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Author Topic: Universal Basic Income: Ideas on how to make it work?  (Read 653 times)
hatshepsut93
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August 15, 2020, 11:32:12 PM
 #41

Different countries will implement it differently. Obviously the poorest countries won't be able to afford UBI, while the more rich countries can afford to give their citizens higher UBI. But at its core, I believe it will be tied to automation caused unemployment - if this statistic will be very high, then UBI will be more likely to be needed and will more likely work. But if automation-caused job loss will be small, and if a lot of new types of jobs will emerge, then UBI could do more harm than good, because the tax burden will be more shifted towards the middle class.

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August 16, 2020, 05:23:56 AM
 #42

I agree that UBI is a must in the future, it will definitely happen one day, but that doesn't mean that it will happen to make sure that people are getting free money to sit at home, people all around the world will still want to make money and live, you are underestimating the greed of humanity.

Amazon owner worths around 200 billion dollars nowadays, he still wants to make even more money, he doesn't go "I have enough money let's give some of it away to help people" or "we made enough profit as a company last year, let's give everyone a 10% raise in salary this year" no he is still trying to screw workers over to make more money.

There will always be people like that, but if we can make sure everyone has steady income even if low, and free healthcare and education, we can still continue to prosper without any trouble.

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August 16, 2020, 09:39:35 AM
 #43

But at its core, I believe it will be tied to automation caused unemployment - if this statistic will be very high, then UBI will be more likely to be needed and will more likely work.

This is definitely one scenario I'm considering. If we're heading towards a situation where capital is very concentrated and the labor market is insufficient to provide jobs to the working and middle classes (if the middle class still exists, that is Tongue) then there needs to be something done to bridge the gap. The entire economy is built on consumer spending. That doesn't really work if consumers have no money to spend.

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August 16, 2020, 01:04:35 PM
 #44

But at its core, I believe it will be tied to automation caused unemployment - if this statistic will be very high, then UBI will be more likely to be needed and will more likely work.

This is definitely one scenario I'm considering. If we're heading towards a situation where capital is very concentrated and the labor market is insufficient to provide jobs to the working and middle classes (if the middle class still exists, that is Tongue) then there needs to be something done to bridge the gap. The entire economy is built on consumer spending. That doesn't really work if consumers have no money to spend.

I agree with your post. But then, handing out money for free would send the wrong message. There needs to be a compromise in between. I have this suggestion: to qualify for the UBI (Universal Basic Income), the recipient should volunteer for community service (let's say 10 hours or 15 hours per month). Those who don't want to do community service, can skip the UBI receipts.
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August 16, 2020, 01:11:57 PM
 #45

I have this suggestion: to qualify for the UBI (Universal Basic Income), the recipient should volunteer for community service (let's say 10 hours or 15 hours per month). Those who don't want to do community service, can skip the UBI receipts.

What about people who can't work? You would need to create all sorts of exceptions and conditions, turning this into yet another welfare/unemployment type of bureaucracy layer. To me the greatest appeal of UBI would be the simplicity and less room for waste or corruption. Everyone gets it without having to prove anything.
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August 16, 2020, 03:05:21 PM
 #46

This is definitely one scenario I'm considering. If we're heading towards a situation where capital is very concentrated and the labor market is insufficient to provide jobs to the working and middle classes (if the middle class still exists, that is Tongue) then there needs to be something done to bridge the gap. The entire economy is built on consumer spending. That doesn't really work if consumers have no money to spend.

It all boils down to how many jobs will be lost and how many new will emerge. There's so many different calculations and it all heavily varies from country to country, with some expected to lose 10% of its jobs while other might lose even 50-70%. But what no one is talking about is the new jobs being created. IT industry is growing, social media and content creation are brand new fields that have potential to create new jobs. There's so many factors at play that it's really hard to make good predictions about the future in this case, so it's probably better to not make any hasty decisions like adopting UBI today.

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August 16, 2020, 08:41:41 PM
 #47

I feel like if the world can reach to a place where automation could help with crops and manufacturing to a level where all of humanities needs could be met with just robots (or basically automation as it is called) we could not only do UBI but we could also have a system where government gives you free housing somewhere where there is a ton of free land, and also food so you can stay alive and not starve.

Now you might say "why should people get free stuff" which is a weird and awful thing to say, but the real answer that you should be hearing is ; because those will be free as well, nothing will be spent on it so nothing will be earned on it, free to make free cost and that is why it is free. But reaching that level of automation would probably take decades and decades.
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August 16, 2020, 11:33:17 PM
Merited by Cnut237 (1), daneal stev (1)
 #48

A lot of good replies here, so let's list them all in one place. We got:

The major challenge to this is the wealth of a particular nation, how buoyant their economy is and how low their level of unemployment is. UBI is a good initiative, but in a struggling country/third word country it'll be impossible to achieve, a country still struggling with an impoverished economy and writhing debts cannot undertake this program.

A country with a high unemployment rate will also struggle, you'll expect the nation to channel much of their funds into creating more jobs for it's citizens, as that will give them a stable income, rather than paying them a little amount that can hardly meet their needs. There is also the problem of creating inflation by printing more money to fulfil this program, that being said, I'd only expect this sort of program to be possible in first world countries.

Now the question to ask is what percentage of countries have a high unemployment rate, and it would be better if we split the data by continent. Your first point I highlighted in blue eliminates almost all African, South American and Southeast Asian countries, except for ones like Singapore but countries like that are outliers so I'll omit them from my study. If such a program were to be made for these impoverished countries it would have very different policies for a program to target unemployment, we now have UBI objective of increasing standard of living vs. objective of simulating the economy due to less cash flows to unemployed people (but then, it's not a UBI program anymore, it's a stimulus program).

Good thing is we already have such data, look at https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/unemployment-by-country, What's interesting about this data is for many of the developed countries with unemployment rates <5%, they still have thousands of people unemployed so a government that wants to increase cash flow around the economy would make a stimulus program targeting these people.

UBI appears to be suitable only for countries with extremely high unemployment rates >30% as it can be safely assumed that without work, most of the population lives in poverty.

To be sustainable, it would need to be a function of ongoing tax revenue, so it would differ from country to country based on economic output and tax structure.

Then it means that different taxes have to be made to make this work. For UBI to work there has to be a source of revenue to fund it and taxes appear to be the only sustainable means to make it happen. But having said that, the last thing working-class people want is more taxes to pay and depending on what is being taxed, it can even cause mass outrage, like Lebanon attempting to tax WhatsApp messages a year or so ago. Which brings us to the next point:

The strength of UBI is there is no means test or work requirement, so it doesn't suffer from the bureaucratic mess of red tape, government waste, human error, and months of waiting time we see with unemployment and other benefits.

I would view it less as a welfare payment for poor people, and more as a tax on large corporations who are making living wages increasingly unattainable, payable directly to all citizens or residents.

Yes, I think that's how it has to work. An equal amount for everyone. Obviously this means that progressive income tax brackets will need to be tweaked accordingly. In part, for example, the removal of an initial tax free allowance; you earn $1 a year, you would be taxed on that $1. And UBI is only partially self-funding; we would probably need a wealth tax or some other taxation of the ultra-rich to make it viable.

Since we now have the entire population requesting a fixed budget this comes as an additional burden to taxpayers who now have to pay more taxes to finance this, and in return only get a percentage of their tax back as UBI (a fixed rate, upper class people also get this rate so it's not very useful to them). The higher tax bracket you're in the more you lose. But this strategy hurts the working class people the most because they don't have large savings and whatever savings they do have is now being slowly eaten up by the UBI program, potentially even lowering their standard of living as they're forced to sell stuff to pay the tax. So while it's good for the poor it looks like it's going to hurt the group of people just above them.

Which leads us to a problem: I just mentioned money is also going to people who have no use for it. So with UBI we are now giving money to people who don't need it, and it's putting the workers, a portion of the people who are employed at a net loss. So it makes me think UBI only works for poor countries with few rich people.

Also for those countries that can't afford the budget needed for UBI they can set up some kind of welfare system instead.

What it also does, is to grant bargaining power to prospective employees. In a country with high unemployment and people desperate for work, the employers can pay a pittance, and someone will still take the job, even if they know they are being exploited. UBI gives prospective employees the option to refuse a job if the conditions are exploitative.

I should mention though, that UBI is merely a weapon to combat exploitative jobs -  it doesn't get rid of the exploitative jobs themselves. As I said a few times before, the companies responsible for allowing these conditions to fester have the option to invest in better conditions or ways to automate the job if it's too dangerous but they choose not to. People can always take advantage of this benefit of UBI and not take an exploitative job, but this is not going to hurt production rates of those companies.

Programs like UBI have existed for decades (if not centuries) and been commented upon by famous economists like Milton Friedman.
~
The second part of the quote describes how increasingly taxing work to subsidize non work is the opposite of everything he described to fix unemployment

Read the 2nd half of the quotation above, carefully.

Quote
"We make it costly for employers to employ people; we subsidize people not to work. We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non work."

Here Milton Friedman criticizes programs like UBI. What "makes it costly for employers to employ people"? UBI does exactly that through tax hikes on businesses and workers utilized to fund UBI. What increasingly taxes work, to subsidize non work? UBI does. Even if Milton Friedman doesn't mention UBI by name, we can clearly see he would be against the program.

I'm no economist but perhaps taxing non-work to subside work is a good program for low unemployment rate countries (not the high unemployment rate countries I wrote about above). But this hits the working-class taxing problem above, putting taxes on them while they continue to look for work. The logical solution to this problem is to create more jobs in those areas but I'm not at this time sure how that would be done.

This still wouldn't be effective if said UBI doesn't lift people out of poverty though. If people only have just enough to put food on the table and not much else, they're still going to need work, and all the power will remain with employers all the same. That's why I think it has to be enough to lift people above the poverty line.

You could maybe get away with a smaller amount -- I mean, something has to be better than nothing, right, especially for the poorest of the poor. It would at least solve the issue of hunger, but the issues you outlined, not as much. If the problem is companies not hiring to protect their bottom line, then it might be easier to address that with legislation over actually implementing UBI. They're shit out of luck either way anyway; you either cripple them with massive taxes to fund UBI, or you force them to spend more on labor.

And to further complicate the minimum amount required, different regions of a country have different standards of living, so obeying the fixed amount rule we set above, it's going to be enough for some regions, and maybe even more than enough, but severely lacking for higher standard of living regions. We can't resolve this and keep a fixed payment amount at the same time.

American companies are paying much lower corporate taxes today thanks to the Trump tax cuts, yet the obvious trajectory is still slashing benefits across the board for workers. More part-time workers, more gig workers, more ICs, while wages haven't been increasing once you account for inflation. And this was true long before the pandemic; COVID-19 is just accelerating the trend.

And as long as it continues this way, no social welfare program (forget about UBI at this point) will be able to secure enough funding to give specifically workers a wage buffer for their taxes, let alone the unemployed.

1) Do you agree that if nothing is done, then inequality will worsen and jobs will become increasingly scarce, and that this is a problem that will need fixing?
2) If so, what options other than UBI might be viable?

I am genuinely interested in answers and different opinions. I'm in favour of UBI largely because I think a solution is needed, and I can't think of anything that might be better.

To be honest I'm starting to think we can implement better social welfare programs than UBI, I suggest two different programs for the unemployed and the workers in low tax brackets respectively. The workers program will pay only as much to cover basic benefits. The unemployed program will pay much more money but say half as much as an average job's salary. These amounts are then adjusted for each region or state depending on their standard of living.

I don't know if such programs are being tried now but I think it's better than getting only a few government benefits and then suddenly losing them by policy change.

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August 17, 2020, 08:22:41 AM
 #49

Since we now have the entire population requesting a fixed budget this comes as an additional burden to taxpayers who now have to pay more taxes to finance this, and in return only get a percentage of their tax back as UBI (a fixed rate, upper class people also get this rate so it's not very useful to them). The higher tax bracket you're in the more you lose. But this strategy hurts the working class people the most
The crucial point is that they can get more than 100% back, because people on higher salaries are taxed more. For example, someone on a reasonable but below average salary might pay an additional $7k tax, but get a UBI payment of $10k, making an overall gain of $3k. Working class people would gain, not lose.
The expectation surely would be that if you are a below-average earner you'd gain, average you'd notice no change, above average you'd lose. Ignoring the fact that in a sense everyone gains from having a healthier and more robust economy with fewer social problems.


To be honest I'm starting to think we can implement better social welfare programs than UBI, I suggest two different programs for the unemployed and the workers in low tax brackets respectively. The workers program will pay only as much to cover basic benefits. The unemployed program will pay much more money but say half as much as an average job's salary. These amounts are then adjusted for each region or state depending on their standard of living.
I'm not sure about this approach. Wouldn't it disincentivise work?


To me the greatest appeal of UBI would be the simplicity and less room for waste or corruption. Everyone gets it without having to prove anything.
Yes, this is how it needs to be implemented. It is part-financed by dismantling the complex and expensive-to-maintain welfare system and replacing it with something much, much simpler.
I will come back on your other point about the automation question later today, if I get the chance.






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August 17, 2020, 10:02:31 AM
Last edit: August 17, 2020, 10:27:17 AM by Hydrogen
 #50


The Social Security fund isn't intended to be an investment vehicle. It exists to pay monthly installments for retired and disabled people.

Are you saying the fund should be used to inflate the stock market, and that fixed income Social Security recipients should be exposed to those market risks? That would be better? If the market crashes, so does their monthly stipend.

What are those worse problems? Walk me through it, and give me more than rhetoric.

Do you see no problem with the current system, where most industries have been completely consolidated by a few giant companies, and where worker benefits (including employer-funded 401Ks) are disappearing and wages are stagnant? Is this an optimal trajectory for the economy?


This is social security

  • Taxes are collected to fund SS
  • "Surplus" SS tax revenues are diverted towards the pockets of the rich, war in the middle east, feminist marches, transgender beauty pageants and other dubious special interest causes of the rich and powerful
  • After decades upon decades of diverting "surplus" revenues, to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich, the program is catastrophically underfunded
  • The media says the problem with social security is old people are living too long, there isn't enough money being collected, taxes must be raised higher(essentially identical to what europe says about their failing universal healthcare)

UBI would undoubtedly be the same as the public has not learned the necessary lessons, or researched the minimum amount of information to prevent history from repeating.


I have two questions for those who have posted in this thread, but who are opposed to (at least trying) UBI.

1) Inequality is high, and is worsening. There are more people than there are jobs. But the biggest problem is the near future, with ever-increasing automation. Many skilled jobs will be at risk of automation as AI develops.

2) If so, what options other than UBI might be viable?

I am genuinely interested in answers and different opinions. I'm in favour of UBI largely because I think a solution is needed, and I can't think of anything that might be better.


...

  • UBI is funded by tax hikes on workers and employers
  • Said UBI tax hikes cripple the ability of small businesses and employers to create jobs and employ workers
  • This leads to more tax hikes being necessary to fund programs like UBI, which then go on to kill more jobs and make it harder for small businesses to create jobs or employ workers

How did Donald Trump achieve record low unemployment and record high job creation BTW?

Was it through tax hikes and massive spending programs like UBI. Or simple and affordable tax cuts.
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August 17, 2020, 10:17:11 AM
 #51

jobs will become increasingly scarce

I disagree with that. Massive technological advances over the last couple of hundred years didn't result in fewer jobs, quite the opposite. Nor will the "AI" happen overnight. Automation has been going on for decades and it's certainly something to keep in mind for someone choosing a career path.

Certainly if you disagree on this point, then UBI becomes much less of a pressing issue. I agree that automation will take time, but I don't think we can use history as a guide in this instance. Historic automation has largely been about replacing human physical skills with something better. This led to a increase in jobs that use human cognitive skills. The difference this time is that it is human cognitive skills that are being automated. I'm not saying AI will wipe out all jobs, merely that once human physical and cognitive skills are automated, it is difficult to envisage where new opportunities may arise.

Numerous recent studies have concluded that there will be huge job losses:
Quote
A number of studies have predicted that automation will take a large proportion of jobs in the future, but estimates of the level of unemployment this will cause vary. Research by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of the Oxford Martin School showed that employees engaged in "tasks following well-defined procedures that can easily be performed by sophisticated algorithms" are at risk of displacement. The study, published in 2013, shows that automation can affect both skilled and unskilled work and both high and low-paying occupations; however, low-paid physical occupations are most at risk. It estimated that 47% of US jobs were at high risk of automation.[19] In 2014, the economic think tank Bruegel released a study, based on the Frey and Osborne approach, claiming that across the European Union's 28 member states, 54% of jobs were at risk of automation. The countries where jobs were least vulnerable to automation were Sweden, with 46.69% of jobs vulnerable, the UK at 47.17%, the Netherlands at 49.50%, and France and Denmark, both at 49.54%. The countries where jobs were found to be most vulnerable were Romania at 61.93%, Portugal at 58.94%, Croatia at 57.9%, and Bulgaria at 56.56%.[109][110] A 2015 report by the Taub Center found that 41% of jobs in Israel were at risk of being automated within the next two decades.[111] In January 2016, a joint study by the Oxford Martin School and Citibank, based on previous studies on automation and data from the World Bank, found that the risk of automation in developing countries was much higher than in developed countries. It found that 77% of jobs in China, 69% of jobs in India, 85% of jobs in Ethiopia, and 55% of jobs in Uzbekistan were at risk of automation.[112] The World Bank similarly employed the methodology of Frey and Osborne. A 2016 study by the International Labour Organization found 74% of salaried electrical & electronics industry positions in Thailand, 75% of salaried electrical & electronics industry positions in Vietnam, 63% of salaried electrical & electronics industry positions in Indonesia, and 81% of salaried electrical & electronics industry positions in the Philippines were at high risk of automation.[113] A 2016 United Nations report stated that 75% of jobs in the developing world were at risk of automation, and predicted that more jobs might be lost when corporations stop outsourcing to developing countries after automation in industrialized countries makes it less lucrative to outsource to countries with lower labor costs.[114]

The Council of Economic Advisers, a US government agency tasked with providing economic research for the White House, in the 2016 Economic Report of the President, used the data from the Frey and Osborne study to estimate that 83% of jobs with an hourly wage below $20, 31% of jobs with an hourly wage between $20 and $40, and 4% of jobs with an hourly wage above $40 were at risk of automation.[115] A 2016 study by Ryerson University found that 42% of jobs in Canada were at risk of automation, dividing them into two categories - "high risk" jobs and "low risk" jobs. High risk jobs were mainly lower-income jobs that required lower education levels than average. Low risk jobs were on average more skilled positions. The report found a 70% chance that high risk jobs and a 30% chance that low risk jobs would be affected by automation in the next 10–20 years.[116] A 2017 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that up to 38% of jobs in the US, 35% of jobs in Germany, 30% of jobs in the UK, and 21% of jobs in Japan were at high risk of being automated by the early 2030s.[117] A 2017 study by Ball State University found about half of American jobs were at risk of automation, many of them low-income jobs.[118] A September 2017 report by McKinsey & Company found that as of 2015, 478 billion out of 749 billion working hours per year dedicated to manufacturing, or $2.7 trillion out of $5.1 trillion in labor, were already automatable. In low-skill areas, 82% of labor in apparel goods, 80% of agriculture processing, 76% of food manufacturing, and 60% of beverage manufacturing were subject to automation. In mid-skill areas, 72% of basic materials production and 70% of furniture manufacturing was automatable. In high-skill areas, 52% of aerospace and defense labor and 50% of advanced electronics labor could be automated.[119] In October 2017, a survey of information technology decision makers in the US and UK found that a majority believed that most business processes could be automated by 2022. On average, they said that 59% of business processes were subject to automation.[120] A November 2017 report by the McKinsey Global Institute that analyzed around 800 occupations in 46 countries estimated that between 400 million and 800 million jobs could be lost due to robotic automation by 2030. It estimated that jobs were more at risk in developed countries than developing countries due to a greater availability of capital to invest in automation.[121] Job losses and downward mobility blamed on automation has been cited as one of many factors in the resurgence of nationalist and protectionist politics in the US, UK and France, among other countries.[122][123][124][125][126]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#Studies

Whilst this is not a universal consensus, there is still a lot of agreement.

A PWC study (2018) breaks this into 3 (overlapping) waves:
Quote
1. Algorithm wave: focused on automation of simple computational tasks and analysis of structured data
in areas like finance, information and communications – this is already well underway.
2. Augmentation wave: focused on automation of repeatable tasks such as filling in forms, communicating
and exchanging information through dynamic technological support, and statistical analysis of
unstructured data in semi-controlled environments such as aerial drones and robots in warehouses – this is
also underway, but is likely to come to full maturity in the 2020s.
3. Autonomy wave: focused on automation of physical labour and manual dexterity, and problem solving in
dynamic real-world situations that require responsive actions, such as in manufacturing and transport (e.g.
driverless vehicles) – these technologies are under development already, but may only come to full maturity
on an economy-wide scale in the 2030s.
https://www.pwc.co.uk/economic-services/assets/international-impact-of-automation-feb-2018.pdf









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August 17, 2020, 11:00:31 AM
Last edit: August 17, 2020, 11:46:52 AM by suchmoon
 #52

I'm not saying AI will wipe out all jobs, merely that once human physical and cognitive skills are automated, it is difficult to envisage where new opportunities may arise.

Anybody who's seen a plumber at work will have serious doubts about that statement. Even if AI could possibly get better than the usual "automated customer service" BS that answers a yes/no question correctly 55% of the time, it could still arguably be worth hiring a human for anything that involves any sort of inventiveness or creativity or critical thinking, particularly combined with physical work.

AI-driven robots won't be cheap. I'd imagine them being very very expensive for the most part except the ones that don't need need to do much more than do a google search... basically the "virtual" stuff, the vestiges of last century when all that was done over the phone and via mail - that perhaps can be automated to some degree. Anything beyond it faces massive hurdles that will take decades of painful slow progress.

Then there is the whole new industry to maintain the army of robots and massive data centers.

Obviously I can't argue with the studies that someone spent $millions and years doing... all I have to go on is my personal experience, which is not directly related to AI but revolves around many of the same technologies. All I can say - let's bookmark this thread and check back in 2030 how much automation we'll have by then.
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August 17, 2020, 11:34:37 AM
 #53

I have this suggestion: to qualify for the UBI (Universal Basic Income), the recipient should volunteer for community service (let's say 10 hours or 15 hours per month). Those who don't want to do community service, can skip the UBI receipts.

What about people who can't work? You would need to create all sorts of exceptions and conditions, turning this into yet another welfare/unemployment type of bureaucracy layer. To me the greatest appeal of UBI would be the simplicity and less room for waste or corruption. Everyone gets it without having to prove anything.

There are already welfare schemes in place for those who can't work. They probably don't need the UBI. I am not suggesting UBI to replace the existing welfare schemes. UBI is meant for those people who are fed up with low paying jobs, and those who are unable to find a decent job. These people may benefit from passive income in the form of UBI, and in return they can do community service in their spare time.
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August 17, 2020, 12:10:16 PM
 #54

AI-driven robots won't be cheap [...] massive hurdles that will take decades of painful slow progress. [...] Then there is the whole new industry to maintain the army of robots and massive data centers. [...] all I have to go on is my personal experience, which is not directly related to AI but revolves around many of the same technologies.

Yes, agreed. This is all speculative. There will doubtless be some automation and some new job creation, but we are just estimating the extent. I will also concede that speculation as to what sort of technologies we will have 5 or 10 years down the line has a tendency to be wildly optimistic.
Similarly to yours, my personal experience also relates to these technologies. I have seen a lot of job losses through automation of lower-level technical roles, and the process is accelerating. This has been partially offset by the creation of new higher-level roles, but a considerably smaller number. Appreciate this is anecdotal, but I believe it to be representative of the underlying trend.

Yes, let's (get our robots to) check back in 10 years' time.






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August 17, 2020, 12:21:18 PM
 #55

Cnut237 and I were having a conversation about wealth distribution in this thread, where he mentions UBI. So rather than derailing that thread I'm going to open it here.

In case you don't know what UBI means it is a program for all citizens of a country, rich and poor, to be paid a fixed amount by their government and the goal of this program is to make sure everyone can pay for what they need. There are obviously many challenges to address before this works out, the most basic ones are:

- How much to pay? Since they're paying millions of people, they need to ensure they have enough money set aside for that, or UBI payments will deplete the government's money.
- What time interval to pay in - If this is not controlled we get the same consequence as paying too much at a time.
- Should people be filtered out based on financial status (EDIT: and employment status as well)? Presumably finance ministries of governments have records of every citizen's earnings (as in profit not balance), and a UBI proposal needs to be crafted meticulously to be very precise in the criteria for organizing everyone into (only a few) financial wellness categories, a vague set of requirements can be challenged by parliaments and get the proposal blocked.
- Corruption: Some of the budget can be stolen and laundered by people in charge of safekeeping it. Look at 1MDB for example, $700million was stolen from them with the help of the prime minister.

Let's assume people will be filtered by status, since giving everyone a fixed amount while keeping withing the budget risks not giving the most needy people enough money, the main hurdle faced here is parliamentary consensus of how to classify everyone in different categories so they can set different incomes for each group. And that's complicated because government budgets decrease and sometimes increase so you have politicians arguing that the income should be raised or lowered accordingly and this just entangles entire proposals.

We basically have nobody in power agreeing with each other on how much money to pay each person.


Unfortunately this would never work for underdeveloped and developing countries since they are fighting the economic war since long and they cannot pay each and every citizen because these institutions have to first handle the overflowi population of these countries and then again , this would need them to print more money , which would actually cause their economic situation to decline.

Therefore I do think this method will only be good for the developed nations since they don't have much to worry about in this case , but due to COVID-19 the Government of US for example has given stimulus bills for the rich and the poor alike , but mostly it was for the registered people , which also included the families which did not need the money , we need to filter out the system and then agree on the wealth distribution which is a really hard thing to actually get going.

We cannot get anyone agreeing on this ever since it's a matter of money and Government is always blinded , one cannot professionally decide how much to give each family until and unless they are personally involved with them , Because there are things that are not written on the paper and no one is that transparent , now that won't happen ever therefore the system might fail until and unless they decide to do something like:

-Taxes be paid by only richest

-Poor people living on streets should be taken to shelters , registered and then Government should get them some job because those people are most of the time forgotten about

-Small families given incentives

-Talking to the people about population control

-Education made free for all

There are a lot of things that we have to do before agreeing to do something like this , it is a complicated matter and therefore it will first require educated citizens with a small family, for it to be working well.


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mu_enrico
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August 17, 2020, 04:54:25 PM
Merited by Cnut237 (1)
 #56

@Cnut237 human tends to be overly optimistic about technological development. Remember about flying cars and stuff when we watch old sci-fi movies? This argument about the robot and AI exist decades ago, remember Skynet? And yet our current technology not even close to Android Arnold Swzwzwzwzzzz.

Hence, the job loss because of automation will not be that huge because of robots' technological limitations and also expensive in terms of investment and maintenance cost. Even now, in 3rd world countries (and China), it's still cheaper to employ human force in various industries. Furthermore, some services always require human to human contacts, such as in hospitality.


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August 17, 2020, 06:42:31 PM
 #57

@Cnut237 human tends to be overly optimistic about technological development. Remember about flying cars and stuff when we watch old sci-fi movies? This argument about the robot and AI exist decades ago [...] the job loss because of automation will not be that huge because of robots' technological limitations and also expensive in terms of investment and maintenance cost. Even now, in 3rd world countries (and China), it's still cheaper to employ human force in various industries. Furthermore, some services always require human to human contacts, such as in hospitality.
Yes, I made that point myself in the post responding to Suchmoon... agreed, nothing is definite. The point about third world countries is addressed in some of my links above. Many companies have outsourced their labour to countries where work is cheaper... it has been mooted that with rising automation, the outsourcing will go into reverse, hitting countries like China quite hard.
Hospitality, yes, and there are other jobs where human contact will likely always remain. The question though is is this a large or a small proportion of total jobs? It's difficult to envisage millions of new hospitality jobs suddenly opening up.

I am meriting your post because you managed the correct spelling of the Terminator.






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August 17, 2020, 08:02:22 PM
 #58

There is a ton of stuff we have to figure out before we could actually make UBI work. First of all we need to make sure that there is no nepotism in the government branches, there is no money that we paid for going into politicians families or people who bribed them, we need to make sure our tax is used 100% like it was intended and nothing more.

It to be perfectly honest with you is close to impossible because most of the politicians become big politicians because they do bad stuff, if they do not do bad stuff they can't grow that big, not all of them but most are like that. However, if you can manage to get 100% true taxes from every human without anybody avoiding paying taxes, and use 100% of all those taxes for the right causes, UBI is child's play, it would be so simple.
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August 17, 2020, 08:13:05 PM
 #59

The question though is is this a large or a small proportion of total jobs? It's difficult to envisage millions of new hospitality jobs suddenly opening up.

I think 50-70 years ago it was similarly hard to imagine the growth of service industries at the expense of manufacturing and agriculture. I wouldn't bet against the emergence of new ways for people to waste their money.
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August 17, 2020, 09:05:54 PM
Merited by Cnut237 (1)
 #60

This is definitely one scenario I'm considering. If we're heading towards a situation where capital is very concentrated and the labor market is insufficient to provide jobs to the working and middle classes (if the middle class still exists, that is Tongue) then there needs to be something done to bridge the gap. The entire economy is built on consumer spending. That doesn't really work if consumers have no money to spend.

I agree with your post. But then, handing out money for free would send the wrong message.

It's not that simple.

Government regulations have completely monopolized industry. It has made it next to impossible for regular people to launch startups anymore. We are completely dependent on external seed capital, and having connections who can grease the wheels regarding permitting, licensing, etc. This monopoly dynamic hands entire markets to a small number of large companies, who generally treat their workers like shit and gradually jack up prices on all consumers once the market has been cornered.

We are those workers and consumers. We are getting jacked on our wages and overpaying for goods because governments (particularly the US) have created a system where the corporations pay a token price to bleed us all dry and leave us with nothing in savings.

Honestly, society (workers and consumers) deserves compensation for this total perversion of markets. That's what UBI represents to me. Taxing the same corporations who have been handed obscene profits from un-free markets, and paying that tax directly to the population, instead of some typical bureaucratic solution like means tested welfare, unemployment, etc. Those programs not only create massive government waste but they distribute payments extremely unevenly, subsidizing the lives of some while letting others fall through the cracks.

If we're not going to stop subsidizing corporations (not only with literal tax subsidies and loopholes but by handing them monopolies through regulatory barriers to entry), then we need to spread around the subsidies evenly to the actual population.

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