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Comment by dzink | Hacker News Reader

During Brexit, people in job-starved areas of UK were reported as resentful for receiving handouts. They wanted gainful employment and their dignity back. You could have corporations foot the bill for basic income and people with certain values would still not want it. The image of being a breadwinner is so deeply instilled in some people that for them not being that, triggers mid-life-crisis: a depression, sense of meaningless existence, addiction, etc. Employment's bigger role is not just to provide income, but to keep people's minds busy and balance dopamine and add more meaning in their life. We have to provide solutions for all of the pieces of the puzzle if we want rapid automation.

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Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different.

In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but most people had a lousy job, that involved very little effort.

The first time i came to the US, i got the same feeling, lots of meaningless jobs (lift boy, parking lot attendant, grocery store bag filler) that i didn't see in the Netherlands.

Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income?

At least with UBI people can decide for themselves how they create a meaningful daily activity.

Street promoters make me sad. If they can find no job they better stay at home and learn something new, but they have no time for it, so they are stuck doing useless, maybe even harmful, work.

> Street promoters make me sad. If they can find no job they better stay at home and learn something new, but they have no time for it, so they are stuck doing useless, maybe even harmful, work.

If these people really have such a large earning potential if they were just learning something new, why not let coworkers get together and finance a fund: The worker (let's call him John Doe) will get his existing income for, say, 2 years, financed by the coworkers together. John Doe on the other hand is of course obligated to learn something new (what exactly is agreed upon beforehand). After these two years for the next, say, five years John Doe has to donate, say, 40% of his gross income back to the coworkers who financed him this opportunity. Both sides should be willing to agree on such a deal: John Doe gets his opportunity to learn new things and (hopefully) get a much better job afterwards and his coworkers will (hopefully) get a lot more money back than they originally invested.

These contracts are really hard to enforce, and is essentially selling equity in yourself. If you sell 100% of your own equity, that'd be pretty much slavery right? Some people (maybe justifiably) feel very uncomfortable with the idea of selling their own future equity. For one thing, it reduces the incentives for someone to work hard.

Yale did something like this in the 70s and finally killed it because of issues with how it was structured. Also it felt really unfair to high wage earners that they were sometimes paying multiples of what their tuition originally was.

Oregon is trying this out now [2].

[1] http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2001/03/27/70s-debt-program-fi...

[2] http://www.salon.com/2015/03/26/two_years_after_signing_of_l...

> For one thing, it reduces the incentives for someone to work hard.

If you work harder, you will still have more money - that's what % is about.

> Some people (maybe justifiably) feel very uncomfortable with the idea of selling their own future equity.

If they have a problem with that, then they should negate something like "40% for every gross dollar over 1000 per month". You are

> Also it felt really unfair to high wage earners that they were sometimes paying multiples of what their tuition originally was.

That's why I wrote "coworkers", so that it is not a "poor workers against big bank" scheme but "poor workers invest in one of their peer" - this is a lot more at eye level. If the coworkers agree to less - fine. If you are more on the social side: Why not simply invest the, say, 40% into financing the education of the next "poor worker"?

It's a matter of trust.

People in other societies do this all the time -- entire families in China, for example, will pay in invest in others' education or pay for them to emigrate to the US, with the understanding that if the person succeeds they will bring over other family members or send back money.

But do coworkers really know and trust each other so well to do this without enforcement mechanisms? Lawyers are extremely expensive, so while you theoretically have recourse to the law, in practice even drafting an airtight contract can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Again there's two problems: cultural (I think to most Americans it's a blow to pride admitting they need help from others), and also enforcing 'percentage of paycheck' contracts is difficult. Just see how much trouble people have enforcing alimony or child support payments, even when the case is 100% legally clear.

> People in other societies do this all the time -- entire families in China, for example, will pay in invest in others' education or pay for them to emigrate to the US, with the understanding that if the person succeeds they will bring over other family members or send back money.

Indeed I had this in the back of my mind when I suggested my idea.

> enforcing 'percentage of paycheck' contracts is difficult. Just see how much trouble people have enforcing alimony or child support payments, even when the case is 100% legally clear.

Alimony and child support payments are forced upon them from above - this is nothing that anybody would willingly agree to if he/she could choose freely. On the other hand: Getting financed to learn something new is something people would willingly agree to. And if after that they earn more than before even after "donating" the 40%, they are still better off than before.

You need a really big group of people to make that happen, because there will be failure cases at every stage of the process. In fact, you might even need an entire country to buy in.

Which is basically a description of what happens when countries provide free uni education...

How is this different to a student loan, in any meaningful sense.

> How is this different to a student loan

* Student loan is "poor student vs. large bank". My suggestion is "peers finance peer".

* Student loan have to be paid back completely (with interest, of course). In my suggestion you pay back a defined percentage of the gross income for a defined number of years. So the risk that the person will only get a badly paying job is not on the person that is financed, but on the financers. This in particular means that the person taking the "loan" will avoids the risk that he will need many more years than originally anticipated to pay back the "loan".

I've met someone who spun a sign for a living... he was a huge stoner... I love weed, but he clearly smoked too much of it while his brain was still developing and he could barely hold a conversation... Now... maybe he was self-medicating or whatever... but the point was he failed out of high school, failed out of a few jobs... and then ended up spinning a sign because he really had no meaningful skill to contribute to society. (And I think he failed at showing up to work so he lost that job eventually...)

I suspect most people who are in really shit jobs are there because they have issues... they can't show up on time, they don't follow employment rules, or they have something just wrong with them (they are sex-offenders, or have untreated behavioral issues or whatever)... not the sort of people who should be empowered to just sit around. I will go so far as to say nobody who really has potential ends up spinning a sign for very long... they use the job to cover their rent, and they find a way to get a better job.

Anyway I don't want to come off as against a UBI, I but I've never met someone who benefited by sitting around doing nothing. I think it's bad for people to be lazy -- like fundamentally brain-rotting to sit around being idle. I like the idea of a UBI that's tied to doing something... anything... getting outside and picking up trash in the road ditches even... or getting vocational training (which we should find a way to make free)... or getting mental health treatment... Prove you have a regular paycheck, or prove you are clocking in 30 hours at some "just move your body" type of approved activity every week to qualify.

At any given time, some fraction of people are going to be burnouts. That's just a fact. I think they still deserve a baseline of wellbeing, without judgment. If they use it to better themselves, great. If not, oh well. But we spend so much time and effort trying to pick the winners rather than simply giving people a minimal foundation.

For those of us with work ethic (the vast majority of everyone, to varying extents), our extra effort will be rewarded by the market, if we do something that other people find valuable, or intrinsically, if we're just doing what we love.

I think UBI have a hard time gaining traction in the US. You're asking me to pay higher taxes to have an outcome where someone can actually do less than they currently do to contribute to society.

UBI is a very interesting concept, but in order to sell it you'd have to have a phased approach... one of the phases I think would have to include some sort of checks and balances.

Agree.

While we are making recommendations about what people with issues should be doing with themselves, let me add, on the other end of the spectrum - overconfident, mindlessly ambitious characters in society, should be sent off to explore the deep sea, climb mountains etc. So that whatever random goal they are chasing has minimal impact on society at large.

>Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different.

* Hoover Dam

* Lincoln Tunnel

* LAX

* LaGuardia Airport

Just a few examples of things created by jobs created primarily to give people work.

>Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income?

Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band?

Those things weren't created primarily to give people work, they were created to fulfill demand for electricity and transportation, respectively.

If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic.

We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China.

>Those things weren't created primarily to give people work

They absolutely were.

They were created under the auspices of the Public Works Administration (originally Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works) - part of the 1933 New Deal:

https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/1...

"Functions: Administered a comprehensive public works program to promote and stabilize employment."

>If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic.

That does not change the fact that these infrastructure works were created primarily to give the unemployed jobs and wouldn't have existed without it.

>We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China.

Some of the infrastructure is like that but most has enough users to justify its existence. Their infrastructure-building binge isn't crazy. Our intentional lack of infrastructural improvement (which is entirely about artificially throttling employment and wage growth) is crazy.

Even if they were created to give people work, what is wrong with "we might as well get something useful out of this untapped unemployment"?

Define "useful" to your heart's desire, be it Hoover Dam 2.0 or Snowflake Poetry.

Examples of work more for work's sake might be landscaping or cleaning up streets. There are loads of rest areas or urban median strips/verges that look really awful worldwide. We could easily give people some responsibility for maintaining those.

> Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band?

Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Bridge to Nowhere or pay them to start the next Apple?

That's not really a fair response to the parent's comment, but I suppose the parent's comment was entirely charitable to the proposed hypothetical either.

A more rigorous question with which to start (though maybe a bit leading...) would be:

Would you rather pay qualified labor force participants to do labor/construction/civil engineering, or would you rather pay the same number of qualified participants to start high growth technology companies?

The nice thing about this question is that it lends itself to empiricism - we can figure out the most rational answer by looking at the ratio of successes to failures in each category of achievement. To put it very precisely: at what percentage of successes out of total attempts are we willing to choose to fund extremely rare but huge successes that employ a lot of people over very consistent but modest successes that employ only the workers and a smaller ongoing number in the long term?

I haven't actually done the math, but my intuition (which could be wrong!) is that it makes more sense to pay for people to e.g. fix America's insanely expensive and inefficient transportation system than to pay for them to sit in a garage and try to "innovate." Then again, you could argue that America's transportation projects are inefficient and expensive because they support an elaborate jobs program already :)

> That's not really a fair response to the parent's comment, but I suppose the parent's comment was entirely charitable to the proposed hypothetical either.

That was the point.

> Would you rather pay qualified labor force participants to do labor/construction/civil engineering, or would you rather pay the same number of qualified participants to start high growth technology companies?

To which the answer is almost certainly, both. Because we need roads and infrastructure, but we also need a safety net, and they are not the same thing.

> I haven't actually done the math, but my intuition (which could be wrong!) is that it makes more sense to pay for people to e.g. fix America's insanely expensive and inefficient transportation system than to pay for them to sit in a garage and try to "innovate."

Literally starting a multibillion dollar company is obviously not the one most people are going to do. But a UBI also lets you quit your terrible job and still pay rent while attending community college, so you can get a better job tomorrow. Or use the safety net go to a new place where you're more likely to find better employment opportunities. Or start a normal small business that nobody ever expects to be Apple or Walmart but after a couple years will be able to pay you a middle class wage.

And the best part is that you have self-interested people figuring it out for themselves.

>That was the point.

That was actually my point.

>But a UBI also lets you quit your terrible job

A guaranteed job that isn't horrible makes terrible jobs better since employers will have to compete to keep their employees.

How do you guarantee a non-terrible job to people with minimal skills?

And how do you finance it? With a UBI you don't have to pay as much because people can supplement it with an actual job even if pays less than current minimum wage, and everyone who works is offsetting part or all of their own cost by paying taxes. 100% of people can collect the UBI because most of them will still be working and paying taxes, and if they don't it's only because the amount is too high.

What if 85% of people choose the "basic job", and the only way to change that is to either make the "basic job" degrading or have it pay less than a living wage?

>How do you guarantee a non-terrible job to people with minimal skills?

Don't overwork them, don't be unreasonable towards them, don't disrespect them and pay them a living wage to do some sort of meaningful work (e.g. care work).

This isn't that hard. The US has done it before.

>And how do you finance it?

There's a hundred different ways.

>With a UBI you don't have to pay as much

You have to pay more because it goes to everybody instead of just the unemployed and you don't get anything in return for that money.

>What if 85% of people choose the "basic job"

That's kind of like asking "what if programmers all gave up their jobs at once to become cleaners?".

> the only way to change that is to either make the "basic job" degrading

A "basic job" can establish a floor on job quality and wages. Private employers will respond to this market force by paying more and treating people better and they will complain bitterly about it.

I'd be happy enough if there were no apple. Overpriced crap, reality distortion field and an egomaniac running a wage fixing cartel operating the whole thing. No thanks.

I'll take some high speed rail though, please. Perhaps 100,000 new affordable apartments in New York and San Francisco too. Unless you think that there's no need and people wouldn't want them?

Is there a reason we can't have both?

It's not actually possible to solve it the other way anyway. It's not 1929 anymore. Modern construction jobs require trained workers with trade licenses who demand middle class salaries and benefits. That is a lot more expensive per-person than a UBI.

So if you have a legitimate project like that, go hire some of those people and do the work. But what about everybody else?

>Is there a reason we can't have both?

If you mean UBI and a job guarantee, I suppose not, however it's going to cause inflation to spike pretty high.

>It's not 1929 anymore

It actually kind of is. Wages have stagnated, the wealth of the 1% has ballooned, infrastructure is crumbling and the far right is on the rise.

>Modern construction jobs require trained workers with trade licenses who demand middle class salaries and benefits. That is a lot more expensive per-person than a UBI.

Just guaranteeing paid work to the ~30% unemployed is far cheaper than giving a stipend to every person in the United States.

Even if you include the cost of materials it's not going to come close.

> If you mean UBI and a job guarantee, I suppose not, however it's going to cause inflation to spike pretty high.

Not a job guarantee, just normal government spending on infrastructure projects, as compared with the underinvestment we've seen over the past decades.

> It actually kind of is. Wages have stagnated, the wealth of the 1% has ballooned, infrastructure is crumbling and the far right is on the rise.

What I mean is we're no longer willing to put unskilled workers in dangerous jobs with no training and stand by while they get killed or kill other people because they don't know what they're doing or they lack the disposition to work safely with industrial equipment.

> Just guaranteeing paid work to the ~30% unemployed is far cheaper than giving a stipend to every person in the United States.

Only if you count the taxes someone "pays" but immediately gets back as a UBI as "costing money". If you use the same accounting that gets used for means-tested programs, the "cost" of a UBI turns negative for everyone making a below average income and costs about the same as existing means-tested programs for people with above average incomes (depending obviously on the amount of the UBI).

Nobody is going to start the next Apple if you pay them. Nobody. Great progress and innovation only come out of great tribulation.

Gates and Zuckerberg were literally going to Harvard on trust fund money, no effort at all was required of them, butthey had the privilege of resourceful parents with high expectations. If we replace resourceful parents with high expectations by a resourceful society with high expectations, the children that have shitty parents wont have a choice but to do better, that's what happened for my father.

Because Jobs and Woz were impoverished third world peasants who created Apple with no help from their families, government or investors?

Yes, but it depends on how people see or interpret their jobs. If you really see meaning in bagging someone's groceries, then it's valuable. If you see meaning in giving people the stop/go signal at a garage in Japan, then it's meaningful.

If one goes to Japan, one might think one sees a number of geriatrics doing needless or meaningless jobs --on the other hand, if you look carefully, for many of these people that simple job gives them meaning in life. They actually take pride in doing their job dutifully and faithfully with pride --things someone from the US would scoff at or think ridiculous. So, it just requires a re-framing.

> In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but most people had a lousy job, that involved very little effort.

I find this hard to believe. Why would a job "in communistic days" be different from, well, a job?

Because there was a job for everyone. Government had to create a job for everyone.

See: http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-19-1-a-...

"In the workplace, almost everyone had a job. Wages,however, lagged far behind those in the Western democracies. A common joke was, "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." But rents, goods, and services were far cheaper than in the West."

>Wages,however, lagged far behind those in the Western democracies.

Eastern Communist states were essentially reduced to rubble after WW2. This did make building to the same economic level as an entirely untouched America, or even West Germany (which was deluged with aid and given preferential trading terms), something of a challenge.

> job for everyone

You are implying that this was dictated by political rather than economical reasons, but that may be not entirely correct.

> we pretend to work

This is true - for some workers. Thing is, the Western society in not and has never been different in this regard. And, some of the "job creation" policies could exacerbate the problem even more.

Yes, some jobs are the same here.

The main question is: do you create a job because there's some work to be done, or do you create a job because somebody needs a job?

Do you have an evidence of the latter, or this is purely hypothetical? (An honest question.)

Common knowledge, see earlier link, some googling will easily give you more info.

Lots of older people in Easter Europe think communistic days were better and wish they could go back: state provided housing, education, healthcare and a job. Not great, but basic (as in basic income).

>I find this hard to believe.

You don't have to "believe it". Just buy and read a few historical accounts, and/or biographies of people that lived through those regimes.

In wasn't that a job in "communistic days" was different from a modern job, it was that in those days productivity wasn't that high anyway neither was purchasing power, so there was little use for jobs to make things or offer services that people couldn't afford.

All the same, everybody was supposed to automatically have a job, hence the creation of tons of mostly idle bureaucratic job positions.

At the heart of the communist was the belief that the entire country with all its people can be managed and orchestrated. This translates to a very static universe, where you are born, given an assignment and are suppose to stay in the same place until you die or the state changes their mind. Everything was a number in a spreadsheet, how many doctors given are will have, how much bread you need to bake and how much toilet paper shoul be produced. The last one turned out to be the symbol of communism failure, they did some math and decided X amount of toilet paper should be produced, but sadly people wanted more. Huge shortfall of toilet paper began and it started being a valued asset. Such over-planned world doesn't really work well with human ambitions, it doesn't really matter if you job is meaningful or not, having very little choice will likely cause stress and make you unhappy. To make things worse promotion was only possible if you were a party member and was seen as valuable and loyal. The whole thing was more than just automatically giving people jobs, it's been about total control, job creation was one of the tools. I don't think it's easy to directly compare it with UBI if someone wants to make such analogy. UBI doesn't restrict you the same way, it might even be seen as opposite - liberating people from being forced into low paid jobs where you generate very little value and it's hard to progress your skills and income.

Because the state created (and paid for) jobs to make sure everyone's nominally employed. It was essentially a form of UBI, although there were different levels and amounts for different people.

I think that's one of the biggest open questions with UBI. What percent of people would use UBI to do productive or self-improving works vs those that solely play video games, watch TV, and feel like life is meaningless? I think psychologically, people need something to do with themselves. However, a counter argument is that many of the people that UBI may benefit the most might have jobs that they loathe.

I'd love to see a review of the impact of work and UBI on human psychological well-being. This is definitely not one-to-one, but it would be interesting to study people that inherited fortunes so they would never need to work. How many chose a life of leisure? For those that did, what is their mental health like? That population is much more privileged and probably better educated than the average citizen that would get UBI, but I think it might give some clues.

I believe basic human nature includes curiosity. Living in a society means one will naturally seek the appreciation, acceptance and respect of their peers. I think these alone will eventually lead most people to contribute something useful to our world one way or another.

Mentally and/or physically exhausted after a long day of performing a meaningless job, or unable to get one and living off welfare, despised by the rest of society, no wonder one tries to escape reality by playing video games or watching tv excessively. Actually, escaping into 'work' is no more healthy.

But when everyone enjoys the security of having their basic physiological needs satisfied by default and not knowing what the hell you're supposed to do is a feeling widely shared and accepted by society, the situation is completely different. It's an enormous community building force. Additionally, we could build or designate community places and workshops where people get together to converse, build, play, create, cooperate to further help everyone find a direction, or find themselves.

>I believe basic human nature includes curiosity. Living in a society means one will naturally seek the appreciation, acceptance and respect of their peers. I think these alone will eventually lead most people to contribute something useful to our world one way or another.

As someone living in a small third world welfare state, I can't help but laugh at the naiveté that can lead someone to believe something like that.

In here, and I don't believe the rest of the world can be that much different, the overwhelming majority of people with their basic needs covered by the state dedicate themselves to a routine of TV, social media and other social rituals of all kinds, all devoid of intellectual pursuit. The few who do look into self-improvement are the same ones that have done it regardless of the economic condition of the lower class of their time; most of this very small minority managing to make it into the middle or upper class with or without welfare checks.

>In here, and I don't believe the rest of the world can be that much different, the overwhelming majority of people with their basic needs covered by the state dedicate themselves to a routine of TV, social media and other social rituals of all kinds, all devoid of intellectual pursuit.

So what? Why is the purpose of other people's lives to serve your idea of nobility?

Wow. That's a huge straw man if ever I've seen one.

I will entertain you, however:

We aren't talking about anyone's "life purpose", whatever the hell that means.

We are talking about having the state (and for a quick reminder, that means citizens producing value, not a magical entity that pulls money with value out of hat) fund people with no desire to create value. Not just people going through a rough time, not people unable to give back, but people who will take, yet willingly not give back. They're free to do live their lives as they see fit within the law, but no one can expect for the rest of society to fund their chosen lifestyle.

If you feel like they deserve income, you can gather like-minded people and open a charity that does just that.

EDIT: Those chiming in with a downvote, I'd appreciate if you explain where I'm so wrong.

Well, I didn't downvote you, but I do feel like your comment ignores the elephant in the room. Your model ("takers rob makers with state") implicitly assumes something like a Labor Theory of Value, in which "value creation" always and only requires that a human being perform painful, undesirable labor. Within that model, the 20th century gave us all sorts of debates regarding job guarantees, job-creation programs by the government for stimulus, privatization, socialization, et cetera.

The whole point of proposing UBI, however, is that we now (almost) universally agree that the LTV is just plain false, and much "value creation" actually involves machines doing the work. We believe that if we impose work requirements by force on humans by depriving them of machines of their own, forcing them to compete with machines to survive, there will be immense human suffering for completely arbitrary reasons.

UBI is thus the moderate proposal to deal with the issue. The radical proposal is to give everyone whole or partial ownership of enough machines to supply for themselves, perhaps through some collective-ownership arrangement like a cooperative, commons trust, or the state.

"The few who do look into self-improvement are the same ones that have done it regardless of the economic condition of the lower class of their time..."

Citation needed. Otherwise, it's not even anecdata. If your perspective from "...a small third world welfare state..." is to be informative, please expand and explain.

> Otherwise, it's not even anecdata

While it's no comprehensive study, it is very much anecdata, for it's how my parents, parts of my family and plenty of people I know have managed to climb out of poverty of all degrees before there was a welfare system. Hunger and work did not deter them. The word "mutante" (mutant) is often used to describe this kind of people, for how they decide to break the norm despite the environment.

Growing up in a poor/lower middle-class neighborhood I haven't seen this change for the better with the welfare system. But I have seen people quitting their jobs to qualify for welfare.

As I mentioned in another comment, I'm not opposed to a well-designed social safety net for those who can't get back into the workforce nor train themselves to do so, but rest assured, UBI or anything that allows people who are perfectly capable of working, the possibility to leech off the welfare system (read: their fellow citizens) permanently without giving back, is nothing short of a disgrace for society.

Thank you for expanding on your post.

Are you suggesting the majority of those people are completely, utterly useless?

Useful contributions don't necessarily have to be intellectual. They may be able and happy to provide art, joyful company, social skills, physical assistance (eg. getting groceries, moving equipment) or other support to those in need.

That moves the goalposts. Sure, I can't think of a human being that can be categorized as completely useless, that doesn't mean that an UBI program is sustainable for society just because "no one is absolutely, completely useless".

In fact there is no shortage of individuals who, despite being outside of the category of "useless" by technicalities, dedicate their state-funded free time in making society worse.

A couple examples just from my last 2-day visit to a relative in a neighborhood with a high number of welfare recipients: People with houses crumbling down, but with huge sound systems running at full volume at any time of day or night; or those in the same conditions getting stolen motorcycles (buying with taxpayer money from thieves or stealing themselves) and racing in the streets or parading around with their silencers removed.

Doesn't stop there either, when our welfare system was first established, there were plenty of cases of people quitting a productive job to slob around. What for many in first world countries sound like "conservative scaremongering" is reality for us.

Mind you, despite all this I'm not against having a social safety net (albeit the one we have I believe to be an absolute disaster), but UBI is a terrible option that cannot work outside of carefully selected groups of people.

Those may be the very same people who play music, build stages or give water to overly wasted kids at summer festivals. Or they might fix your motorbike better and cheaper than your local mechanic if you asked them to.

Or they might not. Either way, I wouldn't consider them any more harmful to society than those probably millions of people working very hard to shove ads into peoples faces ever more efficiently, or those bankers and accountants looking for loopholes to effectively steal from others. Or corrupt politicians whose only concern is filling their pockets. Or I could name a bunch of other mostly useless leech industries.

My point is, I think you are judging these people from a faulty perspective very much ingrained into our society, where one's usefulness to humanity is primarily judged based on how much money they can get their hands on either by stealing from others or selling their freedom to someone willing to pay for it, regardless of what value they actually contribute (if anything) as long as it's considered legal and they do so as part of the so called "workforce".

UBI would fundamentally change that by allowing people to spend time doing things they consider useful, rather than working for whatever gets food on the table, however useless it may actually be. Of course, for that to work, people need to be open to other people's ideas of useful and the currently dominant view of measuring usefulness in GDP or whatever may become obsolete.

Mind sharing where you live?

Uruguay.

Interesting. As someone who has never been there, I always had a positive impression of Uruguay, and have even remarked on HN that I'd like to live there for a while. What I've read about Uruguay has all been very positive and by many indicators it seems prosperous in comparison to other countries in the region. What's your impression of the country as a whole?

We've enjoyed great global PR, that's for sure. A good bunch of it undeserved.

There was a huge uproar about us legalizing pot. While you can now grow your own cannabis, the most important part: legal sale, is yet to be finalized despite plans starting 5 years ago without power changing hands.

There was another huge PR boost with the story about "Uruguay's poor president José Mujica". His administration ended as one of the worst ever experienced in the country's republican (as in Republic, not the US party) history. Corruption hit new peaks with public enterprise bleeding money into party officials' pockets left and right, something we're still paying via "tarifazos" (annual increases in costs of public infrastructure such as electricity, fuel and telecommunications despite their production costs going down).

Reality is that moving here can be suicide for many, as we're one of the most expensive countries to live in of Latin America (and the world) when you account for salaries. We have a growing culture of crime with a government that's disinterested in fixing it, and often tries to downplay it. Import tariffs are insane (usually 150%+ over retail price), and while citizens can make a few international orders under 200 USD without being taxed (used to be 5, then 4, now they just changed it to 3), it helps little and I expect they will scrap them altogether next year.

And oh my god the bureaucracy. It's the only thing more central to the Uruguayan identity than mate and football. The past couple of leftist administrations and this current one has been all about e-government, yet most interactions with the government will be in a crowded office after waiting an hour waiting for your number to come up on the screen. The little web infrastructure we have is inconsistent across public enterprises, is ridiculously insecure (national ISP, Antel, has a max password length of 8 alphanumeric characters; all sites are made in hacked together PHP and/or ASP.NET by FullStackOverflow programmers and one determined black hat could probably stop the country for a while in a boring weekend) and despite the government's interest in tracking all financial transactions, they're in no rush to implement online payment.

My SO starts studying engineering this year, and with me being a software developer (meaning remote is an option and there's offerings everywhere), our hope is that either a miracle happens or we fuck right off after she gets her diploma. We have a deeply ingrained cultural and political problem that will not allow the country to get out of this hole. But then again, Donald Trump is the leader of the free world; it's fair to expect the unexpectable when it comes to political change.

There was a job guarantee program instituted in Argentina (called plan jefes e jefas - meaning head of household). The jobs were typically care-style jobs (looking after elderly, etc.). The government then tried to shift the women into a sort of UBI (called Plan Familias) by offering more money than under Jefes

Unsurprisingly the majority of women took the money. Perhaps more surprisingly (to advocates of basic income, anyway), they took the money and continued to do the jobs "for free".

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_705.pdf

> Perhaps more surprisingly (to advocates of basic income, anyway), they took the money and continued to do the jobs "for free".

Isn't this exactly what UBI advocates say will happen: People will start doing useful tasks, because they no longer need to find a job?

When I was made unemployed, it was the lack of money that made me feel undignified. I couldn't feed my kids and had to as for handouts.

UBI would have been amazing. I would have spent the money on food, shelter and heating. I would have spent the time writing software and trying to start a company.

There are absolutely people like you, and absolutely people who will just play WoW all day, every day. The question is, how many of each?

why does it matter? The point of UBI is to allow people to do what they want.

This is a persistent and pernicious misconception. UBI is intended to increase people's autonomy, but manly by eliminating the poverty trap. Too many people live off benefits they would lose if they took a low paying no job, so are better off or only marginally worse off not working. UBI takes that problem away to that everyone would always be substantially better off working. It would act as a major subsidy for low paying jobs by ensuring even quite low pay would represent a major improvement in marginal income, thus making it cheaper to hire unskilled labour and increasing the number and variety of jobs. It's not intended that a significant number of people would only rely on their UBI.

In the UK the poverty trap is very real. A young person with a family in social housing and on benefits has to jump right up to something like average income to be better off. The penalty for getting a job is colossal. UBI would mean that if they could get work for even 4 hours a week it would represent an improvement to their income. It is an incentive to work

> UBI is intended to increase people's autonomy

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autonomy

1. the quality or state of being self-governing; 2. self-directing freedom and especially moral independence

exactly. The point is that they can do what they want.

This was in the context of talking about people playing WoW all day every day. That's not the sort of lifestyle UBI is intended to enable or encourage.

and vehicles were never intended to enable or encourage teenagers joy riding or drunk drivers, but NO ONE is going to seriously argue we should get rid of vehicles as a result.

It matters because of the potential impact on society? Part of the promise of UBI that proponents often talk about is unleashing more human potential that's currently stuck in some corporate grind.

And while playing WoW all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. MMO addiction isn't really healthy.

> And while [sitting in an office] all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. [Office work] isn't really healthy.

> And while [bagging groceries] all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. [Menial labor] isn't really healthy.

> And while [driving an truck / bus / uber] all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. [Sitting all day] isn't really healthy.

UBI at least gives people options. If someone is happy playing WoW all day, and society doesn't really need them anyway... I see no harm in that. At least they have the option to quit playing and do something else. People doing menial labor often don't.

I'm worried about the inter-generational effect of UBI. What happens to the kids in a family who plays WoW all day? What if neighbourhoods become segregated between workers and non-workers? How are kids going to learn to develop marketable skills and basic work ethic?

Because, if it turns out that most people are just fine with fucking off all day and living off their UBI check then UBI is unworkable (pardon the pun).

The cycle would go something like this: * UBI checks start getting sent out * Large droves of people quit the shitty jobs * Due to reduced labor supply, cost of producing goods rises * The increased cost of living means that now we need to send out even bigger UBI checks (i.e. raise taxes)

This feedback loop continues until even the most motivated individual cannot rationally continue to pay into the system.

Straw man. No data to support that; just a scare story. How about: cost of goods continues to drop as automation continues to expand explosively (as it has in the last 10 years). Standard of living rises steadily as the workforce decreases.

What's the difference in the two scenarios? Data. Which we don't have. So certainly a UBI should be carefully introduced to keep the economy stable.

This is why we need more experiments like the one in Finland. It would be irresponsible to implement a UBI until we know which of these two scenarios is most likely. Although, I suspect the reality will fall somewhere between the two.

Or, just implement it and adjust the payment for stability.

There's not any data to support it because there's no data around a nationwide, long-term UBI, period. All we have are little experiments where people know it could end at any time.

Qualify that enough, you can make the point. But UBI has been around long enough to collect data (pensions, Alaska, experiments). What people 'know' has no place in economics. We can measure - did prices rise in those places? No? Yes? How much?

Oh yeah! I long for times when 100% of society can play WoW all day long and Blizzards alone will foot the bill for all of us :) Ultimate economic perpetum-mobile with an Orcs race in it! :-)

What would happen if everybody left their jobs overnight and started playing WoW? Other than Blizzard having to open thousands of new realms.

Of course not everybody will quit their job to play a videogame, but what if a significant % of workers were simply "lost" overnight?

If you look at the tragectory of humans from star dust, it's clear the pattern is progress

We are progress, it's the inability to progress that is the problem for a lot of us

If we break down that barrier then wow like things that supply fake progress will be less relevant

So the more controversial question here is if we should do it anyway even if it turns out to be a net loss because.. we can.

Then the more dystropian view would be how else are we gonna keep the plebs under control if we think the unemployed will be the majority in the future?

Just pointing out there's a couple of different angles on this not just the net gain one.

> if it turns out to be a net loss because

Doesn't this assume a fixed loss? What if this encourages the former behavior to grow?

I doubt this will be read as I've taken too long in replying. But does it matter? If only 1% get to create new and interesting projects, then that is 1% more than at the moment.

> However, a counter argument is that many of the people that UBI may benefit the most might have jobs that they loathe.

That's not really a counterargument. Suppose you have a job you hate and suddenly you have a UBI. Quit immediately and go find a job you love -- even if the pay is crap, add the UBI to it and it's as good what you had before. Meanwhile the horrible degrading McJob nobody actually wants can either be replaced by a machine or will have to have sufficiently better pay or working conditions to get anyone to do it.

A basic income distributed to everyone wouldn't carry the same stigma as "handouts." Those people wouldn't stop wanting jobs, I agree. They're not going to be satisfied to just be on the dole, and net taxpayer status will probably matter a lot to them. But the basic income would provide them with a fundamental level of security and mobility. It would keep money pumping steadily into the local economy. Small-time entrepreneurs would be able to take small-time risks; small corner-store businesses would be able to prosper. A worker would be able risk leaving a job, and training for a new one; they won't get stuck filling half of their potential just to keep their children in clothing. A more flexible workforce should lower a barrier to new investment in the region. Mobility for the higher achievers would mean more opportunity for those who just want to come in, punch the clock, check out and have a beer.

And when they voiced anger about the government accepting immigrants when there already wasn't enough work to go around they got called racist.

I think UBI's effect on immigration is an interesting topic and one I don't see discussed in most articles. What does it mean to be a citizen of a country when, statistically speaking, you're a drain on the economy? How does immigration fit into that model? In my mind UBI doesn't require changing how we view work, it requires changing how we view citizenship and statecraft.

I think your explanation on the racist name calling shows why this is such a difficult topic.

There is a incorrect assumption that people often make, without malice, about economics being a zero sum game. It really is not, almost by definition.

The more people in an area, usually the more opportunity people have for employment over a long time period, and the higher the economic output.

Also, there is a difference between refugees (i.e. people who might otherwise die) and economic immigrants. It's hard to fault someone for their perception that other people might take their jobs, correct or not. It is easier to fault someone for taking the same stance when the alternative for the immigrants is potentially far more catastrophic. Especially when the arguments are more about culture and race than employment.

> taking the same stance when the alternative for the immigrants is potentially far more catastrophic

refugees also tend to be better off economically in coming to the US. There are a lot of people in the world that can be saved from death by granting them asylum, but who don't get it. To what extent can, and should, the US help the world outside its borders?

This is one of the main theories as to why Trump was successful in the US. The US economy can't properly support it's workforce fully. The Democrats offered social safety net. The Republicans offered tax cuts and deregulation to the business owners. Neither solved the underlying problem that the US economy can't properly support the workforce.

People want an honest day's pay for an honest day's work as they have for millennia. Pride in honest, good work is important to the vast majority of people, especially in the US.

I just simply dont agree. I'd be perfectly happy to do what I pleased everyday if I could. I'm not a huge fan of having to meet deadlines or any of the many little tasks that come with having to work. I think it's truly strange that people are afraid of not having work because it means they will be listless.

I don't know about the UK, but in the US, you effectively have a choice between getting welfare and working. So people have the option to take some low-paying job, but they don't do it because then they lose welfare benefits that pay almost as much, sometimes subsidizing childcare etc. so it's an unemployment trap. UBI is much saner because you get it in addition to any income you earn from working, so you can go ahead and take that low-paying job as well.

I think you know, but just to clarify for others: it is easily possible in the US to be in a situation where increasing the number of hours you work or accepting a job that pays more will paradoxically reduce your income:

http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/the-welfare-cliff-and-why-m...

This is an earned income tax credit(https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-in...).

Personally I could get behind the "lower federal minimum wages regulations" if it were met with a "but increase a EITC to help tweak the income of those who need help".

this is the key point, getting a benefit, you are restricted in what you can do and you get problems as soon as you earn any extra money.... getting a UBI, which everyone gets, is different, you are free to do as much extra as you like. There are no requirements to show you are looking for work, meeting with welfare agencies etc etc. Benefits have a large negative stigma. People try to earn extra all hush hush / secret with large negative consequences if caught.

However, UBI does have some challenges. Current benefit systems try to adapt to each individuals situations, UBI is blind to individual circumstances.

This is exactly the same in the UK, particularly with housing benefit

yep, let's buy them a Nintendo :)

Seriously now: if they have money, it's up to them to find a meaning of life. Not having to work, doesn't mean you shouldn't work. You can help with old people, or educate the youth. You can work on some very non-profitable, but good and meaningful agricultural thing. You can fix your city. You can clean the street. You can work on open source software. You can build furniture.

Giving money just to the poor is stigmatizing, and very bad for mental health as you pointed out. A universal measure would be very different tho.

What could be less dignified than working a job you are empirically inferior for because you got your competition banned?

That doing automatable busywork by hand is somehow more dignified than receiving handouts is an absurd idea (it's just as much a handout, only in this case you have to jump through hoops for it).

That others people should be required to do automatable busywork to receive their handouts is a cruel and borderline evil idea.

Maybe in future there can be some gamification of the whole thing, led by the government for the "common good" (although I wouldn't hold my breath). But I think giving meaning to people's life is a task beyond a government. Experience in Communist countries shows government should be kept as far away as possible from such tasks.

> They wanted gainful employment and their dignity back.

That is in fact what a basic income allows, because it allows you to eliminate the minimum wage. Then anyone who wants a job can have it, because they are allowed to accept the wages employers are actually willing to pay, and in combination with the basic income still have enough to live.

I would agree with you if the perception that UBI is equivalent of handouts, which UBI specifically isnt.

Think of it like this, if every citizen is getting money regardless of their employment status and that this is essentially a perk of being a citizen and paying your taxes, the negative stigma would not be there per se.

Eventually , people will start seeing this as an additional benefits similar to healthcare being provided by state.

One of the crucial points while introducing UBI would be education both of the populace being helped and the populace at large since you may not be able to introduce it through out the country at one go.

It's really a need to feel useful. If we permit politicians to conflate a specific manifestation of that need as being a want for gainful employment, we will end up with protectionism. We will see laws prohibiting certain kinds of automation. And we will see a fight between different classes as one class feels entitled to work, and another class feels entitled to save money on labor.

There's a difference between means-tested handouts and basic income. Since everyone gets it, asic income might not have the same stigma.

UBI combined with single payer health care and a removal of the minimum wage addresses this problem. It's called "basic" for a reason; the idea is that people will continue to supplement it with work that they find enriching and rewarding.

Whole new sorts of currently "worthless" work become possible when not shackled by a minimum wage.

Universality removes stigma. As evidence, read this about Canada's Mincome experiment.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cars.12091/full

A UBI does not prevent anyone from getting work. It actually makes it easier to get work if you want to, because you don't have to compete against as many applicants because some of them would rather stay home and take care of their kids, or woodwork.

Basic income could help get rid of people sitting around unemployed. Instead of small amounts of earned income being effective taxed at near 100% by loss of benefits they might be able to keep it all making low paying work worth doing.

Which is great for UBI as the social contract makes explicit that everyone is a beneficiary of it. The people who need it then will have both their dignity and the will to make more of themselves.

So "handing out jobs" would not breed resentment? It would for me (no one owes me anything).

No one is stopping someone from providing services or goods to others

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