Why are reddit and 4chan actually talking politics and economics according to random WTDWTF users
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@boomzilla said:
I think some of them CBA.
I think the percentage of people who genuinely CBA is low enough that funding them to stay out of the way of the rest of us in the job market would end up costing less than trying to weed them out of the welfare system, as well as doing less damage to those who get misclassified as undeserving through no fault of their own.
Possibly true. I do think that current welfare incentives in the US are less of a problem than other things the government does.
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@boomzilla said:
In theory stuff like food stamps does that too
Food stamps are mostly being used for temporary need (cite).
Exactly.
@boomzilla said:
I'm saying go fix the root problems
I maintain the root problem is the inability to opt-out, which leads to exploitation of employees and leaves very little time or energy for self-improvement.
Eh...we're going to agree to disagree, I think.
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My impression is that it's a much bigger problem in places like the UK, but I have no idea how accurate this is.
I don't know the size of the problem outside of the UK (so can't say if it's bigger or not) but it seems to be a not insignificant portion of the unemployed. It's difficult to get to the bottom of how much of that is media bollocks and how much is genuine though.
There are certainly cases where people are better off financially on benefits than they would be on a minimum wage job, so simply don't get a job for that reason.
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Yeah, in particular I'm thinking of the stories of people who live in council homes and unemployment is counted in generations.
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There are certainly cases where people are better off financially on benefits than they would be on a minimum wage job, so simply don't get a job for that reason.
Isn't that exactly how it should work in a free market economy? The incentives for the jobs that exist aren't sufficient to fill them. Nobody's buying. The seller needs to adjust their pricing -- in this case, offer more money than minimum wage. Instead they try to cut welfare to force the job-seekers' hands.
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But what if it's a minimum wage job? There's no shortage of people to do the job, why should the seller adjust their pricing? The problem there is (IMO) that people get paid too much on benefits once you start to add a few benefits together.
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The incentives for the jobs that exist aren't sufficient to fill them. Nobody's buying. The seller needs to adjust their pricing -- in this case, offer more money than minimum wage. Instead they try to cut welfare to force the job-seekers' hands.
But the jobs perhaps aren't worth that much. So instead of employing someone at a rate that both would accept, the job doesn't get done or they find a way to do it with other resources (e.g., automation). Now, the automation route makes other employees more productive, and that's good for them, but it also puts those other people out of jobs. And their wages might have been more efficient for the owner than the cost of the automation.
You're ignoring that there's an artificial floor here.
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I do think that current welfare incentives in the US are less of a problem than other things the government does.
In my view, it's not the incentives that are problematic; it's the means tests, which amount to unconscionably high marginal income tax rates applied selectively to low-paid workers.
It would be hard to construct a more effective incentive to avoid seeking work than the knowledge that doing so would reduce your already pitifully low income. About the only way I can think of to do that would be to withdraw income support altogether; it's almost completely impossible to get employed if you turn up to the job interview stinking from sleeping rough and haggard from starvation.
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But the jobs perhaps aren't worth that much.
How do you define the worth of a product? You can determine it by what people will pay for it -- if nobody will do the job for that little, the price is artificially "high". Or you can determine it by what the seller cost to make it -- the most an employer can pay before eating into his profits. You're postulating that the latter price is minimum wage. I'd want some hard numbers to prove it, because that doesn't ring true by gut feel.
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In my view, it's not the incentives that are problematic; it's the means tests, which amount to unconscionably high marginal income tax rates applied selectively to low-paid workers.
But that's one of the incentive problems. It's not an easy problem to solve, but it almost certainly involves overhauling the tax codes. Other things have had positive results, like work requirements. I'm not saying that it automatically makes life easy or anything, but that's not really the point.
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Now, the automation route makes other employees more productive, and that's good for them, but it also puts those other people out of jobs
This is only a problem if you're working on the assumption that people should aspire to a paying job. If enough menial tasks are automated that there aren't enough skilled jobs to go around (which is pretty much what I read @flabdablet's "post industrial society" to mean), then you have two choices: create shitjobs to artificially increase supply, or make sure people can live comfortably without having to work.
There are other options like letting them starve, but lets assume a bit more civilization than that.
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How do you define the worth of a product? You can determine it by what people will pay for it -- if nobody will do the job for that little, the price is artificially "high".
This is true, but it's not the problem we're talking about. We're talking about jobs for which people aren't willing to pay so much, but for which there are people willing to do for less.
Or you can determine it by what the seller cost to make it -- the most an employer can pay before eating into his profits. You're postulating that the latter price is minimum wage.
Generally, an employer wants to hire positive margin employees. So they're making more money than they would be without the employee. Doing otherwise is just crazy. I'm not sure what you mean here by "minimum wage." I assume you mean the minimum he's willing to pay to hire someone. Is there a logical case why this shouldn't be generally so?
I'd want some hard numbers to prove it, because that doesn't ring true by gut feel.
I'm not sure what you're asking about here. We know that people are willing to take jobs at current statutory minimum wage jobs. I'm quite certain plenty of people would be willing to do so for less, if only people like kids or spouses or retirees looking to supplement things. And that doesn't even get into immigrants.
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This is only a problem if you're working on the assumption that people should aspire to a paying job.
I think people should aspire to at least supporting themselves by being valuable to society. Is that really crazy to think that people should want to do that?
If enough menial tasks are automated that there aren't enough skilled jobs to go around (which is pretty much what I read @flabdablet's "post industrial society" to mean), then you have two choices: create shitjobs to artificially increase supply, or make sure people can live comfortably without having to work.
I've said before that people who can't or won't acquire valuable skills are a real problem for our increasingly skilled society. I'm not sure what the solution is.
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I'm not sure what you mean here by "minimum wage."
Legal minimum wage. You seem to be saying that increasing pay above this point makes them a negative margin employee automatically, and in fact, if it didn't exist, the wage would probably go lower. I strongly doubt that.
To recap, because we've drifted a bit, the scenario is this: In a society with a UBI, you had suggested that certain currently-minimum-wage jobs would not be filled. You also seem to be suggesting that raising the wages on those jobs would make them negative margin jobs. I am questioning your assumptions here, because I haven't seen numbers that show that this is necessarily true for enough jobs that it would matter.
I think people should aspire to at least supporting themselves by being valuable to society.
Is the only way they can be valuable to society working? Everyone has enough income to consume some level of goods under this scenario. People can create things that don't need to be sold. People can become friends with people who work, thus providing them with valuable social interactions. People can be drafted in times of war. People can have children that grow up to work valuable jobs.
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Legal minimum wage. You seem to be saying that increasing pay above this point makes them a negative margin employee automatically, and in fact, if it didn't exist, the wage would probably go lower. I strongly doubt that.
That's not what I was saying. I'm sure that for some people it would. I'm sure there are others with large margins to spare.
In a society with a UBI, you had suggested that certain currently-minimum-wage jobs would not be filled.
Yes, I think this is true. I'm positive there are people out there who would rather subsist on the UBI than subsist on their minimum wage job.
You also seem to be suggesting that raising the wages on those jobs would make them negative margin jobs.
For some of them, this must be true. There's a point at which any job goes negative, right? Is it crazy to think that filling cokes and sweeping the floor at McDonalds isn't worth much more than minimum wage?
I am questioning your assumptions here, because I haven't seen numbers that show that this is necessarily true for enough jobs that it would matter.
OK, that's fair.
Is the only way they can be valuable to society working?
There may be other currencies than money, but when you want that loaf of bread, the store and the baker and the miller and the farmer are going to ask for money. Basically, we all need people to be productive in order to live and have nice stuff. If you don't want to be productive, what right do you have to take the productivity of others without giving something in exchange? If you did it by yourself instead of having the government do it, it would be theft, and we'd give you a room and feed you after we caught you.
Everyone has enough income to consume some level of goods under this scenario.
And the goods are just magicked into existence?
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Basically, we all need people to be productive in order to live and have nice stuff.
The more and more we automate tasks that used to require workers, the less and less this remains true.
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Basically, we all need people to be productive in order to live and have nice stuff.
This is different than "we need all people to be productive". Obviously with 0% employment, society crumbles. But I am questioning the assumption that we therefore need 100% employment. We'd naturally want to do some verification before plunging into an experiment headlong on a national level, but my hunch is that we'd not see drastically low levels of employment. I'm pretty sure there's a level you can set the UBI at that would encourage enough people to still take minimum-wage jobs to better their life and increase their options that society would not collapse.
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@boomzilla said:
Basically, we all need people to be productive in order to live and have nice stuff.
The more and more we automate tasks that used to require workers, the less and less this remains true.
Yes, if we're willing to live at a lower standard of living. But we keep redefining "nice."
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To put some numbers around it: obviously if you gave everyone 100k/yr, you'd have trouble filling the burger-flipping jobs. If you gave everyone 2k/yr, you might as well not bother. But 15k/yr is basically full-time minimum wage employment, for everyone over 18. Most people don't want to live on 15k/yr, they want to be comfortable. So it would supplement their income, prevent them from starving (in theory), and still encourage them to work. A minimum wage job on top of that raises them to 30k/yr, which is much more comfortable.
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I'm pretty sure there's a level you can set the UBI at that would encourage enough people to still take minimum-wage jobs to better their life and increase their options that society would not collapse.
And I'm pretty sure that the minimum wage that would make a job attractive as a supplement to a UBI is rather lower than the minimum wage that would make one attractive as a replacement for an unemployment benefit; perhaps even to the extent of making a mandated minimum wage generally understood to be undesirable.
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But I am questioning the assumption that we therefore need 100% employment.
OK, but that's not my assumption. For instance, my wife doesn't work at a paid job. Neither did my mom. As you mentioned, they are providing value in other ways. My argument isn't that we'll be transported to the stone age, but that on balance we'll be worse off, even if some people feel better about themselves because they've implemented a UBI.
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but that on balance we'll be worse off,
But how did you come to this conclusion? Because I came to the opposite one, and right now, neither of us has much fact behind us.
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Did I miss anything vital?
Yeah. You missed the fact that you are planning on printing a shitload of currency to cover your little Ponzi scheme, but failed to account for the effects that will have on price.
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But how did you come to this conclusion?
With the reasoning I've been putting in this thread and more like it.
Because I came to the opposite one, and right now, neither of us has much fact behind us.
Life is funny that way.
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With the reasoning I've been putting in this thread and more like it.
Which I'm not following, so I'm asking questions
I'm sensing you're growing tired of this, and I have meetings to run to anyway, so thanks for indulging me :)
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To put some numbers around it: obviously if you gave everyone 100k/yr, you'd have trouble filling the burger-flipping jobs. If you gave everyone 2k/yr, you might as well not bother. But 15k/yr is basically full-time minimum wage employment, for everyone over 18. Most people don't want to live on 15k/yr, they want to be comfortable. So it would supplement their income, prevent them from starving (in theory), and still encourage them to work. A minimum wage job on top of that raises them to 30k/yr, which is much more comfortable.
Give people $100K/year, give people $15K/year, give them eleventy billion dollars a year...it doesn't matter. In very short order, those numbers become the new poverty level. This magic money has to come from somewhere, and where it comes from will want it back.
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on balance we'll be worse off
I would expect that on balance the 1% would be worse off, but that this would cause none of them significant suffering.
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I would expect that on balance the 1% would be worse off, but that this would cause none of them significant suffering.
Everyone will be worse off. You simply cannot tax the rich enough to pay for this program. I know you want to be Robin Hood, but that was a fairy tale. You will be more like a counterfeiter, who just prints money and does not think of the consequences.
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Which I'm not following, so I'm asking questions
I'll say this: several of your arguments reminded me of one of the ways Nancy Pelosi tried to sell Obamacare. That people could go be an artist or whatever and not have to worry about their job because they'd have healthcare (obviously crap, because you still have to pay for the insurance, and then stuff like deductibles, etc, but that's really beside the point).
Not everyone wants to be in the "creative class" or whatever. Their passion is sitting at home watching the game while drinking beer (or similar). If left to their own devices, they aren't going to go out and do something that other people would be interested in paying money for.
I would expect that on balance the 1% would be worse off, but that this would cause none of them significant suffering.
Yes, but so what? Going back to an earlier point, why does it bother you so much that someone is well off?
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Everyone will be worse off. You simply cannot tax the rich enough to pay for this program. I know you want to be Robin Hood, but that was a fairy tale. You will be more like a counterfeiter, who just prints money and does not think of the consequences.
I think this is the sort of idea like perpetual motion that you just cannot make go away.
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I think this is the sort of idea like perpetual motion that you just cannot make go away.
The more apt analogy would be those who think that Joule Thiefs are "free energy".
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you are planning on printing a shitload of currency
Printing a shitload of currency is one option, sure. However, it seems to me that funding a UBI by printing money would require the creation of rather less new currency than doing essentially the same thing in order to prop up the essentially non-productive, rent-seeking financial services sector via QE.
The question of how to fund a UBI is of course separate from the question of whether such a thing is actually a desirable policy goal.
to cover your little Ponzi scheme
Ultimately the entire economy is arguably a Ponzi scheme, so I don't see your rhetorical use of that term as a compelling counter-argument.
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why does it bother you so much that someone is well off?
It doesn't bother me at all. It bothers me that poverty traps exist. If the price of eliminating poverty traps is borne mostly by those to whom a billion here or there makes no real difference to the quality of their lives, that doesn't bother me either; why should it bother you?
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The question of how to fund a UBI is of course separate from the question of whether such a thing is actually a desirable policy goal.
They are inextricably tied together. You are talking about applying magic to economics, both in the "sleight of hand" sense and a supernatural force. You cannot get around the fact that this money has to come from somewhere, and where it comes from will have an effect on the economy as a whole and will undo all that you propose to do. You cannot separate these things.
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this money has to come from somewhere
true
where it comes from will have an effect on the economy
True
and will undo all that you propose to do
Doesn't necessarily follow
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I think this is the sort of idea like perpetual motion that you just cannot make go away.
Again, I see the UBI as bearing more resemblance to a turbojet engine than to a mythical over-unity generator. Yes, you have to divert quite a lot of energy to run the compressor. But you get much more useful work out of the thing by doing that than you would by simply flaring off the fuel.
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why does it bother you so much that someone is well off?
I am reminded of this quote.
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Correct for proper nouns. Like Blackberrys.
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It doesn't bother me at all.
And yet you keep bringing it up in ways that seem to say the opposite.
If the price of eliminating poverty traps is borne mostly by those to whom a billion here or there makes no real difference to the quality of their lives, that doesn't bother me either; why should it bother you?
That's an extraordinary claim. As I said, the way I see this playing out, they won't bear much cost. Probably more than the average per capita, but only in absolute terms. i'm going to be hurting a lot more if it costs me $10,000 than if it costs a 1%er $1,000,000 per year. OTOH, they tend to have the means and the incentive to avoid a lot of that cost, just like they do now, so I'll probably be even more screwed relatively speaking.
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and will undo all that you propose to do
You keep on saying that, but you never show your work. You simply assert that diverting a proportion of the money circulating in the economy toward people with small incomes must necessarily reduce overall economic activity, without providing anything more than handwaving in order to support that assertion.
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Doesn't necessarily follow
Yes it does. Right now, we have a system where, for the most part, people are compensated based upon the value that they give to society. If you spend public money with no benefit given to society, you will cause inflation. To think otherwise is to apply magic to your ideas.
Income levels will adjust, and your UBI will become the new poverty level and nothing will change except the rate of inflation.
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Too many thiefs, not enough lithium
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i'm going to be hurting a lot more if it costs me $10,000
Not if you get $10,000 back in UBI.
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You simply assert that diverting a proportion of the money circulating in the economiy toward people with small incomes must necessarily reduce overall economic activity, without providing anything more than handwaving in order to support that assertion.
I never said that actually. I said that dumping a shitload of money in to an economy without economic drivers behind it will cause inflation. You want me to show my work? Look at Zimbabwe.
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@boomzilla said:
i'm going to be hurting a lot more if it costs me $10,000
Not if you get $10,000 back in UBI.
That's not costing me $10,000.
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Right now, we have a system where, for the most part, people are compensated based upon the value that they give to society.
No, we have a system where, for the most part, people are compensated based upon the prices that the labor market will bear.
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No, we have a system where, for the most part, people are compensated based upon the prices that the labor market will bear.
And those are not basically the same thing?
If you flip burgers for a living, your compensation is absolutely less than the same landed cost of automation that would do your job.
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And those are not basically the same thing?
Paying money is the best metric we have for determining value, though there are other things that are valuable. So...yes and no.
Joule thief - Wikipedia
