I don't understand how people so smart can be fooled by the idea that automation will permanently take jobs away from the economy.
Jobs will shift, but thinking we need cash handouts for people to live on (because all the jobs will just POOF, disappear!) is just naive. Just as farmers & bowling-pin-setters found new jobs in the past, taxi-drivers will find new jobs in the future.
Zuckerberg is right that people should be more entrepreneurial, but I see no reason why the labor transformation we're undergoing now will reduce overall jobs in the market. It never has.
The issue now is that the cost of getting the training to find a new job is going to be substantially higher than it has been during previous iterations of automation. The market is already falling short here -- there's a lot of people doing stuff that falls way short of their potential. If we're going to make it through the next few decades without substantial increases in the welfare state, that's a problem we need to solve before it gets to be too late and the political scales have tipped past the point of no return.
Yeah, if you're talking about underemployment, that's a huge issue, but I think that's more market-driven than skills-driven. People are generally over-qualified than under-qualified.
Too many people are taking on obscene levels of debt to get a college degree, but most aren't really distinguishing themselves by doing that...they're joining a crowd of other people who've proven they have the same skills (on paper).
Do we need more of that?
Hence the need to be entrepreneurial. Everyone doesn't have to create the next Instagram, but if they can just acquire a skill to offer their communities some kind of a service, like the world worked before limited liability and the 401(k), they should be alright.
Many (most?) of these skills don't require $200k to acquire.
What is different in today's situation is that we're asking people to do more than they did in their past: learning a new skill and offering it to others is damn hard. Leaving a farm to work in a factory where someone tells you what to do all day is easy (not literally, but it doesn't require your livelihood to depend on your creativity/luck).
It's not automation in and of itself, it's the speed at which it's happening.
To use a strange analogy, in the past it has been a leaky faucet. Sometimes it's leaked a lot, sometimes it's leaked a little, but it's always been understood how to fix it. Automation (and offshoring) is affecting so many industries at such a fast pace, it's a river flood rather than a leaky faucet.
A current example is the number of truck drivers. 3.5 million. What are they going to do? That's just one of many.
The US adds 200k jobs per month during non recession times. 3.5 million is 17 months worth. Considering that truck driving jobs will disappear over many many years that's no big deal.
This is the kind of comment that shows the wisdom of keeping "code monkeys" as far away from decisions that matters as humanly possible. Thank you for helping the cause of "pointy haired bosses" everywhere, keep it up.
Now add taxi drivers. Now add non-semi truck drivers, such as delivery drivers for auto parts stores, pizza, or couriers.
Now lets hop outward just slightly: Lets include most shipping personnel, whether involved in packing, organizing, shelf arrangement, etc. While we're at it, lets do that for any big box store in the country.
With barely any adjustments, this single technological shift inside of one vertical just eliminated 5-10 million jobs.
This also only includes one level of extrapolation. What about the HR jobs related to these positions? Safety inspectors? Managers?
This is all ignoring the fact that "3.5 million is no big deal" is ridiculous. 3.5 million is massive. Losing that many jobs over 5 years would be a massive increase- it'd cut that 200k number by 1/3rd by itself, not including any of my additions above.
The entirety of the 2008 recession resulted in 8.7 million job losses- and a lot of that were temporary losses based on less revenue than previous years, so with a better economy the jobs would return. The jobs we're talking about now? They're never coming back. Nothing similar is coming back. They're gone, forever.
Not only that, those truck drivers are licensed, meaning it's a skilled profession. Chances are if they find work, it will be in an unskilled position which pays significantly less with less benefits. That's sucking a whole lot of capital out of the middle class and the economy.
What does a country look like without a solid middle class? Broke and on fire. A reckoning is coming and our politicians are pretending it isn't, or they have no idea what to do about it.
you said big box store... now let's move out to Amazon closing tons of box stores by replacing people's shopping habits.. Malls are closing left and right. Sears is going out of business, many other retailers are too...
It's a feedback loop where the more retailers close and jobs are lost, the less people have to spend, the more retailers/stores/restaurants will close, the less people will have to spend..the more... and so on..
Because we have never had machines capable of doing human metal labor. That is making executive decisions, displaying creativity, learning over time etc. These are fundamental human capabilities that machines are becoming capable of. It will be impossible for the human labor market to shift when nearly every job has an AI that can do it better, faster, with less mistakes, and most importantly for cheaper. On what aspects are humans supposed to compete?
Yes, we should expect blue collar workers to be our Uber drivers or our postmate deliverers or Etsy sellers. The new jobs created in this economy pale in comparison to what they were doing before.
We rode horses for millenia, and that never changed until the car came along and suddenly nobody rode horses anymore. The same thing will happen to human labor. Automation will make it obsolete. The only question is how we as a society will deal with humans being made "unnecessary".
Except that automation is entirely unique from what's happened in the past because it requires far fewer people to do those tasks. You're displacing industries where the target doesn't require nearly as many people as the source industry. I mean... even in the example that you give, with the car industry rising, we're already seeing fewer and fewer jobs as all the electricians (as an example) that were once hired were replaced by a single automated machine and that machine only requires a single person to service it (or maybe a handful, at most).
The issue is that your last statement is correct but vastly understated - the jobs affected will disappear, others will emerge to take their place, but not in the quantities necessary to keep the same percent of the population employed. Add to that the fact that the population and number of people requiring jobs is going to continue to increase and you're just cracking the tip of the iceberg.
> Just as farmers & bowling-pin-setters found new jobs in the past, taxi-drivers will find new jobs in the future.
this seems like something of a religious view, and seems to downplay the nature and scope of technological advancement.
mechanization obviated a lot of physical labor. this made human expansion into mental labor and services more practical. however technology is fast approaching a point where substantial amounts of mental labor and services will be subject to automation.
most 'new jobs' won't necessarily go to humans, as they'll be ripe for automation from the start.
if post civil war legislators were told their ultimate effects on farm employment, they would have banned any mechanical farming technologies. Would that have made the world better, or worse?
Mechanization has always obviated mental labor as well. Turning the same screw on an assembly line 100 times as day is vastly less mental labor than building a car as an artisan.
Advances in technology and business processes are often made specifically to allow for less brain labor. There are tens of thousands of people in retail banking who can't calculate an amortization table without a computer. This has only resulted in more jobs in banking not fewer.
Certainly automation may replace some jobs entirely, but in most cases it's merely an increase in efficiency.
You're focusing on the long term and ignoring the fact that automation job losses affect people in the present and short term.
A person who's job is replaced by automation is screwed in the short term. Nobody will hire them for their primary skills (because the job can be done better/faster by automation), and so they have to learn something new while also working some kind of job to support themselves and families in the meantime.
"Just innovate and come up with a new job and work for yourself" is easy to say, but it's a huge cop out. If it were just that simple then everybody would already be doing that.
Yep, despite all the armchair futurists attacking your view, it is exactly correct. Anyone disagreeing please shoot me an email (in profile) and we can make a bet with an ethereum contract about the unemployment rate at 5, 10, 20, any year period you want and I'll put my money up against you. I've been meaning to make a website to automate this process because I've been hearing these arguments for so long and they will always be wrong, and I want to get rich off people being dumb
Ha, that's a good idea about the ethereum contract. How can you make a contract based on the unemployment rate? Can you write code that downloads a csv from somewhere?
The concept is called an "oracle", or a trusted contract that will put real data into the blockchain, then other contracts can query it. For example, the NYSE stock exchange would publish closing prices daily of stocks in an official NYSE contract, and other contracts could trust it. This does rely on a third-party intermediary.
I think there is a business model here to allow internet commenters to easily put their money where their mouth is. Like on reddit, 2 guys get into a long argument chain, and nothing ever comes of it. If it was easy to just say, "Bet me here if you are so sure," and all the other readers of the chain could as well, there is certainly a lot of takers. I know I would. I'm just so crazy busy right now to implement this, but maybe I'll find some time.
No, robots will take literally every job. Every single task a human can perform, a computer will eventually do better. We're horses and James Watt just built his steam engine. Enjoy a few more decades of relevance before getting put out to pasture.
That's a dream world that's always a few decades away.
Do you really know what it takes to make something? Like something as simple as a hammer?
Iron ore must be located. Will we have autonomous robots scan the earth for ore deposits?Then a quarry must be set up, explosives must be brought in, mining equipment is needed.
Now step back. We need robots to make explosives, transport them to the mine, drill holes to put them in, take the explosives out of the packaging, insert them into holes, blow it, clear the rubble and decide if it's time to process the debris or just move it.
Now step back again. You need robots the find the materials to make the explosives, to package them up and deliver them to the factory.
Now step back again. You need robots to make and maintain all these other robots.
Despite the ease of robots doing everything there is still a finite amount of resources on earth, so some sort of economic triage is needed to decide if iron ore gets shipped to the hammer factory or another factory. I guess that would be some sort of AI?
The sheer scale of making a simple hammer from scratch with nothing but robots is immense. We are way, way, way further away than you think.
But the number of people needed to fulfill certain tasks will continually drop as we develop more robots and more AI. A whole logistics chain that used to keep a million people employed, may only need 1000 people to keep the system going.
Right. But I was responding to the claim that robots will do everything.
Once you make a
more reasonable prediction that robots will replace some humans in some jobs then I think we can have an interesting conversation.
As robots take on manufacturing, I'm more worried about the political instability of Asia than anything else. It's manufacturing base could be decimated as factories move closer to consumers in higher wage nations due to automated manufacturing making it economical again.
You're thinking about it wrong. It's not about tediously inventing thousands of different kinds of robots with niche jobs. It's about inventing one robot that can replicate, iterate, and specialize endless versions of itself for every conceivable job.
The past is not prologue, thinking machines have never happened before in the past, so it's rather irrelevant that past automation for simple manual labor type things just shifted humans to new jobs.
You're really not thinking clearly, you can only push humans to new jobs if the robots can't also do the new jobs. Jobs will not just shift, they are being eliminated entirely and new jobs will not displace them because said new work will be automated from the start. When robots can "think", then automation doesn't just shift jobs, it kills them forever. Human labor both physical and mental is now being obsoleted, this has never happened before, industrialization was not remotely the same.
Still, the concept of robots killing jobs forever is exaggerated.
AI is incredible and only going to become even more incredible. But the creativity of the human spirit will always reign supreme.
A robot cannot start a new venture to fill a human need. Only a human can. A robot cannot write a new novel, make a new movie, or craft a new play. Only a human can. A robot cannot solve a human's medical crisis. Only a human can. A robot cannot govern a people. Only a human can. A robot cannot create a video game from start to finish. Only a human can.
I could go on forever. Because almost everything a robot can do must be started + guided + improved by a human before it can be consumed by a human. And ultimately, humans consume, not robots--so that's never going to change.
So while it's true automation can greatly help in all those endeavors, and eliminate lots of jobs in the process (and probably concentrate the value created much more than it was in the past), there will always be more opportunities for humans to be valuable.
Perhaps that means the companies of the future will be smaller and more focused.
Perhaps not. But it does not mean that human beings will be worthless.
> Human labor both physical and mental is now being obsoleted, this has never happened before, industrialization was not remotely the same.
Virtually everything you said "only a human can" is a religious belief. Robots will be able to write novels and make movies and craft plays and solve medical crisis (all of these are being done already in simplistic forms). Bitcoin is already an implementation of an algorithm governing people, you could go on forever making incorrect statements, but they'd still be incorrect.
> There will always be more opportunities for humans to be valuable.
This simply isn't remotely true. While there will always be a place for the smartest and most creative humans, most humans aren't that smart or that creative and won't be able to compete with AI labor. Stop thinking in anecdotes and see the bigger picture, in a world of thinking machines, there will be little need for human labor, certainly not enough need to keep most humans employed at the levels needed to support themselves.
> So while it's true automation can greatly help in all those endeavors, and eliminate lots of jobs in the process (and probably concentrate the value created much more than it was in the past), there will always be more opportunities for humans to be valuable.
Not as many as have been eliminated; that's the point you seem to miss, new jobs will not be added at the rate they're being eliminated in a world of smart machines because the smart machines will be doing those new jobs as well.
False, my views are in line with the evidence. Beyond that, is the belief that something is impossible that is nearly always religious, not the one backed by evidence that says no, those things are already happening.
One way to divide job types is:physical/mental/emotional/creative.
It seems plausible that robots could do physical and mental jobs.
There's a debate regarding creative jobs, but we already have good preliminary results, and once we crack some of the mental building blocks(like conceptual representation and abstraction), it's plausible we could get creativity in many domains.
As for the arts: they require a complex mix of mental, emotional and creative skills, so we'll see.
As for deep emotional jobs, for example, like a psychologist - it's hard to imagine people forming deep relationships with robots, etc. So maybe emotional jobs are the future of jobs. The big question is - how could you create low-unemployment economy around that ?
See, you get it. Yes, there will always be some human jobs, but not remotely enough to have a wage labor based economy built on. We call them starving artists already, there's no demand for a hundred million more artists. Robots will eliminate blue collar work and that eliminates the foundation of our economy.
> A robot cannot solve a human's medical crisis. Only a human can.
Most of what doctors do is pretty routine and we already have AIs that best them at it; we have bigger issues with getting people to trust these systems than to actually build them. The result will then mean that instead of an army of doctors doing basic diagnoses and occasionally hearing a hard problem, we will need a handful of doctors working on hard problems. This is what automation does: it doesn't fully replace all of a thing, but it drastically reduces the number of people needed. I mean, to take all of your other examples: maybe you are right that an AI can't design a video game from start to end, but the insanely large number of people who work on a video game are people doing extremely boring tasks of modelling and motion capture. Imagine making a movie where you just have a writer, a director, a costume artist, and a set designer, and every other role is replaced by a computer.
And I predict the posters on that wall will be replaced for every generation.
The simple logical flaw with the notion that robots will render human beings useless: okay, then who makes the robots better?
Who designs them? Who helps them? Who repairs them? Etc. There's going to be a whole economy around these things that many people in this thread seem to be oblivious about.
No one is oblivious, you simply fail to understand the nature of automation. Yes, humans will be making those robots better, but it'll only be a handful of humans, not the millions displaced by the robots. Everyone displaced by a robot in a blue collar job isn't going to suddenly turn into millions of millions of jobs designing and repairing robots. Repair won't even be a thing, they'll simply be replaced by new robots that were built by other robots. Automation replaces millions of people with robots and a few thousand people. The new jobs created are higher and higher skilled jobs always in lower and lower numbers never enough to cover the jobs displaced by the automation. If automation created as many jobs as it destroyed, it wouldn't be improving efficiency and no one would be doing it. It is precisely because it destroys jobs cumulatively that people automate because that's called efficiency and it creates wealthy for the robot owners by funneling the money that would have went to human salaries to those owners.
Why do you think they're being fooled? We already have masses of people that have been displaced by automation. I mean, just look at Uber. Taxi drivers nearly revolted over the shift that Uber caused because it caused a lot of them to lose their jobs. The immediate response is "but look at how many people had jobs because of Uber. The jobs weren't lost, they were just moved to a different sector." What happens when Uber automates all their vehicles, though? What sector are all those jobs going to move to?
With all due respect, I don't understand how smart people think they can predict the future from a single period in history. When is a sample size of 1 with very dubious generalizability ever enough? Yet, for those who share your views, it's not only enough evidence but sufficient to resist even thinking about the potential for future harms due to mass automation.
I used the farming example because it's the most accessible one, but labor shifts happen all the time. This is far from a sample size of 1.
Don't take my comments as a proclamation that "NOTHING SHALL CHANGE, AS THERE IS NO NEED TO WORRY."
Quite the contrary...I do think changes in training, etc. need to be made. I just don't think it's a markedly different shift from anything we've had so far.
Thanks for your clarification and polite response.
I was referring to the entire period of the industrial revolution. But in any case, your argument is inductive and has all the issues as such. Since we have no reliable explanatory model of economics, you're never justified in making a claim with such certainty on the basis of some number of past observations. At any time the dynamics can change. Hence, at the very least it seems prudent to put some serious thought into the potential for things to go badly.
Will these new jobs be skilled and require a high amount of education. They probably will, do you really think lot of people are going to retrain themselves.
The problem isn't that everyone's jobs will be replaced in the short term. The problem is that enough people's jobs will be replaced that the negotiating power of workers in more and more labor markets will be broken. This happened with manufacturing in the 1970s. Unions had a huge amount of power in the 1950s and 1960s, and could halt production if minimum standards of compensation weren't met. But the advent of the computer (along with major policy shifts and cultural shifts) basically eliminated this power, as it became easier to automate or outsource labor.
Automation and outsourcing are two sides of the same coin: once the price of domestic labor eclipses the price of a non-domestic alternative, negotiating power vanishes. Entire classes of people move from stable positions in which they have bargaining power and sufficient protections to the positions we see today, which are often short-term, at-will, unstable, and often very low paying. This leads to what seems to me to be the most serious result: when you feel that your job is insecure, but your livelihood depends on that job, you are much more susceptible to exploitation. People in the service industry are beginning to feel this, and more and more industries will feel this in the coming years.
Most economists, and business experts have pegged the job loss at 40% by 2030 -- that's permanent non-replaceable jobs by automation. This isn't the same as the industrial revolution, this is going to be much harder, even President Obama addressed this in an interview, and lots of other people much smarter than me, like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
The problem is that this time automation is cognitive in nature. The AIs are reaching the point where they are better than a certain portion of the population at just about any job. Not every taxi driver is smart enough to become a programmer.
I don't like Facebook, and I don't particularly like Zuckerberg, but I highly respect the guy. He's clearly a very smart person.
But I think the leader of a country needs to live life a bit more before leading a country. If he does want to be president someday, I think 2020 is way too early.
You actually only have to be 35, and he will be in time for 2020. The 2024 stuff was starting to come out before Trump won, which significantly increases the chances of a one term presidency based on the polls & media coverage (imo).
I actually disagree here. I think someone young, energetic, and highly intelligent & analytic is exactly what we need to break out of the rut we're in. And so far the tone of his tour across the US seems to indicate that he wants to be fairly centrist and bipartisan, but without necessarily sticking to political norms.
I think he has all that stuff as well? He's certainly got the money and he's got a big lever named "facebook" which gets his message infront of a substantial portion of the US voting public.
I am (anxiously) waiting for the "have you voted yet?" reminders Facebook has been using to get people to the polls in recent elections to turn into "have you voted for the Zuck yet?".
Can't do that. Zuck can't use FB resources or any form of support from FB (other than employees who volunteer outside work hours) for a political campaign. If he does he'll have to reimburse the fair value of services received from campaign funds.
It would be legal as long as there is no coordination with the campaign but I can imagine enterprise ending class actions against FB by minority shareholders if the Board violated their fiduciary duty to shareholders by involving FB in the campaign.
Yea, I don't understand why age is always such a big deal to people when it comes to politics. Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes it just solidifies stubbornness and quackery.
> Yea, I don't understand why age is always such a big deal to people when it comes to politics.
Exactly the same reason “years of experience” are in other hiring situations; evaluating skills is hard, and it's an easier proxynthst people are intuitively drawn to, even if it is quite a bad proxy.
We still have 3 more years of the current administration, that's an eternity (figuratively) in politics. Predicting who will be a legitimate contender at this point is a fool's errand.
The consensus seems to be that he's aiming for a 2024 run. Although if Bernie isn't running in 2020, I think he'd be the one to beat in a Democratic primary. And he'd have a much better chance at beating Trump than anyone else that seems likely to run, in my opinion. At least when I've seen him speak about anything, he generally comes off as intelligent and relatively sincere.
It really is too early to tell, it depends entirely on how Trump is doing politically. It may look like he's doomed now, but there's always the possibility of something crazy happening like single payer healthcare passing that could change things dramatically. It's happened before. Reagan's approval rating was 35% in the beginning of 1983, and by the end of 1984 it was 53%, and he ended up winning 525 electoral votes and over 58% of the popular vote. And while there's nothing I can imagine that would get Trump numbers like that, I do think it's quite possible that he could be re-elected.
Also, if it looks likely that Trump is going to lose then the Democratic primary will be super-competitive. Elizebeth Warren and Sanders are going to eat him alive.
I'd rather not vote third party for the second election in a row, but it looks like I'll have no other option if it comes down to Trump versus Zuckerberg.
I would much rather see Richard Stallman in the White House than to see a greedy Zuckerberg. His success was indeed a lot of luck, but also a lot more greed, climbing on other's shoulders, and several other bad things.
I'm going to say it's unlikely since Zuckerberg and the rest of the Silicon Valley crowd is seen unfavorably especially after Google's flirtation with Obama's administration. At least that's been my observation with my parents and their views. So he has an uphill battle which would be much harder to win than Trump did as Trump had the advantage of voter dissatisfaction in establishment candidates.
In the pursuit of success like Zuck's sometimes being 'unlucky' can also mean getting lucky.
Being raised in a family that struggles to make ends meet might give one the grit and character one needs to succeed. Not being popular, athletic or good with people might push you into more intellectual pursuits.
It definitely stacks the odds against you if you are aiming to be part of the top one percent. But if you aiming to be one of the few dozen people as successful as Zuckerberg, then I think your odds are better if you had a tough life vs. a privileged one.
The important piece to note, which Zuckerberg may or may not understand, is that the UBI should be accompanied by the elimination of the rest of the welfare state (yes, all of it, including minimum wage). Combined with requiring people to be US citizens for 18 years before qualifying should eliminate most of the qualms critics have with the idea. Overall, I don't think the tax burden is significant for a minimalist UBI, because the savings from eliminating our current welfare state full of mal-incentives will increase productivity.
So if I move to the US when I'm two years old, and become a naturalized citizen at age 7 after my parents finish the process, and then I go to college, and graduate at 22, I'm stuck without UBI for another three years?
Yes, you would possibly need to get a job for a few years. 18 is an arbitrary number but there needs to be a limit, and there will always be an example of a person who falls into this 'tragic' category.
Rationale: to prevent a massive influx of immigrants draining the treasury for free income, some of which they would probably send home, too. That wouldn't sit well with many people, nor be sustainable. There will of course, be people like in the situation you mentioned who feel marginally cheated, at least for a brief time.
This is unconscionable, frankly, I'm appalled that someone could display such a cavalier attitude towards "tragic" stories. Nobody is disputing your stated goal, let us agree on that point.
First of all, "feeling cheated" is inaccurate. In an economic environment where everyone has UBI and there is no minimum wage/SSI/SSDI/etc, depriving someone of UBI makes them unable to provide for themselves unless they are skilled and/or lucky. It's common to find a low paying job fresh out of college. Let's say you get a $30k salaried job. With UBI, that might be a $10k salaried job with $20k UBI. Take away UBI and now you're trying to afford housing in a market where the most financially destitute earn twice what you make.
Second of all, immigration is a big part of what makes this country great and what sense does it make to pay immigrants less merely because they're immigrants? If they can do the same job, they should get the same pay, not just for moral but also for economic reasons.
You can fix the system but if you start from the assumption that there is a simple solution (18 year minimum) for a complex problem, you will be consistently disappointed.
It's not a simple issue, but there are many complexities you seem to have overlooked. I believe in a high level of mobility and freedom in immigration, compared to the current limits, at least. I'm curious, what do you think would happen if we gave the UBI out to everyone immediately?
To spell it out: we cannot afford to produce a UBI for the entire world, but if everyone is able to immigrate to America and receive America's UBI, we will have several billion of the world's poorest knocking on our door. The two are mutually exclusive in the real world, in which we both live. What is your solution?
Yes, you are correct that long term citizens would have higher financial negotiating power than newer citizens who do not yet qualify. Does it need to be 18 years? Of course not -- the point of that number was that you should be an adult to receive a UBI. In our current immigration system, it may be difficult enough to get citizenship that perhaps the only requirement should be that you're an adult citizen.
However, the most important takeaway for you is that if you just give away a UBI to every person that sets foot in America, immediately, you will either:
1. make it near impossible to immigrate to the US due to increased demand from people who were only persuaded by the UBI (in our current system)
or
2. open the floodgates to unsustainable immigration that will drain more from the UBI pool than the system can support (in a higher mobility system, which I otherwise support)
And in either case, you will have immense capital flight to other countries, which is obviously not in America's best interest.
I'm open to suggestions on how to address immigration with a UBI; I don't deny that it's one of, if not the primary shortcoming without an obvious solution for UBI.
But it's not like all those people would stay in their home countries and just siphon away all our sweet sweet ubi hoard. These people would become US citizens and their societal output would become part of the country's aggregate output, some of which presumably funds the UBI program. As long as we don't assume people from economically disadvantaged regions are inherently incapable of providing as much value as individuals in advantaged regions then the only way allowing immigration is unsustainable is if UBI itself is unsustainable.
> It's not a simple issue, but there are many complexities you seem to have overlooked.
Funny, that was exactly my reaction when to your comment.
> I'm curious, what do you think would happen if we gave the UBI out to everyone immediately?
I'm confused why you're even bringing this up, since we agree this wouldn't work. If that's the position you're arguing against it's a straw man.
I'm interested in UBI, but I think we'd need a system that isn't as deeply and fundamentally flawed as the "wait N years" system. I think it's a complicated enough issue that I have honestly no idea how to tackle it, so the comment that I am "overlooking" complexities seems completely out of left field.
Anything that cuts off all the people on SSI is a non-starter.
> I'm confused why you're even bringing this up, since we agree this wouldn't work.
> Anything that cuts off all the people on SSI is a non-starter.
I didn't realize you were anti-UBI altogether. Is this the only reason you are anti-UBI then? But no ideas on how to improve it? And you believe the current welfare complex is superior?
Regardless, I would argue that even with an X-year rule to curb UBI-related immigration, a UBI would be vastly superior to our current system. If the income is truly basic, you have not significantly adjusted demand in the economy against what is already being purchased (to raise prices, as you mentioned) in the "necessity" category, specifically, and the reduced welfare in other areas may actually serve to bring artificial demand down in some cases (e.g. instead of feeling obligated to spend all of your food stamps because you can't use them for something else, people may be more focused on what they need). Yes, the currently homeless will also have money to compete with immigrants for inexpensive housing, but I don't think the formerly homeless would be complaining about that. Will it be harder to be an immigrant than a US citizen? Yes, that has and will always be the case for numerous reasons -- however, I don't think the financial effect of a UBI creates this unlivable economy you describe, and it provides a bright future to look forward to.
Always looking at ways to refine my policy ideas, so thank you for pointing out how extreme 18 years is given how long it already takes to become a citizen. However, it's always nice to see complaints that follow up with proposed solutions, which is unfortunately uncommon on HN political threads.
I'm still not sure where you're getting these conclusions about what my position is, especially when I say things like "I'm interested in UBI" which contradict it. If you have a question about my position just ask, if you don't care then don't respond, but I feel like I'm talking to Eliza.
What we seem to agree on is that "just give citizens money" doesn't work.
> And you believe the current welfare complex is superior?
Superior to what? It's hard to even compare something that exists in all its complexity with something that is just an idea you could write down on a napkin. How do you even evaluate a UBI proposal that doesn't have numbers in it?
One complaint here is that people who currently receive SSI should not be dropped by the new system. Rules like "you must be a US citizen for 18 years" are simply unworkable.
> however, I don't think the financial effect of a UBI creates this unlivable economy you describe, and it provides a bright future to look forward to.
It's already hard to be an immigrant, such a system would mean that immigrants get paid significantly less than non-immigrants. I am not interested in a system that deincentivizes immigration that severely. And again, it's hard to evaluate the potential effects a proposal without numbers or quantitative analysis, so I can merely say "I disagree" here and there's not much substance available to change my mind.
One thing to watch out for in these threads is that sometimes people will dismiss or devalue viewpoints or arguments merely because they do not provide alternative solutions to complex problems. That behavior is nothing more than a transparent attempt to shut arguments down without responding to their content.
Well in that case, simpler and cheaper can be achieved through the reduction of military expenditures and increases in marginal tax rates for high earners.
If it's cheaper, doesn't that necessarily mean that people on welfare will be receiving less benefit? Actually much less since UBI will go to everyone, if it's cheaper in spite of that...
See my other response -- negative incentives, bureaucratic cruft, etc.
Similar to why you might prefer a 10 line program that is O(n) to a 4000 line program which is O(nlogn) -- seems obvious to me.
There could certainly be exceptions for some programs (like Food stamps for children who don't yet qualify for UBI) or for things that are not bought with cash in a marketplace (if we ever had state health providers, for example), but for the most part, this comparison could eliminate dozens of government agencies and programs while expanding benefits.
Lol what? UBI doesn't make up for medicaid, medicare and minimum wage for example. We should probably keep foodstamps as well. It's an advancement of the welfare state, that's the whole point Zuckerberg is making. Our current welfare state is inadequate which is why lots of kids don't get a fair shot. Zuckerberg's fix for this is to use more welfare to create a more even field for all kids to compete on.
You're right about medical, but the whole point of UBI is to provide a floor upon which anyone can live without the expensive bureaucracy of qualifying them. It's supposed to replace the welfare state with something more efficient. That's not a regression, with UBI you don't need foodstamps or any other kind of assistance (not counting healthcare which is a separate thing).
No, that's the point of UBI in your mind. This is actually what I think is harmful about our current obsession with UBI, all the politicians are slowly coming around to it and when they do that you know some people are about to get screwed. UBI isn't here to reduce welfare spending or to reduce welfare spending on the poor. Inequality has a direct effect on social mobility. Thus programs which exacerbate inequality are antithetical to the idea of a meritocracy. We need more, direct redistribution to the poor to fix America's problems with social mobility. Abolishing the minimum wage because of UBI? Come on.
That's the point of UBI in most people's minds, it's a better way to redistribute wealth and once in place should be the only way needed. Of what purpose is a food stamp program when we can simply make sure the UBI is enough to live on? UBI is about dealing with a world where we don't don't have enough jobs for everyone, that already covers the poor. Want more redistribution, raise the UBI. It's one program that can replace the entire welfare state. UBI would be a better and more efficient use of the existing welfare money as well as new funds so it can be given to everyone. It makes no sense to have UBI and a welfare state at the same time. And yes, you don't need a minimum wage when you have UBI, UBI is a minimum wage.
How is the job market going to be skewed towards the employer? That statement needs some clarification.
The way it seems to me, it would make sense that actually jobs would shift away from menial tasks (which will be replaced by automation eventually anyway) in favor of things that people actually consider a valuable use of time. You can't get people to do jobs they don't want to do if they don't have to do them. At least, not at a scale that leads to the situation you seem to be implying.
If you had $2000 in your pocket every month why would you waste your time on a job that pays $9/hr? Maybe you'll find some people who take 5- or 10-hr/wk contracts so they have a little extra beer money, but it definitely would eliminate the need to submit yourself to the job market woes that currently plague the poor. People value their time with a money analogue, since this is a moneyed system we're living in, so you won't find many who will choose to earn less than what they can see themselves paying on a daily basis.
I think what we are afraid of is a token "UBI" of say $5k a year or less which is nice if you need a small spending boost but it is not enough for food and rent.
Oh and rent! The rent is too damn high. We need to build more, property prices be damned! Yes, ugly houses are OK. No, I don't care if the "eye sore" is damaging your view. Your pleasant view is not as important as shelter for me.
UBI that isn't enough to live on isn't UBI; the point of UBI is to remove the "need" to work at all by providing a minimum level of income that's enough to survive on.
> Of what purpose is a food stamp program when we can simply make sure the UBI is enough to live on?
Many what might be called “moderate UBI proponents” have argued that certain use-specific universal or means-tested programs will still be needed because of social costs of failure of individuals to allocate funds properly to certain needs. Different sets have been suggested, but usually one or more of healthcare, food, and housing support programs (in roughly declining order of frequency with which I've seen them suggested) are proposed.
They're wrong, those problem can be solved simply by paying out the UBI more often in smaller amounts like a paycheck. Means testing leads to expensive bureaucracies and wasted money. UBI is meant to end that, not supplement it.
Whether they are right or wrong about the need, the fact is that there is a sizable contingent of UBI supporters that do believe certain other programs are necessary. It is not at all the case that UBI is promoted universally, or even overwhelmingly, as a complete replacement for the welfare state, or even a complete replacement for simply the means-tested compobebts of the welfare state.
Of course, because UBI itself isn't an accepted concept yet; once it becomes one, the natural result of rolling it out will be the elimination of all other welfare programs in favor of the UBI. It's a better abstraction, and good abstractions displace bad ones eventually.
I would prefer a gradual phase in of UBI with a reduction of minimum hourly wage (after it is increased to $15/hr and indexed to inflation) by 1/2000 the annual value of UBI. This presumes you keep EITC, if EITC is eliminated, it's a little more complicated.
Honestly, UBI isn't going to fix anything if the mentality are still in the frame of mind that making money is an end to itself. Until, the american society learns that adolatring money is completely wrong, there isn't any hope for any of this to succeed.
My newborn son has $250,000 in debt thanks to the welfare state. Borrowing from him to give to someone else is criminal. How can you talk about expanding the welfare state when we can't even pay for the one we have?
There are plenty of issues with healthcare at the moment, but what effect do you think it has that a large segment of the population (and the majority of drug takers) are subsidized to get drugs for almost nothing with effectively zero price negotation? (Re: Medicaid -- the government does not negotiate as well as the market, especially when lobbyists are on both sides of the negotiation). And would you agree that unemployment benefits encourage being unemployed until you no longer qualify? Then there's TANF: have more kids, get more income. What need is there for a minimum wage when you have a "livable" income already, from UBI? We would no longer have to ensure that homeless people cannot voluntarily enter into an employment contract for less than $15/hour (which guarantees they remain unemployed). Food stamps? You must understand that the UBI is cash that can be used for anything.
The common theme here is that these complex programs will not only come with bureaucracy and deadweight loss, but they also include complex side-effects, mostly negative economic incentives. Another common theme is that money can be used for any of these things, and that's exactly what a UBI provides.
I think it can replace min wage..but defintely need medicare for all also- - but with GBI -- less people have to work to maintain life -- which will mean more jobs will be open for those w/ the initiative to earn more and enjoy more feature comforts -- w/ more open jobs the wages will increase naturally as a result of supply/demand of jobs.. GBI is actually one way to raise the supply and lower demand of jobs so that prices re-stabilize and such that working actually makes more sense....
One of the biggest concerns I hear about UBI is where the money comes from. I think think your point about eliminating the welfare state systems is a big part of the solution. Think of all the bureaucratic cruft that exists right now and how many of those resources could be diverted into more impactful areas such as paying for UBI that enables more to participate in the economic flow of goods and services. It's easier said than done, but I think a lot of the UBI's implementation costs could be covered by consolidating expensive and complicated systems into a simpler solution like UBI.
The money will come from the same place money comes from now: banks. The value backing that money will come from the same place value comes from now: energy applied to capital. Given that the whole reason money and capital even came to exist in the first place is that humans have some compulsive drive to do relatively complex things once their basic, life sustaining needs are met, there's very little rational reason to be worried about less value being produced in a post UBI world.
One very good reason to keep (not necessarily in their exact current forms, mind you) the current bureaucracies involved in housing, health care, etc, is that that bureaucracy factors out the energy involved in obtaining those life sustaining societal structures. Certainly make the bureaucracy more efficient, but entirely eliminating it makes the society as a whole less efficient.
I'm confused about the downvotes you're receiving. You're right. The fractional reserve, and especially derivatives, has created trillions of dollars in the last decade.
Market capitalization general corresponds with the amount of debt a company is able to take on, and the creation of debt literally is the creation of money.
I would be absolutely amazed if any government actually agreed to dismantle their welfare states in return for UBI. There will always be pressure on politicians for one group or another to receive more money for one reason or another which will require all the government beurocracy to administer it.
Agreed -- it would be very difficult politically, not that that matters in terms of which policies we should advocate.
The drug lobbyists, for example, absolutely love Medicare. They prefer the government with its friendly politicians and bureaucrats "negotiate" the prices of drugs that the government subsidizes, rather than allow price discovery in a market system.
So if your a typical immigrant to the USA, your going to wait +25 years before you can get UBI then? 5 years minimum of green card waiting for citizenship and 2-10 years just waiting to get a green card in the first place?
I agree, as long as it's adjusted to account for inflation, changes in housing costs, and truly meets the minimum thresholds... I think we should institute consumption taxes though to help fund it, and maybe have a different rate for those w/ state id's that are 'verified' citizens vs those who aren't citizens.. Basically so immigrants/tourists pay more to be here than the rest of us...
I also think that we can only get rid of all other programs as long as GBI also includes medicare for all. Medical is a basic need as much as a roof.
> Combined with requiring people to be US citizens for 18 years before qualifying
The safety net programs that UBI would replace don't require that (some require citizenship, others require only satisfactory immigration status, none have anything like an 18 year citizenship requirement.)
There's no way we could do that. Social security pays on average much more than any realistic basic income. Are we supposed to slash the income of retirees in half?
thank you for fucking the country. I'm sure you feel very smug now that a few evil fucks are trying to take basic healthcare protection away from a bunch of poor people.
Personal attacks and political flamewar will both get you banned on HN, so please don't post like this again.
More generally, would you please only post civil and substantive comments here? You've done that a fair bit but you've also done the opposite some. In order for HN to have a hope of being slightly better than the nasty internet median, we all need to pitch in with the effort.
I'll say this: I was in the emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital last week, and while his namesake wing was very nicely appointed, the Xray tech was complaining about the software performance and monitor resolution.
If he wants to give his own money away, cool. But there are a lot of problems with the idea of a UBI that are not solved by rich people admitting "I wouldn't have gotten here without first having a basic level of privilege."
It isn't just "luck" that got him there. It was education, connections, hard work and many other things. I have alimony in about the amount that many people suggest for UBI. Yes, that has been a good thing, but it hasn't gotten me insider connections, magically taught me to code or solved many other problems that need to be solved in order for me to become rich.
There is just so much more going on that people like Mark Zuckerberg apparently fail to see. It isn't just the money they had that helped them leapfrog to the position they currently occupy. Simply throwing money at this problem will not make poor people the next multi-billionaires.
Yes, having a UBI does not automatically grant you connections.
There are a lot of questions about people who will fall through the cracks. I raise those questions all the time.
However, I support a UBI, not because it is a silver bullet to everything but because it is a step forward. It is a real shame that we can't provide nutrition for everyone in these United States (much less the whole world). There is no reason other than greed why our economy can't feed and house each and every one of us.
I fear the real positive outcomes might take generations to manifest and might get wiped out by one major economic depression.
I wonder how many people would accept UBI in exchange for voluntary sterilization? I think that would end up solving basically all the problems we have now.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] threadJobs will shift, but thinking we need cash handouts for people to live on (because all the jobs will just POOF, disappear!) is just naive. Just as farmers & bowling-pin-setters found new jobs in the past, taxi-drivers will find new jobs in the future.
Zuckerberg is right that people should be more entrepreneurial, but I see no reason why the labor transformation we're undergoing now will reduce overall jobs in the market. It never has.
The past industrial transformation has never had that trait.
Too many people are taking on obscene levels of debt to get a college degree, but most aren't really distinguishing themselves by doing that...they're joining a crowd of other people who've proven they have the same skills (on paper).
Do we need more of that?
Hence the need to be entrepreneurial. Everyone doesn't have to create the next Instagram, but if they can just acquire a skill to offer their communities some kind of a service, like the world worked before limited liability and the 401(k), they should be alright.
Many (most?) of these skills don't require $200k to acquire.
What is different in today's situation is that we're asking people to do more than they did in their past: learning a new skill and offering it to others is damn hard. Leaving a farm to work in a factory where someone tells you what to do all day is easy (not literally, but it doesn't require your livelihood to depend on your creativity/luck).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
To use a strange analogy, in the past it has been a leaky faucet. Sometimes it's leaked a lot, sometimes it's leaked a little, but it's always been understood how to fix it. Automation (and offshoring) is affecting so many industries at such a fast pace, it's a river flood rather than a leaky faucet.
A current example is the number of truck drivers. 3.5 million. What are they going to do? That's just one of many.
A better critique of the argument is about the quality of the jobs, not the numbers.
that's the point though. seems like a standard example of the problem of induction.
Now lets hop outward just slightly: Lets include most shipping personnel, whether involved in packing, organizing, shelf arrangement, etc. While we're at it, lets do that for any big box store in the country.
With barely any adjustments, this single technological shift inside of one vertical just eliminated 5-10 million jobs.
This also only includes one level of extrapolation. What about the HR jobs related to these positions? Safety inspectors? Managers?
This is all ignoring the fact that "3.5 million is no big deal" is ridiculous. 3.5 million is massive. Losing that many jobs over 5 years would be a massive increase- it'd cut that 200k number by 1/3rd by itself, not including any of my additions above.
The entirety of the 2008 recession resulted in 8.7 million job losses- and a lot of that were temporary losses based on less revenue than previous years, so with a better economy the jobs would return. The jobs we're talking about now? They're never coming back. Nothing similar is coming back. They're gone, forever.
What does a country look like without a solid middle class? Broke and on fire. A reckoning is coming and our politicians are pretending it isn't, or they have no idea what to do about it.
It's a feedback loop where the more retailers close and jobs are lost, the less people have to spend, the more retailers/stores/restaurants will close, the less people will have to spend..the more... and so on..
I also recommend the CGP grey video.
When horses became obsolete, the car industry rose, and tens of thousands of people were needed to engineer, produce, sell, and repair cars.
So as automation takes over, the jobs it affects will disappear, but others will emerge to take their places.
The issue is that your last statement is correct but vastly understated - the jobs affected will disappear, others will emerge to take their place, but not in the quantities necessary to keep the same percent of the population employed. Add to that the fact that the population and number of people requiring jobs is going to continue to increase and you're just cracking the tip of the iceberg.
this seems like something of a religious view, and seems to downplay the nature and scope of technological advancement.
mechanization obviated a lot of physical labor. this made human expansion into mental labor and services more practical. however technology is fast approaching a point where substantial amounts of mental labor and services will be subject to automation.
most 'new jobs' won't necessarily go to humans, as they'll be ripe for automation from the start.
Advances in technology and business processes are often made specifically to allow for less brain labor. There are tens of thousands of people in retail banking who can't calculate an amortization table without a computer. This has only resulted in more jobs in banking not fewer.
Certainly automation may replace some jobs entirely, but in most cases it's merely an increase in efficiency.
A person who's job is replaced by automation is screwed in the short term. Nobody will hire them for their primary skills (because the job can be done better/faster by automation), and so they have to learn something new while also working some kind of job to support themselves and families in the meantime.
"Just innovate and come up with a new job and work for yourself" is easy to say, but it's a huge cop out. If it were just that simple then everybody would already be doing that.
I think there is a business model here to allow internet commenters to easily put their money where their mouth is. Like on reddit, 2 guys get into a long argument chain, and nothing ever comes of it. If it was easy to just say, "Bet me here if you are so sure," and all the other readers of the chain could as well, there is certainly a lot of takers. I know I would. I'm just so crazy busy right now to implement this, but maybe I'll find some time.
Being able to spend my time however I want instead of wasting my life away at work sounds awesome.
The real problem seems to be that our society puts so much emphasis on jobs and working. I guess it's a good way to keep people in line.
Do you really know what it takes to make something? Like something as simple as a hammer?
Iron ore must be located. Will we have autonomous robots scan the earth for ore deposits?Then a quarry must be set up, explosives must be brought in, mining equipment is needed.
Now step back. We need robots to make explosives, transport them to the mine, drill holes to put them in, take the explosives out of the packaging, insert them into holes, blow it, clear the rubble and decide if it's time to process the debris or just move it.
Now step back again. You need robots the find the materials to make the explosives, to package them up and deliver them to the factory.
Now step back again. You need robots to make and maintain all these other robots.
Despite the ease of robots doing everything there is still a finite amount of resources on earth, so some sort of economic triage is needed to decide if iron ore gets shipped to the hammer factory or another factory. I guess that would be some sort of AI?
The sheer scale of making a simple hammer from scratch with nothing but robots is immense. We are way, way, way further away than you think.
The future is humans and robots working together.
Once you make a more reasonable prediction that robots will replace some humans in some jobs then I think we can have an interesting conversation.
As robots take on manufacturing, I'm more worried about the political instability of Asia than anything else. It's manufacturing base could be decimated as factories move closer to consumers in higher wage nations due to automated manufacturing making it economical again.
You're really not thinking clearly, you can only push humans to new jobs if the robots can't also do the new jobs. Jobs will not just shift, they are being eliminated entirely and new jobs will not displace them because said new work will be automated from the start. When robots can "think", then automation doesn't just shift jobs, it kills them forever. Human labor both physical and mental is now being obsoleted, this has never happened before, industrialization was not remotely the same.
AI is incredible and only going to become even more incredible. But the creativity of the human spirit will always reign supreme.
A robot cannot start a new venture to fill a human need. Only a human can. A robot cannot write a new novel, make a new movie, or craft a new play. Only a human can. A robot cannot solve a human's medical crisis. Only a human can. A robot cannot govern a people. Only a human can. A robot cannot create a video game from start to finish. Only a human can.
I could go on forever. Because almost everything a robot can do must be started + guided + improved by a human before it can be consumed by a human. And ultimately, humans consume, not robots--so that's never going to change.
So while it's true automation can greatly help in all those endeavors, and eliminate lots of jobs in the process (and probably concentrate the value created much more than it was in the past), there will always be more opportunities for humans to be valuable.
Perhaps that means the companies of the future will be smaller and more focused.
Perhaps not. But it does not mean that human beings will be worthless.
> Human labor both physical and mental is now being obsoleted, this has never happened before, industrialization was not remotely the same.
I don't buy it.
> There will always be more opportunities for humans to be valuable.
This simply isn't remotely true. While there will always be a place for the smartest and most creative humans, most humans aren't that smart or that creative and won't be able to compete with AI labor. Stop thinking in anecdotes and see the bigger picture, in a world of thinking machines, there will be little need for human labor, certainly not enough need to keep most humans employed at the levels needed to support themselves.
> So while it's true automation can greatly help in all those endeavors, and eliminate lots of jobs in the process (and probably concentrate the value created much more than it was in the past), there will always be more opportunities for humans to be valuable.
Not as many as have been eliminated; that's the point you seem to miss, new jobs will not be added at the rate they're being eliminated in a world of smart machines because the smart machines will be doing those new jobs as well.
> I don't buy it.
It's true none the less.
It seems plausible that robots could do physical and mental jobs.
There's a debate regarding creative jobs, but we already have good preliminary results, and once we crack some of the mental building blocks(like conceptual representation and abstraction), it's plausible we could get creativity in many domains.
As for the arts: they require a complex mix of mental, emotional and creative skills, so we'll see.
As for deep emotional jobs, for example, like a psychologist - it's hard to imagine people forming deep relationships with robots, etc. So maybe emotional jobs are the future of jobs. The big question is - how could you create low-unemployment economy around that ?
Most of what doctors do is pretty routine and we already have AIs that best them at it; we have bigger issues with getting people to trust these systems than to actually build them. The result will then mean that instead of an army of doctors doing basic diagnoses and occasionally hearing a hard problem, we will need a handful of doctors working on hard problems. This is what automation does: it doesn't fully replace all of a thing, but it drastically reduces the number of people needed. I mean, to take all of your other examples: maybe you are right that an AI can't design a video game from start to end, but the insanely large number of people who work on a video game are people doing extremely boring tasks of modelling and motion capture. Imagine making a movie where you just have a writer, a director, a costume artist, and a set designer, and every other role is replaced by a computer.
The simple logical flaw with the notion that robots will render human beings useless: okay, then who makes the robots better?
Who designs them? Who helps them? Who repairs them? Etc. There's going to be a whole economy around these things that many people in this thread seem to be oblivious about.
Don't take my comments as a proclamation that "NOTHING SHALL CHANGE, AS THERE IS NO NEED TO WORRY."
Quite the contrary...I do think changes in training, etc. need to be made. I just don't think it's a markedly different shift from anything we've had so far.
I was referring to the entire period of the industrial revolution. But in any case, your argument is inductive and has all the issues as such. Since we have no reliable explanatory model of economics, you're never justified in making a claim with such certainty on the basis of some number of past observations. At any time the dynamics can change. Hence, at the very least it seems prudent to put some serious thought into the potential for things to go badly.
http://www.farmandranchguide.com/entertainment/country_livin...
In Ancient Rome, access to cheap slaves, created a very high unemployment among the plebs, who than became dependent on support from the state.
Than the question becomes: could technology create a "cheap slave" equivalent ?
Will these new jobs be skilled and require a high amount of education. They probably will, do you really think lot of people are going to retrain themselves.
Automation and outsourcing are two sides of the same coin: once the price of domestic labor eclipses the price of a non-domestic alternative, negotiating power vanishes. Entire classes of people move from stable positions in which they have bargaining power and sufficient protections to the positions we see today, which are often short-term, at-will, unstable, and often very low paying. This leads to what seems to me to be the most serious result: when you feel that your job is insecure, but your livelihood depends on that job, you are much more susceptible to exploitation. People in the service industry are beginning to feel this, and more and more industries will feel this in the coming years.
It's not a matter of IF, but when.
But I think the leader of a country needs to live life a bit more before leading a country. If he does want to be president someday, I think 2020 is way too early.
Oops. I was wrong. Only 35. He could possibly run for the next one depending on his exact age.
May 2019 - 35
That isn't what works in politics...
What works in politics is knowing which levers to pull, and having the money or influence (in the right paces) to do pull them.
Exactly the same reason “years of experience” are in other hiring situations; evaluating skills is hard, and it's an easier proxynthst people are intuitively drawn to, even if it is quite a bad proxy.
It's interesting how Zuck seems so generous when it comes to politics yet doesn't apply that same mentality to his cafeteria workers.
Being raised in a family that struggles to make ends meet might give one the grit and character one needs to succeed. Not being popular, athletic or good with people might push you into more intellectual pursuits.
Or it stacks the odds against you, and you'll struggle the same way those before you in your family/social group did.
Rationale: to prevent a massive influx of immigrants draining the treasury for free income, some of which they would probably send home, too. That wouldn't sit well with many people, nor be sustainable. There will of course, be people like in the situation you mentioned who feel marginally cheated, at least for a brief time.
First of all, "feeling cheated" is inaccurate. In an economic environment where everyone has UBI and there is no minimum wage/SSI/SSDI/etc, depriving someone of UBI makes them unable to provide for themselves unless they are skilled and/or lucky. It's common to find a low paying job fresh out of college. Let's say you get a $30k salaried job. With UBI, that might be a $10k salaried job with $20k UBI. Take away UBI and now you're trying to afford housing in a market where the most financially destitute earn twice what you make.
Second of all, immigration is a big part of what makes this country great and what sense does it make to pay immigrants less merely because they're immigrants? If they can do the same job, they should get the same pay, not just for moral but also for economic reasons.
You can fix the system but if you start from the assumption that there is a simple solution (18 year minimum) for a complex problem, you will be consistently disappointed.
To spell it out: we cannot afford to produce a UBI for the entire world, but if everyone is able to immigrate to America and receive America's UBI, we will have several billion of the world's poorest knocking on our door. The two are mutually exclusive in the real world, in which we both live. What is your solution?
Yes, you are correct that long term citizens would have higher financial negotiating power than newer citizens who do not yet qualify. Does it need to be 18 years? Of course not -- the point of that number was that you should be an adult to receive a UBI. In our current immigration system, it may be difficult enough to get citizenship that perhaps the only requirement should be that you're an adult citizen.
However, the most important takeaway for you is that if you just give away a UBI to every person that sets foot in America, immediately, you will either:
1. make it near impossible to immigrate to the US due to increased demand from people who were only persuaded by the UBI (in our current system)
or
2. open the floodgates to unsustainable immigration that will drain more from the UBI pool than the system can support (in a higher mobility system, which I otherwise support)
And in either case, you will have immense capital flight to other countries, which is obviously not in America's best interest.
I'm open to suggestions on how to address immigration with a UBI; I don't deny that it's one of, if not the primary shortcoming without an obvious solution for UBI.
Funny, that was exactly my reaction when to your comment.
> I'm curious, what do you think would happen if we gave the UBI out to everyone immediately?
I'm confused why you're even bringing this up, since we agree this wouldn't work. If that's the position you're arguing against it's a straw man.
I'm interested in UBI, but I think we'd need a system that isn't as deeply and fundamentally flawed as the "wait N years" system. I think it's a complicated enough issue that I have honestly no idea how to tackle it, so the comment that I am "overlooking" complexities seems completely out of left field.
Anything that cuts off all the people on SSI is a non-starter.
I didn't realize you were anti-UBI altogether. Is this the only reason you are anti-UBI then? But no ideas on how to improve it? And you believe the current welfare complex is superior?
Regardless, I would argue that even with an X-year rule to curb UBI-related immigration, a UBI would be vastly superior to our current system. If the income is truly basic, you have not significantly adjusted demand in the economy against what is already being purchased (to raise prices, as you mentioned) in the "necessity" category, specifically, and the reduced welfare in other areas may actually serve to bring artificial demand down in some cases (e.g. instead of feeling obligated to spend all of your food stamps because you can't use them for something else, people may be more focused on what they need). Yes, the currently homeless will also have money to compete with immigrants for inexpensive housing, but I don't think the formerly homeless would be complaining about that. Will it be harder to be an immigrant than a US citizen? Yes, that has and will always be the case for numerous reasons -- however, I don't think the financial effect of a UBI creates this unlivable economy you describe, and it provides a bright future to look forward to.
Always looking at ways to refine my policy ideas, so thank you for pointing out how extreme 18 years is given how long it already takes to become a citizen. However, it's always nice to see complaints that follow up with proposed solutions, which is unfortunately uncommon on HN political threads.
I'm still not sure where you're getting these conclusions about what my position is, especially when I say things like "I'm interested in UBI" which contradict it. If you have a question about my position just ask, if you don't care then don't respond, but I feel like I'm talking to Eliza.
What we seem to agree on is that "just give citizens money" doesn't work.
> And you believe the current welfare complex is superior?
Superior to what? It's hard to even compare something that exists in all its complexity with something that is just an idea you could write down on a napkin. How do you even evaluate a UBI proposal that doesn't have numbers in it?
One complaint here is that people who currently receive SSI should not be dropped by the new system. Rules like "you must be a US citizen for 18 years" are simply unworkable.
> however, I don't think the financial effect of a UBI creates this unlivable economy you describe, and it provides a bright future to look forward to.
It's already hard to be an immigrant, such a system would mean that immigrants get paid significantly less than non-immigrants. I am not interested in a system that deincentivizes immigration that severely. And again, it's hard to evaluate the potential effects a proposal without numbers or quantitative analysis, so I can merely say "I disagree" here and there's not much substance available to change my mind.
One thing to watch out for in these threads is that sometimes people will dismiss or devalue viewpoints or arguments merely because they do not provide alternative solutions to complex problems. That behavior is nothing more than a transparent attempt to shut arguments down without responding to their content.
Similar to why you might prefer a 10 line program that is O(n) to a 4000 line program which is O(nlogn) -- seems obvious to me.
There could certainly be exceptions for some programs (like Food stamps for children who don't yet qualify for UBI) or for things that are not bought with cash in a marketplace (if we ever had state health providers, for example), but for the most part, this comparison could eliminate dozens of government agencies and programs while expanding benefits.
The way it seems to me, it would make sense that actually jobs would shift away from menial tasks (which will be replaced by automation eventually anyway) in favor of things that people actually consider a valuable use of time. You can't get people to do jobs they don't want to do if they don't have to do them. At least, not at a scale that leads to the situation you seem to be implying.
If you had $2000 in your pocket every month why would you waste your time on a job that pays $9/hr? Maybe you'll find some people who take 5- or 10-hr/wk contracts so they have a little extra beer money, but it definitely would eliminate the need to submit yourself to the job market woes that currently plague the poor. People value their time with a money analogue, since this is a moneyed system we're living in, so you won't find many who will choose to earn less than what they can see themselves paying on a daily basis.
Oh and rent! The rent is too damn high. We need to build more, property prices be damned! Yes, ugly houses are OK. No, I don't care if the "eye sore" is damaging your view. Your pleasant view is not as important as shelter for me.
Many what might be called “moderate UBI proponents” have argued that certain use-specific universal or means-tested programs will still be needed because of social costs of failure of individuals to allocate funds properly to certain needs. Different sets have been suggested, but usually one or more of healthcare, food, and housing support programs (in roughly declining order of frequency with which I've seen them suggested) are proposed.
I would prefer a gradual phase in of UBI with a reduction of minimum hourly wage (after it is increased to $15/hr and indexed to inflation) by 1/2000 the annual value of UBI. This presumes you keep EITC, if EITC is eliminated, it's a little more complicated.
The common theme here is that these complex programs will not only come with bureaucracy and deadweight loss, but they also include complex side-effects, mostly negative economic incentives. Another common theme is that money can be used for any of these things, and that's exactly what a UBI provides.
One very good reason to keep (not necessarily in their exact current forms, mind you) the current bureaucracies involved in housing, health care, etc, is that that bureaucracy factors out the energy involved in obtaining those life sustaining societal structures. Certainly make the bureaucracy more efficient, but entirely eliminating it makes the society as a whole less efficient.
See here for a visualization of the world's money supply: http://money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-an...
Market capitalisations != money.
The drug lobbyists, for example, absolutely love Medicare. They prefer the government with its friendly politicians and bureaucrats "negotiate" the prices of drugs that the government subsidizes, rather than allow price discovery in a market system.
I also think that we can only get rid of all other programs as long as GBI also includes medicare for all. Medical is a basic need as much as a roof.
The safety net programs that UBI would replace don't require that (some require citizenship, others require only satisfactory immigration status, none have anything like an 18 year citizenship requirement.)
More generally, would you please only post civil and substantive comments here? You've done that a fair bit but you've also done the opposite some. In order for HN to have a hope of being slightly better than the nasty internet median, we all need to pitch in with the effort.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14842404 and marked it off-topic.
That feels like one of the biggest problems with it.
It isn't just "luck" that got him there. It was education, connections, hard work and many other things. I have alimony in about the amount that many people suggest for UBI. Yes, that has been a good thing, but it hasn't gotten me insider connections, magically taught me to code or solved many other problems that need to be solved in order for me to become rich.
There is just so much more going on that people like Mark Zuckerberg apparently fail to see. It isn't just the money they had that helped them leapfrog to the position they currently occupy. Simply throwing money at this problem will not make poor people the next multi-billionaires.
There are a lot of questions about people who will fall through the cracks. I raise those questions all the time.
However, I support a UBI, not because it is a silver bullet to everything but because it is a step forward. It is a real shame that we can't provide nutrition for everyone in these United States (much less the whole world). There is no reason other than greed why our economy can't feed and house each and every one of us.
I fear the real positive outcomes might take generations to manifest and might get wiped out by one major economic depression.