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Comment by playeren | Hacker News Reader

I'm a great believer in the power of cash to solve problems. Rutger Bregman's Utopia For Realists opened my eyes on this matter. The minority of "rotten apples" only spoil the concept if we let them - we can view their potential misuse as part of the operating cost of helping a large majority of people into happier and more productive states of life.

I worry that some employers fear that UBI and similar will decrease workers dependency on their employment, and thus become more demanding and more expensive. My own intuition is that keeping a strong imbalance in power between employer and worker is at best a local maxima for the employer, and much greater profits can be achieved with a more balanced relationship with the workforce.

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Yes, zombie companies which are just profitable enough to stay in business can be a real long term drag on the economy. Increasing costs can counter intuitively promote economic growth by removing them.

Zombie companies, but also zombie jobs (or the much-quoted "bullshit jobs") where I have the impression they only stick around because people say "eh, it's not the most cost-efficient measure, but since we're paying people so little and they can easily be laid off why take the risk of automating it?"

As a European I often feel that way when looking at jobs in the US that in Europe would be too costly to staff: Three people at constructions signs holding signs with "Stop" and "Go" instead of a mobile traffic light. Senior citizens at the cash register which help you bag your groceries. I wouldn't mind if these kind of jobs would be made obsolete if workers had the option to not take them.

Here in the Caribbean it's even worse. Our gas stations employ people to fill up your car. I remember when I first traveled to the U.S. as a child and was surprised to see people filling in their own tanks of gas. With my innocent mind, I immediately thought that their quality of living was worse because they had to get out their car and do the labor of filling up their tank. Now I realize that the Caribbean has many of these jobs by force because are employment rates are so low. It's a sad realization.

There are two states in the USA that require gas to be filled by an employee, no self-serve allowed. New Jersey and Oregon. This was put in place as a measure to protect jobs - for better or worse.

The observation is correct. In Europe you have social programs, in America you have gig jobs and Walmart. Walmart even tells its employees how to sign up for all sorts of programs, like food stamps and housing aid, and that's how the taxpayer subsidizes them.

> My own intuition is that keeping a strong imbalance in power between employer and worker is at best a local maxima for the employer, and much greater profits can be achieved with a more balanced relationship with the workforce.

Cue Henry Ford on wanting his employees to be able to afford his products.

Moreover, it works even better when it's universal. If only your company or your industry had to pay higher wages, that's probably not great for you. Most of your customers aren't your own employees, so most of the benefits go to others while you pay a disproportionate cost.

But doing it for everyone helps everyone. People can afford more of everything, so they buy more of everything, so companies produce more of everything and make more money. Enough at scale to offset the higher wages -- by definition, provided the level of savings is unaffected. And if savings increase then that's good too because "savings" are invested which makes it easier for companies to raise capital.

The irony of a lot of this is that capitalism depends on the circulation of money. The poorer the person the less likely they are to put that money into some investment fund or the bank (which I wouldn't call trapping the money but it does make it less liquid). A UBI just seems like a great way to ensure that cash actually flows.

I think you’re forgetting about globalism. The global middle class is much larger than ever before. Free Trade agreements and outsourced labor make relying on a local middle class a relic of the past.

I think that depends on what perspective you're looking at. There is still a fractal nature to this. I think there's still an advantage if you're coming from the perspective of empowering your country. If you're a rich elite and trying to profit maximize I think your perspective matters more. But the goal makes a difference.

Trade is a small percentage of US GDP. In 2019 it was only 2.5T in exports out of a 21.4T GDP.

That’s no where near enough to keep the economy moving.

What about products being made in foreign countries and sold in different foreign countries that are owned by an American company? That’s sort of what I was getting at.

US companies is really misleading here. Google is a very American company but it isn’t 100% owned by Americans. That’s why economists break things down by imports and exports.

I wonder if a UBI, done well, couldn’t help compete with foreign companies who enjoy much cheaper labor. The UBI could move people from thinking of an employer as a total source of income and livelihood to a marginal source of income. They’d be much more flexible to employer demands, once employers start to think of labor as a marginal cost than something to average out across multiple units of output. Ie employees become more like the contractors that Uber/Lyft say they’re hiring across the economy.

I think that as long as it is raw cash it can help. I have however noticed that it seems like the 3 most expensive things in the US right now are Medical, College, and Housing. I've also noticed that the government subsidizes or dumps cash into each of these in one way or another. In college it is through pell grants and/or student loans. In medical it is through Medicaid/Medicare and also the tax subsidies around health care, and same thing with housing and the different type of loan options they have like FHA, VA, Rural Development, etc as well as the tax deductions they bring.

If we just hand people cash I think this would limit the distortion but if you subsidize people in just one area it seems that produces a disproportionate rise in price in that one area.

while i agree that there are very, very few bad apples, and our intuitions incorrectly overweigh them to our detriment, the power imbalance in labor won't be solved by ubi. it can never be big enough to make that kind of difference (see: cost of stimulus checks relative to the economy), and that's why it's a frustrating distraction wasting cycles when we could be talking about ways to level the playing field, like removing the advantages to capital, providing real-time information symmetry to workers, dampening corporate protection, enforcing anti-trust, and dozens of other more effective policies.

ubi is like candy when what we need are balanced meals.

To me a big problem with UBI is who is eligible. Yes, I know it is called 'universal' but this doesnt mean everybody. Like should a person living in Europe be able to claim UBI from the US? Well, this example is silly, but just to show that 'universal' wont mean 'everybody'. I believe for UBI the devil is really in the detail.

The devil is always in the details, but there are vastly more details to manage with our current amalgamation of overlapping safety net systems spread across the local, state and national level. One of a UBI's strongest selling points is that it's comparatively very simple.

if it is the US govt giving UBI to its citizens, then they should give it to all their citizens, no matter where they are?

The US govt, for reference, taxes the income of US citizens wherever they are in the world..

Just citizen, or also green card holder? What about illegal immigrants? (And in the original provocative statement I meant EU citizens living in EU, should they get UBI from US? (just to debunk the often heard 'its for everyone'))

Well I don't know about green card holders or illegal immigrants. perhaps there would be a qualifying period for new members of the club in any case? If it is a US benefit then why would they give it to somebody elses citizens?

If you want to talk about promoting a world government then yeah lets do it and forget about borders?

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