VC, Entrepreneur Says Basic Income Would Work Even If 90% People 'Smoked Pot' and Didn't Work (techinsider.io) 1116
An anonymous reader cites a story on TI: The chief complaint people lodge at universal basic income -- a form of income distribution that gives people money to cover basic needs regardless of whether they work or not -- is that it'll make them lazy. Sam Altman doesn't buy it. In a recent episode of the Freakonomics podcast, entitled "Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income?" Altman argued basic income could support huge amounts of productivity loss and still carry the economy on its shoulders. "Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win," Altman says. "And the American puritanical ideal that hard work for its own sake is valuable -- period -- and that you can't question that, I think that's just wrong." [...] The complaint Altman addressed on the Freakonomics podcast is a common one. Study after study, however, has shown that giving people extra money makes them feel financially secure. That security ends up leading to empowerment, not de-motivation.
Let's just get the makers vs takers out of the way (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the capitalist version of "let them eat cake." Because god help them if the proles feel like they deserve some of the money they're making capitalists.
Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of the (Score:5, Insightful)
And if that is the way modern capitalism worked, you might have a point. But when you consider the amount of corporate welfare in most industrialized countries, and couple that with the fact that, as the Panama Papers show, the very wealthy are so powerful that they can actually manipulate, if not outright force the political system to make sure not only profits are guaranteed, but large amounts of cash is protected in tax shelters. There's nothing wrong with being wealthy, but when being wealthy effectively creates a whole new political class, capable of overawing politicians to guarantee compliance and leniency, then i'd say we've left behind the idealized capitalism and are well on the way to kleptocracy.
Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of the (Score:5, Insightful)
I htink we were collectively distracted by the poor term "the 1%". The actual 1%, the moderately wealthy, the successful doctors and dentists and lawyers and small business owners, they aren't the issue here. The 1% aren't the people in the Panama Papers.
We should instead be upset at "the richest 100 families", who IMO have been causing so many problems. In some ways, the difference between "ideal capitalism" and "capitalism as practiced in the US" is the difference between the 1% and the richest 100 families.
Re:A more perfect union (Score:5, Informative)
But could it be that capitalism is practiced a little more ideally in the U.S.?
That, or maybe American tax dodgers just set up their sketchy shell corporations in Delaware or Nevada.
Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of the (Score:5, Interesting)
Except you are confusing this and welfare. It is not the same thing. It is also not "free" it is basic. Everyone gets it, even those who work. There is a lot of overhead that could be saved in managing welfare systems by doing something like this.
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Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of the (Score:4, Insightful)
First, the basic income replaces a lot of other programs, so it isn't as expensive as it looks. It's far cheaper to administer than welfare programs. Second, we raise taxes to cover the rest. Everybody's taxable income goes up.
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However, each of those programs will slowly be reintroduced because "basic income" isn't enough to provide adequate nutrition to children (WIC returns) or housing (section 8 returns) or medical care (medicaid returns) or phones (lifeline phones/rates return) or that disability is too disheartening on the "basic income" (Social Security disability program returns). As well, it will soon be determined that those who don't "need" the basic income really shouldn't get it (after all, does an tech who is already
Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of the (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the VC's claim is a little strange also:
Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win,
Yes, people will continue to invent, they will create new products and services, music, art, etc. But who is going to decide that instead of sitting home and watching TV, they're going to wait tables, or flip burgers, or enforce laws, or collect trash, or be a retail cashier?
Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of the (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, inflation at the Fed tap but that is a step up. Currently we let the fed create money out of air (if it's digital, they buy notes at printing cost for currency) and loan it to banks, then for every program we generate a bunch of treasury bills to pay for it. The banks who borrow from the fed buy those higher interest t-bills and tax payers pay the higher interest on the t-bill. So, actually getting money with
Government benefit / government rules (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. I'm very surprised we haven't used statistical information to cut down on rent seeking behavior. Useless middlemen must wield far more power than those that desire an efficient, equitable market.
The problem with that theory is that we are essentially replacing the existing private middlemen with government middlemen. Any time the government offers a service or benefit it comes with strings attach. The government can't resist doing so. Engaging in some sort of social engineering for "your own good". Want government housing, then your behavior must conform to these government requirements. There will still be middlemen, there will still be management, they will merely be government ones looking not for a profit but to enforce compliance with whatever the social engineering "its good for you" idea of the day is. Actually that's a bad metaphor, it implies one idea is replaced with another, this is government we're talking about ... the ideas don't get replaced, they just stack new on top of old, they rarely go away.
It will most likely just give government new avenues of control with inevitably lead to new avenues of government corruption. Congress can not resist meddling with these avenues of control, either for their well intended social engineering or political payback to friends and enemies, as we see in today's tax code. The tax code probably being the greatest delivery vehicle with respect to influence buying and corruption.
Re:Government benefit / government rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh for fucks sakes, anytime anyone offers anything, there are strings attached. The difference between government and private concerns is that governments are at least hypothetically responsive to the voter. But really, this is total paranoia. All housing, even privately owned housing, has rules attached to it. I can't dig a big ass mote around my property, nor can I build a five hundred foot tower. I still have to get permits, and if the plan violates local or state building codes, then that's that. If I play loud music at 1am, the fact that I own my house doesn't mean I can't be fined under nuisance bylaws, and potentially even end up in court.
This Libertarian fantasy of yours simply does not exist. We all have obligations, whether we're owners or renters, and whether, as renters we live in privately-owned housing or public housing.
Re:Government benefit / government rules (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between government and private concerns is that governments are at least hypothetically responsive to the voter.
Another difference is that private parties are responsive to their own welfare, and not just hypothetically because they must play well with others in order to have continued success.
So this debate boils down to which has more power to push common good: the set of voters or market forces? My thought is "both", and I think it's foolish to play the game of attacking one side just to promote the other.
Re:Government benefit / government rules (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but you shouldn't underestimate the effects. The government won't just be offering a service or some benefits. They will stand in for every single employer out there. You can argue that this is no different than any other employer paying someone, and certainly there are parallels.
However, think about what employers are sometimes able to make their employees do.... If people become used to having a basic income, it absolutely *MUST* be no strings attached. That means:
No removal of basic income for felonies, including serial killing or terrorism.
No removal of income for saying things that no one likes, including the most vile racism, sexism, or ethnocentricity you can think of
No removal of income for failing to vote
No removal of income for anything at all except dying, and only then if we have a death certificate or a legal process declaring them dead.
And that needs to be made a Constitutional Amendment that Congress would have zero power to adjust or amend.
I am actually *FOR* a basic income. I believe that it is what greater automation and productivity of humanity should be providing us with. What I do NOT want to happen is it becomes a social engineering experiment for ANYONE.
In fact, I'd prefer if the political system had no control over the basic income at all. Zero. It is controlled simply by a directorate who can only change it based on things like the value of the dollar or the GDP or something. No exemptions, no incentives, nothing but X amount of money delivered to every citizen over the age of 18. Their only job is to ensure that the plan does not sap the economy by an unrealistic expectation of what people can get out of it.
Re:Government benefit / government rules (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is everyone spelling "moat" wrong? Weird.
Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of th (Score:5, Informative)
Oh please, this isn't that hard. The Basic Income is simple: everyone gets the same amount, period. (As I understand it; if I'm wrong, someone please correct me, but I don't think I am.) You don't get more money for living in NYC than in Bumfuck, Idaho. So if that basic monthly paycheck (which isn't going to be a whole lot by NYC standards) isn't enough for you, then you need to pack up and move somewhere cheaper. But guess what? Now that you have a guaranteed basic monthly income, you have money to move, and you don't have to worry about losing your job and not having a source of income, so you can afford to abandon the high-price city and move someplace cheaper and see if it works out for you. If it doesn't work out and there's no jobs there or you just plain hate it, no problem, you still have that basic income, so you can pack up and move again. Moving isn't that expensive when you don't have a lot of stuff anyway, the problem is the danger of losing your job and that paycheck, and not finding a new one in the new location. BI solves that.
Now, with that out of the way, real estate prices are pretty simple: leave them to market forces (to an extent). If a city makes itself so expensive that all the janitors and cooks and meter maids can't afford to live and work there, oh well! They'll have to figure out a solution on their own, such as building some lower-income housing, or they can just suffer the consequences.
In fact, this will probably be a really GOOD thing for getting rents lower: with the lowest-income people no longer required to work for a living, and only working because they want more money so they can buy iPhones or whatever (BI isn't going to provide them enough money for any luxury, just the basics), they're not going to put up with shitty jobs in high-rent cities any more, a bunch of them are going to move out to cheaper places. It'll be better for them to move to the middle of nowhere, collect their BI check, and smoke pot or watch TV or maybe start a small business than to hang around some ultra-high-rent city like NYC working their ass off just to pay the rent (or commuting for hours every day to live someplace more affordable) because the BI isn't close to sufficient to pay the rent there. This will force rents to come down in those cities, one way or another.
So, for your SanFran example, the city will basically implode, which is a good thing. Usually, things need to completely fall apart before people will fix them.
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Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of th (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't happen a lot today, so why would it happen under the new regime? People who cannot afford to live where they do now rarely just up and move; they prefer to sit and whine about how the cost of living is too high and there needs to be a higher minimum wage.
They can't afford to move now because they're wage slaves: they can't afford to lose their job because they're living paycheck-to-paycheck and have no money to do anything differently. Of course, you have no comprehension of this because you've never had to live it.
The guy who goes to work at Mickey D's to be able to afford better pot isn't creating incredible new products or wealth.
Nice strawman. It only takes a small minority of people creating hugely successful enterprises (like Harry Potter, written by a woman on welfare) to make the system work for everyone. And Mickey D's isn't going to need many workers in the future because their jobs are being automated, so how exactly do you propose to handle that?
And it isn't going to get rid of the rich people; they'll just stop working and take the free money.
Wow, you anti-BI people are an incredibly stupid lot. I'm sure rich people will be perfectly happy to live on $1k a month in a tiny apartment with roommates...
Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of th (Score:5, Interesting)
So BMI is going to be less than they're making today and they won't be able to afford it tomorrow, either.
They'll be able to afford it tomorrow because they don't have to worry about losing their fucking paycheck!! Holy shit, are you really this stupid?
The VC analysis uses the number "10%" doing this. There aren't 10% doing it today, and there won't be 10% tomorrow, especially when it's only 10% who are working at all.
There's only 10% creating real wealth. Most people's "work" is just make-work, or will be automated away shortly.
And you pro-BMI people are insulting and rely on ad hominem too much.
Well maybe if you didn't spout such stupidity, I wouldn't have to point out what morons you people are.
You can live pretty well on $3k/month when everyone else is at $1k.
Not if you want to drive a Ferrari or live in an exclusive place like next to Central Park or in Hawaii. What makes you think rich people are going to give up on wanting those things and be happy with a measly $3k/month?
A guy with a million in the bank can go 41 YEARS without working another day on that "income",
So what's stopping that guy from doing that *right now*?
Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of th (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds nice on paper, except you still haven't dealt with the problem of those who feel they have the "right" to live there.
Sure I have: they don't have any such right. They have a guaranteed monthly income, and they can spend it how they like. If they can't afford the rent in Manhattan on that, then they'll have to move.
Remember also that New York was one of those states that wanted to justify having unemployment for longer than 99 weeks.
You don't need unemployment with BI, just like you don't need "disability", SNAP, etc. All these social programs are band-aid attempts to fix the problems caused by poverty. Eliminate poverty with a basic income and you don't need them any more.
Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of th (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
Now one problem I do see is that a bunch of people are going to whine that the BI isn't enough to pay for their Manhattan apartment, and that they don't want to move because their family is there or whatever, and a bunch of bleeding hearts are going to try to "fix" this somehow. That needs to be fought against. The system won't work if they try to do some BS like giving people in Manhattan some huge BI (too many people will just want to move where the BI is higher, and the cost will be unaffordable, plus it'd drive up rents even more, bringing demands for even-higher BI in high-rent districts).
There's Your Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
That security ends up leading to empowerment, not de-motivation.
The powers that be don't want us plebes being empowered.
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But neither do they want the plebs to revolt.
Yes, it's called the "riot index". A cost/benefit ratio of gains from austerity to the losses from the resulting property damage. It is finely tuned.
For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
I strongly suspect that my level of "basic needs" I'm willing to "give" to someone who smokes pot and plays video games all day is much lower than they will demand.
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather eat a bit of an extra tax hit to have someone smoking weed and playing video games in some dumpy apartment in a place where the rent is dirt cheap enough for the bums to live than in my neighborhood breaking into my apartment so they can sell my stuff in order to buy food. In the later case people naturally end up paying for security (police forces) and detention for criminals that are every bit as expensive as giving people enough to subsist on their own.
The biggest obstacle to a basic income plan is that immigration needs to be strictly enforced and a lot of the country has some wild hair up their ass that makes them think borders are just a suggestion. Otherwise if you're absolutely opposed to complete freeloading, just add community service requirements for anyone who's not working to earn their basic income. It doesn't require much aptitude to pick up trash in a park or some other simple chores that typically need doing. If they want more than subsistence, they can get part time work for extra spending money,
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Most people overlook the other side of the equation which is "what is the cost to me for society to contain individuals who don't have basic needs met?" which is not zero. No city is happy with homeless people pissing in the streets, criminals who burgle or engage in other crimes, and a perpetual cycle of poverty which can be difficult to escape.
True, but you have to balance that against "Chav riots". Meeting someone's basic needs without giving them economic mobility only delays violence and unrest. Without a good outlet for people with drive to make their own lives better, it finds a bad outlet, through riot and looting and organized crime.
A basic income is not itself the problem, but it also doesn't solve the problem: the problem is economic mobility.
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what is the cost to me for society to contain individuals who don't have basic needs met? ...... No city is happy with homeless people pissing in the streets, criminals who burgle or engage in other crimes
Right there you're implying outcomes that rational people have every reason to dismiss as nonsense. The most violent nation in the world today that isn't actually fighting a war is post revolution socialist Venezuela. It is a criminal hellhole, festooned with blood spattered signs declaring guns illegal. To date the only solution we've found for the criminality and general corruption that emerges in these nightmare societies is extreme coercion. Thus North Korea; no commercial billboards, few cars, obes
Re: For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember that when you're 80 and have shat yourself yet again.
Re: For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:3, Interesting)
I dont know about the rest of the plebs, but I am sick of being forced to work my ass off to make another man rich.
Basic income will give me the breathing room I need to take my ideas to market, as I cannot afford a single idea that fails to sell.
Re: For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds good in theory, but maybe not in practice. BI would definitely be a great thing for people at the lowest income levels: minimum-wage workers and maybe up to $25k/year. But it's not going to be giving you a fat check to continue your upper-middle-class lifestyle while you try out a new business. The key word is "basic": it'll give you enough money to survive on, to buy some cheap food (e.g., grocery store food, not restaurants) and live in an apartment with roommates most likely. Perhaps $1000/month. Is that much going to pay for you to "take your ideas to market" given that you "cannot afford a single idea that fails to sell"? Somehow I doubt it. If you've worked your way into a middle-class or higher lifestyle where you need a bare minimum of $3k/month just to pay for your housing, food, and transportation (let's neglect healthcare since a proposed BI system includes universal healthcare), then BI isn't going to save you, you're still going to be $2k/month short which will come from your savings. If you live someplace expensive like SV, then $3k/month is probably way too low a figure.
Now, $1k/month might be enough for you to quit your SV job, trade your BMW in for a 2005 Honda, sell all your furniture on Craigslist, and use your Honda to move what little's left to Wyoming so you can work on your ideas without having to burn your savings. However, if you live in SV, don't you have enough money saved to do that anyway? Doing that for 2 years would only cost $24k; a large amount of savings for some guy making $40k at some regular job, but that's nothing to someone working a 6-figure job in SV.
BI is not really all that helpful to people making a lot of money; it's really for the lower classes, to improve their lives and improve our society. It could help any one of you if you fall on bad times (how many tech workers lost their job in 2000 or 2008 and had long break in employment then?), it could help if you're not paid SV wages and want to try your own business, it'll certainly reduce property crimes, and I think it'll probably have a lot of other positive effects too, such as lowering housing costs (due to people not *needing* to work to support themselves; they'll just move someplace cheaper if they get sick of high rents).
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And that's why everyone around you thinks your an evil Nazi.
Re: For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a very limited imagination if you think paid employment is the only way people can contribute to society. I'd also question the contribution to society made by most people's employment.
Its puritanical 'work ethic' bullshit
Re: For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
I reckon 10% of employees don't even contribute to their employers, let alone society. If they did absolutely nothing, it would be a bonus - other people could do something useful rather than fixing their fucked-up shit.
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
If an able bodied/able minded person continually makes bad decisions that put their livlihood in jeopardy or worse yet, plain out refuse to work, then they NEED a little hunger incentive. Hunger to better yourself YOURSELF or go hungry.
The problem with that logic is, in order to better yourself you need to take risks -- but if the potential consequence taking a risk is starvation, you can't afford to take any risks. That means you end up working your entire life in an unskilled job because you can't afford the risk of starting your own business, or going to school to learn new skills.
The problem will only get worse in the future, when there will be a sizable (and continually growing) subset of the population who are literally unemployable because they don't have any skills that a robot can't do better and/or cheaper. For them, no amount of motivation will improve their financial condition; education might, but even that only goes so far. If your only solution is to let them starve, then their solution will be to kill you and take your money.
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:4, Insightful)
It is already happening. The number of (pre-retirement age) people going on permanent disability each month is about the same as those finding a job, or exceeding it, 150-200,000 a month. This often has a component of "you're a loser and your unskilled labor job disappeared and there are no more, and there are no desk jobs dumb enough for you", so here's your disability check, Mr. Back Ache.
There was literally an NPR show about it.
Re: For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:3)
it's fucking 2016, why do I still have to explicitly use the markup for something as simple as a goddamn carriage return
Re: For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Informative)
English speaking countries have a LONG history of wanting to punish people taking public money to survive. Look into the poor houses of 1700s where by law they could serve nothing but gruel and the patrons were required to work 18 hours a day in back breaking labor or they didn't even get their gruel. They were forbidden from leaving, if they by chance got their hands on money it was immediately seized.
I have no doubt in my mind there are people right now in the US and reading this forum that think such a thing would be a great idea.
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see hunger, poor health or desperation as motivations to improve yourself, those are necessities of life. Either you commit suicide or you find a way to take what you need from others, one way or another. History shows more choose the latter than the former, and honestly I can hardly blame them. The same "fuck you i've got mine" mentality is pervasive across the human condition, I am more important to me than you.
I see xboxes and iphones and designer shoes and nice houses in the 'burbs and all that stuff as a motivation to do more and better yourself and contribute and I am fairly certain they are motivation enough for the majority. I have no problem with giving a person a 10x10 box in which to live, access to health care, access to food, heat, water, education and sanitation. That will keep you alive. If you want more you have to work for it. My opinion is that most people will attempt to get more, and in doing so ultimately pay off our investment, and that will help me stay alive and unstabbed, and them get bling. I would call this socialized life not "basic income" but "basic living". You earn no money, but you will survive as long as you wish to. You can figure out how to work your way out (education is the key here), or you can merely live. The boredom alone might motivate many.
I do not see basic income as being even remotely like this, nor based on our economy likely to do anything but jack inflation through the roof. Currency is a squirrely social mechanism to trade forms of productivity. It's broken, it's unfair, it's the best we've got. But without actual productivity it has no meaning. The greater the productivity, the better it is for every single one of us. We owe it to ourselves to figure out how to get people to be as productive as possible, to ensure they directly feel the benefits of that increased productivity and to want more. Letting people rot serves no one, our present system of "Fuck you I got mine" ensures people will be unproductive because they are poorly trained to get a job, or else don't feel like their work is getting them anything but more work without end.
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The other counter argument is if you have someone with nothing, they have nothing to lose. So stabbing you for the contents of your wallet becomes a valid choice. You may hate the idea of it, but how much has crime through desperation, cost the productive part of society? You might call it stand over money or a protection racket, but which ends up with a better society and quality of life overall? Paying a basic income that reduces desperation or pay the costs of that desperation directly.
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a wage slave does not "better" you. That's the very silly Protestant work ethic.
The Protestant work ethic is pre-industrial revolution. It was never about wage slaves, but about working your farm, where the habit of work beyond the minimum, work that improves your farm in some lasting way, was a very good habit indeed.
And it applies greatly today. We should all be seeking to work harder where that benefits us long term. There's a lot of satisfaction to be had from that, something that the faux-achievement provided by video games etc emulates. It's not about work for work's sake, but about the drive to improve your life and seeing the payoff.
The real problem is people who genuinely believe they're trapped, there's nothing they can do to improve their life through hard work. Whether they're right or wrong, society has failed them badly. I don't worry about the "incentive to be lazy" from a minimum income - that's a distraction at best - I worry that we'll have a minimum income instead of solving the harder problem: providing the opportunity for economic mobility to all.
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm getting rid of my moderations to reply to this, but I think I need to...
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the government would just 'give' money to anyone. It doesn't. Food Stamps and medical care in my state requires that your either: a woman, pregnant, or have kids. Or... You work a job with no less than 15 hours a week, but make less than a certain amount (I don't recall the cutoff right now). Welfare actually has higher requirements. So if your a man who didn't sleep around? Not getting money. A woman with a partner? Not getting money. A single woman with no children? Not getting as much money. Want money? Sleep around and have lots of unprotected sex and keep at least some portion of those kids.
Also this wouldn't create money, it would remove programs like welfare and the hassles that go with it to simply distribute funds evenly across the population. It might need a slight increase in taxes, or we could just stop pissing away money on being the world's police and use that money to help our own people. That's not to mention carious other 'half-baked' programs we have that have requirements we could do away with. Telecom taxes just recently came up because the FTC wanted to use it to support low income broadband. If anyone could afford broadband their is no 'low income' to worry about.
I've always found it funny how the world sees us as so rich, yet I can drive into almost every city in this country and find homeless people in conditions as bad as any third world country. I mean we have people who live in service tunnels, under bridges, and in sewer outlets because we just don't give a shit for our own people. If we could just get money to where it needs to go maybe we could stop being a first world country built on top of a third world one. I'm all for basic income. Welfare and other support systems are rife with abuse because we pick and chose who we help and who are 'garbage' to be thrown away by society.
Re:Very good points! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a trap and even worse can be a weapon used against people in need. Husband lose his job and you were a single income family? Kick him out and we'll give you money! Stay with him and we'll make sure you burn together. What the fuck sort of message is that?
It may not be only single mothers caught in the trap. After all I've not only seen, but I've known men who are effectively 'playboys' who simply knock up women and then say they care for these children to 'earn a living'. My ex-fiancee had two children before I dated her. One from her boyfriend in high school and another from one of those 'playboys' who knocked her up to have another kid he could mooch off of. My Ex is a nurse and as is typical the caring type of person, though not always the smartest. Even so she never intended to have a second child, the guy went to quite some lengths to get another kid he could claim is his. One of our constant issues while we were together was that she'd lose part of her government provided income if I ever married her. She could qualify for welfare while working full time because of the kids and got free medical coverage and 'food stamps' to go with it.
When I lost my job and my unemployment expired? "You don't meet our standards of need or protected status for any type of support." Ironically if we would have gotten married and I lost my job I bet I'd have qualified then because I would have been 'supporting two kids'... The whole system is shit and couldn't see need if it bite it in the ass. It's rife for abuse because we decide some people deserve help and others don't. Making it universal would finally be a means of destroying the traps and weapons and creating a balanced environment without bias.
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if the government gives me $30,000/year but I have to work at some boring, back breaking job 40 hours/week to make $32,000/year then why the hell shouldn't I just sit home and play video games?
Because then you will be making $62,000 a year.
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, if the government gives me $30,000/year but I have to work at some boring, back breaking job 40 hours/week to make $32,000/year then why the hell shouldn't I just sit home and play video games?
You've just hit on another interesting side effect of a basic income. All of those crappy "backbreaking" jobs that they can get away paying peanuts for today because the only people that will do them are desperate? Guess what, those desperate people can give them the finger, and they'll actually have to pay enough to make people *want* to do it.
Re:For certain values of "basic needs" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why bother? Because maybe it's what you want to do.
I've always had creative interests in storytelling and writing, but do you know how many people can make a living off of 'writing novels'? In the age of paper publishing most genres would see 5 new writers per year get published. 5. Even in the age of online distribution the number of people who can write full time is fairly low. It's maybe a thousand or so a year across all genres.
Worse, who makes an income as a 'storyteller'? It's a completely lost art in
The cost case against (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Because the results of a failure could be catastrophic. If the result is a ruined economy how do you go back?
Re:The cost case against (Score:5, Informative)
I have a suggestion, rather than everyone sitting around drawing conclusions out of their asses, lets see what actually happens when someone tries it. Let them prove or disprove it and then we will have some results to examine and criticize.
Been done, forty years ago. [wikipedia.org] And the results (WARN: PDF) seem fairly positive. [duke.edu] Now, one test is never good enough but it didn't reduce the town to a smoking ruin. So why shouldn't we throw some more at the wall and see what sticks?
Never going to happen (Score:4, Interesting)
The entire American capitalist system is predicated on the idea that workers don't have the freedom to just leave their jobs, no matter how bad the conditions. This is maintained by a careful system of salary collusion, artificial means of keeping wages stagnant and low (using H1B's and outsourcing, among other methods), and union busting.
A guaranteed income is a guarantee that your workers will no longer have to take whatever shit you sling at them.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire American capitalist system is predicated on the idea that workers don't have the freedom to just leave their jobs, no matter how bad the conditions.
And yet I see plenty of people quitting their jobs. I quit my last job and spent four months deciding what I'd like to do next. My local economy didn't collapse.
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But that "something else" is nearly always another job with similar terms. Like the laughable 2 weeks annual leave you get in America. And the insecurity of "at-will" employment.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
The Capitalist system has created more jobs, more wealth, more prosperity, and higher income mobility than any other system in the history of mankind.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
You're deliberately pretending that history didn't happen so you can insist that having other people provide for you is somehow not only fair to them, but preferable. No. We don't want to be your slaves, slacker-boy. Trying to re-tell the history of prosperity so you can avoid looking at reality is just your juvenile way of wishing you could slack your way through life while other people work and create and make the things you want to be handed simply because you're breathing.
Re: (Score:3)
Ask the people in East Germany before they were set free from your idea of utopia if they think their lifestyles - as empowered by mandatory collectivist wonderfulness - was more or less corrupt, or polluted, or impoverished than was the lifestyle in West Germany.
I was born in DDR. Let's be honest, there was as much corruption and pollution. However, at the collapse of the regime, many (most?) people lost a lot. They lost their jobs, their home, their hopes for the future. Most of the people I know had huge regret. You're trying to make it very one-sided, truth isn't that clear...
Re:Never going to happen (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Informative)
Calling what the Soviets did 'Marxism' makes Karl Marx roll over in his grave. His sole idea was that the power of production needed to be in the hands of the people who did the labor. The Soviet state may have said that was their goal, but that's not what they did. Instead a select few people mandated all production for the country combing means of production and labor into a single whole under their authority. We call this a 'centralized command economy' not 'communism' or 'marxism' even. The biggest lie ever told was that of those who promoted a 'centralized command economy' as the desire of Marx and those like him.
Real 'Marxism' does exist. I've heard of more than a few companies that are run by that method with the companies 'shares' owned by the workers and everyone having a say into the shape of the companies future. They tend to be highly resistant to downturns and profitable for both workers and the cities and towns they work in.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Corruption exists in all economic systems.
More pollution and more trash are by products of people using more resources. Not all choices will be good choices
Capitalism is basically resource allocation based not on need but ability to cover the expenses of gathering those resources. It is flexible by letting people set their own lower bounds. Socialism tries to make it capitalism more efficient which It can do in limited grouping but not on the whole system. Some systems especially those dealing with people will always been horribly inefficient. That won't ever change. So the most flexible system will grow the most and that is capitalism.
Where capitalism fails is in providing minimum base level. If you want people to have healthcare capitalism will always fail at that. If you want everyone to get a minimum amount of food daily. Capitalism fails. Otherwise you get homeless hungry people dying on your streets.
Lies, and Damn Lies (Score:5, Insightful)
Good grief I'm tired of you people attempting to blame the system for human nature. Human nature is why we have corruption, and have had corruption in every system of power since the beginning of civilization. A Capitalist Republic is the best system humanity has ever implemented to reduce and control the impact of human nature. The US was not a half ass Republic like we saw in other countries which still hold/held Monarchies and and Noble classes/families. It was fully implemented from ground up as a Capitalist Republic. The fact that it took well over 200 years for the system to become so noticeably corrupt speaks volumes for how well it works. Name one communist country that has been clean for more than a week. Name a Socialist country that has been clean for more than a year.
To GP, I call complete and utter horse shit. There is no expectation of a stagnant worker in Capitalism, in fact that view defies any writing by Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and countless Economists in between. Economic mobility is one of the keys of Capitalist theory. If workers don't believe they should work for X dollars at Employer-A they try to work for Employer-B at Y dollars. People being stuck means that competition is lacking, not that workers are intentionally stuck. Workers who are "stuck" should be able to start their own businesses to compete. Competition exists at each of the 3 legs of capitalism, or at least it should.
What you may be attempting to claim is that "starter" jobs should pay as much as "professional" jobs, which is horse shit. Who would want to work hard when there is no payoff or benefit? Oh yeah! That doesn't work very well, which is why worldwide innovation is relatively flat. The US innovation bubble is a fluke of Capitalism.
I realize that it's trendy and cool to say the US is bad. I fully admit that corruption is a huge problem that I don't know we can fix without a reset. I am a US Citizen who denounces the corruption and entrenched politicians all the time. That does not make Canada a "better" Government.
In a do-over would you choose another Capitalist Republic or go Communism? If you say Socialist I implore you to determine how you are going to be different than communism to succeed. The Socialist governments in the EU are really not doing as well as many are being led to believe.
Me, I'd do another Capitalist Republic.
That word... (Score:5, Insightful)
If by "happiness" you mean "millions of dead and suffering people" then yes indeed, all socialist countries produce is "happiness". Just look at how "happy" Venezuela is these days!
Doesn't matter though if you manage to get in good with the rulers, and can bask in the reflected opulence. Sucking-up to the overseers is on hell of a retirement plan.
Re: (Score:3)
Those countries... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have lived and worked in the Netherlands, you have no idea what you are talking about if you think the Dutch mindset is in any way socialist in nature. They were the original capitalists, which made them wealthy beyond measure.
The mindset of people in the Netherlands is very far from that of the socialist...
Mainly you can tell they are not socialist by the fact they are (a) permissive, and (b) happy - neither the sign of socialism at work (as well know all too well from countless historical examples, socialism and totalitarianism go hand in hand).
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I like people to feel secure (Score:3, Insightful)
just not with my money. We could end crime by embedding a chip into everyone so we could track everyone's movements and know exactly were everyone is at every second. I don't see anyone jumping at that idea.
Not at all, I'm willing to pay for lazy people (Score:5, Insightful)
But almost certainly at levels of income that will not be satisfactory to them.
I don't think anyone should starve, so I would be happy to provide funds for as much beans, rice, and vitamins as would be necessary to prevent starvation. But I'm not happy about being asked to provide lobster, filet mignon, or even fast food.
"Basic needs" at this point though seems to be something like "a nice 2br apartment with all amenities and easy access to all the nice services, in a good school district, 400 channels on 50" 4k TV, 100Mbit internet, smart phone, game console" and "free pot". IOW, they expect my lifestyle without working for it (although I don't smoke pot), and demand instead that I reduce my lifestyle to fund theirs.
The UBI ignores human nature (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The UBI ignores human nature (Score:5, Informative)
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The supporters of it in that already socialized Scandinavian country realized that you would have to stop all other assistance programs for it to be effective.
Well, yeah, simplifying the welfare system is one of the major points to a UBI. It reduces overhead and ends up saving money without reducing the amount of assistance that people receive.
Another point that was brought up is that in such a situation since everyone gets some basic income that the minimum wage should also be eliminated as the amount that was begin proposed was enough to subsist on.
I think you'll find a lot of people will agree to this. It might even lead to higher total income for people that have what are currently minimum-wage jobs. If the UBI is close to equal to a full-time job that pays minimum wage, and you reduce everyone's salary/wages by that amount (making the start of the UBI program incom
Re:The UBI ignores human nature (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the argument also ignores another facet of human nature: man is a creature of infinite want. A UBI is about satisfying human needs, but people are still going to want things. What you'd likely see is a lot of people working part time jobs (10 hours / week) or joining the so-called gig economy to generate a small amount of supplemental income to cover those wants.
The problem of facts vs dogma (Score:5, Insightful)
In the war between facts and dogma, facts have a habit of coming second. Facts are hard to think through and analyse properly, and proper analyses are detailed and tough to understand. Dogma doesn't have any of these drawbacks.
I'd still work (Score:5, Interesting)
It might be better than the Federal Reserve (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now, when the government wants to expand the money supply, the Federal Reserve just sort of dumps money on the biggest financial institutions. Then it pays them a small interest fee for their service of having use of the money (0.25% according to this Investopedia article [investopedia.com]).
If the government really must inflate the money supply, then it seems to me that the best way to do it would be to spread the new money evenly among the citizens. It's just part of reality that when you have lots of money, it's easier to get more money, so almost all the time when we are talking about the economy, everything benefits the rich more than the poor. Here would be a direct payment that would definitely benefit the poor more than the rich.
Inflation effectively steals part of the value of the money. This is hardest on the poor, and people trying to live on a fixed income. Directly paying the inflation to the people would offset the harm, at least partially.
P.S. I'm a minarchist libertarian, so I don't really like seeing the government messing with the money supply at all. I'd rather just see prices deflate, so that maybe a hamburger would go back to costing a dime, and even a small income would be enough to live on. However, I'm not a trained economist, and apparently Milton Friedman believed we need to inflate the money supply as the economy expands. If you have to bet on whether Milton Friedman was right or I am right, you should bet on Milton Friedman. And if we accept that we need to inflate the money supply, I'd just as soon do it by paying the new money out to all the citizens.
People need a real sense of PURPOSE. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:People need a real sense of PURPOSE. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not wrong that work has virtue. The distinguishing argument is that not all PAID work has inherent virtue, and not all work that you can't be paid for is worthless.
People will find direction on their own--we have a tendency to find the meaning in our lives if we're given an opportunity. Minimum income plans are just a different way to provide *mobility*. If you can eat and pay rent without working a shitty retail job, you can set your sights higher. You can go to school, you can volunteer at animal shelters, or to work with people that have disabilities. There are so many things to do that have so much more value than scraping by, working at a McDonalds for less than it takes to stay alive.
Economics vs technology (Score:5, Insightful)
You people categorically against this do realize we are rapidly approaching a point where large parts of the population don't really have to work to support our basic societal infrastructure? So what happens then? Do we actually reevaluate our economic system or just proceed as we've been going with increasing economic inequality and subsequent societal unrest? Are you people so selfish that you would deny basic support for all if our society could afford it? There will always be an incentive for work because you'll be able to make more money and have more things.
Think of it this way... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have lots of money, but have trouble with the idea of a basic income think of it as guillotine insurance!
-Some meme I saw somewhere
Lots of bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's clear up a bit of garbage that some idiots don't understand
1) Basic = to what we give them in prison, minus the security. Food, housing, cheap clothing. In fact, it's CHEAPER to give people a Basic Income than it is to put them in prison (guards are not cheap)
2) No one, and I mean NO ONE, that's willing to live at that level of crap (and it is crap) is ever going to amount to much of anything. If you are stupid enough to live like this, you were never smart enough to significantly contribute to society. People that know how to write, dance, invent, discover, repair, etc. should and will continue to work and earn more.
3) The main areas where we would (and currently do) give more money is not for the people on Basic Income, but instead is for their children, which would need education etc. so that they don't get stuck at the Basic Income.
4) We already do this for many people already. It's called Social Security and Disability. Not to mention Prison and Institionalized - though those last two are a lot more expensive, they basically do the same thing.
5) The people we currently provide a basic income for (old, disabled, criminals and insane) are not considered free loading, lazy shmucks because we recognize that for various reasons, they can't meaningfully contribute.
6) All we are really talking about is adding "below average intelligence" to the category of disabled.
No other choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, to be honest, there is no other human choice.
What is the percentage of people that are useless? 30%, 40%? It has to be higher than the unemployment rate, given the amount of bullshit jobs that exist nowadays. This percentage is increasing thanks to the machine intelligence going on. One guy with modern tools can do the same work as many guys that hadn't those tools back then. Most of the population cannot become PhDs (lack of capabilities, money, lust, whatever), and even if they could, we just don't need 10^9 PhDs. What will be that percentage in 30 years? 80% 90%?
What do we do of these people? Let them starve and have social unrest? Give them what it takes to smoke pot and play video games and have most of the population happy?
We built all our previous civilizations on the value of human work. You have to realize that the value human work is very rapidly plunging towards zero. This is unprecedented in history. Do you really think we can continue business as usual and it will be fine?
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"This is unprecedented in history."
Only if you disregard all of history. Every invention that increased productivity got rid of jobs, but it hasn't ended humanity. The industrial revolution especially was supposed to have a massive unemployment problem as machines did all the work. Yet unemployment actually went DOWN. Difference is that the average standard of living went up.
Today, we all have many gadgets that nobody had a decade or two ago. we're incredibly more productive by letting machines do some of t
Where does the money come from? (Score:5, Informative)
And if you give everyone in America a check for something like $20,000 every year,
The federal and state budgets of the US totaled around 5.5 trillion dollars. There are around 210 million US citizens over the age of 18. This comes out to around $26k per person. This is if you spend EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR ON THIS PROGRAM. But let's say we settle on something smaller (like $13k). You are still going to have to roughly take in 50% more tax just to cover this program. And if the overall economy shrinks because of a drop in worker participation, won't that make it even more difficult to fund this?
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Re:Where does the money come from? (Score:4, Interesting)
U.S. GDP is about $17 trillion. Total tax revenue is about 33% of that, or just under $5.6 trillion. So far so good.
What is GDP? It's gross domestic productivity. In order to generate GDP, people have to do productive things. If you implement a basic income and 90% of people decide to become pot heads and video game bums, well now your GDP is about 10% what it originally was. So your $17 trillion GDP has shrunk to $1.7 trillion. And it is impossible to reach the $5.6 trillion tax revenue needed to cover basic income even at a 100% tax rate.
See, the value of money comes from productivity. When people stop being productive, money becomes worth less. Prices rise to balance out this drop in productivity, and now your basic income isn't enough to live on anymore. If you panic and try to freeze prices because you believe the price increases are due to sellers gouging instead of your own bumbling economic policies, you're effectively forcing sellers to sell their goods at a loss, and you break the economy. The sellers end up selling their goods on the black market instead, and now not only have you broken your economy, you've broken your currency as well.
Money is just a representation of productivity so its value is not fixed, and it's folly to make economic policies under the assumption that $3 will continue to buy a gallon of milk (with a small constant allowance for inflation). The true fundamental currency is productivity. The average standard of living of a country = sum(every person's productivity) / (number of people). If people stop doing productive work, the numerator in that equation starts to decrease, and the average standard of living drops. And (assuming people's income and the money supply stays the same) the amount of milk (productivity) you can buy for $3 decreases.
For example: Imagine a vastly simplified economy of 100 people where the only good produced and consumed is milk. Average income is $30k/yr and each person on average produces 10,000 gallons of milk. Total productivity for this country is thus 1 million gallons of milk/yr, and total income is $3 million/yr.. The price of milk is thus $3/gal. And each person buys (consumes) 10,000 gallons of milk/yr.
You decide each person needs a minimum 5,000 gallons/yr of milk to live, so you implement a basic income of $15k/yr. 90 of the people become bums. Total income drops to 90*$15k + 10*$30k = $1.65 million/yr. Total milk production drops to 100,000 gallons/yr. The price of milk is now $16.50/gal - enough for your basic income to buy only 909 gallons/yr of milk.
If you resist the urge to break the economy by implementing price controls, milk producing companies are now making more money per gallon sold. Consequently they can pay their employees more (each employee is still producing 10,000 gallons/yr). The wage of a worker thus increases from $30k/yr to $165k/yr. Total income is now 90*$15k + 10*$165k = $3 million/yr, while milk production says at 100,000 gallons/yr. The price of milk is now $30/gal, reducing the purchasing power of your basic income to 500 gallons/yr of milk
And so on. By the 10th iteration a working person's income is $975k and the basic income buys only 65 gallons/yr. By the 100th iteration a working person's income is $13.1 million, and the basic income only buys 11 gallons/yr. The series tries to equalize at a point where each person's income matches their productivity. In other words a basic income doesn't work - the value of the basic income tends towards the productivity of the people receiving it. If their average productivity is zero, the value of the basic income trends towards zero (the series is divergent). If their average productivity is 10% that of a worker, the value of the basic income tends towards 10% that of the worker. The value of a basic income (or minimum wage) doesn't stay at the value you originally assigned it.
Post-scarcity economics... (Score:3)
Everybody who likes to point out the fact that humans "need" to work (let's call them the Idle Hands contingent) doesn't realize the fact that motivation is multifaceted, and only for the most menial types of labor does more money = more motivation. (See Daniel Pink's "Drive" for lots of discussion of this)
Honestly, welfare, disability, and social security pay already exist - if someone really wants to be a bum, they can, and either end up sleeping on a girlfriend's couch, living in Mom's basement, or going to prison if they have no other options and want 3 solid meals and a bed to stay in.
The truth of the matter is that people do work far more for social and personal reasons than just pure monetary gain. They want freedom, they want to learn, they want prestige and recognition from their peers, they want to see the world, they want to express themselves... look at stuff like Stack Exchange and all sorts of other "gamified" systems online. People will work their asses off for a virtual merit badge or to increase a progress bar on a screen.
Corey Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" is an interesting look at how a post-scarcity economy based on prestige might work. We're going to have to figure out what to do with the majority of the human race when AI and robots are better and cheaper than the average untrained human. It's only a matter of time.
It's all about leverage... (Score:4, Interesting)
Today, doing nothing really isn't an option. You *have* to work somehow. By offering a basic income, you are, in effect, creating competition for those jobs. If I have the leverage to say "no", if some people find "nothing" a competitive alternative, then supply-and-demand for workers says that prices (ie, salary) will have to go up to match.
It's a double-whammy against the wealthy, in that they will have to pay a large chunk of *both* the basic income and the delta in salaries. On the other hand, they have benefited the most from income/wealth inequality over the last 3 decades, and increased automation will only make a basic income more necessary.
I'm not sure *anyone* has fully thought through the action-and-reaction of basic income, so I can't honestly say that it's "good", but one way or another its time may be coming.
Is smoking Pot really mean you're a slacker? (Score:4, Insightful)
Superficial and wrong (Score:3)
but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth
And what happens when that "90%" includes all the teachers, law enforcement, hospital workers and fire crews? Basically the people who do the shitty, but necessary, jobs that keep societies running?
It's fine for the aspirational people to assume that everyone is like them - but they aren't. Most people do the least-worst job that allows them to keep a roof, feed their kids and keep the lights on. Remove the need for them to work to do that and the food stops coming, the lights go out and the roof doesn't get repaired. If you will rely on those with some sort of moral imperative to earn, or those for whom work is a joy rather than an inconvenient necessity, then your society won't last a month.
Would you do a dangerous, unpleasant, stressful or demeaning job if you didn't need to? I don't see those sectors having many volunteer workers.
No Problem (Score:3)
We just finance this with a tax on venture capitalists. Right, Mr. Altman?
Re:Terrifying stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)
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It all depends on just how basic the basic income is. I would go with something less than $10k per adult per year, regardless of local. So if you want to live in an expensive part of the country without working any extra you're simply not going to make it. At that rate in Average Hometown America, you'd need to have roommates, prepare your own food, and probably ride a bike for transportation. Depending on how the economy turns out to be going we could gradually increase the UBI and maybe if the robot utopi
Re:One question that is never addressed (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just elimination of the people maintaining the system, it's eliminating the need for the system at all.
When they ran the experiments in Canada in the 70s, only TWO groups of people worked less:
1) Mothers
2) Teenaged boys.
The mothers stayed home with their kids, freed from the burden of trying to take care of children and provide for them at the same time. That's bound to have good outcomes.
Teenaged boys stayed in school. Instead of abandoning their education to get a farm or industrial job at 16, they finished high school. The correlation between education level and productivity is fairly well established.
Additionally, visits to hospitals decreased and the number of mental health cases significantly decreased--huge savings in a system that is already government funded. (An 8.5% drop in hospital visits gives an outsized return; hospital visits are far more expensive than normal trips to the doctor.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Don't mix Venezuela and and Greece (Score:3)
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Because all these people who had no money to buy eggs before are now able to buy eggs because they have the means.
There will still be incentives to work and have a business. These systems are all about taking care of people so we know they have enough to survive.
If I had a basic minimum income, I would be able to go back to school and get a Masters degree. I think that would be a net benefit both to myself and to society. But the short-term costs mean that I have to defer plans like that for a while until I
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Nobody would work as a janitor for shit wages, you're right. I guess we'd have to pay them more.
"Wait! But being a janitor is a low-skill job! Why should we pay them more?" Well, because nobody else is willing to do it. There's the invisible hand, working to fill a demand.
If you don't want to do it, and it needs to get done, you need to be willing to pay for it. Or pay for a robot to do it.