Guaranteed Basic Income

[stollcpa]

Coming to the US soon? Hopefully we don't all apply or there will be no taxes to pay for it.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-05-06/finlands-guaranteed-basic-income-working-tackle-poverty

 

[twenty02]

Coming to the US soon? Hopefully we don't all apply or there will be no taxes to pay for it.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-05-06/finlands-guaranteed-basic-income-working-tackle-poverty

Likely inevitable at some point in the future, but I'd guess it's still a generation away here. As automation and tech continue to replace the need for human workers, don't see how you get around it.

This has been discussed here several times. Libertarians, of all folks, have endorsed this idea.....on the condition that it replaces all other social welfare programs.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Likely inevitable at some point in the future, but I'd guess it's still a generation away here. As automation and tech continue to replace the need for human workers, don't see how you get around it.

This has been discussed here several times. Libertarians, of all folks, have endorsed this idea.....on the condition that it replaces all other social welfare programs.

It really comes down to how one sees the future of automation. I am one that firmly believes it is going to me a huge net job loss, and if I am accurate I don't see any other alternative. Well, aside from letting millions starve, death camps, forced sterilization. To me, a guaranteed basic income is the only solution.

There seem to be many who believe that automation will have no impact in available jobs and thus oppose anything like that.

 

[twenty02]

It really comes down to how one sees the future of automation. I am one that firmly believes it is going to me a huge net job loss, and if I am accurate I don't see any other alternative. Well, aside from letting millions starve, death camps, forced sterilization. To me, a guaranteed basic income is the only solution.

There seem to be many who believe that automation will have no impact in available jobs and thus oppose anything like that.

Trucking business is a huge one. Self-driving trucks will exist at some point.....and in doing so will have massive ripple effects in nationwide employment.

 

[crazed_hoosier2]

It really comes down to how one sees the future of automation. I am one that firmly believes it is going to me a huge net job loss, and if I am accurate I don't see any other alternative. Well, aside from letting millions starve, death camps, forced sterilization. To me, a guaranteed basic income is the only solution.

There seem to be many who believe that automation will have no impact in available jobs and thus oppose anything like that.

I think that we'll find that the fears of mass job loss are overblown.

Will accelerated automation cause significant changes in labor markets? Of course. In fact, that's hardly anything new. And neither are the fears that come along with that. The story of human economic advancement has been consistently getting more output with less input.

But as for this dystopian image of machines doing pretty much all the producing and people doing pretty much none of it? Meh, I'll believe it when I see it. So I'm not saying technological advance has "no impact on available jobs." I just think the fears of the job market of the future being barren will prove wildly overstated.

That said, I certainly can't argue that production is favoring capital over labor. That, too, has always been the case. As such, we should be doing everything we can do to further spread the ownership of capital. We've done that to some degree (in 1980, roughly 20% of US households owned capital assets, today that number is in the 50% range). But we can, and should, do more.

 

[twenty02]

The story of human economic advancement has been consistently getting more output with less input.

Do you think there is a theoretical limit to this? If not, wouldn't at some point we find that the human resource input needed becomes so reduced that we approach a post-employment economy?

Retail is certainly a great example. I believe I read that the # of retail employees have lost their job in the last year exceeds the total employment of the nation's coal industry. Yet the latter is discussed so fervently, while the former is just a page B4 headline.

 

[bawlmer]

It really comes down to how one sees the future of automation. I am one that firmly believes it is going to me a huge net job loss, and if I am accurate I don't see any other alternative. Well, aside from letting millions starve, death camps, forced sterilization. To me, a guaranteed basic income is the only solution.

There seem to be many who believe that automation will have no impact in available jobs and thus oppose anything like that.

Eventually automation will make everything cheaper, and we'll need a lot less income anyway. So this policy would be primarily a transition away from a money-based economy. At least theoretically. The concentration of capital among those who own the machines may play a role.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

Trucking business is a huge one. Self-driving trucks will exist at some point.....and in doing so will have massive ripple effects in nationwide employment.

View embedded media

We've had the technology for locomotives without engineers for years. We don't do that. Why? We just don't trust the machinery. That distrust is getting more prevalent as we enter the age of continuous hacking. We also have the technology for pilotless aircraft. We don't do that either. Driverless trucks? Safety will always require a human in the cab so long as we don't have entire guideways dedicated to driverless machines. This may have the effect of "drivers" logging more hours in a day, but it won't eliminate them.

One thing technology has done is to make human work easier. It used to be that operating a large excavator took considerable operational skill. Now with all the computer assisted technology, anybody can be good at it after a day or so training. Same for backing up a modern semi-truck. The computer assist allows anybody to do that.

I am not as concerned about technology taking jobs as most people. But I am very concerned that we, as human beings, are defaulting toward that. We saturate many communities with drugs, including marijuana, we grow reliant on others feeding us, housing us, and keeping us well. We succumb to crowd think instead of individual critical thinking. Human beings are taking comfort in having no responsibilities. Those who seize the future are those who don't think that way. Those are the people who will own all the machines.

A true story. We have all seen those huge tanks in oil refineries. They have technological apparatus to read the levels of material in the tank. They still test that level with a dip stick--they way it has been done for 150 or more years. If the technology gives a false reading, there can be disaster. Dip sticks are never wrong.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

We've had the technology for locomotives without engineers for years. We don't do that. Why? We just don't trust the machinery. That distrust is getting more prevalent as we enter the age of continuous hacking. We also have the technology for pilotless aircraft. We don't do that either. Driverless trucks? Safety will always require a human in the cab so long as we don't have entire guideways dedicated to driverless machines. This may have the effect of "drivers" logging more hours in a day, but it won't eliminate them.

One thing technology has done is to make human work easier. It used to be that operating a large excavator took considerable operational skill. Now with all the computer assisted technology, anybody can be good at it after a day or so training. Same for backing up a modern semi-truck. The computer assist allows anybody to do that.

I am not as concerned about technology taking jobs as most people. But I am very concerned that we, as human beings, are defaulting toward that. We saturate many communities with drugs, including marijuana, we grow reliant on others feeding us, housing us, and keeping us well. We succumb to crowd think instead of individual critical thinking. Human beings are taking comfort in having no responsibilities. Those who seize the future are those who don't think that way. Those are the people who will own all the machines.

A true story. We have all seen those huge tanks in oil refineries. They have technological apparatus to read the levels of material in the tank. They still test that level with a dip stick--they way it has been done for 150 or more years. If the technology gives a false reading, there can be disaster. Dip sticks are never wrong.

An anecdote. Yesterday a young man, I'd say early 20"s, came to our front door selling pest control services. He seemed a little off. I said we weren't interested, he then proceeded to explain their "half-price" offer, and he lost his train of thought in mid-sentence. And said "thank you" and left. When my stoker asked who was at the door, I said a guy selling pest control, but he was high on weed. He will be one that a machine will replace.

 

[crazed_hoosier2]

Do you think there is a theoretical limit to this? If not, wouldn't at some point we find that the human resource input needed becomes so reduced that we approach a post-employment economy?

Retail is certainly a great example. I believe I read that the # of retail employees have lost their job in the last year exceeds the total employment of the nation's coal industry. Yet the latter is discussed so fervently, while the former is just a page B4 headline.

I don't know. History would suggest that there isn't a hard limit -- the rewards for gaining efficiencies are ever-present, as is the desire to gain those rewards. Though it certainly changes at different paces. And it's probably correct that we're presently in the early stages of a period of quick change.

But the reason I'm skeptical about a "post-employment economy" is that labor is a resource that can always be put to productive use and, if it's made available because its prior purposes are being tended to by more productive and less expensive alternatives, then I don't think what follows next is mass, sustained idleness. It's certainly true that education and training are among the big list of variables.

I'm not saying there's nothing to the theory, BTW. I just think that, when it all sets in, it will prove to be overblown.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Dip sticks are never wrong

I will point out I've been called a dip stick many a time. I am glad you admit I am never wrong.

EVEN if no jobs are lost, as you point out, it will become so easy that there won't be pay. Truck drivers will have the job of just shutting the system down if it fails. It is the same, either we won't have the jobs or they won't pay enough to allow anyone to live.

Did you know the British employed coastal watchers in WWII to scan the channel for invasion. Oh, well, did you know that some of those coastal watchers weren't watching for Germans, they were watching for Napoleon? The British had founded that group when Napoleon was a threat and no one ever bothered to take the positions off the books. Had Sea Lion taken place I always envision them staring out and seeing Germans and not reporting it because their job was to report French. Sometimes jobs still exist for strange reasons. We don't trust someone to read a dipstick, yet modern jets virtually fly themselves and nuclear plants monitor themselves because no human can survive going in to read the dipstick.

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

Eventually automation will make everything cheaper, and we'll need a lot less income anyway. So this policy would be primarily a transition away from a money-based economy. At least theoretically. The concentration of capital among those who own the machines may play a role.

Although private ownership may still work, capitalism as we understand it probably isn't feasible in a post-scarcity economy. Eventually, even the concept of money may be worthless. The trick is going to be figuring out how we can transition from the current economy into that one. Guaranteed income seems like the most plausible way to do it while still keeping a capitalist veneer for as long as possible.

 

[bawlmer]

An anecdote. Yesterday a young man, I'd say early 20"s, came to our front door selling pest control services. He seemed a little off. I said we weren't interested, he then proceeded to explain their "half-price" offer, and he lost his train of thought in mid-sentence. And said "thank you" and left. When my stoker asked who was at the door, I said a guy selling pest control, but he was high on weed. He will be one that a machine will replace.

Exactly, and then what happens to him?

 

[hoot1]

An anecdote. Yesterday a young man, I'd say early 20"s, came to our front door selling pest control services. He seemed a little off. I said we weren't interested, he then proceeded to explain their "half-price" offer, and he lost his train of thought in mid-sentence. And said "thank you" and left. When my stoker asked who was at the door, I said a guy selling pest control, but he was high on weed. He will be one that a machine will replace.

Even though pest control represents a service industry with service industries not being as subject to being eliminated by the global or robotics, door to door cold call sales personnel have been fast disappearing for years. In today's world consumers will use the internet to scan through pest control companies and make their selection based upon making comparisons and educating themselves about pest control services.

When a pest control specialist does make a house call, he will face stiff competition and an educated consumer. Bottom line, he had better be on his toes and knowledgeable. As to weed, the customary drug testing done by most companies will eliminate this guy.

Final note, franchises and big companies are the future for service companies such as those in pest control. Again it is the franchise and corporate owners who make the big money with those providing the services working very hard for lower middle class pay. The television show "Undercover Boss" well illustrates this arrangement. Sole proprietors (electricians, plumbers, home security providers, etc.) which once dominated many service industry operations have a tough time competing with these franchises.

 

[stollcpa]

http://trib.al/jayXEII