dd564
Recycles dryer sheets
So your premise is that jobs won't disappear so no need to do anything.
If you're wrong, you'll just have to find away to keep those who are affected from voting.
Universal Income - Freedom Dividends
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So your premise is that jobs won't disappear so no need to do anything.
If you're wrong, you'll just have to find away to keep those who are affected from voting.
dd564
Recycles dryer sheets
I'm really shocked by so many on this forum who feel this way.
I could understand if people were just questioning the timeline, but really shocked to think so many don't believe it's an area of concern.
marko
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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No my premise is that jobs DO disappear and are replaced by other, newer (and many times better) jobs
If I'm wrong I'm not sure why I need to worry about people voting.
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Closet_Gamer
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Interesting and important discussion at the heart of some very basic economic beliefs about how the world works.
Because it is so dramatic, the implications for FIRE are legion...potentially making it easier or creating an economic environment where it is nye on impossible to retire with a great standard of living.
My $0.02:
Automation will be super impactful and result in massive destruction of classes of jobs but the attendant creation of whole new classes of higher value jobs. We've seen this movie before. When I started working there was actually a group of people who's job it was to create fancy charts for exec presentations. The exec explained or drew what they wanted and someone in chart creation team worked on it, passing revs back and forth. Powerpoint nuked those jobs out of existence but now we can afford to do high quality internal video productions with professional designers, etc.
This next turn of the productivity wrench will do the same in many places. When it's over, we will have more people working in more rewarding jobs and a larger economy.
UBI would be the greatest economic mistake possible. It risks the ultimate "tragedy of the commons" where people decide the best way to improve their lives is to elect people who agree to bump the monthly stipend.
I think it would then turn into the greatest mental health crisis in history. There is something very fundamental about having a constructive purpose to your daily life. Most people on this board who seek to remove work from their mix have actually had a purpose every day when they got up. Telling 300M people they don't need to work is unlikely to end well. Buy Pfizer stock and go long.
The intersection of the above is the educational system and our cultural instincts for education. Rather than putting $5T into UBI, let's put $5T into our education system to prepare kids for an automated world and ensure our culture supports it.
DD2 is interested in Nueroscience and programming. Spot on for a post-automation, high intellect, high value job. That's a by-product of being in a good school district, with parents who value education, and an economic foundation that allows her to consider these pursuits for real. Lots of other kids are not in those circumstances.
Raise the bar on the education system, keep solidly upon well regulated capitalist footings, and the rest of this will sort itself out.
Great topic!
Because it is so dramatic, the implications for FIRE are legion...potentially making it easier or creating an economic environment where it is nye on impossible to retire with a great standard of living.
My $0.02:
Automation will be super impactful and result in massive destruction of classes of jobs but the attendant creation of whole new classes of higher value jobs. We've seen this movie before. When I started working there was actually a group of people who's job it was to create fancy charts for exec presentations. The exec explained or drew what they wanted and someone in chart creation team worked on it, passing revs back and forth. Powerpoint nuked those jobs out of existence but now we can afford to do high quality internal video productions with professional designers, etc.
This next turn of the productivity wrench will do the same in many places. When it's over, we will have more people working in more rewarding jobs and a larger economy.
UBI would be the greatest economic mistake possible. It risks the ultimate "tragedy of the commons" where people decide the best way to improve their lives is to elect people who agree to bump the monthly stipend.
I think it would then turn into the greatest mental health crisis in history. There is something very fundamental about having a constructive purpose to your daily life. Most people on this board who seek to remove work from their mix have actually had a purpose every day when they got up. Telling 300M people they don't need to work is unlikely to end well. Buy Pfizer stock and go long.
The intersection of the above is the educational system and our cultural instincts for education. Rather than putting $5T into UBI, let's put $5T into our education system to prepare kids for an automated world and ensure our culture supports it.
DD2 is interested in Nueroscience and programming. Spot on for a post-automation, high intellect, high value job. That's a by-product of being in a good school district, with parents who value education, and an economic foundation that allows her to consider these pursuits for real. Lots of other kids are not in those circumstances.
Raise the bar on the education system, keep solidly upon well regulated capitalist footings, and the rest of this will sort itself out.
Great topic!
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This debate has been going on for a long time - see Schumpeter's Gale - without resolution. It is unlikely we will resolve it here. But still interesting to contemplate.
mickeyd
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
This seems mostly like a wealth redistribution program run by the USA. I do not recall signing up for such a cash give-away. Remind me again why I bought into LBYM?
I imagine free money would result in lots more cat videos, and lots more people watching them. This is said by someone who from time to time has watched cat videos.
stepford
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As is all progressive income tax. I advise you to stop paying immediately.
Chuckanut
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I don't think it is wrong to consider what you have said as a possibility. Perhaps all the very rich folks should visit the Palace of Versailles in France where they can see how the rich and privileged lived while the peasants were struggling to feed their children. A stroll through the palace and grounds will give a person a good feel for why there was a revolution.
Like my old grand-pappy used to say, "Never give your enemies nothing to lose."
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ncbill
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Aren't a lot of early retirees already doing so?
They're withdrawing from tax-advantaged investments (e.g. Roth or 0% federal LTCG taxable accounts) to 'manage' their MAGI for heavily subsidized ACA health coverage pre-Medicare.
Independent
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I'm not disagreeing with the rest of the post, but the $100k looked odd to me. In 2017, the national median wage for full-time, year-round male workers was $55,600 (for females, it was $44,600).
S ee table P-24 here: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-people.html
gwraigty
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Median is the midpoint. That means some make more, others make less.
brucethebroker
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But the same could be said for Dacha's in Russia, right? Or the Hearst castle in CA? Taj Mahal?
I'm not sure that having the rich folks visit these places is the same as an argument for/against guaranteed income.
BTW, I appreciate the comments relating to the problem of giving money to those who can work, but choose not to.
marko
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Yeah. We lived near Versailles and had to make 7 or 8 visits a year to accompany visiting friends and relatives.
I can say that the last thing anyone thought of was the plight of the peasants; more comments were along the lines of "Wow, these people knew how to live" or, more notable for this thread: "Imagine how many people they had to employ to keep this place running!".
An apocryphal story goes that the reason we have modern restaurants today is because the hundred-odd cooks from Versailles found themselves suddenly unemployed and opened their own little places along the streets of Paris.
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flintnational
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Problem solved!
As I understand it, the assumed problem being discussed is that "automation will eliminate the vast majority of jobs". I have a simple solution.
Since the above scenario assumes AI will be clever enough to replace most jobs, we have to assume, as many have, that AI will have no need for us and want to destroy us. Accordingly, in the future, the wealthy will employ displaced workers to defend them against an attack by AI. There will be plenty of jobs. I suspect the wealthy are willing to pay high wages to not be eaten by AI robots.
As I understand it, the assumed problem being discussed is that "automation will eliminate the vast majority of jobs". I have a simple solution.
Since the above scenario assumes AI will be clever enough to replace most jobs, we have to assume, as many have, that AI will have no need for us and want to destroy us. Accordingly, in the future, the wealthy will employ displaced workers to defend them against an attack by AI. There will be plenty of jobs. I suspect the wealthy are willing to pay high wages to not be eaten by AI robots.
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dd564
Recycles dryer sheets
Some interesting responses on here.
Points of disagreement seem to be:
1. Whether a lack of jobs will become an issue. Some believe yes and some believe new jobs will replace those (and possibly better jobs).
2. There seems to be a disagreement if "people in need" should get any government assistance. It appears people on here could fall into a couple different categories.
3. There seems to be disagreement on whether there is an issue of wealth becomes too concentrated among the top 1% or top 10%. I'm guessing most on this board are in the top 10-15% so financially most of us are in a solid spot. I guess my concern being in my 40's is how much joy will having a large amount of money be if 80-90% of the nation wants you gone.
Anyway, I appreciate the civil discussion around this.
Points of disagreement seem to be:
1. Whether a lack of jobs will become an issue. Some believe yes and some believe new jobs will replace those (and possibly better jobs).
2. There seems to be a disagreement if "people in need" should get any government assistance. It appears people on here could fall into a couple different categories.
- i.) Zero tolerance. There is no need for me to get taxed to help someone else. People are lazy.
- ii.) There are people who need assistance, but our current and future systems get taken advantage of by lazy people who don't want to work.
- iii.) There are people who need assistance and we probably aren't doing it in the best way possible and there might be a better way to prevent this becoming a bigger issue down the road.
3. There seems to be disagreement on whether there is an issue of wealth becomes too concentrated among the top 1% or top 10%. I'm guessing most on this board are in the top 10-15% so financially most of us are in a solid spot. I guess my concern being in my 40's is how much joy will having a large amount of money be if 80-90% of the nation wants you gone.
Anyway, I appreciate the civil discussion around this.
gwraigty
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
As I understand it, the assumed problem being discussed is that "automation will eliminate the vast majority of jobs". I have a simple solution.
Since the above scenario assumes AI will be clever enough to replace most jobs, we have to assume, as many have, that AI will have no need for us and want to destroy us. Accordingly, in the future, the wealthy will employ displaced workers to defend them against an attack by AI. There will be plenty of jobs. I suspect the wealthy are willing to pay high wages to not be eaten by AI robots.
flintnational
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If we wanted to design a system to magnify income inequality, it seems UBI would be the perfect system. For many, it would be a disincentive for work, education, advancement, saving and risk taking (all of the items that classically lead to wealth). Yes, others would use their UBI to benefit from these same issues. This would increase the wealth gap not reduce it and we would increase the numbers in a permanent underclass. "My granddad and dad never got an education. They just got by on UBI and some side jobs. And that's good enough for me".
dd564
Recycles dryer sheets
1. How would it disincentivize work when you get it whether you work or not?
2. I feel that having a safety net would actually promote risk taking of starting business. Healthcare costs and fear of losing everything are my two biggest factors for not starting new business. Knowing that I had a safety net (and if I had health coverage for my family) I'd be much more willing to ignite my next venture.
3. How does this increase the wealth gap if people at the bottom are getting a safety-net to start entrepreneurship?
The Rich will say: "HEY! We need something like this!" And when made aware of the revolution and peasants etc will say: " But that won't happen to us."
Data 1, Conjecture 0
Is this thread about the merits/flaws of UBI, or the mechanism alleged to require UBI?
If it's about the mechanism, I'll note the following.
Shocked? Really? Poster after poster has presented data to the effect that despite centuries of increasing automation there have never been so many people employed as there are today.
So far the contrary view, that further automation will rapidly and catastrophically reverse this correlation, is based on conjecture. Surely the burden of proof rests with this camp. I look forward to seeing some clear, accurate, significant and representative data to add to this colorful discussion.
If the thread is really about UBI itself, instead of venturing an opinion, I'll ask a question. "Given the history of governments giving bread and circuses to the population, are there data to indicate that $12k per head will be satisfactory for long?" Please show your work.
Is this thread about the merits/flaws of UBI, or the mechanism alleged to require UBI?
If it's about the mechanism, I'll note the following.
Shocked? Really? Poster after poster has presented data to the effect that despite centuries of increasing automation there have never been so many people employed as there are today.
So far the contrary view, that further automation will rapidly and catastrophically reverse this correlation, is based on conjecture. Surely the burden of proof rests with this camp. I look forward to seeing some clear, accurate, significant and representative data to add to this colorful discussion.
If the thread is really about UBI itself, instead of venturing an opinion, I'll ask a question. "Given the history of governments giving bread and circuses to the population, are there data to indicate that $12k per head will be satisfactory for long?" Please show your work.
1) Yes. The Rich, movie stars et al, already have several lifetimes of money and get paid for nothing. They collect off their property & ownership "rights". A Government program. An still they work, and brag about it, with no financial insensitive (compelled need.) And Some will brag about how "productive" they are. Even more than those who must work in exchange for food and shelter and no government guarantees.
2) Exactly. Life is not about risk or taking risk. It's about eliminating risks. The Risk braggers always use other people's money then declare bankruptcy if it doesn't work out (then usually blame somebody) . When "There's always more where that came from" you ain't takin' any risk. But they want everybody else's life to be a 100% throw of the dice every time and call it freedom. Wouldn't want a safety net. Then you'd get lazy.
flintnational
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For a lighter, more humorous take on this topic, for years I have joked that if it were not for women, men would live in trailers, drink miller light and fish. We would aspire to nothing else. For many, UBI, brings that "dream" much closer.
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For those who may have missed it, we discussed the UBI less than a year ago. The thread covered a lot of this same ground, including alternatives to UBI.
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