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Comment by fxj | Hacker News Reader

A big problem about the basic income is that it is perceived as money that you get for nothing and so people don't have to work and therefore they are lazy.

Let me give you an analogy: Imagine that breathing air would cost money and you would have to work in order to breathe. Unless you don't work you would die. Would then a basic income be something that makes you lazy or would it be something that gives you confidence in surviving the next day?

The same is true for the "basic income" that is used by its recipients for food, medical care, clothing and shelter. So how in the world can we deny the basic needs to most of the population in our civilization and call these people lazy?

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You’re basically saying that because it has ethical value it can’t make people lazy. That’s irrelevant. UBI might make people lazy. In fact, it would be pretty shocking if it didn’t make some % of the population choose to do nothing for their entire lives but stay at home and play video games.

People like to point out that techies would feel more comfortable building start ups, and that’s probably true. But for people with low skills and low opportunity costs to doing nothing (of which there are many more people), I don’t see a reason why they would work relatively shitty jobs for low income. Who is going to work minimum wage to be a janitor to get basically no substantial benefit. Maybe you think people deserve better wages then- but then uh oh, it’s even harder to justify not doing things in China wherever possible.

UBI benefits society when it’s given to a person with a high ability to to positively impact society (let’s say skilled workers and parents). And that’s before considering any effect on prices or whatever.

The security that you have medical care, food and housing tomorrow takes away a lot of psychological pressure and your mind can think about other things. But nevertheless I also think about the ethical implications of letting people die because they cannot afford the medical care they need. A society that just thinks only about profitability of a person is in itself unjust and inhumane.

If you look at communities where large portions of the population have their basic medical care, food, and housing all provided or paid for by the government, you don't see hotbeds of creative and entrepreneurial activity. You see cesspools of drugs and crime.

Like Switzerland and Sweden? What are you talking about?

Putting them both in the same sentence so nobody will spot you keep getting them mixed up? Smart move ;)

And I agree that these are things that need to be solved. But UBI won’t do that long term.

Like, just to push a point, with medical care, the prices are so absurdly high that a poor person with UBI who had to pay a large medical bill would effectively just lose their UBI to medical debt payments and interest. And now they’re back where they began. It’s an entirely different problem.

While it is certainly possible to give people enough money to become uninterested of working, one of the conclusions of the experiment is that the UBI version tested did not make people less efficient at seeking employment. UBI just made them happier.

In other words, not implementing their UBI version is simply a way to punish unemployed people for not having a job. You can still argue that unemployed people should be unhappy, but you no longer have any basis for saying that unhappines will make them more likely to get a job.

> UBI... did not make people less efficient at seeking employment.

No, it didn't make them significantly lazier short term.

They didn’t get UBI forever, they got it for a fixed amount of time. If they quit working, they would be shit out of luck when they money stopped flowing. It’s not a very useful experiment.

Really this is just basic economics though. Money has decreasing marginal utility. The first stack of cash you get pays rent, then food, then later on luxuries. For low income workers, the opportunity cost of not working is not being able to afford basic things. If that’s covered, there’s no reason to do a crappy job for low pay. You don’t even need to assume laziness. If cashiers now have their basic needs covered and want to go invest their time into improving their education, then the cost of cashiers goes up. If the cost of cashiers goes up, the cost of food goes up. If the cost of food goes up, the original UBI is now too low, so the cashiers need to stop pursuing education and get some money again. If an equilibrium exists, it’s going to be at the point where poor people need to work, because somebody needs to clean the toilets.

Under UBI, the people with low skills would have the means to upgrade those skills.

Exactly. And if all the people with low skills upgrade their skills, the cost of low skilled labor increases, driving up the price of goods, and making the current UBI insufficient.

We NEED low skilled labor. Bioshock proved this years ago.

==We NEED low skilled labor. Bioshock proved this years ago. ==

Would we stop importing this labor from other (poorer) countries? I imagine only people with a SSN would get the UBI benefits. Immigrants would still come here to do low-skilled jobs as they would be ineligible for UBI, no?

A very large proportion of low skill labor is done by us citizens- and we don’t have many visas for low skilled labor.

This wouldn’t evade the problem of increasing the cost of low skill labor and thus increasing the cost of goods.

To your point, it would force the poor without UBI into even harder poverty.

So it looks like what you argue is that without UBI some people are forced to work the shitty low paying jobs that more secure people would pass on, and that's beneficial to society? So basically wage slavery of the lower income people is beneficial to society?

I dunno... I think, UBI may actuall ydrive change in those very awful professions where they become more attractive either through quality of life improvements or through the pay rise. Otherwise, yep, I think having people not to go to a soul crushing job because they are secure is a better thing than grinding lots of them down generation over generation.

Nope. I’m saying UBI, economically cannot lift these people out of the jobs because someone needs to be at the bottom.

If you want to help people, improve minimum wage

The problem with your analogy is that other people have to work to make the food, provide the medical care, produce the clothing, and give shelter. You don't do anything to produce air (more likely we do the opposite).

The question is, can we make the economy work while providing everyone with these basic needs. If too many people stop working, either the people that are working will be reduced to a similar sustenance level, or it won't even be enough to cover the basic needs of all anymore. If the people that are working don't get more they will think "why should I be the one working?", and then the problem exacerbates.

In this experiment, the unemployment numbers didn't rise, but the participants knew it was supposed to be a temporary measure. So this doesn't really look at long-term sustainability.

Take into account that soon robotics, machine learning and automation will make even more people jobless.

Of course if there is MAGICALLY enough 'resources' all citizens could enjoy basic income.

There are enough resources overall, but they aren't redistributed as a basic income for historical and political reasons.

But that is what automation is all about. The productivity of a single worker went through the roof in the last century. There is not enough work for all the people who want to.

Wealth created through automation isn’t captured by the enhanced worker.

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