Hacker News Reader

Comment by jlarocco | Hacker News Reader

The problem there is that you have a cushy programming job.

The bigger question is what about the gas station clerks? Or cleaning people? Or wait staff? Or any of the people working the millions of other jobs that just totally suck. Having done it in the past, I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes.

So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, but for people with shitty jobs, why not say, "F* it, I can get by with the guaranteed minimum, so why bother?"

View on HN

If you are 20-something living on minimal income that barely covers food and a roof, would you take a job working as a gas station clerk in order to afford to go out and eat and socialize, buy a drink in a bar, or participate in the culture of everyone else around you?

If you asked a anthropologist, I suspect you would hear a pattern of human beings doing all kind of work in order to increase their status in society and finding a mate. Working in a low status work is not perfect but it is better than nothing and money is quite useful when it can be used on things beyond a 1-room apartment and basic food.

>If you asked a anthropologist, I suspect you would hear a pattern of human beings doing all kind of work in order to increase their status in society and finding a mate.

Being a garbageman wouldn't help with this nearly as much as spending 4 hours in the gym and then spending 4 hours building socializing skills. Especially since the other side is now guaranteed being provided for thus reducing the already low impact that being a good provider has on mate finding.

Most of the time, I wouldn't.

To be more realistic, most of the time I wouldn't even take a job programming if I had food and housing covered. I might do a contracting gig here or there to buy a new bike or skis, or pay for a big trip somewhere, but it's very unlikely I'd work all the time.

I've considered doing something like that now. I have enough savings to pull it off for a few years, so why not take a few years off and play? With a guaranteed minimum income it'd be an even longer time.

I like the idea of providing for everybody, but people need to be realistic about what could actually happen. If it's just a plan to shame and guilt trip everybody into working all the time, I'd prefer we don't do it.

Depends. If every euro you earn there adds to your unconditional minimum income, instead of replacing a euro from welfare, the motivation to work for that new car, or whatever, becomes pretty tangible.

Note that €900 (or €1300 for a family) is pretty barebones. You won't be putting much more than bread and potatoes on the table using that. And you'll probably live in a rather small house too.

Yeah but at the same time, it would allow people to be more picky about where they work. "I need money so I'll take any job" is a different mindset than "I am financially independent and I'm looking to make more monies in a job I like"

The I'll-take-any-job crowd might not be very motivated in their work anyway. At worst this will force us to pay better salaries for ALL jobs that have fewer applicants, instead of only the ones that require a higher education or lots of experience. Seems fair to me.

Income has a diminishing return, once you're out of "minimum income" the ammount requred to take the shit job is not linear.

You can either lowball the minimum income to the point where you can't realistically live on it for long or a lot of services get more expensive + tax hike to support it = lower standard of living for normal people (unaffected by minimum income but not rich enouh to ignore the costs)

The idea of basic income is to take people out of starvation and lack of shelter. It would still leave people wanting to earn in order to e.g. go on holiday, own a computer, go to a bar, go to a restaurant, eat nice food, own a car (in Europe where owning a car is not required at least) etc - i.e. still plenty of incentive to work, earn and save just more freedom to take risks by e.g. starting that business...

You also miss a basic premise of basic income - everyone gets it with no means testing. It is a different concept to current benefit systems. Normal people would receive it as much as unemployed people.

I doubt people are starving in developed countries so I wouldnt say it's taking anyone out of starvation, it's an alternative to existing welfare in that regard.

And when we get to "basic shelter" well coupled with free health care I guarantee you there are people out there who have very little ambition beyond that, I know more than a few from highschool that literally said things like "all i need is enough money to play WoW" or just work enough to earn money for weed and go out with their friends and live with their parents (and these are people in late 20s early 30s).

People with ambition aren't the ones that benefit from minimum income (unless they get really unlucky, which I guess is a valid concern, but then again those same people are not the ones doing the bottom tier jobs, at least not for long).

Also that's not how I saw basic income schemes suggested, usually it's paid out to people below min income and then progressively lowered to some point otherwise the taxes would have to be insane to finance it.

> Also that's not how I saw basic income schemes suggested, usually it's paid out to people below min income and then progressively lowered to some point

This is not basic income.

Yes it is - it's been a while since I studied economics but I beleive it's called negative income tax.

NO basic income is a flat amount paid to everyone regardless of their income.

What you are talking about is called means tested in work benefits in my country. It is bad - for all the reasons you mentioned but it is not basic income.

Criticise basic income if you want (please do so if you are trained economist) but please do understand what it is before doing so otherwise you are merely burning a strawman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

>Negative income taxes can implement a basic income or supplement a guaranteed minimum income system.

IIRC it was proposed as a simplification of the means tested welfare. Basically NIT is the most realistic funding for Basic Income I've seen - but it's irrelevant - the incentives stay the same the only difference is that it screws over regular people a little less (depending on how it's funded, I'm unconvinced by any "tax the rich" scheme).

Anyway I was interested in this stuff in college when I took my intro econ classes I never looked in to it further but I'm 100% sure NIT is a basic income scheme.

Sighs. You really don't get it do you.

Basic income (NB not minimum income!, not negative income tax!) is not means tested at all. No means test period. Everyone gets it. From the beggar to the millionaire. This is a totally different concept to means tested benefits. The proposal is a so called universal benefit.

>I doubt people are starving in developed countries so I wouldnt say it's taking anyone out of starvation

Grew up with friends who had no food sometimes. My mom would give me food to bring to their house when I went to visit. The mother also had very serious medical problems which was a big reason for that.

You didn't have social services/food charities/local church/neighbors etc. ?

There is a difference between not having food sometimes and starving. Minimum income doesn't fix that either - there will be people who will spend their kids food money on other things.

And if that does not satisfy you, you've got all the time in the day to cultivate your own cabbage garden on balcony.

If nobody is required to do the "shitty jobs", I wonder if those jobs would increase in value as less people do them? Maybe having a waiter at a restaurant would become a luxury.

Perhaps all the jobs would continue to exist but there'd be some very interesting rebalancing.

yeah what I fear it would happen is either all wages go down of an equivalent amount, or an inversion of wages according to job satisfaction, or a cycle on inflation with prices surging and minimum wages following

in this experiment they can test the latter, since the scale is too small to affect global pricing.

I wonder how far the 'unregulated' goes: could one pocket the monthly allowance and then live on a cheap city abroad while maintaining citizenship and privileges?

at the very least this should promote entrepreneurship: given social security that what I'd do. I can't risk anything now as I have no savings and live in a country that offer zero (monetary) supports to startups via neither private nor public capitals.

Robots and automation. I think in near future (put your number here) only cool jobs will be available for humans and shitty jobs will be done by robots. So, we need to find a way how to feed and entertain let say 90% of population.

Very likely. Think of how uncommon household servants are today compared to before the industrial revolution. Now only the super-rich have them, as a rule. The rest of us get by with automation (washing machines, vacuum cleaners), with the occasional hiring of a temporary "servant" when neccessary (e.g., calling a cab compared to having a dedicated chauffeur, or having a landscaper or cleaning service come in once in a while).

I'm almost certain household servants have always been for the rich.

I'm curious what makes you think otherwise?

No, middle-class people had servants back then. It wasn't just the rich.

The lower class, of course, largely were servants.

The industrial revolution opened up other avenues for employment.

Edit: see, for example, http://www.bl.uk/victorian-britain/articles/the-victorian-mi...

"A middle class woman was entirely dependent on a supply of domestic servants, ranging from the untrained ‘slavey’ to a staff of several highly trained specialists."

> I wonder if those jobs would increase in value as less people do them?

Sure. Although technically it's not that the value of the job changes (to the employer, the value of the job is basically the same), it's that wages go up due to the decrease in the labour supply.

Just go to a country with really high labor costs. This is exactly what you'll see. Lots of work goes undone because people just don't care enough to pay for it. Usually just cosmetic or convenience stuff.

Actually, that happens in the United States.

I read an article a while back that some types of manual labor are having a really hard time filling positions because nobody wants to do them for what they can afford to pay, and IIRC, they were already paying significantly higher than minimum wage.

> So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, but for people with shitty jobs, why not say, "F* it, I can get by with the guaranteed minimum, so why bother?"

As more of their jobs get automated away, this could be seen as a feature.

"So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, but for people with shitty jobs, why not say, "F* it, I can get by with the guaranteed minimum, so why bother?""

That'd be a good thing. People leave the bad jobs behind, which would either free up room to automate them without social consequences, or the job would have to be made more attractive in some way (shared between multiple people for less stress, better pay, etc...).

>I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes.

Maybe you don't but there's some people who do. I, personally, actually did enjoy my time working at food service. The first place I worked was poorly run and it sucked but the second place I worked at great management and it was generally a good job minus the pay. I enjoyed my time there.

I also know someone (with a degree) who is a restaurant manager who loves her job as well.

> why not say, "F* it, I can get by with the guaranteed minimum, so why bother?"

Because, most people want to be able to do more. Working at McDonalds might give you enough spending cash to be able to do the stuff you want to do like have a fancy car, jewelry, nights out, vacations, etc.

I'm not saying the shitty job argument is invalid, but it is much more complex.

It has so many different sides a test sounds like a good idea.

Taking the shitty out of a Subway (sandwiches) employee's job might now sound hard. But there are so many solutions to this single situation. And these might be fairly different for many shitty jobs. Just to name a few in this case: better pay, automation, better working conditions, smaller one-person franchises, disappear altogether,...

It's nearly impossible to find the solution upfront nor generalize. I personally believe society's creativity can easily solve this.

people with shitty jobs will be willing to do less-shitty jobs that pay less.

Which means the shitty jobs will have to pay more in order to attract people to do them. People should be paid well for taking on a job no one else wants. That's how the free market is supposed to work.

So what makes you think that's not the case? We're not observing a shortage in unskilled work right now.

People aren't necessarily compensated extra for taking on a job that nobody wants.

...because there are enough people wanting to do the job in the first place.

Yes, but that includes wanting to do the job because they want to live, but not necessarily because they see it as a good use of their time beyond that.

Because right now, people are forced to work in order to survive. Meaning they have to take the shitty jobs for shitty pay because that's what they can get. If you remove the forced to work part, then they can be more selective.

Being force to work is not the same as the need to work to fulfill personal needs and goals.

That is one key difference between slaves and early farmers.

Perhaps. However, currently, people are forced to work. You need a job in order to pay for a roof over your head and food in your stomach.

This "force" to work is even stronger if you aim for a Helicopter. Helicopters are so expensive, they force you really hard.

I'm talking about the basic necessities of life. Whether you choose to admit it or not, one is forced to have a job in order to provide basic shelter, clothing, and food for ones self and family.

I know what you are talking about, but: The term "force" is utterly missplaced in this scenario. ..also: Most in the civilized world have broad welfare benefits for those who decide not to work.

You don't think they have hobbies and interests?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com