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Comment by TheSmiddy | Hacker News Reader

The idea that giving someone just enough money to live will kill their motivation is insane. If that were true why do people still work 40+ hour weeks when they could be earning enough to live on just 15? Most UBI schemes are initially targeting around 1k per month which is nowhere near enough satisfy the vast majority of people.

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>If that were true why do people still work 40+ hour weeks when they could be earning enough to live on just 15?

There are all sorts of practical reasons why it's difficult to work 15 hours every week, the biggest of which is employers don't want to hire you. If you're flipping burgers, sure, but it's pretty rare to find that arrangement for a professional job.

When everyone working 40 hours they are getting paid a lot more. They can afford high rents and mortgages. Even as a software engineer I struggle with rent and don't leave much for savings.

When a robot is doing low skilled jobs and education is insanely expensive like it is now, the gap is inevitable.

Capital buys AI allowing one person to do the work of many and reap the rewards of it. America is built on this very idea.

well robots arent just doing low skilled jobs here. They are on the verge of replacing many white collaar jobs

This is an important point. AI could replace many programmers for example. Or make better investment decisions.

It has the potential to kill the entire notion of wealth as we currently know it, regardless of social standing.

What then?

The fear is that capital will own all the means of production and services and what then of everyone else? Hope UBI is implement? Or perhaps become more self-sufficient? The hype around 3D printing seems to have died down. I guess a lot of grand visions weren't realised and a lot of cheap trinkets printed instead but it still contains an idea that should be nurtured: robotics and AI at the grass roots level. Don't let capital own all the means of sufficiency.

Sounds like a way forward. The current notion of wealth is toxic: an incongruent patchwork of ancient and modern ideas of what's valuable. It limits mankind's potential.

White collar/services jobs are a lot easier for robots to perform than blue collar ones (Moravec's paradox). The untapped potential of being able to sell "the one company that does every service task with a credit card form factor" will probably make it more profitable to attempt to outcompete the low-hanging fruit: higher-cost (so more likely to "go viral") and easier to implement professional jobs. It might just be AI that makes Marx's accelerationism a household term!

Not only America, the whole world

Our ideas about motivation are shaped by self fulfilling prophecy; most people are on the planet a working jobs which are, at best, a compromise for what they want to do with their lives. As a result staying motivated is hard because you're ultimately doing it just for the money.

So yeah; let's give large numbers of people a chance to try doing what they want with their lives. Yes it will not be easy. More education will be required, some will need support to not fall into drug abuse etc but ultimately it could lead to a better human condition

I very much agree with you. Related to the parent comment I think it's not so much about killing their motivation, more a case that many people's skills will no longer be, or already are not needed. My simple theory about the current political anger in the US is that it's not so much money, though still important, that hurts people from unemployment. Instead I think that it is feeling that you are no longer needed by society or the people around you that hurts the most. I imagine that it must be existentially distressful to feel that you have nothing to contribute and very likely never will again.

The Dalai Lama puts it better than I can:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/opinion/dalai-lama-behind...

My guess is that in additional to a basic income, you'll need to find a way to make people feel that they are needed and useful. I think it's easy for the men and women on HN, who tend to be the go-getter type to say that they would start up a business or take up painting. However I think we could all probably learn learn a little from the unemployed factory worker in Akron Ohio about what would they do with basic income, unlimited free time, but limited job prospects.

It's also worth noting that $1K per month for all US citizens would represent materially more than 100% of the current federal tax.

US Citizens: Couldn't find a readily available reliable source, so I'll use residents instead. Should be close enough for this math though I'd imagine this would be more likely a citizen program rather than a resident program.

US Residents: ~325 million

Federal Tax Revenue 2016 - ~3.27 trillion

Federal Tax Revenue - ~272 billion / month

Federal Tax Revenue - ~$850 / resident / month

What if we didn't give it to minors?

US residents over 18 - ~247 million

Federal Tax Revenue - ~$1100 / resident-over-18 / month

That's if we spent it all on UBI, no debt service, no federal employees, no military, no infrastructure spending, no social security, no pensions (even for federal employees who earned them and are legally and morally entitled to them), etc.

Well, we're imagining a world where robots have made us vastly richer. (Self-driving cars! 100% automated factories!) Stark increases in inequality will also mean that more of the US' total income is given to the highest earners, i.e. those with the highest tax brackets. So we'd collect quite a lot more in taxes even if we left current rates completely unchanged.

If robots don't end up making society incredibly wealthy and more unequal then there's no point in UBI to begin with. So it doesn't make sense to simply look at current figures.

Agreed that current figures don't tell the whole story, but it's at least as unwise to not consider the current figures to get a sense of order-of-magnitude.

It needs to be indexed to GDP, it should not be welfare it should be each citizen's cut of the machine driven GDP. That won't stop people from forming new kinds of human markets and selling their art, or doing things like benefitting from a scientific breakthrough, people who own the machines may benefit the most, but if you tie it to GDP and its a cut of the economy rather than a welfare check far fewer people will sit around and get loaded. They will be motivated to do the thing that everyone told them "don't quit your day job" for, the dreams of childhood coming into manifestation for the masses for thee first time in human history.

"why do people still work 40+ hour weeks"

Mostly it's about upbringing. People are taught to have expectations for themselves and they strive to fulfill them. 15h would be bare subsistence for most, and that's not good enough. The minute they can live their expectations without work they usually check out; e.g. 45 year old "retired" government workers bankrupting their muni/county/state with union negotiated pensions.

Both something that doesn't exist, and also something you've mischaracterized. Pensions are delayed payments for work already done.

Defined-benefit pension schemes are a problem because now, with the baby-boomers retiring, we're finding that we can't afford it. Many people can expect to live to 100 - that's 35 years of retirement after 45 years of employment when their employer probably only set-aside 10-15% of an employee's income for investment in the pension when it should have been 25-30% - so now the younger generations are paying for it - by using revenue generated from their activities to pay for the defined-benefit schemes which cuts into their salaries - and making them work longer years to make up for their own contributions.

> Many people can expect to live to 100

Do we have an actual source for this yet? Anecdotally, I still see about 7 out of every 8 deaths in my social circles occurring before 90, with a notable number before 70.

>> Pensions are delayed payments for work already done.

That's your view, not mine. Bankrupt governments are a fact for the both of us.

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