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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

I see this proposal, but like many I object to it. It reduces the marginal value of work and encourages laziness. We already have enough laziness, we don't need more.

The fact is we waste a lot of human capital. People claim to be unable to find work, yet it costs $50-80 to have your house cleaned in NYC. The unemployed are simply unwilling to clean houses for $10/hour. According to many on the left, we need more unskilled immigration since immigrants "do jobs that Americans just won't do" [1].

But I do agree that we should eliminate the current ragbag of welfare programs and replace it with a single simple one. So rather than a basic income, I propose a Basic Job Guarantee. The government will give anyone who asks a job at minimum wage. If that is insufficient to pay rent, the government can also provide cheap housing out in the boondocks [2] and buses to the location of the Basic Job.

This is the FDR plan and it worked well. Rather than paying people to watch TV we paid people to build national parks. A basic income without work makes sense after technology makes human labor obsolete, but we are nowhere near that point yet.

[1] I'm not opposed to immigration, I'm simply pointing out that people across the political spectrum agree that many Americans are unemployed by choice.

[2] I.e., move the housing projects to south jersey, don't stick them in midtown manhattan.

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Actually, basic income does not encourage laziness (that's a common misconception based on our personal opinions which make sense from a certain point of view and from a confirmation bias). I'm currently researching basic income and the criticism that BI increases laziness is the most frequently repeated criticism for which I argue that it's invalid because it is based on personal opinion and not on fact.

Actual data and field experiments on basic income prove that people work more hours, that their income increases, that they visit hospitals on fewer occasions and that they spend money responsibly.

Sources: 1) http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100 -> Dauphin Canada, 1974-1978 experiment -> only mothers with newborns and teenagers worked less.

2) http://www.usbig.net/bigblog/2013/08/important-study-finds-t... -> BI receivers worked 17% more hours and their annual income after two and a half years was 50% higher (they invested mental resources into building their own businesses or looking for better paying jobs).

Also, allow me to argue that the system would work even if most people did not actually contribute anything. How many Linux users are there, vs. how many developers contributed source to the Linux project? Only a tiny, tiniest fragment of the world developer population actually got off their butts and did something for Linux, and the rest of the world sat by and "leeched" off their work. And yet, Linux thrives. My argument is that we still don't have real data about how many people in % need to be productive for the society to be sustainable and progressive. I believe we grossly overestimate the % of people who need to be productive.

The Uganda experiment is rather different - it provided a large capital investment to individuals in a capital starved economy. Basically, it allowed people to invest in their business. The US is not a capital starved economy, so it is unlikely that the same would occur.

The actual report about Dauphin Canada would be useful here rather than some reporters interpretation of it. Among other things, the drop in work related injuries strongly suggests work did go down, as do the anecdotes of people who "could wait for something [work] that better suited them." Anyone know where to find the real report? It does sound interesting.

The example of linux contributors compared to the development world is not really indicative of the economy at large. Software is infinitely reproducible, unlike most goods and services.

It's not that capital here doesn't exist - it's just concentrated to a toxic degree. Warren Buffett is a smart investor, but he can't squeeze the most out of every dollar, not at the scale he's obligated to invest at. Scale - especially the bespoke, "too big to fail" kind - invites waste.

Capital requirements in the US are also higher. In Uganda, people can become significantly wealthier and improve their standard of living simply by having a few chickens. But in the US, individuals are taking on debt just to have enough education to get a job! And the level of spending needed to operate in most US industries is similar to the costs of college education. Like you point out, software is exceptional in this respect since it has an extremely low capex - so we can conclude that, in fact, individuals are capital starved in the US as well.

With Linux my using it imposes a cost no different on those that develop it than not using it other than the bandwidth of the person I download it from.

The argument of "I can't find someone to clean my house for $10/hr, so everyone must be lazy" is specious at best. Occams Razor says that you're mostly likely not soliciting labor from the right people. It's likely that a broke teenager or an addict who needs a fix would be willing to work at the low end of the pay scale. You don't get to make proclamiations about the american work ethic because no one answered your flyer.

It's not productive to turn the poor into an "other" or a "them". They are obviously people just like us, with pride and dignity just like we have. The fact that they don't want to clean up other peoples' messes for $10/hr doesn't mean that they are "lazy"...it means they are normal people who don't want to do dirty jobs for low pay.

One of the things that a BI will do for us is weed out the people who don't want to work. Ideally, the people that we interact with in commercial situations will want to be there, as opposed to lazy and incompetent people taking up slots just so they can get a small paycheck. It could be a like a streamlined version of our current welfare state: jobs for those who want them, a modest living for those that don't.

There are people in our society who suffer from mental illness, addiction or have social problems that prevent them from being able to focus, show up on time or be a part of a team. We can ask them to clean our houses for a cut rate or we can get serious about solving the problems that effect so many of our fellow citizens. None of us would be on hacker news if we hadn't gotten lucky in so many ways. Instead of calling people "lazy", We should be eager to help those who weren't so fortunate.

Of course, the assumption is that people living at the basic income level will spend their money wisely; a hard assumption to make. When you work a full time job to earn your money you have less time to spend it. Spending money you sweat for is much harder than spending money you got for free, I don't care who you are. You are probably pretty tired when you get home and you just want to eat, relax in front of the tv for a while, and get some sleep so you can do it all over again the next day.

If you suddenly start receiving a basic income and no longer have to work what the heck are you going to do with your time? Sit and watch tv all day long? Or will you spend your money now that you have the free time to enjoy it? I think it's naive at best to assume that everyone will budget their BI perfectly and sit inside their houses not bothering anybody.

The likely scenario is that people will treat their BI like discretionary income and spend it as soon as they get it, most likely on entertainment or luxury items. Once it's gone, they will go back to the same menial jobs to earn whatever little they need to actually survive and the cycle will continue. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

> A basic income without work makes sense after technology makes human labor obsolete, but we are nowhere near that point yet.

I would argue we are slowly moving to that point. The fact that there is just not enough work do to anymore to keep the entire population employed clearly points in that direction. And that is not factoring in a lot of "kinda useless" work or work where humans could be replaced by machines but have not been yet because labor is so dirty cheap.

A few decades down, we might only need a fraction of the population to effectively produce all we need, all we want, and all we neither need nor want but still produce anyway.

>> we are slowly moving to that point.

It would be better to rapidly move to that point, that way the transition period(with the suffering it will cause) will shorten.

As part of doing that, and from the understanding the lack of jobs in the future, we need to strongly work at reducing costs of basic needs. Partially, it's happening now , with solar, online education.But mostly , with regards to healthcare, housing, transportation and some parts of education(K-12) - we see lack of investment and large regulatory barriers in regards to cost reducing innovation.

The fact that there is just not enough work do to anymore to keep the entire population employed clearly points in that direction.

The average American spends 1.74 hours/day doing household activities. Most of the middle and upper class would be willing to pay others to do some of those tasks, provided the price were sufficiently low.

http://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2012.pdf

There is plenty of work to be done. Unemployed Americans are just unwilling to accept those jobs at a price low enough that people are willing to pay it.

To put a technological spin on it - if you had a humanoid robot, would you be unable to find tasks for the robot to do?

"Unemployed Americans are just unwilling to accept those jobs at a price low enough that people are willing to pay it."

The whole point of BIG is that people will begin accepting low-paying or even altruistic jobs once they won't lose social security over it. Everything they earn over BI is premium, why not snatch it?

Let me emphasize that I'm not arguing for the current welfare system. I'm arguing that replacing it with a Basic Job is superior to both the current system and a Basic Income.

Much like a Basic Income, a Basic Job also gives you an incentive to work. No work => no pay. People will accept a $10/hour house cleaning job because it's better than a $7.25/hour Basic Job. In contrast, with a Basic Income, the choice is $7.25/hour equivalent for watching TV, or maybe twice that for working hard. Many people will be happy to live without working.

Additionally, society gains the benefit of the public works created by people working the Basic Job. We gain cleaner parks, better infrastructure, etc. (Unless you want to claim that US infrastructure is as good as it could possibly be...)

Basic Job isn't a terrible idea mind you, it's just much more complex and fragile.

It would require a lot of political will to constantly prune jobs that do more harm than good, jobs that are degrading and meaningless (think of painting park grass with green paint), have enough jobs so everyone technically have one, and

USSR had this Basic Job thing, everybody had a job but nothing got done because you couldn't get fired from one and not get an equal one. So best-performing workers adopted habits of worse-performing ones. Who watches the workers? Does she earn the same $7.25?

Another problem is corruption. Easier and prettier Basic Jobs would be lucrative, everybody wanting to have them, and you will have bribes and kickbacks for landing on one. If unwilling to participate in corruption, you will only have a choice of worst ones.

Everything can be fixed but it's very hard in total.

It's worth reinforcing the point that a guaranteed job requires effectively zero economic output in order to receive a paycheck. If you are guaranteed a job, and we accept that people seek to maximize their income per unit of work done, then the maximization of that function is to do as little work as possible without losing the job. If you are guaranteed a job, then it effectively means that you can't be economically penalized for doing no work, so the most efficient personal approach is to just collect your paycheck and do no work.

The threat of economic penalty for failing to work is an important incentive to actually contribute to economic output.

I'm not sure why a basic job would be any better than a basic income since it would encourage people to collect income for no work performed, except that it would do so at risk and expense to the employer (and at damage to the employer's brand and reputation) rather than at expense to the tax paying populace as a whole.

I don't understand this. Why can't you be guaranteed a job, but you don't get paid if you don't do it? I don't see how paying people who refuse to work is a necessary part of a Basic Job Guarantee.

Also, the purpose of this is for the unemployed to clean up and improve public parks, repair potholes and the like. Private employers are under no obligation to hire anyone.

A lot of unemployed are mentally ill, psychologically unstable or disabled people. How much oversight will you need to get any meaningful output from them? Yeah, they come and try to be useful, but they don't accomplish anything, you fire them, they either go to court or apply to another job they can't do.

BIG solves this but Basic Job doesn't in the slightest.

The mentally ill and disabled are simply a different problem. Handing $1200/month in free money to a schizophrenic is not a solution either.

The whole idea is to decrease a number of "different problems" as much as possible. I don't know if it would help schizophrenics, but why not? At least it can get one off street by providing means to pay rent (which can be administred by his/her legal guardian).

An unmotivated, largely unsupervised park fence painter might not achieve much in the way of output for their $7.25 per hour, but importantly they aren't being paid $7.25 per hour to enjoy their chosen form of leisure. Which means that when someone in the private sector wants to pay them $8.50 per hour to work hard creating $10 per hour worth of value, they might actually consider saying yes. Any value the "basic jobs" themselves add to society is just a bonus.

I don't see why the administration of "Basic Jobs" would be any more open to corruption than any other bureaucratic role, many of which administer things far more significant than next week's work assignment to people earning far more than $7.25 per hour. It doesn't seem unsurpassably difficult to design a set of rules to ensure that "basic jobs" are rotated and not too cushy or unpleasant; I'd actually see that as an easier task than calculating a level of "basic income" that doesn't grotesquely distort one or more of (i)low-end labour supply (ii)budget balance (iii)price inflation and (iv)rental yields on substandard property

There are two kinds of people: those who escape work or are incapable for it, and those who work fairly (but may still be poor). Former are going to build a lot of bad fences, for $7.25, but business only want latter ones. And if you have Basic Jobs, they would indeed be working for $8.50 in poverty, but if you have Basic Income, those would be working for an equivalent of $7.25 from BI and everything their fence-needing employer can conjure on top of that, which will hopefully give them something around $15/hour, which might let them get out of poverty actually.

Low-end labour supply is poor people. Low-end labour supply is people you pay not enough money for them to escape poverty.

Any effective fight with poverty would involve disrupting the "low-end labour supply" as we know it today.

This seems to me like a disguised return of slave work.

In my value system, forcing people to do unfulfilling work to be able to feed themselves is nowhere near a positive.

Paying people to stay at home is not ideal, but it's the least terrible, just like democracy is the least terrible form of government we've experienced yet. And, with an education system that works, it contributes to solving the problem over generations.

Plus, I don't see what the problem is with people not working, as long as society can support it. I'd rather support poor unemployed people than nearly anything else governments spend their cash on these days.

You either don't know what slavery is, or you didn't read what I wrote. No one is owned by anyone else. No one is forced to work.

I'd rather support poor unemployed people and get new public works than simply support poor unemployed people.

It may not be slavery but it sounds rather like a reinvention of the workhouse.

The infrastructure around ensuring the Basic Jobs were available is not trivial. Finding tasks to do, providing transport, checking that job-takers were actually doing the requirements, managing staff (including things like providing uniforms) - these things are not small items on a grand scale. Basically you're talking about creating a new tier of low-paid public servants.

> Unemployed Americans are just unwilling to accept those jobs at a price low enough that people are willing to pay it.

I don't understand what's wrong with that. Why shouldn't the price be high to get another person to clean up your detritus? What ill would befall society if everyone but the most brilliant (and ostensibly highly paid) had to clean up after themselves?

Or do you feel that only a certain type of person deserves the dignity of being paid well to clean someone else's toilet?

If there were a basic income guarantee, then the price might go up for cleaning toilets and other filth--if it already isn't high enough that a BIG wouldn't make a dent. But I think rich people would still find people to do the job if they paid enough regardless, so what's the big deal?

It's wrong that hardworking middle class/rich people are forced to support people who are unwilling to work to support themselves. If that's acceptable in your value system I won't be able to persuade you otherwise.

But I think it's important to be honest about this point.

Well, then I think your argument is entirely a moral one. It's axiomatic that BIG is wrong, because any potential free-rider problem creates an intolerable situation, correct?

This entire argument is a moral one. I'm just pointing out that if you value getting people on welfare back to work (which many proponents of Basic Income appear to, given that they argue Basic Income will do this), there are far more straightforward ways of making this happen which still provide income to the people who would be unemployed in the modern economy.

No, I think there are compelling arguments in favor of basic income that are entirely practical. For instance:

* In a capitalist, money-driven economy there are many socially beneficial activities that are not compensated (or are under-compensated), and therefore disincentivized. BIG would allow more people to partake of these activities (for instance, staying home to raise children, caring for elders, performing volunteer work, creating art, receiving an education).

* If any social welfare programs are to exist, they are most efficiently delivered through a direct cash transfer, rather than through a means-tested or other qualification-based process, reducing both waste and corruption by eliminating bureaucracy.

* If a BIG were high enough, no minimum wage would be necessary to reduce poverty, and it could therefore be eliminated. Thousands if not millions of jobs that do not exist today because of the minimum wage would come into existence.

* By ensuring a life-long minimum earnings level for individuals, a whole host of poverty-related social ills could be reduced including crime, addiction, illness and under-education.

* As more and more tasks otherwise performed by labor are automated and mechanized, existing social welfare systems, and society itself, will be strained by the needs of formerly-productive workers, as well as their families, who are affected by this transition. If such changes happen fast enough, the economy itself will not be able to adapt in creating new labor opportunities, and more worrying, in replacing their reduced purchasing power.

A BIG could make even long-term economic transitions less volatile, in large part by keeping consumption rates stable even in the face of massive and sustained unemployment. Furthermore, it should prove more adaptable to new economic and social circumstances than means-tested and qualification-based social welfare systems.

Your arguments for a BIG apply equally well to a BJG, if not more so.

If the basic jobs include socially beneficial activities, BJG provides an even greater incentive for those activities than a BIG.

A BJG is also a cash transfer, but with a single qualification process. Show up, do work, get paid. This reduces waste because you gain the product of people's work. With a BIG, Waste = transfers + admin overhead + disincentivized work. With BJG, Waste = transfers + admin overhead + disincentivized work - product of basic jobs.

Similarly, the BJG would eliminate poverty and ensure a life-long minimum earning level.

As for your hypothetical future where human labor is unnecessary, we'll switch to a BIG when we get there.

The preference for a Basic Income over a Basic Job is a moral one - most of the proponents of Basic Income believe people should be able to subsist on the fruits of other's labor if they choose not to work.

Basic Job is worse because some individuals cannot get jobs simply because they are not productive enough - forcing them upon employees would be worse for the economy than giving them an income to live on

They don't, actually.

"socially beneficial activities that are not compensated" -- doesn't apply equally well.

"most efficiently delivered through a direct cash transfer, rather than through a means-tested or other qualification-based process" -- doesn't apply equally well.

"no minimum wage would be necessary to reduce poverty" -- doesn't apply equally well.

"ensuring a life-long minimum earnings level for individuals" -- doesn't apply equally well.

"the economy itself will not be able to adapt in creating new labor opportunities" -- doesn't apply equally well.

Amazingly, that's each and every point. Not a single one applies equally well.

I think your assumption that government can provide guaranteed (productive) jobs to everyone at any time is dead wrong. This sounds much more like a communist nightmare then BIG does as it would almost certainly introduce a massive dysfunctional bureaucracy to manage all those jobs.

I don't expect all the jobs to be productive. Some will, some won't. The productive jobs will generate returns, while the unproductive ones (e.g., digging and refilling holes) will merely serve as a disincentive for people to use the BJG.

The disincentive is important - the goal of the BJG is that ideally, no one will use it. Unlike a BIG, laziness is no longer an option.

Unwilling? Unable, unwilling to see their own ability or a mix of both. It's difficult to get their confidence back and escape their own emotional/social prison that they are in. Whether it's something of a choice or an unfortunate situation is arguable, but it's a fact nonetheless.

But the "hard working" middle class should support the society that allows it to exist, no? And society is made up of every person, no?

The point of the guaranteed minimum is precisely to make this kind of jobs even more expensive, so that people are not forced into unfulfilling jobs by economic necessity.

I mean, if you don't need to clean other people's houses to survive, you sure as hell will not do it, unless it pays enough to make your life significantly better. Someone would have to pay me in the millions to work as a maid for a year.

With a minimum revenue of $2000 a month for example, the incentive would be very low to do this kind of work for less than say $100 an hour, since it would only marginally increase your standard of living.

In the long run this should work towards automatization of these tasks by producing an economic incentive. And at least the robots won't suffer from mental and physical conditions due to a bad work environment.

If we are moving to that point then tax machines doing human job and split that and only that tax's revenue evenly among the populace. As soon as we get to that point you'll immediately get BI.

Till then, I'd rather not work to support people who had not worked a single day for generations.

I think the crux of the issue is, entrepreneurs (us!) just don't want to build companies that rely on "unscalable" low-cost human labor any more. We want to build our empires on the backs of machines. There are no new jobs being created at the margin. All the jobs we want people to do are hard, and all the unemployed people we have are unqualified to do them.

My wild-and-crazy suggestion: a Basic Training Guarantee--a law requiring companies to hire capable-but-unskilled laborers, and convert them into skilled labor. No more "15 years' Node.js experience required", or its equivalent in any industry. Work with what we've got!

There are plenty of job openings being created at the margin. I want my house cleaned for less than $80 (note: 2 hour job). Farmers want their crops harvested for minimum wage.

There are no jobs being created because the unemployed are unwilling to do these jobs.

To identify all the job openings that go unfilled, go live in India or China. Most upper class families have a maid, a cook and a driver (if they are wealthy enough to own a car). This is quite uncommon in the US - instead, we have people who are paid not to work.

> I want my house cleaned for less than $80.

A consideration: can someone who earns less than $80 for a day's work afford to live within driving distance of your house? In India, definitely; in a US metropolitan center, definitely not. (This reduces the problem to the much-better-studied, "people really don't like relocating thousands of miles away for a job, even if their life currently sucks.")

It's $80 for 2 hours. You can survive within commuting distance of Manhattan on $15/hour. You might need to commute from NJ and suffer the indignity of having roommates and black neighbors, but it's quite doable.

I lived within commuting distance of Manhattan during grad school on a stipend roughly equivalent to a $10/hour x 40 hours/week. Prices have gone up a bit since then, but only enough to push me 15-20 minutes further out.

Okay, admittedly, earning $40/hr at any job is well above "marginally-employed", so we're both being a bit silly here. It's more those who expect people earning minimum wage to somehow survive in a city that I was aiming for.

Just because you're billing $40/hr doesn't mean you're well above marginally employed.

We're talking about a 2 hour gig here. There's likely to be at least 2 unbillable hours involved in a 2 hour gig gig, so your rate is already cut in half to $20/hr.

Once you start taking into account all of the unbillable hours (including time spent finding gigs) and all of the downtime between gigs, a $40/hr rate could very well mean you are below the poverty line.

You realize that most of the time, when you're hiring someone to clean houses, that most of the money is going to an agency that has overhead, right? Who is answering the calls to set up the appointments? Who is paying for the cleaning materials?

That cleaner is likely making close to 15-20 an hour.

> It's $80 for 2 hours. You can survive within commuting distance of Manhattan on $15/hour

Not if you only get two hours of work! That $80 for 2 hours has thousands of dollars in opportunity costs.

Some of those jobs will be probably transitory and some are not worth doing in the u.s. even at minimum wage.

There's a lot of automation going on in agriculture[1].

Regarding maids: Roomba's and alike might be starting to become popular in india[2].

Regarding a driver: The average wage for a taxi driver in the u.s. is $12. Not that far from minimum wage[3].

Regarding a cook: I suspect that , a least at current wages cooks make(and even at minimum wages), it's more economically and varied to order food than to have a cook.

[1]last paragraph , http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567202-...

[2]http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-22/peopl...

[3]http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes533041.htm

> I want my house cleaned for less than $80 (note: 2 hour job).

First of all, I doubt there's anywhere in the USA you couldn't get responses to a craigslist ad offering $40/hr for house cleaning.

Second, a 2hr/month gig is not going to pull in anywhere near the responses that a 40hr/week would at the same rate. It's just not the same thing. Try living off freelancing for a while; then you'll know what "2 hour gig" really means.

What about unskilled workers who are not capable of learning/understanding programming or other technical endeavors?

In a society that runs out of physical labor to do, you might just as well call them "disabled", and pay them a cheque out of that pool. But Basic Income (or a negative income tax) is cleaner in its economic predictability than special-casing things like that.

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