[musicale]

> what to do when automation makes many people unemployable through no fault of their own - seems valid

Unfortunately the video doesn't answer its own question directly.

The answer for the past 40 years or so seems to be "move them to lower-paying service jobs, or out of the job market entirely."

[robotresearcher]

Another part of the answer over the last 40 (or 200) years, is to repeatedly create totally new industries that employ lots of people, including a large fraction of HN readers.

[ketzo]

Yeah, but what does the Venn diagram look like there?

Yes, new technologies create new jobs.

But it’s not usually the people from the old jobs who are taking those new jobs.

[musicale]

> it’s not usually the people from the old jobs who are taking those new jobs

https://news.mit.edu/2022/automation-drives-income-inequalit...

[robotresearcher]

That can be terribly hard on people, while great for other people. What would you suggest would be better?

[dragonwriter]

A progressive income tax that does not exclude or favor capital income, so that funding ideally targeted transitional assistance, UBI (with a rate ratcheting up with sustained increases in per capita revenue), or, ideally, both so that the adverse effects of labor market shifts which shuffle or concentrate labor demand or shift from labor-intensive to capital-intensive methods are buffered.

[robotresearcher]

How do you prevent UBI being captured by landlords in rent, and similar non-discretionary spending?

[dragonwriter]

> How do you prevent UBI being captured by landlords in rent

Progressive taxation + UBI compresses income ranges, rather than adding it, there’s not really anything to capture unless the market was sharply segmented before and after the change, its dubious even before UBI and to the extent “lumpiness” in income distribution might allow market segmentation, UBI reduces that and weakens capture opportunities.

[dllthomas]

Competition, both between similar units in similar places and between alternative arrangements. Maybe having a roommate or living with my parents isn't worth it for $X/mo but it is for $2X. Certainly it is for some X for most people. Also the presence of a UBI directly increases "housing" in the sense we mean. We don't really have any shortage of housing - we have a shortage of attractive housing, where a huge part of "attractive" is "sufficiently close to sufficient income" and a UBI makes more things sufficient. And for those in the cities, by elevating the bottom of the income distribution we make developers more interested in building the affordable housing we need.

Will some of the increase still be captured? Probably. More in some areas than others. Will we be right back to square one (or worse)? I really don't think so.

[musicale]

In the current US system, much of income is captured by rent and health insurance, regardless of where it comes from.

But I share the same concern that UBI would immediately be added to rent.

And that it might combine poorly with existing perverse incentives:

"Across the nation, landlords with units in poor neighborhoods average nearly $100 a month in net profit, compared to about $50 in affluent neighborhoods, and just $3 in middle-class areas."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-21/housing-e...

[vkou]

Tax robots. At a minimum, at the highest income tax rate bracket.

[mikewarot]

How? What should a Roomba owner have to pay? Or a dishwasher owner? Or someone who has a calculator?

Computer used to be a job description, do we all owe?

Where would you draw the line?

How would you enforce it?

Edit/Append: Also, how do you calculate the income to be taxed?

[vkou]

> What should a Roomba owner have to pay?

The same amount that someone with a stay-at-home spouse who cleans the house pays.

[robotresearcher]

Robots don’t have income.

Are you going to pay this tax for your washing machine, dishwasher, car, word processor, electric lightbulbs? The first two are robots, and all of them put a lot of people out of work.

[j33zusjuice]

I find this discussion fascinating, but YouTube is one of the last places I’d go for that discussion, unless it’s a debate between two highly-regarded minds on the topic (like Chomsky vs Foucault back in the day). I’m not very interested in listening to random people tell me their ideas without any good pathways for critiques or questions.