People feel a natural obligation to be rewarded for their work. "Don't work, don't eat". The fact is, giving people a small income makes them inherently lazy. Lazy people don't like to work, but they will do just enough to get by, so if you give them a min amount of $, they'll do nothing. Others will look at that and say, "How come they get money for being lazy?" It actually acts as demotivation for people who would work some. The guy who isn't making much to begin with isn't rewarded - it only makes his labor less valuable. Does it make him strive harder to gain opportunity? Not really. People who have tried multiple times to jump over the hurdles in their economic careers won't feel that obligation to continue to jump if they have their precious safety net.
Is a safety net nice? Sure, but as much as it's nice, I know full well I wouldn't be sending out resumes or even looking for what I should be doing if I didn't feel some obligation to work, whatever that be from.
The idea of giving people a flat income sounds nice in theory, but that's all it is: in theory. Practically, I believe it fails to account for the basics of human nature after that point, which is why the idea wouldn't work in practice. That doesn't mean it isn't humanitarian, which is where I guess it shines for some people. After all, it's nice to think everyone is taken care of, much like social medical plans. But in both cases (income and medicare) I think it's the reverse solution to the problem: It's trying to raise people up rather than lowering the bar. Vague analogy, sorry, but maybe it makes sense?
>> I'm all for doing work, but never understood worship of hard work for hard work's sake.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, so let me try to answer this in a general way, for the sake of practice if nothing else. Personally, I view the body as being made to do work. It's very functional, well designed "equipment" - or at least better for all-purpose usage than anything humanity has ever created. Some people feel like they wouldn't be fulfilling their purpose without work. They wouldn't feel complete I guess. Notably, it is a personality-type thing, as there are types of people who enjoy doing much more than thinking, but everyone enjoys doing something, even if not work related. We'd get bored otherwise. Some people naturally associate the doing of things with working for a living. Some people find work to be therapeutic.
I'm rambling alot here trying to toss out ideas. Maybe I already answered the question in my feeble way.
What would you suggest to Walmart, Krogers, McDonald's workers and all Truck Drivers who will be displaced by automation in the next decade? Learn to code? Not everyone is cut out to be a coder, or has the money for education in the first place or the mentality to learn it online on their own.
Truck driver is probably the first job to disappear, this is also the #1 job in about 30 states. Truck drivers also touch many communities by travelling through po-dunk towns who's whole industry be it a couple mom and pop shops and a gas station IS because of truck drivers who frequent their route.
All of those communities will dry up, millions of truck drivers will be out of work. What do you expect people will do when they are starving, and the unemployment rises from 6% to 40-50%, by 2040?
There's currently an 83% chance that workers earning less than $20/hour will lose their job to automation in the future, and a 40% chance that those who earn between $20-40/hour will lose their job (forever to automation) in the not-to-distant future. Do you know anyone who falls in those ranges? Would you risk it all on 40-83% chance that your job will be here in 20-30 years?
What happens to the graduate who ends up graduating from medical school only to find out all doctors have been replaced by robots? They still have gargantuan loans and all, but zero employment options.
Source: http://www.geek.com/tech/middle-class-workers-are-losing-the...
> Truck driver is probably the first job to disappear, this is also the #1 job in about 30 states.
That's not really true. This misconception came about from an NPR journalist who drew an infographic that appeared to show that truck drivers were the most common job in each state[0]. In reality, that infographic used BLS data - the BLS subdivides other professions to provide more granularity. In other words, all that infographic showed was that the BLS considers "truck driver" to be a less specialized profession than "teacher" (which is separated into different roles of teachers).
If you actually look at the number of truck drivers in each state and compare that to the size of the labor force in each state, it's a lot smaller.[1]
>If we look at data that is consistently disaggregated into the most detailed nonfarm occupations, retail salesperson is the most common job in 42 states. In four other states (Alabama, Louisiana, Maryland and Vermont), cashier is the biggest occupation. Fast-food worker is tops in two states: Kentucky and Ohio.
Wow, seems like worse news to me. The number of self-driving trucks on the road today is probably low to zero, but the number of non-grocery retail stores closing every year, largely due to competition from Amazon (but also stagnant wages keeping demand low), is clearly in the thousands. I don't think it would be crazy to predict closings and automation within the stores that remain (e.g. Amazon Go) driving a collapse in jobs over the next decade.
> Wow, seems like worse news to me. The number of self-driving trucks on the road today is probably low to zero, but the number of non-grocery retail stores closing every year, largely due to competition from Amazon (but also stagnant wages keeping demand low), is clearly in the thousands
Maybe, but clearly the net effect is positive, because unemployment has fallen by half since 2010, and is in fact currently below NAIRU levels[0]. So every job that has been lost has been replaced by more than one, on average.
(Before someone says "yes, but that's because the labor force participation rate has fallen" - that's another common remark that misses the point altogether. The economy has expanded during this timeframe, and while labor participation is a secondary concern, it's not a proximate one. If people are able to afford the choice not to work during a period of time in which the economy has expanded, that's unambiguously a good thing, even if it's not always the best case. Increasing participation in the labor force is often a goal, but not in and of its own sake. Unlike controlling excess unemployment or preventing GDP contraction, which are basically always bad, a drop in labor force participation is a more ambiguous signal of economic health).
[0] In other words, one could actually make the argument that unemployment is currently too low - although this would be a bit of a moot point, as it's still within measurement error of the NAIRU and has been for the last 13 months.
I've met very very few genuinely lazy people. I've come to realise that people who may appear lazy are usually somehow impaired or beaten down. In one way or another, they have lost or never gained faith in their ability to push through, and have fallen into "don't expect much, try to survive" mode.
> People feel a natural obligation to be rewarded for their work ...
If people are actively demotivated by seeing others idle and surviving, who cares? Provided that we as a society can afford basic income (including after it's been established and it's having various impacts on the workforce), it's no loss if people stop working. And there's only so much basic income could ever give you; it'll make the necessities of life free (or rather paid for), but if you want things beyond necessities (including any positional good), you'd still want to look for work.
> Is a safety net nice? ...
If we can afford to provide a basic income, you don't need to work -- unless the economy goes so pear-shaped that we stop being able to afford a basic income. (And this seems unlikely, since automated factories won't be offered a basic income. If anything, basic income might increase consumer demand...)
> The idea of giving people a flat income ...
I'd emphasize that this income will grow if you work -- and that it won't be enough to buy positional goods, by definition. You can keep body and soul together on a basic income, but to live better you'll have to find a way to engage with the economy. (And the presence of a hammock-grade safety net will give you more options, not fewer. Live on oatmeal and vegetables, and buy stock with your food savings; or work for years on a project that might or might not pay off.)
> I'm not sure what you mean by this ...
"Made to do work" could mean any number of things. Tribal warfare, hunting, gathering, and social climbing are certainly things humanity has evolved to do; subsistence farming, artisanal crafts, and management are close enough that we're pretty good at them; but factory work, we're just plain not adapted to. Keeping strict schedules, doing small parts of a large whole, and repeating a single task for a long period of time: these are learned skills at best for humanity, and that's why such jobs get automated.
> Some people feel like they wouldn't be fulfilling their purpose ...
They can find jobs and keep working. UBI isn't the end of employment, just the provision of support. Think of it as reverting to the economic structure of the classical world or the American South, except that this time the only slaves are robots.
I guess our ideas of how it would be implemented are different. Let's consider it from a practical perspective. What's the basic level of income? Right now, minimum wage helps some people (where cost of living is low) and not others (where cost of living is high), so asking this quantitatively, how much would you propose basic income be, assuming the dollar stays put? Of course, we have to get Congress to even pass such measures in a way that actually helps society, but let's ignore the government problem for our theorizing.
Second, what do you project would be future salaries? I know, that's very difficult to say, but let's toy with the idea since it's important that such salaries have an impact on whether people actually step out into the workplace... or if the sorts of jobs available are even something they can do.
Third, exactly where does this money come from? The rich have money, but it's awfully hard to get them to part with it. They're usually crafty enough to manipulate the system. The government can't keep printing money (without taking it out) because that makes it worthless. Money doesn't just magically appear when the economy "gets going". Let's not assume imports are going to decrease (at least not for this theorizing, even if Trump gets his way), or at least we should pretend that imports and exports balance out. I say this assuming that we might apply Basic Income at a global level, at which point "import" and "export" become meaningless. Money can't just cycle because the fact is, some people are in control of the resource supply and others aren't. On a small, small level, capitalism is like this: If we have two people, Mr A and Mr B, and Mr A has the resource supply, the way Mr B gets anything is if he works for Mr A, and Mr A pays him for the resources. Basic Income at this level would be taking from Mr A to give to Mr B some small, but significant amount, for just existing. Does Mr A get a stipend/basic income? And supposing Mr B works more. I wonder at what point would Mr B become like Mr A where he gets taxed more. Already we've seen companies move their headquarters to places like Singapore to avoid the heavy corporate taxing. I have no doubt that the rich (who can afford to move) will be glad to leave this country to find havens where their wealth is unaffected but from which they can still suck the wealth of other nations. Taxing laws here are critical because there are usually loopholes to get around it.
Fourth, how would this look with immigration? Seems - just from my observations - a number of liberals would like both immigration and things like Basic Income. These ideas seem opposed to me, since immigration doesn't necessarily bring much wealth, as it's often the poor who immigrate (assuming no wars or famine and such that drive people from their homeland, and those could be factored in, at least with Basic Income on a national scale). (I'm ignoring here, the fraction of people who immigrate just 'cause they like the country).
Why do you think it doesn't? If I'm getting a free hand-out, I don't need to work as hard to get the necessities, which is why I go to work in the first place.
His labor from his point of view, not from the economy's point of view. Certainly labor from him is good for the economy. But for him, he already has what he needs, so there's not as much incentive to get more. Sure, there will always be people who want more, but they may pursue alternatives to [what I'd call] standard, ethical labor in order to gain those ends.
Is a safety net nice? Sure, but as much as it's nice, I know full well I wouldn't be sending out resumes or even looking for what I should be doing if I didn't feel some obligation to work, whatever that be from.
The idea of giving people a flat income sounds nice in theory, but that's all it is: in theory. Practically, I believe it fails to account for the basics of human nature after that point, which is why the idea wouldn't work in practice. That doesn't mean it isn't humanitarian, which is where I guess it shines for some people. After all, it's nice to think everyone is taken care of, much like social medical plans. But in both cases (income and medicare) I think it's the reverse solution to the problem: It's trying to raise people up rather than lowering the bar. Vague analogy, sorry, but maybe it makes sense?
>> I'm all for doing work, but never understood worship of hard work for hard work's sake.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, so let me try to answer this in a general way, for the sake of practice if nothing else. Personally, I view the body as being made to do work. It's very functional, well designed "equipment" - or at least better for all-purpose usage than anything humanity has ever created. Some people feel like they wouldn't be fulfilling their purpose without work. They wouldn't feel complete I guess. Notably, it is a personality-type thing, as there are types of people who enjoy doing much more than thinking, but everyone enjoys doing something, even if not work related. We'd get bored otherwise. Some people naturally associate the doing of things with working for a living. Some people find work to be therapeutic.
I'm rambling alot here trying to toss out ideas. Maybe I already answered the question in my feeble way.