Universal Income.

[arthwollipot]

And what chance does this have of being implemented? The major parties won’t touch it, and I think even the Greens will not have it on my platform. They may, but remember their base is the relatively affluent inner urbanites, and tax rises will be unpalatable.

Apart from some Nordic countries I can’t see this happening.

Today, very little. But the future is a long time. The burdens to society of trying to maintain an expanding and aging population in a time of swift technological change, and the economic benefits of literally eliminating all poverty, will become clear over time.

 

[Roboramma]

It doesn't. There is absolutely no requirement for you to do so. UBI doesn't come out of your staffing budget. The salary that you give to your staff is on top of the UBI. Which means that your workers can use it on quality-of-life purchases, rather than mere subsistence.

He did explain why he thought he'd have to pay them more: because the work is unpleasant enough that if one doesn't have to do it to survive, many will simply choose not to do it. A higher pay might be necessary to motivate someone with UBI to take the job than it does someone without UBI, because the latter needs the job in order to eat.

There are lots of people in the world who don't have time for training because they have to work three jobs at fourteen hours per day just so that they can feed their children. Remove the burden of having to work to feed the children and you have more free time that you can spend in upskilling.

+1.

One thing I think about with respect to UBI is the parents invest money in their children. Why? Doesn't paying for someone's college just make them lazy since they don't have to work? Free rent while going to school? No, it's an investment in their future that makes them more, not less productive. UBI could potentially have a similar effect because it gives everyone more resources to invest in themselves.

There's some research on "direct transfer" charities in the developing world that basically just gives people money and has positive effects on their outcomes. It doesn't make them less productive, it makes them more productive.

Or, you know, artistic expression. Or just sitting around playing video games if you want. Heck, if my tax money allows one person to just bludge about being a "burden" on society, but prevents one child from starving to death, then that's money damn well spent in my opinion.

Yep. Or how about preventing that person who couldn't find something productive to do from turning to crime?

There may be some productivity losses due to UBI, but there are also at least some theoretical productivity gains as well, and it's certainly not obvious that the net will be negative. Researching it makes a lot of sense to me.

 

[psionl0]

The fact is that if, as you claim, bank staff levels are unaffected by, say automation, then there should be over 34,150 bank staff in NZ. You say there are 25,000, so that is a estimated nearly 10,000 (27%) reduction, and a definite over 10,000 (31%) reduction since 2013!!

I would have thought that the reduction was more but these must be front line positions that have gone and banks were never big on front line services. Long queues and irate customers were the order of the day. The banks didn't care since it was mostly just the tellers who bore the brunt of the customers' ire.

 

[arthwollipot]

He did explain why he thought he'd have to pay them more: because the work is unpleasant enough that if one doesn't have to do it to survive, many will simply choose not to do it. A higher pay might be necessary to motivate someone with UBI to take the job than it does someone without UBI, because the latter needs the job in order to eat.

Sure, I accept that reasoning. But I think the market will take care of itself. New ways of doing things will be found. Abooga's facility may be able to find ways of doing things with fewer staff. There may be ways to automate some processes that Abooga hasn't thought of yet. There may be non-salary-based incentives that can be put in place. And if all else fails, they may just go out of business. And that'll be okay because the employees of that business will not be destitute.

 

[The Atheist]

The fact is that if, as you claim, bank staff levels are unaffected by, say automation...

I'm not claiming they're unaffected, I'm saying that automation has nowhere near killed them, despite being one of the largest users of new automation.

Your idea that automation will kill off the workforce is plain wrong.

 

[smartcooky]

I'm not claiming they're unaffected, I'm saying that automation has nowhere near killed them, despite being one of the largest users of new automation.

Your idea that automation will kill off the workforce is plain wrong.

As Arth correctly noted, the future is a very long time. Automation may not ever reduce the workforce to zero, but it will eventually severely reduce it to the point that there will be many more people than jobs. You can take that to the bank. Oh, there will be jobs building and maintaining the automation, until the advances I the sophistication and application of AI allows machines to do the building and maintaining.

None of this is controversial... its just inevitable!

 

[arthwollipot]

I always seem to link to this video in any discussion of Universal Basic Income. It's well worth fifteen minutes of your time.

Humans Need Not Apply - CGP Grey (15:01)

 

[Orphia Nay]

So? Unemployed people are offered thousands to go fruit picking, but they don’t take it up.

You're defending below minimum wage?

...I suspect that when it's middle class jobs that start disappearing en masse, rather than working class jobs, the conversation will start to shift from "we can't just have them laying around all day, being a burden to society" to "isn't it great that people can start to have more free time to pursue more spiritually rewarding goals?"

The "indentured servant" mentality lives on.

Collectively we have more technology than we do jobs. We had a thread I started where it was agreed that the savings in automation can go to people. It just takes some new tax laws and government ingenuity in accounting.

Why must everyone have "a job"?

If we applied some intelligence to solving that question, we'd see far less poverty and crime.

 

[smartcooky]

I always seem to link to this video in any discussion of Universal Basic Income. It's well worth fifteen minutes of your time.

Humans Need Not Apply - CGP Grey (15:01)

Yup, worth every minute to watch

Some people here will hate it!
Some will do "the ostrich"

 

[NewtonTrino]

We are already seeing the effects of the government giving out tons of money. Employment markets are super tight because people are being paid to sit at home. Inflation is increasing rapidly. I don't think the current stats of affairs makes UBI look very good.

 

[Olmstead]

We are already seeing the effects of the government giving out tons of money. Employment markets are super tight because people are being paid to sit at home. Inflation is increasing rapidly. I don't think the current stats of affairs makes UBI look very good.

Because the situation during a global pandemic makes for a good case study?

 

[arthwollipot]

We are already seeing the effects of the government giving out tons of money. Employment markets are super tight because people are being paid to sit at home. Inflation is increasing rapidly. I don't think the current stats of affairs makes UBI look very good.

The current state of affairs is in no way a model for UBI.

 

[lionking]

You're defending below minimum wage?

Of course not. Fruit pickers have to be paid award wages.

What I am saying is that Australian citizens in the main will not do jobs like that for award wages, even with bonuses added. This gap was filled by visa holders and those whose visa have expired.

My main point was to counter smartcooky’s argument that jobs are disappearing. This is not true in Australia. As well as agriculture jobs, there are shortages of hospitality workers. I question the contention that technology is destroying jobs so we need a UBI to stop people starving.

 

[Matthew Best]

I always seem to link to this video in any discussion of Universal Basic Income. It's well worth fifteen minutes of your time.

Humans Need Not Apply - CGP Grey (15:01)

That was fascinating, but the tinkly background music was so annoying I could barely make it through, so it was interesting to hear that the music was composed by a bot. I'm sure this says something, but I'm not sure what.

 

[Belz...]

We are already seeing the effects of the government giving out tons of money. Employment markets are super tight because people are being paid to sit at home. Inflation is increasing rapidly. I don't think the current stats of affairs makes UBI look very good.

Wow, man, you're still here? Been a while since I saw you post!

 

[Abooga]

So you must also be against unions and legal representation when employees have to sign work contracts.

I´m not "against" any of that, I am just aware of how the improvement of workers conditions or pay increases production costs which can make businesses uncompetitive, in this global economy where we have to compete with other countries where they have much lower wages, very little protection of workers, in things like health and safety etc. which are costly. I wish the company I work for could afford a big expensive filtering sistem for the machine fumes, expensive footwear for the workers who have to stand, masseuses for the office staff who have to sit for long periods etc... but I´m aware that those things would make our business unprofitable and it would shut down, so It´s better to have to put up with some discomfort in exchange to having work. Spain has seen whole industrial sectors extinct, due to these market forces in the last decades, the shoe industry, the toy industry... impossible to compete with China, India etc.

Many of you seem to think that workers are kept in bad working conditions because rich bosses are gratuitously cruel, but I think that many of you work in academic, research, law and other sectors quite far removed from the harsh reality of the productive sectors, which are made of a miriad of small, medium and large businesses, competing organically and trying to survive with the best means at hand. Talking about a UI and "full automation" seem laughably unachievable from my perspective.

 

[Rolfe]

"Everybody works part-time."

Perhaps I could get a part-time job imagining things for you, until you can afford an automated imaginationbot? (Do not get the Imaginotron 3000, it can only imagine new plots for Degrassi, and "Spinner comes back as the janitor" isn't worth considering.)

Actually, most people already work "part time" compared to the hours that were being worked in, say, the 19th century. We're just taking longer to get the hours down than we really should.

For the last three and a half years of my career, before I retired, I worked a 20-hour week. In my case that worked out as four hours every weekday afternoon. It was amazing to have my mornings to do other things, but still have the structure of a working day.

In Ada Palmer's nove series "Terra Ignota" the society is set in a future where there is cheap very rapid public transport (flying cars) and the climate emergency has been solved (after some upheaval and a close shave, one gathers). Twenty hours is the normal working week unless you're a "vocateur", so keen on your work you work every hour God sends for the sheer joy of it. Grunt work has been automated. Oh, and the politics are cut-throat.

It's not perfect but it' well imagined and given my experience of the 20-hour week I would have thought it would work.

 

[RolandRat]

Economics isn't my strong point by far. Would a Universal Income have any effect on things such as prices? I mean if people have more money, would retailers put their prices up?

 

[The Atheist]

We are already seeing the effects of the government giving out tons of money. Employment markets are super tight because people are being paid to sit at home. Inflation is increasing rapidly. I don't think the current stats of affairs makes UBI look very good.

That may well be the case in USA and other countries, but it's not here. Covid payments stopped in October and unemployment is negligible.

 

[Olmstead]

I´m not "against" any of that, I am just aware of how the improvement of workers conditions or pay increases production costs which can make businesses uncompetitive, in this global economy where we have to compete with other countries where they have much lower wages, very little protection of workers, in things like health and safety etc. which are costly. I wish the company I work for could afford a big expensive filtering sistem for the machine fumes, expensive footwear for the workers who have to stand, masseuses for the office staff who have to sit for long periods etc... but I´m aware that those things would make our business unprofitable and it would shut down, so It´s better to have to put up with some discomfort in exchange to having work. Spain has seen whole industrial sectors extinct, due to these market forces in the last decades, the shoe industry, the toy industry... impossible to compete with China, India etc.

Many of you seem to think that workers are kept in bad working conditions because rich bosses are gratuitously cruel, but I think that many of you work in academic, research, law and other sectors quite far removed from the harsh reality of the productive sectors, which are made of a miriad of small, medium and large businesses, competing organically and trying to survive with the best means at hand. Talking about a UI and "full automation" seem laughably unachievable from my perspective.

There's no reason to believe that this is the cut-off point after which everything collapses. The same argument could be used (and probably has) to excuse child labour, sweatshops, unsafe work conditions, etc.

Maybe a company that can't remain profitable without exploiting it's workers shouldn't exist.