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Comment by cdoxsey | Hacker News Reader

I think in the end this wouldn't work. It'd play out something like this:

A certain percentage of the population would stop working entirely since they no longer need to. (Particularly when politicians push the basic income amount up to placate constituencies)

Because workers bow out of the system certain industries lose productive capacity. Maybe we stop producing enough food, or enough fuel.

Prices rise (assuming a moderately free market), which causes the basic income amount to rise and it spirals out of control from there.

The state is forced to intervene. Either by forcing people to work certain jobs (ala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...) or by capping the basic income and reincentivizing work.

Hayek: The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they know about what they imagine they can design.

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> A certain percentage of the population would stop working entirely since they no longer need to.

Everyone I've ever seen argue this has had strong opinions about how other (more greedy and venal) people would act. They, of course, would still work, but the great unwashed masses would sit on their backsides and take the money.

I suggest, instead, we try specifics. Given a basic income, I wouldn't be lazy. Nor would anyone I know, which includes some very poor people who would love to work if they could only do better than on benefits.

I suspect (though I don't know), that you wouldn't be lazy, either.

Also, the evidence of limited trials is that this increases work, not idle people:

eg http://www.bignam.org/BIG_pilot.html

> The BIG is a form of social protection, which reduces poverty and supports pro-poor economic growth.

   They, of course, would still work, but the great unwashed masses would sit on their backsides and take the money.

The counter argument would be the existence of industries that people will already not work in.

For example Italy has a 38.5% youth unemployment rate. It also can't get enough workers for the garment industry. So why don't the youth of Italy want these jobs? Maybe the work is seen as menial (so a cultural condition) or maybe the wages are too low (they think they deserve more) or maybe Italy has made hiring citizens too difficult (so they shift to the black economy), but either way their reluctance is sustained by a welfare state that allows them to not work.

The same can be said in this country with the absurdly low unemployment rate in North Dakota while the disability rate has shot through the roof. Unless you think people have suddenly and inexplicably become disabled this is clear evidence that people are willing to go on the Government dole rather than get a job in North Dakota.

I'm not even saying these people are evil or irrational. (It actually seems entirely rational to me) In a similar situation I'd probably do the same thing.

The question is: how many people currently working would stop working if they didn't need to? (particularly in the areas vital for the basic functioning of society) That question is so impossibly difficult to answer that I don't think any system we come up with won't have potentially disastrous consequences.

> That question is so impossibly difficult to answer

I agree, which is why I think we should not implement a basic income immediately, but that we should proceed with further trials and examine the evidence on the ground.

> The same can be said in this country with the absurdly low unemployment rate in North Dakota while the disability rate has shot through the roof. Unless you think people have suddenly and inexplicably become disabled this is clear evidence that people are willing to go on the Government dole rather than get a job in North Dakota.

Or, people who are able-bodied and unemployed have chosen to move out of North Dakota (perhaps due to work available elsewhere), and/or people who are disabled have chosen to move to North Dakota for financial or environmental or other reasons. Either of these would both reduce the rate of unemployment and increase the rate of disability without people "choosing to go on the Government dole".

> The question is: how many people currently working would stop working if they didn't need to?

The price consequences of BI are such that this is self-limiting. Once you set a level of BI, the more people choose to opt out of work, the less affordable it is for people to choose to opt out of work. Less people working -> higher market clearing cost of labor -> higher market clearing cost of all goods and services -> reduced standard of living for people on fixed incomes (including whatever point the BI is set at.)

Although the unemployment rate is low in North Dakota there are actually only about 17,000 open jobs. This wouldn't even employ all the unemployed people from Minneapolis.

Compounding the issue are a lack of housing, and the fact that over half of those positions are low paying dead end jobs like fast food, walmart, etc. It's also very far away from almost everywhere - a four to nine hour drive from the closest major airport.

I don't think it's all that difficult to answer. When I leave the office building I work at the end of my day, the janitors are just showing up. They probably already only get paid the basic livable wage (probably less), so why would they show up to work if they were getting the paycheck anyways? I can think of 100s of other jobs that someone wouldn't show up for because they aren't worth the time, they aren't fun, or even remotely interesting.

Basic income is just that - basic income. Some people who want to have more than that will work. Janitors still want iPads or cable television - and they will be incentized to work for that on a competitive market for those products and services.

0 hours of janitoring = small comfortable house and enough food

5 hours of janitoring = small comfortable hosue and enough food and cable televsion

If people simply stopped working when they could live "comfortably" why would they buy iPads, cable television, new cars? Employment history and reputation aren't going out the window with this plan either. A janitor will be good at his job because he knows if he gets fired he won't get reccomended for other janitorial jobs - and his chance of getting an iPad in the future goes way down.

I know janitors who buy lottery tickets, eat out at restaurants and have cable television - according to you those wouldn't exist because they could "janitor" less and live without those.

I never said any of those wouldn't exist, but I'm a firm believer in rewards. Right now a janitor is rewarding himself with a paycheck so he can do what he wants otherwise the flip side is poverty.

Here's the thing. Let's say you made $100k per year working 40 hours/week with benefits. If I were to pay you to not work but get a smaller wage (keeping your benefits), what percentage would be acceptable to you? 90%? 80%? 50%? What is it worth to you to not have to work?

There is a number that most janitors would probably accept. I think a fair number of retail employees too.

> When I leave the office building I work at the end of my day, the janitors are just showing up. They probably already only get paid the basic livable wage (probably less), so why would they show up to work if they were getting the paycheck anyways?

There's something that deeply bothers me about the notion that the above is a bad thing. Yes, you would no longer have access to low-wage janitorial services. But that's your problem, not your janitor's. Do you think he wants to be scrubbing toilets for a subsistence wage?

The world will not fall apart for want of janitors, or garbagemen, or baristas.

Imagine a world where, at some time t=0, there are zero people filling these jobs because of a basic income. It truly doesn't take all that much enterprise to see an opportunity in a world with no janitors. At t=1, there would still be janitors, but there would be fewer of them, the ones that exist would be better-paid, because they're now working for something approaching the wage that you might demand if someone asked you how much it would cost to clean their office.

Do you think he wants to be scrubbing toilets for a subsistence wage?

Thanks for proving my point. No, I highly doubt he wants to scrub a toilet for a subsistence wage. I think a janitorial job would go empty for a long, long time. So now, instead of me focusing on my job, I have to take time out of my day to do something I'd pay someone for.

It would be better if you get your basic livable wage but still have to work (exceptions made for childcare, students, disability, etc.) and depending on the job you get what the market deems as extra. So, if you get $20k per year as a livable wage (figure just chosen for easier math) and a job would've paid $25k, you get the $5k difference in your paycheck. This would help keep the low-interest, but easy, jobs staffed.

" I have to take time out of my day to do something I'd pay someone for. "

But apparently you wouldn't pay enough to have them do it, so it's more valuable to you to use your time to do that job.

If you paid more, you could more effectively utilize your time.

"So, if you get $20k per year as a livable wage (figure just chosen for easier math) and a job would've paid $25k, you get the $5k difference in your paycheck. This would help keep the low-interest, but easy, jobs staffed."

So you would only be getting paid 5k then. If I don't work at all, I get 20k. If I work, I get 25k.

I think that's what you're suggesting. Unless you're suggesting you get nothing if you don't work, at which point we don't have a basic income anymore, and this idea is moronic.

because they still would be better of working, just possibly at a lower hourly rate. basic income: 1000 USD. unemployed janitor: 1000 USD employed janitor: 1300 USD.

He does not need to work anymore, but it might still be worth it.

Supply and demand. If the wages on offer are inadequate to secure janitorial services, they will go up.

Many of these arguments assume that in (say) 50 years, all the janitorial/toilet cleaning/fruit picking jobs (i.e. shitty) jobs won't have been replaced by robots. I think this will happen whether it puts people out of work or not, so maybe we stop people from needing these jobs in the first place. Sure there will be some manual labor left to do, but it'll be highly paid so you can do it 5 hrs a week instead of 50 for some extra cash for your house party.

> So why don't the youth of Italy want these jobs? Maybe the work is seen as menial (so a cultural condition) or maybe the wages are too low.

If you can't make a living wage at these jobs, then by taking the job you are hastening your own demise. If you already have a living wage, then taking a low-paying job will give you a supplemental income. If you can work part-time at a low-paying job, then you can still spend your other time educating yourself or looking for a better job.

Also, if you can't fill your factories with the wage that you're offering, then the free market is telling you that you need to either increase the wage, or learn to make do with less, i.e. decrease output.

It's worth keeping in mind that a number of the people who would show up in statistics as not working would be devoting themselves to activities that are socially beneficial but not currently economically viable: community art projects, gardens, mentoring children, cultivating time-intensive abilities that are inhibited by the archaic idea that the only worthwhile way to exist is to work 40+ hours per week. I know that's what I'd do.

I'd also like to travel, and would be more than willing to work a sane amount of hours to contribute to the basic functioning of society in exchange for the means to do so. With respect to the Italy example -- raise wages enough and I'd bet the shortage would disappear. If the societal need is great enough, the prices will reflect that (maybe we don't actually need more garments?).

The basic functioning of society would need to be redefined a bit -- perpetual economic growth is neither sustainable nor desirable at least while it comes at the expense of the environment, or social and medical well-being (obesity, depression, etc).

If there were no work left in the world for humans (and yet I was still allowed to live), I might devote my entire energies to the education of my daughter.

Today, that is called idleness. But in that future world, perhaps it would not.

A certain percentage of the population would stop working entirely since they no longer need to.

True. The problem is, as things are now, a certain percentage of the population will be forced to stop working as they are made obsolete by increasingly efficient globalization and automation. As that percentage increases, eventually either society will collapse or something fundamental will have to change (such as implementing a basic income).

What evidence is there of that? Because we've had a slow recovery from the last recession? That couldn't possibly be because of bad policy, no?

To give one example the Google Car. If this car works as advertised millions of jobs will get irreplaceable lost. Cab drivers / Car Manufactures / Truck driver etc.

When the car was invented, millions of horse and buggy operators, manufacturers, and horse dung sweepers lost their jobs. Their jobs were then replaced by used car salesmen, mechanics, the tires industry, etc. etc.

But it is a bit presumptuous to believe that all future inventions will destroy jobs. A great example of the reverse is the compiler industry.

As compiler technology / programming languages have become easier and easier... smaller and smaller teams of programmers have been able to get more things done. This hasn't destroyed programmers... it has instead increased the demand of programmers.

> This hasn't destroyed programmers... it has instead increased the demand of programmers.

Nor has invention of internal combustion engine decreased the demand for cars. Programming today is far from its full potential, just like transportation was 100 years ago. Software is a very young technology and it is just beginning to take over the world, but keep in mind that developing it is a) high-skill job, and b) mostly aimed toward automating other people out of their jobs.

Maybe. But others will be created (or made simpler), to wit: a teenager can now rent a google car (since he isn't driving it won't cost much more than an adult) which will enable him to do things like wash peoples windows (which is neither technically difficult nor especially dangerous) thus driving down the cost per window washing, enabling more people to enjoy this luxury.

Or, assuming you are right and delivery men are unemployed in great numbers which I agree is likely, then (as transportation prices plummet) there will be more jobs for packaging. Imagine that instead of having to collect your kids in day care, go shopping and the go home and cook you can instead preorder your groceries, have your Google Car pick up your kids, spend the time talking with them in the car, go to the shop and pick up your package (which will take 10 minutes at most, since you have likely already been charged when you made the order) and then home to cook, which kids you actually get to talk to and who are now a lot less stressed.

Even then self-driving cars will also create other oppertunities, because there is no reason the car has to stay in the lot until you get home. It might as well drive to the nearby car cleaner (which can be out-of the way since the time is essentially free, although the gas used is not) for a cleaning. That is more business (and it is low skilled) and better, nicer cars.

> will enable him to do things like wash peoples windows

Until next year a new type of window will come that doesn't have to be washed.

> there will be more jobs for packaging

There won't. Humans are already being optimized-out of packaging by automated, self-adjusting warehouses and package machines.

> you can instead preorder your groceries

Being produced, packed and delivered by machines.

> It might as well drive to the nearby car cleaner

Which has been automated-out of his work years ago because how this job requires any skills cheap machines don't have right now?

Rest of the things you write about are things people will be able to do instead of working.

The point is, computers are not replacing particular jobs and creating new ones (of similar skill levels). They are replacing whole classes of skills humans have with jobs that have significantly higher requirements and significantly less open positions.

Automation. Can you imagine the consequences of a driverless car on transportation industry for example? Or automated cashing machines on cashiers? Or cleaner robots for cleaners? You see, simple jobs are going to be replaced in the future. These people will go unemployed, because there will be no simple jobs for them. This is a trend, yes, and it won't happen overnight. But there's one crucial fact -- it doesn't just stop at replacing simple jobs. It will eventually replace even more demanding ones, such as knowledge workers. Infact, only human creativity seems to be the only thing which we can't automate YET, but perhaps eventually will be able to. What this means is that the current capitalistic system has to fail eventually because we lose jobs, and it seems very certain that automation is going to be the beginning of the end.

This has been happening in China too -- recently(late last year) there was news about Foxconn replacing over a million jobs with robots in China. What this means is cheaper products which are also accessible to those who don't work. It narrows the purchasing power gap between those who work and those who don't.

You point has been argued a lot recently, but if it were true then surely nearly everybody would be unemployed by now? After all how many of you are scribes, weavers, carpenters and farmers (or farmers helpers)? Less than 20%?

Then why don't we have 80% unemployment? Because we found other jobs for those people, the economy is much, much bigger, life is much, much better and everybody is better of.

And it isn't like that hasn't happened again and again and again through history.

So I ask you, what proof do you have that this time it is really different? As opposed to every other time we thought it was different through history?

I'll tell you why this time is different. Each time we had growth in technology that had the potential to displace a huge number of workers that technology also enabled a massive decrease in the costs of transactions (railroads, motor vehicles, the internet, etc). This allowed a massive growth in the economy which enabled these displaced workers to find new jobs. Also consider that the growth in technology didn't eliminate jobs, but it shifted them. The technology of old still required a mostly proportional human energy input to produce output. New technology decreased that proportion, but it didn't eliminate it.

This last point is the difference that this new wave of automation has compared to the waves of past. It is unprecedented in human history to be facing a future where human effort can be multiplied by such enormous multiples that the value of labor approaches zero. This coming automation revolution would have to simultaneously grow the economy to greater proportions that automation reduces the cost of labor. I don't believe this will ever be possible, but definitely not in the time period that a properly developed AI and robotic technology could corner the market in labor (once developed, less than a decade). Society is not prepared for what is coming, and it will be disastrous.

No, it's basically a tautology based on continual technological progression. Imagine if we could build a robot that was exactly equivalent to a human. If it ran on less energy than a human, then basically no human would be needed for any task. Now imagine a continuum of less sophisticated robots that excel in certain tasks beyond what certain humans can do.

Another example I like http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/08/08/unemployed-21s...

there was a type of employee at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution whose job and livelihood largely vanished in the early twentieth century. This was the horse. The population of working horses actually peaked in England long after the Industrial Revolution, in 1901, when 3.25 million were at work. Though they had been replaced by rail for long-distance haulage and by steam engines for driving machinery, they still plowed fields, hauled wagons and carriages short distances, pulled boats on the canals, toiled in the pits, and carried armies into battle. But the arrival of the internal combustion engine in the late nineteenth century rapidly displaced these workers, so that by 1924 there were fewer than two million. There was always a wage at which all these horses could have remained employed. But that wage was so low that it did not pay for their feed.

The arguments people make against this are that humans aren't horses. Humans can learn and adapt much better. But they can't do that infinitely, and some will reach their limits faster than others.

Many people, including me, expect to see unemployment rise from the current 10% to an eventual 100% over the next 50 years.

This is a powerful point to ignore. The Great Recession has shown this trend might be establishing itself already; the percentage of people not participating in the workforce in any fashion spiked, hasn't recovered, and isn't showing promising signs of ever recovering.

What a basic income will tend to do however is reduce the need for a minimum wage. Currently the minimum wage exists to solve a problem: People need to survive, and to do that they need to work enough to enable that. The problem is with workforce participation being compulsory, absent a minimum wage the price for labor in unskilled work rapidly drops. Where you can find someone desperate for 7.00 an hour, you'll find someone else equally desperate willing to take 6.90 an hour. There will be yet another person willing to take 6.80, and this trend continues until you reach a point where you're better off scraping whatever you can do to survive.

So it's actually preferential for the labor force to shrink some; instead of everyone competing for the tiniest slice of a paycheck just for survival, you'd have a labor force with much more power, ensuring that you don't have to settle for work at 7.50 an hour just to eat. On the contrary: You'll stand on a corner and flip a signboard around in the air for 20 bucks a day only if it's worth your time, and to buy the extra 6-pack or whatever you desire, but don't need to survive.

On the contrary, I see a falling dollar in the world market which is reinvigorating the US Manufacturing industry. As China's middle class grows, they become impatient with China's loose policy of eradicating their own currency to promote local jobs. The Chinese middle class has begun to rise, and with it, the cost of production in China.

In the US, the weaker economy has hurt the US Dollar, making manufacturing cheaper again in the US. So for the first time in over a decade, Apple Computers is building a US Factory.

It's not just a weaker dollar causing manufacturing to return to the US, though (especially relative to China) that is definitely part of the cause.

Rising fuel costs threaten global supply chains. Especially in areas that have a less-than-cordial relationship with the US such as China, there is some uncertainty that things will stay as they are.

Another powerful trend that is reinvigorating the US manufacturing industry is the re-evaluation of the spoils of offshoring. Companies such as GE are discovering that there are many side benefits to bringing production back to the US: Shorter supply chains from manufacturing to retail, better quality from production, and greater feedback from shop floor to engineering.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-inso...

One of the biggest unaccounted costs of offshoring was the effects it had on the lifecycle of a product. That article points out how GE was able to take a $1600 water-heater from China and sell it for a profit $1300, just by manufacturing it from the US. It turns out that in off-shoring the production, they lost most of the feedback in the product's lifecycle that enabled them to refine the design far beyond what they thought was 'final'.

> You'll stand on a corner and flip a signboard around in the air for 20 bucks a day only if it's worth your time, and to buy the extra 6-pack or whatever you desire, but don't need to survive.

This is key here. Plenty of people are willing to work beyond survival for luxury goods.

Alternative scenario:

A certain % stop working for existing businesses. However, since there is greater money velocity in the system (vs. investments), there's still high demand (likely _higher_ demand). Businesses which had been slow to automate their production do so, spending more money on high-skill positions.

Prices temporarily increase to pay for this capital investment, but within a few years drop to below prices pre-BI.

Note that the author DOESN'T advocate necessarily doing this today, but that this is somewhat inevitable. I think I agree — eventually, the vast majority of jobs in our society will be automated / done by machines. Either we give these people a BI, or a very large segment of our population falls into poverty, which has other damaging political ramifications (revolution?).

It might be best just to have some portion of people become an idle class and another class of people become the productive class. (But allow people to move between them.)

I don't think it's compatible with universal suffrage, though. It ends up a lot like an aristocracy, albeit an aristocracy that people can join at will. Is that acceptable? I dunno.

I'd be far more worried about this sending a false prosperity signal that could exacerbate our already insane and unsustainable population levels. What's really depressing is that not a single comment here or on the article even mentions this.

Why the hell should I pay even more and subsidize those who have more than two kids?

I don't think the number of kids goes up with prosperity. Developed countries and upper classes typically have much lower birth rates than their counterparts, and some countries are even experiencing negative population growth.

I agree, but in depressions/recessions it goes down quite reliably. It's a strong signal

Hmm, true. Probably something to keep an eye on, then.

> I'd be far more worried about this sending a false prosperity signal that could exacerbate our already insane and unsustainable population levels.

Strong social safety nets seem to be pretty strong contributors to reduced family size (which is why the developed world has low natural population growth and many of the places with the strongest safety nets have negative natural population growth) because people don't need children as a form of old-age insurance.

> Why the hell should I pay even more and subsidize those who have more than two kids?

A fixed basic income per adult is self-evidently not a subsidy for having more kids. In fact, compared to existing welfare policy (where the principal basis for cash benefits is number of dependent children), its a disincentive for that.

You shouldn't, of course we could limit couples to replacement rate of birth, if that's 2.1 for couples or 1.05 for individuals, they could sell a fraction or all of their "right to reproduce" to people who want to have 3 or more kids.

Sure. China loves the One Child policy. No horrible side effects at all.

Social engineering like this is fraught with huge risks.

It makes perfect sense that 2 people should be able to replace themselves with 2 people. Nobody said 1 child policy, plus I mentioned a market for people who don't want to have kids selling off their "rights to reproduce."

Your response is simplistic and doesn't even outline any of your concerns about what I've posted.

Trying to control people's reproductive rights goes against eons of human nature and evolution. And creating a "market" where you can sell these rights sounds like a horrible mash of Ayn Rand and Huxley.

And the real problem was they didn't adopt a two child policy a few doubles ago. (Basically the US is in the same position - we have the same landmass as china, but 1/4 of the population)

Right. Let's starve them out. That's not social engineering!

> I'd be far more worried about this sending a false prosperity signal that could exacerbate our already insane and unsustainable population levels.

Hello there, person I'm very glad entered this conversation as you did.

You're talking about a great taboo. No one wants to admit that not every precious snowflake can do exactly what they want to be a shining star. Saying that we have too many precious snowflakes, or that we shortly will, is akin to saying that and it makes people nervous.

But there are a lot of us, aren't there?

And our population plan seems to be "Reproduce however you want until nature starts killing us off."

It could be that our coming jobs shortage is the result of too many people. Our geographic area is big enough that there will always be a certain number of jobs because of the different specialized tasks necessary in each locality.

But everyone wants a kid, and it seems the people who don't plan for those kids, whether rich or poor, have the most.

This worries me more than global warming, nuclear proliferation and synthetic marijuana (mostly jk) combined.

Yes, market forces can only be controlled by getting rid of the market. At that point social forces will only be materialized through physical force.

The difference between a socialist and an individualist is in how they think the physical force equation (applied to the society in which they live) will work out for them.

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