[aahhahahaaa]

Why give free school to everyone, libraries? Clearly a rich person doesn't need those either?

Public services should be public. There's extreme social value in equal access and you reduce an extreme amount of bureaucracy and debate in the process.

>If I got free money I wouldn’t increase spending, I would reduce work.

WE SHOULD ALL REDUCE WORK.

Sorry for the caps but we need to collectively get into this mindset. We're more productive than ever with very little to show for it. We've been having labor outright stolen from us for decades.

[tropdrop]

We're more productive than ever with very little to show for it.

Agreed. "Indeed, in 2006, the top twenty per cent of earners were twice as likely to work more than fifty hours a week than the bottom twenty per cent, a reversal of historic conditions." [1]

1 - https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/you-really-dont...

[donatj]

Hours isn't a great metric for direct comparison here. I worked 50 hours a week back when I was lead for a small company years ago. But 50 hours coding vs 50 hours working manual labor? My dad was a farm hand back in the 1950's-1970's. I'd much rather do 50 hours of my job than even 5 of his. To argue the two are comparable strictly on hours is… goofy.

They're not remotely comparable. The jobs themselves have gotten better even if the hours might have gotten worse.

I spend my day listening to music, watching YouTube, doing largely what I'd be doing anyway but with GitHub, Slack and a terminal open. Why do I care if it's 15 hours or 60 if I'm getting paid to do what I'd be doing anyway?

[tropdrop]

Doesn't it strike you as odd that you must perform the appearance of working all those 50 hours (even though, as you've just mentioned, you spend the majority of your day listening to music and watching YouTube)? And what about those of us who don't have that luxury - say, due to increasingly invasive corporate tools preventing "time theft"?

Why don't we just drop the act?

[rramdin]

Doesn't that statistic imply that working more correlates with higher earnings?

[baconandeggs]

We live in a planet. A planet that also has other countries.

The reason people in the first world can even produce the thought of wishing for less work is because all of the heavy lifting needed for them to exist was outsourced to third world countries.

The only reason you think you are so productive is because almost all your clothes, technology, medical supplies, house appliances and most of your food was produced outside the US by foreign workers; you had nothing to do with it. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR, YOUR SUPERIOR PRODUCTIVITY, OR ROBOTS.

The US is living off the back of illegal miners in the third world and it tells itself "yeah, we should do less!".

I am not making a point against automation, we clearly need more. But the world is so big and the people so numerous all the automation we have pales in comparison with the needs of us all. That is why the number of people working globally has increased, even with automation, not decreased.

[triceratops]

> The reason people in the first world can even produce the thought of wishing for less work is because all of the heavy lifting needed for them to exist was outsourced to third world countries. That is why the number of people working globally has increased, even with automation, not decreased.

It's not because the number of people existing globally has increased? People in poor countries didn't work at all until developed countries started shipping their work overseas? What did they all do then?

[baconandeggs]

Some still don't. Just read the stories about villagers in China being brought in in truckloads to work manufacturing electronics. Not everyone is part of the labor-force, not even today.

[triceratops]

> Not everyone is part of the labor-force

That's flat-out untrue. They aren't part of the industrial workforce. Surely they were already doing something back in their village, even if it was low-productivity farm work or manual labor that paid very little. In developing countries everyone works because it's a matter of survival.

[baconandeggs]

> That's flat-out untrue. They aren't part of the industrial workforce. Surely they were already doing something back in their village, even if it was low-productivity farm work or manual labor that paid very little.

Housewives obviously do something they don't stay in bed all day, and what they do is very valuable for society. But they do not directly contribute to the GDP and hence they are not part of the workforce, industrial or otherwise.

[triceratops]

Rural "housewives" in the developing world run little businesses or sidelines (cooking, sewing, childcare, midwifery and other medicine, selling produce), and/or work on the farm. They're very much a part of the informal workforce.

[aahhahahaaa]

This is not true.

I'm talking about worker productivity within the US. Hour for hour we're outputting more and getting paid less. Before overseas labor you weren't less productive because you had to make your own clothes or something. That time had already long passed. I'm talking about what has happened since the 1950s, not the 1850s.

[baconandeggs]

In the US, in the 50s most women weren't in the labor-force. That is about half of the population.

[nickff]

We have a lot to show for our increased productivity, though the 'things' may not be what you care about. Fancy televisions, nice food, great cars, and a lot more travel are the current 'mindset'. If you think people should be happy with less, you shoud try to convince them; if that fails, you can also lead a less consumption-driven lifestyle on your own!

Why do you want to force me to follow your priorities?

[aahhahahaaa]

This is false. I do not understand how so many people are coming in here peddling this theory with 0 sources. It doesn't even follow basic logic. You're positing that we're spending more while also earning less? Where's that money coming from then?

It's objective that productivity has increased while pay and leisure time have decreased. This isn't a result of any increase in material goods. People are spending less because simply because they're getting paid less.

In 1956 the federal minimum wage was $1 (roughly $10 adjusted for inflation). Today it's 3/4 of that at 7.25.

[kortilla]

Minimum wage is irrelevant in a discussion about averages. Also, you’re forgetting that increased productivity has led to decreased prices for things that used to be manual labor intensive.

It’s possible to both make less on average (inflation adjusted) and have access to much nicer things. The equivalent computing power of an iPhone would have cost you millions of dollars in 1990. Food is cheaper, any automated manufacturing output is significantly cheaper, etc.

When so many people point something out to you that you think “doesn’t even follow basic logic”, it usually means you’re making a bad assumption somewhere.

Unless a corporation (or cartel) can monopolize an increase in productivity, society will reap the benefits through lower prices even if wages don’t increase. Competitive forces ensure that. If you’re interested in learning more, check out what happened with the mini mills and steel prices.

[throwawaygh]

Literally the opposite. We do so much useless work that our productivity curve remains flat even as technology makes us extraordinarily productive at the tiny fraction of actually meaningful and necessary work

[yelloweyes]

Yeah like, wtf is the point of technological innovation if we're still working like crazy?

[alexmingoia]

You don’t need to work like crazy if you do skilled work and spend your money wisely. When I was a software engineer I took months off between jobs. I worked less than 40 hours when freelancing. However, most of my colleagues used their income to buy trappings like a mortgage, clothes, eating out, video games, drugs, new gadgets and toys, cars, their own apartment, etc.

Most people choose to spend their money increasing their standard of living instead of buying time at a low standard of living.

As Picasso said, “I’d like to live as a poor man with a rich man’s money.”

[ATsch]

> You don’t need to work like crazy if [list of privileges]

Nobody should have to work like crazy

[alexmingoia]

If working for what I have is privileged, then that privilege is available to anyone.

I didn’t graduate high school, my dad waited on tables to raise me. Get out of here with your privilege crap.

[Afton]

You're responding to an aggregate statistic with an anecdote. I too did not graduate high school, but now have an advanced degree and a high paying job. Claiming that that invalidates the notion of privilege is silly.

[rcar]

Still, he literally said "do skilled work and spend your money wisely", the former implying that he focused on developing his skills, and the latter implying that he didn't live beyond his means. Hard to characterize either as some sort of undue "privilege".

[chipotle_coyote]

While I kind of get what you're saying, mortgage/rent, clothes, cars, and food are necessities. :)

This sounds a bit like the Mr. Money Mustache philosophy -- live very cheaply, save like crazy, retire early -- which is all great advice, but elides the level of fortune involved, e.g., getting and keeping a high-paying job straight out of college, having no college debt, quickly marrying someone else who also has a high-paying job and is down with both combining incomes and practicing Extreme Thriftiness with you. IIRC, he made the rather bold claim that he could both live and retire on $25K a year -- which is something a lot of people would, well, prefer not to do. With all respect to Picasso, I'd at least prefer to live as a middle class man with a rich man's money.

[brippalcharrid]

There are expensive and inexpensive ways of approaching accommodation, clothing, food and transportation. The fact that so many things which used to be considered luxuries are now thought of as essentials (and that were once considered sensible but are now considered extreme thriftiness) goes to show that people actually want the frills of a lifestyle where they work hard and can as a result afford luxuries in every area of their lives.

[chipotle_coyote]

> People actually want the frills of a lifestyle where they work hard and can as a result afford luxuries in every area of their lives.

Well, yes, sure, and sure, there are different levels of "luxury," e.g., there's getting a BMW 5 series, and there's getting a Honda Insight but springing for the Touring model -- and that's not counting the choice between used and new (what if the person with the BMW 5 series bought it used for about the same as someone else paid for a new Honda Civic). But, particularly at the income levels the average HN reader seems to have based on comments, "build up savings" vs. "afford small luxuries" is often a false dichotomy, which is what I was getting at.

[Negitivefrags]

Hopefully you would agree that even if we are working just as hard as we were 1000 years ago, that our lives are still improved from that time.

[tornato7]

So we can shoot aliens in VR with our friends a thousand miles away

[aahhahahaaa]

This is not true. You're completely pulling this out of your ass.

Your job isn't paying less and outputting more because video games exist. When cars were introduced pay didn't suddenly stop tracking productivity.

[brippalcharrid]

Our desire to have awesome stuff and amazing experiences expands to fit the space available. People compete for social status, and they don't want to miss out on whatever's new and exciting. There's an unlimited amount of resources that we could spend on medical research (curing every medical condition, including shortness, cognitive impairments and ageing, plus enhancements/transhumanism), climate engineering/geoengineering/megastructures, space exploration/tourism/real estate and other areas of scientific research, and most of this is going to happen as a result of private-sector employees exercising their consumer purchasing power. We're curious and productive creatures; I don't think a large proportion of us are ever going to just stop and make do with whatever the state of the art was at the time.

[boogies]

To double life expectancy so we can retire?

[prawn]

Amazes me that American Presidential candidates are in their 70s and people and parties just go with it. I was shocked reading the news that Wilbur Ross was hospitalised - he has a major work role and is 82 years old. Age of retirement in Australia for that age group is 65. I understand some people just don't know how to stop or what else to do with their time, but I feel like pinning too much hope on retirement is misguided. Far better surely to be doing more living while in your prime. More likely to be physically able to enjoy it, for one thing.

[aahhahahaaa]

Ouch, that's kind of like the lottery. Sorry you worked your ass off waiting for retirement, here's some cancer.

[luckylion]

From that perspective, everything is a lottery. Sorry, you worked your ass off doing good things for your fellow humans, here's a tree branch falling on your head.

The standard of living has improved massively. I agree wholeheartedly that there are issues (e.g. people are giving more free time, but they don't know what to do with it and engage in unhealthy habits to kill the free time they've been given), but generally, it's not even close.

[refurb]

Higher standard of living.

There is nothing stopping you from working 10 hours a week and living like a person in the 1920’s. Local doctor who will put a $1 poultice on your skin cancer, no AC, no car, 10 to a house.

[aahhahahaaa]

I'll say it again because apparently no one's listening.

We're working more and getting paid less for that work. This isn't because of the standard of living. Standard of living can still increase while pay tracks productivity, and it does in other developed countries.

This is the most frustrating HN discussion I've seen in a while. People are coming here to peddle this "quality of life" argument with zero evidence. You're not even stopping for a second to consider that the US isn't the only country in the world.

If you compare the American GDP to other countries, the average individual is getting very little bang for their buck as far as quality of life goes.

[refurb]

But we aren’t getting paid less, we’re getting paid more, if you measure by total compensation (salary + benefits), not just cash compensation.

[kortilla]

People prefer the better quality of life than what was had even in the fifties. That’s why they work more. Houses are bigger, multiple cars are had, people travel, people have elective surgeries, dental cleanings, the Internet, college educations, etc.

You’re proposing that people should be happy with what we had back then by reducing output. I’d rather work full time and have the better quality of life, thanks.

[logicchains]

>WE SHOULD ALL REDUCE WORK.

>Sorry for the caps but we need to collectively get into this mindset. We're more productive than ever with very little to show for it. We've been having labor outright stolen from us for decades.

Speak for yourself. Not everybody's comfortable spending most of their time lounging around doing nothing that anybody else even values enough to pay for.

[aahhahahaaa]

The thing is... you can have the choice. Sometimes you need the choice, things can go south for any of us. The choice can also free you to take risks... it makes it easier to start a business, it makes it easier to fail.

I've been literally working without an unemployment gap since I've been 14. I worked 60+ hours a week through most of my 20s. I didn't have a choice. It took me half of my life to reach financial stability and normalcy. I still get stressed about healthcare costs despite being healthy. It doesn't have to be this way for anyone.

Even if you want to work all the time, most people aren't being paid appropriately for the time they put in. None of us are really experiencing the benefits of society's dramatically increased productivity.

[WalterBright]

> None of us are really experiencing the benefits of society's dramatically increased productivity.

You're just not seeing it. I remember the days of manual typewriters. Make a mistake, type it over again. Put in an envelope, mail, wait weeks for a reply. Write the letter by hand, even worse.

Today, shoot off a text or email with automatic spellchecking.

Cars need far less maintenance.

TVs are practically free.

My microwave greatly reduces meal prep time.

I could go on and on.

[robertpateii]

Those examples save us minutes but don’t make humans more free or happier or safer. Better examples would be increased lifespans and lower infant mortality. Stuff that ties into the standard of living definition. Which is the point: our standard of living has not increased at the same rate as productivity.

[WalterBright]

Modern cars are a heluva lot safer.

Expected lifespan is quite a bit higher.

You can't expect it to increase at the same rate as productivity, because it asymptotically approaches a limit.

Whether you're happy or not is up to you, not society. People, regardless of their status, tend to be at about the same level of happiness.

[robertpateii]

Are you saying that right now the quality of life for all Americans has reached a its asymptotic limit in regards to productivity?

[WalterBright]

I remember my mom helping my dad write his book. She did a lot of the typing. Make revisions, retype the whole book. I thought that was hell even as a child watching her work.

Today, just do the edits, hit [print].

Hours, hours, hours saved.

Ironically, my dad told me in the 70s that the two greatest inventions would be a TV you could hang on the wall and a typewriter where you could edit without retyping the whole thing. To think some people think we don't live in a wonderland!

(He missed the calculator. What a marvelous time saver that was!)

[aahhahahaaa]

Walter You can go on and on, but you're talking about an illusion. You are literally working more and getting paid less than previous generations. It's objective data. People had cars and televisions. Your cellphone doesn't cost the lifetime of productivity gains that are being stolen from you.

[themacguffinman]

Money isn't wealth, money is just a common & convenient representation of wealth. You don't need to look into people's paychecks to see wealth. You can see wealth in the buildings and streets, in health and technology and culture.

People work tirelessly to create & improve that, and you can see that society is improving bit by bit. That's not an illusion.

Stagnant wages likely signify an actual problem in valuation worth fixing, but it's silly to solve that by being less productive. Lowering total productivity may generate lower surplus value for greedy employers, but it's a weak revenge. You still earn less than you should, and society is poorer for it. There are many other ways to address the root issue.

[dbsmith83]

Stolen? Please, spare us the hyperbole. How is it stolen?

[aahhahahaaa]

You're working more and getting paid less than people did, 10, 20, 30 years ago... meanwhile the wealth gap has increased dramatically. Where do you think it's going? It's not hyperbole whatsoever.

[dbsmith83]

Sure things have changed and the wealth gap is a problem, but it is not stealing. If it were, you could take them to court for paying you only min wage and making you work 40 hours.

[fountainofage]

Who said anything about lounging around?

One could read as many books as they like. Learn to play an assortment of musical instruments. Learn woodworking. Sailing. Write novels. Compose songs. Complete their magnum opuses. Master languages. Study art. Create art. Improve their athleticism. And so on.

The list is near endless of things to do.

[logicchains]

>One could read as many books as they like. Learn to play an assortment of musical instruments. Learn woodworking. Sailing. Write novels. Compose songs. Complete their magnum opuses. Master languages. Study art. Create art. Improve their athleticism. And so on.

Those would all be very fun things to do, but very self-focused. I'd love to spend my life writing a novel, except it'd probably be a pretty shitty novel, and it'd be hard for me to find satisfaction in having spent my life on something that contributed very little value to anybody else in society. At least with work I know somebody values what I'm doing.

[eggsmediumrare]

Spend more time raising your kids. Volunteer in your community. Restore the environment. Take care of the elderly. Grow healthy food for your neighbours. These all sound much more valuable than my job, but no one is gonna pay me to do it.

And you're making the argument that the effort of aspiring novelists is wasted. It's not. Or else we would have no novels.

[dbsmith83]

There are jobs for all the things you mentioned. There are people who are paid to take care of the elderly, to grow healthy food, and there are even jobs for taking care of the environment.

Also, I think you missed the point about novelists. It is more about if you suck at writing novels, sitting around and writing one for yourself isn't very valuable for society. There are some people who have natural talent, but the average Joe sitting around not working and instead writing a novel for fun will likely not be producing much value--at least, not as much as if he were working.

[eggsmediumrare]

Most jobs like this pay minimum wage and are seasonal or part-time. At least with UBI, you can do it on your terms.

How do you know you suck at writing novels until you try?

[robertpateii]

I don’t understand how UBI forces you to stop working at your job. Wouldn’t you potentially be paid even more if everyone who does that job but hates it stops? And the compensation to do it increases to compensate?

[nickff]

UBI means that the empathetic people subsidize the vain and the selfish.

[eggsmediumrare]

In my experience, empathy has an inverse relationship to your position on the org chart.

[robertpateii]

Vain and selfish people probably aren’t going to sit around and live on the basic level. It’s more about providing for the ignored, the sick, and enabling people to take risks in the market without putting their family’s lives at stake.

[throwawaygh]

> At least with work I know somebody values what I'm doing.

...have you talked to your sales guys?

[kamaal]

You will have option to do what you want. That's the whole point.

They won't pay you enough to buy a Ferrari. But it will be enough money to spare time to cook well, exercise and spend time on relationships. Or do whatever you want to do.

Different people want different things. Surely your choice of tech work will be very different when you know losing your job won't starve you to death.

[albatruss]

Suppose that automation has greatly advanced, and our material needs are fulfilled as a given, as if Earth were now our own Eden, tended to by robots. About the only work left for humans to do, that is to say producing goods and services that other humans deem valuable, is researching and developing heroin. The robots don't do this because they know that heroin use is quite harmful to human well-being, but of course we find great value in being high and are willing to pay for the experience, thus creating a market.

In such a scenario, to what extent does working involve the creation of value? Would you, and should you, find satisfaction in performing this labor? And in what ways is it different from working on the next big social media app to dethrone TikTok?

[dbsmith83]

That is a very weirdly specific scenario that won't ever happen, so why bother asking about it? Humans will always find new things to be valuable. There will never be a time when there is no work left except for producing heroin. People will always want what something no one else has, or something that someone else has that they do not. Humans will strive to create new things, thus creating value. I can see you are trying to pigeon-hole the conversation in a social media vs. heroin comparison, but that just isn't a good representation of the issue.

[flavmartins]

This is the economy of Star Trek.

The people on space ships all have a form of UBI and choose a profession so that they can accomplish something of meaning. Space exploration is one of those.

But others turn to art, literature, etc.

[goatlover]

Sure, but how the economy works is not explained. It's basically that first contact was made, humans realized they weren't alone, so war, poverty and money ended within 50 years, somehow. I'm sure it helps to have transporters, replicators and computers approaching AGI. But how everything inside the Federation just works is not discussed. I guess everyone just naturally wants to do what works out for society, somehow.

[jaakl]

You might have here answer to the ”Where is everybody” question. Space is not economically viable. Not for us, not for the others. Not even in a billion years, literally.

[AngryData]

It isn't discussed because the closest equivalent it can be compared to is communism, which is the last thing any network or studio wants to be seen as advocating regardless of how accurate or realistic or good or bad the depiction may be.

[themacguffinman]

That doesn't fill me with confidence. Communism has not been successful, so it's not clear why or how it inexplicably works out well for Star Trek society.

[tropdrop]

You can work as much as you'd like. But which would you rather - being obligated to work 80 hour workweeks as an "integrations architect" for a shadowy .com company that will sell and gut its workforce (including you) in a couple of years so that each VC gets a nice payload from the sale? Or would you rather choose to work 80 hour workweeks on your very own homesteading project, building your house from scratch while not having to worry about the cost of food, receiving just enough for basic sustenance all the while?

I know which I would rather do.

[waheoo]

If you were steelmanning the argument you would understand they mean reduce required work.

Your always welcome to work harder for more.

The problem is, there is quite literally not enough valid, useful, and productive work to go around.

We've reached a point there isn't enough work for everyone to do. What does that mean if you want to work full time?

It means you're taking work away from someone else.

I don't think anyone minds that, what they mind is that you're also taking their livelihood away.

If there isn't enough work, but there is enough resources, what does that tell you about the system?

Either those who can't secure work will suffer, or we need to redistribute the outputs of those who can secure work.

Its a really basic question whether you agree with ubi or not:

Do you want people to suffer so you can work full time? Or would you rather everyone gets what they need, and we work for what we want.

[themacguffinman]

This is not how a market economy works. There's no preordained pool of work that you can run out of. It's practically nonsense to say there's not enough work to go around.

People always want more, and you can always find work fulfilling those wants. There's always demand for stuff. Can you honestly look around you right now and think "there isn't much room for improvement"? Well, people need to work to improve stuff, that's useful and valuable work. Do you really think "welp, my life doesn't have any more problems to solve". Well, people need to work to solve those problems, that's useful and valuable work.

Whether or not people are given what they need to survive is irrelevant to UBI. Welfare does that. What makes UBI worse is that it provides no incentive to work and create value, and that's a tremendous waste of human capital and it worsens inequality.

[Shacklz]

> There's no preordained pool of work that you can run out of.

But this is a point the article somewhat addresses - the graph for marketing-budgets shows that pretty nicely in my opinion.

At some points, its just easier to make more money/profits by trying to increase demand for your product than by improving it (or reducing costs of its production). And I think that's what we're seeing more and more on an ever increasing scale right now: "Actually productive" jobs (e.g. manufacturing) are already outsourced, and the gains from the cost-savings are spent on e.g. marketing.

This might make sense economically (in terms of profits, emplyoment), but arguably less from a "benefit-for-society" point of view.

I think David Graeber adresses this quite nicely (but rather aggressively) with his 'Bullshit Job'-theory.

[themacguffinman]

As you said yourself, UBI's increased demand doesn't really help from a "benefit-for-society" point of view, which is the only point of view that matters. We don't encourage people to maximize profits because money is good, we do it because you usually need to create actual value/benefit in order to do so. When something makes sense economically but doesn't benefit society, that's an economic failure.

I have heard about the Bullshit Jobs theory and I find it unconvincing (I admit I haven't read the whole book). The meaningfulness and value of a job is not determined by the laborer - as suggested by the "do you think your job makes a meaningful contribution to the world" surveys he cites - but by the employer.

The value of something has always been determined by other people who want it. It doesn't matter what David Graeber and his unhappy laborers think or say, something isn't bullshit just because they say it is. Many of the examples he mentions (doormen, content curators, PR) are valuable things that people want enough to pay for, yet his opaque judgment deems them "bullshit" simply because he or someone else thinks they're worthless.

History shows us economies that failed because some people thought they could plan them with isolated judgments of what society should value. UBI as a solution for Bullshit Jobs follows in the same tradition by personally judging whole swaths of jobs to have no value, then proposing a plan to get rid of them.

[waheoo]

Doormen is precisely the definition of bullshit.

Thats why the definition is what it is. He knows it's a subjective phrase that means many different things to many different people. He also admits there will be some people who find value in the same job someone else does not.

I think it's a bit strange to hinge your opinion on this definition though, its really only defined that way so it doesn't piss people off, the book isn't about how you define bullshit jobs, the book is about what we should do now we know they exist.

Which you're sort of ignoring.

What do you think we should do since we do know bullshit jobs exist.

[waheoo]

I'm sorry but this is simply not true.

Look at a basic case, a single farmer is able to produce enough food for 100 people.

There is no need for 99 people to work for there food in this simplistic case.

Yes, these people may want iPhones, and maybe they need to work for them, but the basic income component is covered by a single farmer.

I'm not saying there is some static pool of work available.

I am saying there is a static pool of life sustaining work available.

This is why ubi works mathematically, and people not working are not a problem, for the maths.

> Whether or not people are given what they need to survive is irrelevant to UBI. Welfare does that.

What are you talking about, this is the point. And no, welfare does not do that adequately. Welfare is an incredibly inefficient means of wealth distribution.

> What makes UBI worse is that it provides no incentive to work and create value, and that's a tremendous waste of human capital

I have zero concerns about the incentive to work, that is a fud argument that doesn't hold up when looking at the studies we've seen. Work is meaningful in and of itself, you don't need to be paid to receive reward from it.

> and it worsens inequality.

This is what I'm afraid of too and have not heard any ubi proponents address this in any meaningful manner.

Ubi would quite likely create a proletarian class.

On the flip side, I'm not really sure how this is very different from what we have with capitalism right now.

At least with ubi welfare is adequately taken care of.

[machiaweliczny]

You simplistic case is too simplistic. Assumes that advanced tech required for such farming comes from nowhere. Now for farmer to produce so much you need GPS (ability to build and maintain one), oil/energy, millitary power, modified grains, etc. to have this you need some people who spend more on thinking rather than being most of waking day the in field, so you need all the support jobs.

From my POV having job as au pair for example is still better than working hard in the field.

IMO we should focus on reducing much duplication od work, so I am happy that OSS, Wikipedia, SciHub, KhanAcademy, MIT, translations services, open hardware design and similar efforts are in progress.

IMO more focus should be shifted into education. I guess education problem isn't solved in western rich countries only because it's easier to brain drain from less developed ones, so people don't feel the pain.

When this will start I hope they start taxing more at very top and shift economy to more valuable stuff than zero-sum Tinder clones.

BTW in my country(Poland) they introduced small version of UBI (like 500$ per child per month for family). It cost 5% of whole country budget. It's quite controversial but IMO it was good move but we still need to see long term impact.

[abootstrapper]

Then get a job, a hobby, or volunteer. Contribute to open source projects. Create a startup. Spend more time with your kids. Take care of your aging parents. Sit around and play video games. UBI creates so many opportunities.

[airstrike]

...And get outcompeted by the next country over

[throwawaygh]

"Caring for the elderly is a weakness."

[airstrike]

"Putting words in people's mouths is fun"

Caring about the elderly is entirely besides the point I'm making

[themacguffinman]

No, but a massive, disproportional share of your population caring for the elderly is a real weakness. A market economy would weigh and value "caring for the elderly" in balance with other priorities, whilst UBI volunteers are free to care for the elderly too much, sacrificing limited resources that are needed to keep a society competitive in other areas.

[Bootwizard]

Isn't it better to be happy than to be "the best"? Would you really rather draw meaning in life from your country's position in the global economy than from your own happiness? Do you even matter at that point as a human being or are you just a gear in the machine to crank up the economy of your country. You're disposable.

[themacguffinman]

That's a rather emotional and wishful take on the matter. There are real benefits to staying competitive in the global economy. Countries with weak economies have less resources to invest in the health and happiness of their citizens. They are less resilient to crises. They are easily exploited by others and more susceptible to corruption. They lack the geopolitical strength to achieve long term goals that would benefit their citizens.

Building the #1 best economy obviously shouldn't be one's sole purpose in life. But if you really think it doesn't matter at all, why not leave the developed nation you probably live in and find happiness in the third world. Or just ask one of the many people who seek a better life in the first world every year.

There's a troubling number of people in this thread who seem think that wealth creation and strong economies is some pointless goal that we've been tricked into caring about. Let's not forget that we work to build wealth for ourselves and our children. We've already worked so hard to build wealth into our buildings and streets and health and technology and culture. Apparently that's why you can dismiss the value of a strong economy from the comfort of your laptop/desk in the first place.

[jacobkania]

Question though: would companies just move to Brazil, which doesn’t have UBI, and save all of the money from the now-even-more-expensive American workers? Maybe not immediately, if there are more skilled workers in the US than Brazil, but over time I’d worry about high value companies just leaving.

So you’d need to prevent that, but in order to prevent it you’d have to become somewhat isolationist, right? Sounds bad.

Though I’m curious if anyone has thought about how to prevent all of the expensive skilled jobs from leaving.

[burntoutfire]

> Isn't it better to be happy than to be "the best"?

Have you played Civilization? If you don't strive to be "the best", eventually you're the guys with spears or even muskets being bombed by F-15s. In other words, lag behind the leaders for long enough and you can say goodbye to your freedom. That's basically how the XVI-XIX century colonization happened.

[abootstrapper]

Giving everyone the ability to exercise their creativity, pursue their passions, take care of their families, while simultaneously eliminating poverty would make the US less competitive globally? I just don't see how.

[airstrike]

You're only looking at the idealistic pros and none of the cons. Competition is about who's working the hardest. Imagine two companies, Company A in which workers are extremely hard working and Company B which workers are free to pursue their passions and only work when they want to. Which one do you think wins out in the long run? And I'm not talking about a version of Company A in which everyone is unhappy, worked to death, etc. I'm just saying more work = more productivity, which is what competition is about

[jariel]

"Public services should be public"

Money is not a public service.

Also, to the OP Milton Friedman's 'Negative Tax' is the same thing as UBI - in the end, 'rich people' would not get a cheque in the mail because on the whole, they'd make too much money.

Also - the top 10% taxes would have to go up radically in order to pay for UBI.

[aahhahahaaa]

The top 10% of taxes should go up radically. They've been MUCH higher in the past.

[jariel]

There were somewhat higher for a tiny slice of history.