An unconditional basic income[1] would speed up a paradigm shift from the current "work or starve" society. Maybe our grandchildren will look back to this time and make funny jokes about digging and filling holes...
For example, salary may still be partially driven by necessary education / experience, but physical, tiresome or stressfull works would requireask for way higher salaries (because you get up at 4AM to collect garbage when you have no other choice, or when you think it really is worth it, and those jobs would still be necessary)
The same way, some companies will have huge problems filling the ranks (let's say: food industry, waiter, marts cashiers (or the people filling the mart at night), ...
But education industry (and universities) would have to change their methods, because nowadays peoples are willing to commit 100,000's of $ to get a well paying job, this incentive would be gone, the better paying one being the physical labor, with low education requirement.
I also wonder if people would go with their lives the same way they do now. I, for one, would get one of those hard, high-paying job straight out of high school for a few year, enough to buy a house and save a bit, then go to university (or self-studying with internet classes, choosing some classes in common with friends) and study whatever I found get my interest.
TL;DR: I'm all for Basic Income, mainly because I don't see any long-terme viable alterative, and also because the changes it would bring to society would be really interesting to study.
It actually works out well for some that do it, by starting at '4 a.m.' they finish early afternoon, around about lunch time and can be around when their kids get out of school. They also get paid rather well, as in £40K, which is well above minimum wage. They are also working, whereas chances are that 'Microsoft', 'Vodafone' or any of the other big-brand, knowledge economy employers of the area probably would not employ them. The garbage collector in Reading is quite likely to want to hold onto his/her job as it makes a lot of life possible, even if it does come with the 'stigma' of being in the 'recycling business' (okay, being a bin man!).
I must say that the situation in Reading is an anomaly, it may not even exist any more, but five years ago it was a cushy number, I had friends doing it.
Compare this situation to collecting the garbage in a rural no-jobs area. Here the job pays minimum wage and nobody sticks at it for very long. There is no benefit in doing it as the money is barely any more than income support and any overtime is swallowed up by tax. Consequently there is a high amount of churn as people give it a go to get off the employment register and prove to the government that they are willing to work, then, one way or another, they jack it in.
So how would that work out in a 'basic income' economy in some rural town where there are no jobs? I think it would still work out rather well, even if the pay was £10K after tax + Basic Income. It would make the difference between having a subsistence style existence and one where one could cook nice meals for the kids and buy them all the things they need. Even a holiday could be afforded, subject to budgeting ability.
Why would the incentive disappear? A basic income means that people don't make zero when they don't work; filling jobs would still be based on supply/demand, hence, implicitly, ability.
So, the supply drops (many people choose to simply sit out the whole job thing if its going to be unfulfilling). At least, this is the theory.
Why does the garbage have to be collected at 4 AM? Why do people need to fill the mart at night? Do you really need a waiter?
We'd have to reconsider the price our convenience imposes on other people.
Here's a video of the truck in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GprMe6A5DR8
It's still not great to be replaced by a robot, but it's not a hopeless situation here like it is in a lot of places.
I have to admit this alone is enough to give me pause. The logic goes something like: "Our current social system has produced astonishing wealth. We can therefore take this to change our current social system and distribute the wealth more widely. Hooray, we fixed things!"
But this amounts to a rewriting of the social system. We have no guarantees that the next social system will produce the same amounts of wealth. This is a silent assumption that most advocates seem to make, and it is completely unjustified. Despite the vigorous handwaving, it doesn't take much Econ 101 to guess there's a darned good chance it will produce less. But, if it produces less, now we're distributing less wealth. Whatever social effects may occur when that happens, it's pretty unlikely that they're going to be happy puppies and rainbows.
If one could assume a steady-state and that the effects of the first year will be the only effects ever, it's all fun and games. But the second and third order effects seem unlikely to produce a happy society, or even necessarily one that is still generating wealth at anything like our current pace.
The most popular handwave seems to be "Well, we can just pay people more to do the things we need done... and look, now they're getting paid more to do these things, so it's a win! Hooray!" but, well, follow that through to its logical conclusion... a society that is paying more for its basic needs is a poorer society. Poorer in the same wealth that we're trying to redistribute. And given that the price has risen, it's also a society that is getting less of its critical needs.
Sure, the first year of basic income is fun and games. But what does the twentieth look like? Or the year that you have to claw it back because the society no longer has the wealth to provide it? What does it look like when 78% of the culture votes for a larger "basic income" every year? Basic income is probably incompatible with democracy in the long term; what are we going to do about that? Basic income, democracy, and unrestricted immigration from poorer places are definitely incompatible with each other, what are we going to do about that? (Given that we already see plenty of politicians with incentives to legalize immigrants so they can have their votes, this is a huge concern.) What does it look like when a natural disaster strikes New York and society is out billions or trillions of dollars? You have to think about more than the first year, and you have to think about what real people will do in reaction, and what real people will do in reaction to those reactions, and so on and so on. Yes, clearly, Star Trek people do great on something probably quite like Basic Income, but that doesn't prove much.
And I'm quite concerned that this is something that from a societal point of view is not something we'd ever be able to remove if it did become infeasible; I suspect that the populace would happily ride it into straight-up social collapse before giving it up. We may be disturbingly close to that scenario even before we try "basic income".
This logic goes flying out the window if we can make robots that "just work" and can provide for us... but we're not talking about waiting that long right now, are we? We may have no practical choice but to suck it up until then. (And ye gods is there probably a thin line between a robot economy smart enough to provide for us without us doing much, and a robot economy smart enough to simply dispense with us entirely.)
In Europe the main problem in agriculture is overproduction so farmers sometimes get payed to leave some land uncultivated and hard limits are imposed on the production of milk and on the import of bovine meat. This is not a place where we'll starve because everybody will start painting and sculpting all of a sudden.
The "wealth creation" argument is flimsy, but recognizing that the consequences of BI are unknown is not.
Also, i found this phrase really upsetting: "A society that is paying more for its basic needs is a poorer society"
It would have been a perfectly applicable argument against abolishing slavery. I can assure you that all low-end jobs like serving burguers, cleaning up toilets, and the sort are not doing by people choosing what they want to do from assorted options and incentives. They have no other choices, its doing that or starving. If you are not cleaning toilets, then you have all the incentives to go against BI, becuase you are way more likely to have to do your own sandwiches, clean your own office, serve and cook your own food, etc.
I find it dignified that people can choose that they want to do, and very much like the slave owner sucked up his loss of stature, middle-class and upper-class should suck up to not having wage slaves cleaning up after them.
It would have been wrong, though; slavery is an abuse of power to force people who could otherwise be very productive members of society to do relatively low-value tasks. I'm pretty sure most historians agree that slavery was either not a net economic win, or on its way to not being an economic win, by the time it was abolished.
You then sort of prove my point, by describing an economy in which apparently nobody runs any restaurants at all, and apparently you're going to do your own cooking, cleaning, etc. Yes, that's a gloriously hippie paradise... it's also a poorer economy. You've just celebrated that basic income will produce a poorer economy. And that's not my problem. That's your choice. We all have different values. The question is, where is the wealth for basic income going to come from if the economy just got poorer than it is today?
There's no free lunch. A great deal of the "wage slave" jobs are also where a lot of the basic value of the economy is coming from. Indeed, isn't this half the point of the people on this page, complaining that the "real" value creators aren't getting properly compensated for it? If we tear into those, where is the stuff going to come from that we're supposed to be giving out to people as part of their basic income? It does no good to hand people a "living wage" if there's no longer anything to purchase with it. I'm not sure basic income advocates have deeply internalized the idea that for any economic transaction, there has to be two sides, and there's no Infinite Magical Grocery Store that will always be there, regardless of what we do to the economy. Replacing all the scut work with musicians and painters is a very sweet sounding goal, but where does their poop go?
It would be supreme (and probably very, very deadly) irony if we institute a "basic income" because we're "so rich", only to destroy the very wealth we thought we had in the process. This may not be what happens, but I'd like to see a lot more careful analysis based on real psychology and a few very careful trial runs (yes, I know about the tiny ones that have been done) before I'd even remotely support it. The risks are gigantic, and there's probably easier and less risky ways to mitigate the problems than this.
Restaurants wouldn't disappear, but it would be a bit more expensive. Also, I suppose restaurants which treat their personal badly would quickly disappear. (You can say that's wishful thinking, but the lever effect would be quite effective against those).
If you really love your job, and that's everything for you, ok, not much of a change, you may even get a bit less money. Chance is that you work with people who enjoy it too, and basic income wouldn't be much of a change for you.
But if you have a side project you want to launch, it could be what makes the difference, even if it wouldn't be possible in the current economy. Or you could take a few years off to raise your children (or help them go through a difficult period, I heard it can happen).
"Established" company have a lot to loose in that proposal, mainly those we depend on cheap labor. But it would also create a lot of opportunities on the market, so the economical aspect wouldn't be that bad.
What kind of opportunities? Let's say, if people have a bit more free time, child education through fab-lab would be pretty neat (complement or replacement of school, IDK). This is just one "on the spot" idea, it could be done today... if people took the time, or could take it.
Frankly, "look at all the wonderful things that people will do when they're freed from having to do the things they are doing today" is the scariest thing about it. I'm a programmer. A pretty decent one. The exact sort of surplus-generator that this scheme is predicated on. I go to work and I enjoy my job, but let's be honest, if I could choose how I spent my time, it is not what I would do. I would do something fun and personally interesting, like my outliner (read: "yet another f'ing text editor"), or one of my video game ideas.
This is MURDER to the basic income idea. It only works if enough of us choose to keep working away on things we don't really want to do, and there's a real tension between "a living wage"... that is, by definition enough to "live" on without a job... and something less than that, which is hardly basic income.
How many people are advocating for a basic income because they really think it's just, and how many people are just itching to use it as a way of not having to work anymore (but use the high-minded wealth redistribution as a cover for advocacy)? Even on HN, I rather suspect there's more of the former than we'd like, more people dreaming about how they could easily live frugally if they could not work at all... and we're the workaholics of the world if ever there were any, we crazy programmers. If this is put to a vote, how many millions of people would be just voting to never have to work again? We're not that rich that we can take that yet.
The exact reason why we can't all just do what we want, today, is that "what we want" doesn't add enough value to society on its own for us to be able to afford it. If we could live in a glorious wonderland where we just did what we wanted and we all came out collectively wealthy in the end, we wouldn't have to try to create some "basic income" idea, we could just do it right now... but we can't. Our desires don't overlap the needs of the world well enough. That's true even here in the programming world, and if anything in the entire spectrum of work would work like that, it's our world, with open source and feasible free collaboration between thousands on single products. I can't see how to make the numbers add up... and that is what we have to do if we're going to make this work, not rhapsodize about how wonderful it all could be in Utopia if only we got together and wished hard enough.
People flipping burguers could be doing something a lot more producting than flipping burguers as well.
Also in terms of poorer economy, I think we dont see eye to eye on the definition of it, because if you consider the loss of wage slavery work as a poorer economy, you should also see that for old fashioned slavery. The colliseums closed after there were no slave-gladiators, so abolishing slaves did contribute to a poorer economy.
Continuing on that, this is why I found that phrase upsetting: "A great deal of the 'wage slave' jobs are also where a lot of the basic value of the economy is coming from"
If we admit to ourselves collectively that our economy functions thanks to people that have little or no options, there is a very small difference than running a place with slaves.
In the form of a question, if you had a cotton farm that could only work because you had slaves you could work to death, and slaves are taken away from you and you go broke, what is your feeling about that business?
And if you have a burguer joint and it only works because you have people that are very cheap to hire to cook the burguers and clean the place up, and once they want higher salaries you would go broke, what is your feeling about that business?
Social systems have been rewritten for a very long time. Colonialism, manifest destiny and whatever else springs to mind.... all of these things rewrite social systems. The new script is the purview of powerful.
My skills are all over, but my job is external renovations. We've gone from wood siding, soffit, fascia and shingles to predominantly metals and plastics that are now getting increased longevity. If new houses were built with the best materials, it wouldn't need work done to it for 40+ years.
Stone coated galvalume (iirc aluminum coated galvanized steel) is a true 40 year shingle. Their operating lifespan is likely to extend past 60 years before it absolutely had to be replaced (ie leaks). If that was available for a siding material or for fascia cladding, it would be >100 year longevity. (Shingles on a vertical wall typically last up to 3-4 times their rated lifetime for a roofing application - so 120-160 years).
If a customer gets their whole house done, they'll never be a return customer with our current materials. The work I'm doing today will be redone by a robot, I guarantee it.
We need basic income because almost every job can eventually be automated out. What about the day we're using nanobots? A tree branch damaged your eavestrough? Just pick up a pail of nanobots at the store and pour it into the reservoir in your basement that your houses computer handles all repairs and renovations. Who am I kidding, they'll probably be made by a nanofabricator you have that makes all your material things.
But i agree with many people who replied to your thread - this would be a very small problem.
Smart parking meters (that accept credit cards, and that let you reup time with your phone) for example, could dramatically adjust the number of positions available for meter maids / parking enforcement officers.
USPS is probably going to have to shift at some point to... something different.
The federal government spends $25 billion maintaining vacant properties, and owns more than 50,000 vacant homes. That probably doesn't equate to job elimination, but there's got to be some kind of opportunity there.
Toll booths for toll roads have got to be on the way out, right? I mean, not saying EZ Pass is the best, or most ubiquitous, but we've got speed cameras that map to DMV databases such that if I run a toll, I already get a bill in the mail -- add a new question at the DMV for 'email address' and stop sending paper bills and you've got a business model.
A hospital with no nurses, doctors or patients only administrative staff.
Bullshit jobs are largely jobs that managers create and defend in order to expand their managerial fiefdoms. A manager's influence in an organization comes partially from how many people report to him or her. That's the incentive structure that creates many of the bullshit jobs.
There are also interpersonal issues in play. For instance, you or I might walk into a particular company and observe a dozen different processes that could be easily automated with off-the-shelf software but are currently being done by humans. We might say to the manager "Why don't you automate, you're wasting money?!". In some cases, the manager would reply that the people doing those jobs are valued employees, possibly even friends, and automating those processes would put them out of work and thus, the processes are not automated.
It is a fallacy to believe that businesses operate efficiently simply because there is a profit motive. Businesses are complex organizations made up of people, with all their failings and weaknesses (if you want to call them that). It is not necessary for a business to be perfectly efficient to survive, it is only necessary that its competitors be equally inefficient.
I like to point this out to anyone who says "well, a business wouldn't do it if it made them less efficient", eg the case of open floor plans for programmers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507280
Operating more efficiently is exactly what is destroying jobs. Middle managers are an easy target but I fail to see how there are enough of them to move the needles.
I think the purpose of this adage is that businesses operate more efficiently than government entities. Not with perfect efficiency.
It's not perfect, but it's way better than any other system.
Much of the administration of social services (Social Security, Food Stamps, etc.) in the USA (to all be replaced by that basic living stipend).
I can think of more.
I cannot recall the historical character at the moment, but I recall reading of a benevolent king(central or south american?) who give all his subjects generous amounts of gold to the effect that it crashed their economy. Anyone?
edit:reword last sentence
If the baseline is provided in a more straightforward way (and, presumably, taxes on above-baseline amounts are raised accordingly) there may be very little economic distortion from the present state.
"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon"?
I guess so, I am not an economist. That seems to be the cycle repeated since the dawn of human interactions, however. With scarcity comes demand, market sets price... and the rest of the spiel. A game that has been gamed long before we came along, but yeah, that seems to be how it works historically.
My point thus being that a guaranteed minimum income would not cause inflation.
Prices change in response to market forces, yes.
But micro price changes are not inflation.
Inflation is a macro level phenomenon, caused "always and everywhere" by monetary changes (debasement etc).
It doesn't work in supply restricted things like real estate thought, so other solutions might be needed for that market.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi...
A Basic Income policy is totally Socialism, which is a system in which the economy is cooperatively managed. (Again, more complicated really.)
But there's nothing wrong with Socialism. It's a bad word in America, for historical reasons, despite being fairly widely implemented within that country.
Disagree. Provision of money and "co-operative management" are two separate concepts. You can do either, both, or none.
Both communism and basic income include the notion of income distribution as an antidote to strong government controls.
I agree there's nothing inherently "bad" about these ideas, I just wish we wouldn't invent new terms for old ideas, just because the older terms have gotten a (perhaps undeservedly) bad reputation.