, I do think there's value in giving people a reason to work. As a by-product of work you are forced to socialize with a different group of people; the chores you do get you out of the house, and give you something to look forward to. There's a notion of growth mindset that sets in, even if the work that you do is banal - you see it as a stepping stone to something else. Without work a large fraction of people would just sit at home and get addicted to TV, games and possibly drugs. Self motivation is not a strength of most people, sadly that is the truth.

Instead of UBI, I would much prefer creation of state sponsored jobs, even if the jobs were mundane like painting roads. It's effectively the same as giving everyone money, but with all the benefits of "work".

I agree that people need something meaningful to do, and don't always find it for themselves. I'm afraid that forcing people to a job might feel more like a kind of slavery than a stepping stone.

It could work if the jobless are "socially placed" into existing workplaces. Creating gangs of unemployed people to paint roads, however, would only enforce the low status of the jobs and the people doing them. There is no motivation and strength to be found there.

If basic income is low enough, then people could choose themselves to either scrape by (which is nigh impossible in Finland for 560 euros) or find additional sources of income for themselves. It's always better if your job is by choice rather than forced on you.

I know a good number of rich people who inherited all their money. They don't work. They've never worked. Should we take away all their money to "give them a reason to work?"

I often hear some variation of "the government needs to incentivize people to strive for more so they aren't so lazy", but somehow it only applies to the poor.

There's a difference. With inheritance, the previous owner of the money is willingly giving up their possessions to the inheritor. Free will, willingly done. With UBI, it's basically everyone's tax money forcibly taken from EVERYONE, sponsoring these people. Think of it as forced inheritance. Force is unfair, unjust and wrong.

I'm all for donation-driven-universal-basic-income. Please do that instead.

People will find things to do, because we are human. But pointless work that goes nowhere is demotivating. http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-d...

The question is, what's inspirational work? I think it's easy to come up with examples of inspiring work.

True - my example of painting roads was just incidental. More creative variety of state sponsored jobs would probably make it a better option. A lot of countries already do forced military service and people are fine with it, not demotivated. So serving in the police or other places shouldn't be that different.

Majority of those who have been chosen to the study seem to be unemployed or at least not fully employed. Currently many here in Finland seem to consider that working even some odd hours is not beneficial because it would cut down their benefits. With basic income, one gets that benefit + it encourages people to find even temp jobs because it means more money which hopefully will cut down long term unemployment.

> We're automating away industry after industry. There already aren't enough jobs to go around, and that will only get worse from here on out.

Japan is one of the most "automated" countries. And they have 3% unemployment. I think we are far, far away from the moment there won't be enough jobs to go around.

Japan is also one of the few countries with a shrinking population.

hint hint

Japanese society believes in full employment through make work. They covered the entire country in concrete in the 80s and now rebuild it all every so often, and every parking lot and construction project has a guard directing traffic. Four guards, if there actually is traffic.

There isn't necessarily an economically sensible job for every single person,...

Sure there is. Domestic labor (maid, cook, driver, servant) for more productive people. Mechanical turk. Selling loose cigarettes. Making tacos for people and selling them by the side of the road.

We know that these are jobs people could possibly do because in India people actually do them. Americans just have the opportunity not to work, so they take that opportunity. This makes us all poorer. BI only makes the problem worse.

It's not really clear how having people "selling loose cigarettes" helps us all become richer. But that _is_ a perfect example of an invented, demeaning occupation that nobody needs to be doing.

Just because somebody in another country might be trying to scrape together a living that way, because there are no better options, doesn't make it _good_.

We're building better labour saving devices all the time, but that has a human cost. When the long haul trucking industry is inevitably automated, it's frankly callous and unfeeling to suggest that we'll all be richer by forcing those former drivers to become the domestic servants of "more productive people".

Selling loose cigarettes provides convenience for folks who smoke rarely and don't want to carry a full pack. So does making tacos, cleaning houses, etc. We all become richer because we have more tacos, cleaner houses, etc. Wealth is goods and services.

You seem to disagree with me about shared obligations; you think that some folks deserve to be able to live off the productive output of others and provide nothing in return. I think all people should contribute to society as best they are able - "from each according to his abilities" was an important part of Marxism.

That's fine - just recognize that "I don't want people to work" is a very different claim from "there already aren't enough jobs to go around".

Passive income is already 30% of income, with the majority going to the "productive class" via capital income [0]. These people still find ways to be productive and contribute despite their free time. People become addicted to things precisely when they don't have meaning in their lives. If you remove the obligation of their time to meaningless work, you give them an opportunity to find meaningful productivity which can be of greater benefit.

The full quote is: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need!"[2]-Marx

  [0]https://medium.com/@MattBruenig/the-ubi-already-exists-for-the-1-d3a49fad0580#.ht5wz4ecy
  [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13303420
  [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs#Origin_of_the_phrase

Many of those folks (typically called "retirees") are not currently productive. They have instead shifted consumption forward into the future - they were productive at age 30 but are now unproductive at age 70.

But I'm a bit confused what this has to do with the 1%, who typically gain capital income by managing companies that they own. How is that unproductive?

Which folks? Did you read the referenced article? 1% are those making most of the capital (passive) income so those were the productive passive earners I referred to. At this point, if they work, it's because they're choosing to - which is proof that passive income does not inherently slow productivity.

According to that article, 75% of capital income does not go to the rich. Significant chunks of capital income consist of (unrealized) increases in the appraised value of homes.

At this point, if they work, it's because they're choosing to - which is proof that passive income does not inherently slow productivity.

Is this really correct? Do you think that a trust fund baby would not become more productive if they lost their trust fund and needed to find a job? Do you really believe that exactly zero rich people choose not to work because they don't have to?

> Is this really correct? Do you think that a trust fund baby would not become more productive if they lost their trust fund and needed to find a job? Do you really believe that exactly zero rich people choose not to work because they don't have to?

He was arguing under your premise that passive income equalled productivity. If you now suggest that they would be more productive without their money, why should "having money" be rewarded like it is? An automated machine doing a job gives money to the person owning the machine, who does exactly as much work as the unemployed person who lost their job to that machine.

>According to that article, 75% of capital income does not go to the rich.

The article says 25% of all passive income goes to the 1%, but says nothing of what goes to the rich.

> Do you think that a trust fund baby would not become more productive if they lost their trust fund and needed to find a job? Do you really believe that exactly zero rich people choose not to work because they don't have to?

You're making a straw man argument using stereotypes. I only spoke of 1% as a group on average. Any group will have people that are not currently productive, even those forced to go to work.

> Do you think that a trust fund baby would not become more productive if they lost their trust fund and needed to find a job?

On average, I think that's true. Economic returns are concentrated in the high-risk, high-return gambits that a trust fund baby can afford to pursue and a labourer can't.

You don't have to do any managing to make capital gains, and I'm not convinced that it makes that much of a difference whether the person with the capital is personally making the decisions.

>Wealth is goods and services.

Wealth is matter, energy, information, and time arranged together in various ways. Leisure, the ability to spend time outside a "work or die" event-loop is a kind of wealth, one that most people have far too little of right now. You seem to be eliding leisure from your notion of wealth, and thus proposing that leisure be eliminated wherever possible.

A lot of people disagree with that.

What if it turns out that having more equal society and less of these demeaning jobs is better for everyone, including the productive people?

If you want to make the argument that a society with a leisure class and a working class is somehow better for everyone, go ahead and do it.

But that's unrelated to the argument I was making. I was simply disputing a claim that we don't have enough jobs. We do, people simply refuse to do them.

"Domestic labor (maid, cook, driver, servant) for more productive people."

Are you seriously suggesting to implement (or go back) to the class system we (thankfully) got rid off in modern West? You can get a job as a maid, cook, driver and even servant if you want to now, but forcing people to take such jobs would be just another form of slavery that benefits only a small group of already well-off people.

I don't propose forcing people to do anything. On the contrary, it's BI proponents who want to force me to work for people who prefer to be lazy.

I'm proposing one class: the working class. It's BI proponents proposing to add a leisure class.

Going one step further on your proposal leads to well off people doing nothing (leisure) and earning passive income on automation, and poor people doing made up serf jobs for scraps. I'm unsure how you don't see that end result.

>It's BI proponents proposing to add a leisure class

Don't we already have a leisure class in the >1%? It may not represent a large portion of our population, but it does represent a large amount of wealth and income.

Sure, there are still elements of the leisure class that spend time maximizing their income by working/investing, but its hard to call that a "job". If there's no risk of falling through and becoming insolvent, then I'd say it's more of a hobby focused on power/wealth accumulation.

"I'm proposing one class: the working class."

That's also heard somewhere[0]. Didn't work out well either.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union

"Sure there is. Domestic labor (maid, cook, driver, servant) for more productive people. Mechanical turk. Selling loose cigarettes. Making tacos for people and selling them by the side of the road."

buddy, all these things are heavily licensed and regulated. selling loose cigarettes or tacos on a side of the road... that is jail time you are talking about. it is a lot safer to sit at home and collect government checks than to sell tacos without FDA approval. /sarc

Very true. So perhaps regulatory reform, rather than BI, is the policy we should adopt.

I'm sure we're coming at this from very different perspectives but I can't quite understand how it would be better to reduce regulation on food safety than to give people enough income by default that they can eat and have a roof over their heads. At least from my perspective giving people a choice as to what they do is worlds better than forcing people to take (often multiple) unsatisfying, poorly paid, jobs just so they don't starve to death.

There are plenty of people who are capable of making healthy food, but are simply banned by the current regulatory process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/opinion/15zachbrooks.html

What safety do you believe that requiring 2250 hours of training to be a hair braider provides?

http://madamenoire.com/501738/texas-federal-judge-rules-hair...

And why is a pack of cigarettes sold by a bodega somehow safer than a single cigarette sold by Eric Garner?

I eat food that has not been blessed by American regulators all the time. Somehow, this didn't kill me: https://goo.gl/photos/ytKacsLvkxhqCnW18

All of that is argument for saner, more evidence driven regulations, not getting rid of regulations.

Who advocated eliminating all regulations?

What do you mean by regulatory reform? So anyone can sell restricted and harmful items (i.e. cigarettes) as they see fit or make food without any oversight of hygiene regulations and sell to public? Most of regulatory laws are there for a reason, and as an European, I enjoy costumer protection provided by EU in a form of these regulations.

that is why europe is doomed.

edit: seriously, this is fantastic post, thank you. it perfectly captures modern european mindset. how dares someone to make <whatever> without any oversight of regulations! I enjoy protection provided by EU in a form of these regulations! я очень люблю Пеже!

you sound like communist shills during Brezhnev period, rhetoric and indignation аre perfect!

Yeah, consumer protection is definitely the most Communist thing ever. Commies loooved consumption and consumers /s.

no, commies loooved protecting people, whether people liked it or not.

There is limited demand for the jobs you list. If population continues to grow and automation continues to grow, I believe there will soon be more people than we need for domestic labor, mechanical turk, selling things on the roadside, fashion and entertainment, maintaining the automations, lawyers etc. Anyway, robots can sell cigarettes much cheaper than a person can.

I don't think that inventing bullshit jobs (say an extra few layers in your local bureaucracy) is really a solution.

I'd much rather everyone got a universal basic income and could focus their lives on something more useful like their families, or creativity and art or whatever the post-job-world will be about.

I take it that since you believe there is no useful work to be done, you also oppose expanding the government and providing new services?

Working women don't need child care, and should in fact be encouraged to stay home to reduce the demand for jobs? Infrastructure is not crumbling and in need of repair? That's what "no useful work" means.

I didn't say that there was no useful work to be done. I said that I believe there to be a limit to how much there is and that I believe that, if automation continues to grow, that population will exceed how the amount of useful work.

There will always be useful work to be done, but will there be enough for 7 billion people? What about 10 billion people? Especially as more routine work gets automated "away".

Note also the submission about how routine jobs are disappearing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13310423

> I reject the idea that working any deadend awful job just to get by is somehow virtuous.

It is, because being alive is somehow virtuous.

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