After Jobs Dry Up, What Then?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/world/europe/after-jobs-dry-up-what-then.html?_r=0

by cryptoz • 11 years ago

145 211 11 years ago

nissimk2• 11 years ago

It's interesting that the nyt is covering basic income. I wonder if it would be possible to institute basic income as a policy without significant social unrest. It seems unlikely to me that basic income would be accepted politically unless there was significant action first by disenfranchised workers.

thret• 11 years ago

I wonder if the tipping point might simply be when >50%-80% of people are already on welfare.

neohaven• 11 years ago

Yep. When you can't hold up the "you can't find a job because you're lazy/a slob/stupid/etc." narrative, we'll get these things.

edward• 11 years ago

I was going to point out that UK Green party supports a basic income, but now I find that they have dropped it from their 2015 manifesto.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/green-party/1138380...

mrec• 11 years ago

It's not clear yet that they have dropped it; I think a lot of reporters jumped the gun after some (typically) careless comments.

The Greens' "basic income" is only a partial one, though; most notably it's set at a level that couldn't possibly replace Housing Benefit, and so doesn't avoid the welfare trap.

smountcastle4• 11 years ago

I'm curious why you don't think that a basic income would accepted politically? If it were provided to everyone without regard to their other sources of income it would differ from other approaches like welfare. I realize that the money has to come from somewhere, so perhaps a transition to a consumption tax rather than income tax would work. Of course the basic income would need to be significant enough to offset the increased cost of consumption for basic needs.

Shivetya3• 11 years ago

Sell it to the left as assistance programs, sell it to the right as a tax overhaul, (fair tax/flat etc).

You could cover both sides by consolidating aid programs into one basic income payment and bundling with tax reform where all tax paid is via a consumption tax. So borrow the fair tax idea of a prebate, where the government automatically deposits a set amount weekly/monthly into your account.

The worrisome parts here are is that far too many people are willing to live at near poverty levels as long as the feel comfortable and the effort to exist there requires little on their part. We could end up legislating an entire segment to permanent poverty, paid enough to keep them from rising against those who have all the money

JonFish852• 11 years ago

Once people saw the cost of the program, I think it would cause a great deal of outrage. I've done the back-of-the-envelope math here on HN several times, so I don't really care to do it again, but essentially it would dwarf our current budget (which is already spending beyond income).

The cost is enormous. I believe if you taxed everyone whose net worth is over $1b at a 100% rate, you could pay for this program for just under 2 years.

And if you're talking about "everyone gets the same amount", remember that you have to collect it back, so you have the overhead of giving a person $1 just to collect it back again.

logfromblammo4• 11 years ago

The political sector is largely a client of the upper class and the rich. A basic income scheme takes power and influence directly from them, and shifts resources to the middle class, while essentially pushing the lower class and poor into the middle class by force of law.

Indirectly, business owners are deprived of cheap labor, while barriers to entry are lowered, increasing competition. The market becomes glutted by zero-employee owner-operated lifestyle businesses. DIY culture explodes, and is primarily motivated by a desire for genuine quality at an affordable price. Companies dedicated to supplying small businesses and home businesses, garage-sized production capital, and small quantities of raw materials win big (i.e. Staples, Home Depot) and those who depend on large business customers and factory-sized production capital lose a little.

The latter type of company pays for a lot of the government's pet projects. You simply can't tax small businesses as heavily without destroying them utterly.

NoMoreNicksLeft8• 11 years ago

If it were provided to everyone without regard to their other sources of income it would differ from other approaches like welfare

The trouble with that is that the math becomes impossible.

If everyone gets equal benefit, then there are only two possibilities:

1. It's so small as to be worthless. Your annual basic income check of $6.28 won't be able to buy combo #3 at the drive thru, let alone combo #1.

2. The tax bill is so huge it strangles the economy. There are 300 billion people in the United States, for them to each get even $1000/year, that's $3 trillion. And what's $1000? Most basic income stooges talk more about 5 figure numbers... so we'd need $30 trillion/year.

Where does that come from? It needs to be up front, since people will lose jobs first, and only decades later will 100% automation actually produce immeasurable wealth.

JoeAltmaier17• 11 years ago

We've already (in America) got so many basic support programs, I don't see a problem with accepting Basic Income. There's food stamps, housing assistance (20% of Americans!) and free education already.

{edit: add Basic Income}

flatline• 11 years ago

The problem is at the intersection of welfare and work. You have to be really poor and stay really poor to qualify for most of these social programs, and the programs are designed to be pretty minimal and thereby encourage people to work. At the same time, they disincentivize much of the low-paying work that many people on welfare can obtain, because they will be worse off without the handout. This is what unconditional basic income is supposed to address. It is also the source of concern about jobs going away, that a much larger number of people are going to be swept into government-subsidized poverty, which will put strains on the already burdened welfare system in the US. Where will the money come from?

geebee• 11 years ago

I think the big arguments for basic income are:

1) there is a huge and inefficient bureaucracy involved in administering these various assistance programs

2) the way these programs work (you lose access to them if your income rises above a fairly low threshold), we've essentially created a marginal tax rate of 100% on certain types of low income workers.

3) rapid technological change and increasing automation undermines the moral argument against redistribution of wealth.

It is interesting that libertarians, not generally known for enthusiasm around wealth distribution, appear at least intrigued by basic income.

This is just a quick summary, of course, I'd encourage you to read more about the case for basic income.

nissimk2• 11 years ago

Did you see the divisiveness created by the Affordable care Act? Every democrat voted for it and every republican voted against it. It was forced through and many people complained bitterly about it.

The affordable care act is not even a national healthcare plan.

It was almost impossible for them to get ACA passed when it was basically just adding regulation and bureaucracy to the existing private insurance system. The opposition kept saying socialism and redistribution of wealth. Why do you think "Basic Income" would be "no problem," when it actually is both socialism and redistribution of wealth. Even looking through the comments here on HN, there are a lot of folks who would have a big problem with it.

timepiece3• 11 years ago

Marx was dead right all along.

We should not work for capitalists who plunder the nations wealth with the help of politicians for them to make more money off our efforts.

We should fight for (believe me these leeches won't give up very easily) fair share in aggregate wealth and people should not work for subsistence anymore esp when we have all these resources available on the planet.

chrisbennet• 11 years ago

I think the word you are looking for is "plunder" not "blunder". If it is, you misspelled it in your other post also.

lucozade• 11 years ago

Absolutely. There's overwhelming evidence that when the proletariat rise up it producers worker utopiae and doesn't revert to another capitalist system a few years later. Oh wait...

tosser-002• 11 years ago

You can't have both open borders and guaranteed income. Maintaining open borders seems to be a higher priority for the time being amongst those who would also advocate for a guaranteed income.

dragonwriter5• 11 years ago

You can't have both open borders and guaranteed income.

Sure you can have liberalized immigration and basic income: basic income isn't means/behaviorally-tested, but it still has a target population -- which can well be citizens. If anything, a relatively liberalized immigration policy with unconditional basic income for citizens but not noncitizens minimizes the economic incentive for immigrants without their own strong support (whether from their own assets or family support) to come to the country.

dragonwriter5• 11 years ago

I wonder if it would be possible to institute basic income as a policy without significant social unrest.

Probably. But it depends on what it replaces, how it is funded, and how it is sold.

sktrdie2• 11 years ago

Wouldn't there always be new jobs? I mean, sure, technology has automated lots of things. But that's a good thing. We just need new kinds of jobs - ones that can't be automated. Who knows, perhaps in the future everybody can be an artist. Not sure a universal basic income would work from a mathematical point of view. Giving money to everybody would only increase the price of things.

alandarev• 11 years ago

Alternatively, not giving the money to majority, yet producing enough food for everybody will drive prices to zero.

marksbrown• 11 years ago

CGP Grey covered a few of your points in his video 'humans need not apply'[1]. The main argument against new jobs filling the void as it were, was the prevalence of the kinds of jobs that most people currently perform and the lack of any industry requiring millions of people in the future.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

snowwrestler• 11 years ago

I find these arguments incredibly short-sighted. A typical American in 1850 could not have conceived of most of the jobs that employed a typical American in 1950. And a typical American in 1950 could not have conceived of most of the jobs that people here on HN hold.

The idea that "this time it's different" seems so vain to me; like somehow NOW we're able to reliably predict the future of society, when we've proved terrible at doing that for thousands of years.

What an amazing coincidence it would be if we all just happen to be alive at the time when all the surprises were over in human society!

The founding premise of the market economy is that we can't predict the future, so we set up systems to be flexible in the face of changing technologies and cultures. Is that really all over now?

That feels like an extraordinary claim, so I'd want to see extraordinary proof, and I'm not seeing it. Employment is actually on the upswing in the U.S. right now, and there are hiring shortages in "jobs of the future" type fields like programming, data analysis, genetic analysis, engineering, etc.

Employment will change, and our training and education systems need to change too. But I think it's way early to declare the end of specialization and employment.

facepalm3• 11 years ago

Historically there haven't always been jobs, so why should there be in the future?

A job means you have something to offer that somebody is willing to pay you for. If nobody needs anything from you (or nobody has money), what job can you get?

clavalle3• 11 years ago

Perhaps that definition of job is too narrow.

While there hasn't always been currency trading hands for goods and services on a regular schedule there have always been people creating value for themselves, their family, their community and, ultimately, the world. Trading currency is just a convenient way to trade on that value. I have no doubt that we can figure out a way to continue to create value and reward those involved.

leaveyou• 11 years ago

"Wouldn't there always be new jobs?" No there wouldn't. And even if there were, this article talks about when there will not be.

pachydermic• 11 years ago

Look at all the people making and selling hats for TF2 or gun skins or whatever. Valve already started the idea of creating value from its software users - creating an entire economy. People get the tools and game for free and only have to invest their time to make money. Epic is doing something similar with Unreal Tournament. Making it open source and creating a marketplace to sell your own games/modifications. There are a lot of examples like this.

Who knows how pervasive that kind of system will become. Will it apply to other industries/mediums? Could Reddit or Hacker News find a way to pay individuals for well regarded content? There are some possibilities here.

But I wonder if that kind of system can really support that many people. Most of the content created sucks, right? Then only a really small number would actually be successful. Maybe you'd have to incentivize sorting through content to find the good stuff a la Steam Greenlight (and find a way to pay users for their work).

Anyways, I'm sure people will find something to do. Even if it's just being paid a basic income for nothing in return. I think peoples' standards of living have been improved by technology (nukes and what not notwithstanding). Why expect that trend to stop now? It's just that, from our relatively medieval point of view, it's hard to imagine what that world will look like so we're naturally scared of it. That's also not to suggest that there won't be serious growing pains while we all collectively try to figure this new world out.

datasage• 11 years ago

Its unlikely that would be enough to offset the scale of disruption that will be occurring with automation. With ever creative or content industry we have so far (wether it will be with actors, app stores, youtube celebrities) a similar pattern always emerges.

At the top, you have often less than 1% becoming wildly successful, making hundreds of thousands to millions each year.

Below that you have maybe 5-10% who are able to make a living at it, but will not pull any spectacular numbers.

After that, you have everyone else. These are people who's apps are rarely downloaded, who have less than a few thousand views on any video they put up, or actors who are out of work most of the time. These section may pull in some revenue, but not enough to survive on. At best its a side job, at least until their main job goes away.

At the core of all this, is that we don't have enough time to consume all the media that is produced. We often end up letting other curate the content that we consume. Whether it be media companies or friends and family. But it tends to create self reinforcing cycles, driving more attention to the hits and less to everything else.

Zigurd2• 11 years ago

There is no reason to believe jobs with significant cash wages will always be around. If we eliminated prisons and police we don't need, the TSA, a significant part of our military, and other make-work and counterproductive jobs we would have higher unemployment rate, even after the economy rises from having the unproductive drag lifted. That is, our current employment picture is highly manipulated. The people in jobs that could readily be eliminated only have an illusion of worthwhile work.

JoeAltmaier17• 11 years ago

I'm not convinced arguments about worthwhile are useful. If you're not involved in basic industry, then any job is the same, right? We don't NEED anything but food, housing and ... that's about it.

jchrisa• 11 years ago

It might actually lower prices due to there being an addressable market below the middle class.

panglott6• 11 years ago

Whether there will always be new jobs is impossible to predict. There may be, or not.

Guaranteed basic income doesn't necessarily give money to everybody: only at the lowest levels of income, where people already have the lowest levels of consumption. It seems like the increase of consumption at the low end from a basic income could be easily projected, and I suspect the impact on inflation would not be overwhelming. Of course I also think we should have a slightly higher inflation target (say 3%), as well.

A basic income would definitely need to be paired with supply-side policies to reduce poverty, to reduce housing prices for example.

jnbiche• 11 years ago

Guaranteed basic income doesn't necessarily give money to everybody

As discussed in the article above and as debated in both right- and left-wing political circles, guaranteed basic income does give the basic income to everybody, either in cash benefits or tax credits [1].

Thus, basic income is unconditional. There is no expensive bureaucracy to decide who gets it and who doesn't get it. And there can be no accusations about "those people" receiving basic income, and the accuser not. Everyone gets it.

That's the beauty of the system.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

zanny6• 11 years ago

So I have a counterclaim that exists today - Deviantart.

Why can't everyone be an artist? Because you can only consume so much art. I have a page group that is currently ~45 pages of artists on that website whose galleries I need to review and potentially watch. They total up to around 15k works of art, and that pool just grows, I can never get it under wraps, because it would take me probably a full workweek just to get through half of that.

On that, I'm already following nearly one thousand artists. I get probably 1 - 2 thousand pieces of art every month in my inbox.

A lot of these artists are actually living off their creations. Over time my standards had to rise because there are just so many people drawing. That doesn't even touch the writers on fanfiction.net or the thousands of sites dedicated to hand crafted continuities that are hundreds of thousands of pages long. Nowadays I really only follow people on Deviantart who consistently do beautiful full color ultra high resolution art pieces that would have probably bowled a king over half a milennia ago.

And I'm getting thousands of them a month, for free.

Because a lot of those creators are not living off their creations. They are wasting amazing potential flipping burgers at McDonalds because I don't have the money to fund them all. I've probably spent $100 this year on commissions so far, but I do not have nearly enough income to subsidize the (probably) 800 or so artists I follow who are stuck in bottom feeding jobs to survive.

But that is only bad for the 200 making a living off of it.

You see, the problem with a creative economy (beyond the CGP Grey robots will do it) is that a lot of people are creative, and while very few people are good at it, there are a lot of people. Just on this random website that pales in comparison of scale to premiere web ventures HN talks about all the time (of course most folks on here would love to be as successful as DA) is that you can meet everyones creative needs and desires with significantly fewer than the entirety of the population. Our current economy is satiating our entertainment desires to match whatever amount of money we are socially willing to impart to the business today, and we will only get poorer and less capable to fund entertainers of all forms (artists, writers, animators, comedians, etc) in the future as all our other jobs dry up and we lose all our income.

And then there are all those volunteers.

Today, they live off menial labor jobs. Tomorrow, when the jobs don't exist, they will try to make a living off the creativity when there is nothing left, but it cannot be enough. It is not enough today when wealth inequality is where it is at, it will never be enough tomorrow when it is even more random to find a patron with wealth to fund you - you are basically praying an aristocrat blesses you with prosperity in that world.

But they still give all of it away for free. Fundamentally I'm amazed people even spend money on entertainment at all, because I really do not - I have basically stopped watching film, because I don't see the opportunity cost of moving pictures as being worth it over the millions good of works of art and comics I have not seen yet. Music? There are millions of free tracks that could last me a lifetime on top of the collection I amassed before around 2010 of paid music that would last a lifetime. There are more fantastic free stories told than seconds left in my life to consume them all, and more are made every day.

And this is all in the infancy of the Internet. It has existed as a thing for only about twenty years where creative people could impart entertainment upon us through it. And its adoption grows every year. So the next ten years will not generate 50% more entertainment, it will probably generate magnitudes more, and we already have more than enough for a lifetime.

I mean, look at youtube. 300 hours of video every minute. It only .01% of all youtube content is great, then you are still behind spending this minute reading this sentence than watching that minute of great youtube content.

My point is the cat is out of the bag, and the economics would have never supported the cat in the bag in the first place. Art, music, video, even free (freedom and freeware) games, are all available en masse, at such scale that you cannot ever fathom to consume all we have today. There is no way we can create an economy around creating more of this stuff, because the Internet solves a long run problem that enabled the old world TV and radio industries of yesteryear - seamless persistence. All this data is going to be with us forever, always at our fingertips. No cumbersome recording hardware needed to preserve our entertainment, it is perpetually eternal thanks to the Internet Archive at the least. We can only add more from here on out, but until we achieve immortality we will only have so much any one person can possibly consume. And its not like that person is going to have any money to pay for it, if you have a creative economy, where the status quo is free, and all the other jobs evaporate.

JoeAltmaier17• 11 years ago

I've had a similar thought for years. How much media do we 'need'? A lifetimes' worth? Two? How about we just restart broadcasting from the beginning and repeat it all. It will seem new again, to new generations who weren't exposed the first time around.

It has a chilling effect on the current generations of artists, because we just don't need what they have to offer.

sktrdie2• 11 years ago

Being "artists" was just an example. I'm thinking of everything else that can't be automated (although virtually perhaps in the future everything, even art, will be automated). My point was that we simply need to find new ways of satisfying ourselves - whatever that is.

creshal• 11 years ago

Wouldn't there always be new jobs?

Sure. But will there always be enough jobs for everyone?

raisedbyninjas• 11 years ago

How big is the market for art and other entertainment? We already having "starving artists" with the limited pool of artists that we have now. Even supposing art consumption exploded, people generally don't consume a lot of lower quality, amateur art. Compare the earnings of a musician on the billboard charts to, say, the most popular local band in your city. Similarly, compare the revenue of a major league sports team with a minor league team. Both of these demonstrate that only the elite entertainers have enough success to quit their day job. I don't expect this pattern to change, only for the number of elite to grow slightly.

timepiece3• 11 years ago

We need asset/wealth re-distribution and not fiat currency issued by those Fed wolves.

The worthless paper they issue to help their buddies plunder the nations wealth has to stop and we should look for more alternatives to derive meaning for our lives than working to death just to please those greedy capitalists. Enough is enough!

The recalling of the story of Maria Fernandes death always saddens me that a human being had to sacrifice her life for the capitalists to appropriate her work efforts and give her pennies in return just to keep her alive.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2737115/New-Jersey-w...

vijayr2• 11 years ago

There will always be some jobs even if everything is automated - to maintain the robots, fix them, make new ones etc. But the number of jobs would be much less than it is now. For example, once self driving cars become common, imagine how many people would be out of jobs - millions of cab drivers, truck drivers, people working in parking lots, insurance companies etc. Sure some of these jobs would be replaced by engineers, specialized mechanics, urban planners etc but the number would be far smaller and would require specialized knowledge and skillset. It wouldn't be easy for today's cabbie to get any of those jobs. What happens then?

NoMoreNicksLeft8• 11 years ago

Wouldn't there always be new jobs?

There's no fundamental law of economics that demands there always be new jobs.

There have been in the past, each wave of disruption created new job categories, even new industrial sectors. But that just means there will be new jobs until there aren't new jobs.

Science fiction authors have no trouble imagining scenarios where there are no new jobs for anyone. If that comes to pass, what then? Presumably the same economic forces that creates such a situation will also have allowed some small percentage of property owners to own the automation that makes everything. Depending on the details, this might not even be a Pyrrhic victory... why would they need your money anymore, if they had fleets of yacht-building automated shipyards and robots that kept the wine cellar stocked? If they can manage the transition from "we still need you to buy our products so I can live in luxury" to "the luxuries are produced in my automated factories directly"...

Then quite bluntly, you're fucked.

Who knows, perhaps in the future everybody can be an artist

There is the cliche of the starving artist. Even today. And we live in a world which only supports less than 1% artists because that's the ceiling on that occupation. That is mostly the amount of art that the rich want in their lives.

Specialties rely on the idea that only a few do them. One specialty trades its goods and services for those produced by another.

If we all make art, then I could trade my art for yours. But neither of us can eat art.

cafebeen7• 11 years ago

I think you're assuming that art requires a market for buying and selling. Most people mostly make art because it's fun and personally fulfilling, not so much for rich folks to enjoy.

JoeAltmaier17• 11 years ago

That's dark. How about, if automation is ubiquitous, we ALL have yachts and robots?

drabiega• 11 years ago

Giving money to everybody would only increase the price of things.

Not necessarily, inflation and the price level are more complicated than that. Creating new money in an economy with no idle capital might create 1-to-1 price level increases, but generally a guaranteed income is funded by progressive taxation. You'd expect some prices to go up and others to go down because the beneficiaries will use money differently, but a funded general income should cause no general inflation.

SideburnsOfDoom• 11 years ago

Wouldn't there always be new jobs?

I'll say what I always say when this objection is raised: Is the rule that "new jobs will always arise to replace the ones automated" an iron law of nature, or just something that has been happening for a while and will eventually stop happening?

And if it will eventually stop happening, what would the early stages of it stopping look like? Perhaps an economic recovery that doesn't produce as many jobs as expected?

Further reading: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/03/09/2120134/jobs-automatio...

megaman22• 11 years ago

The way things are going, the floor level of intelligence and skill required to be a productive and comfortable member of the economy (i.e. not stocking shelves at Walmart, tending bar, or doing other minimal-skill drudge work) is rising steadily. Somebody with an 80 IQ is not ever going to be a software engineer, or a doctor or a lawyer. We used to have jobs that allowed these people to at least enjoy a lower-middle class existence, now they are scraping just to survive and stay off the streets.

imgabe• 11 years ago

“The challenges we face are big, but our politics are small,” Mr. Cruddas said. “We have stopped asking ourselves the important question Bobby Kennedy asked. What makes life worthwhile?”

This is the real problem. I can't imagine any current politician giving a speech like the one quoted in the article. Politics today is not about "How do we make our country as good as possible?". Instead politicians only care about "How do I get my party to win and make the other party look bad?"

seanmcdirmid4• 11 years ago

It is our own fault: we no longer vote for idealism. And the other party will just drag you through the mud if you try to run on something like "hope."

Edit: did I say something offensive?

dataker3• 11 years ago

Not really, but pragmatism, rather than idealism, would be a better idea. Most of the time, people believe in ludicrous promises and take the candidate as a just and incorruptible individual.

One would be better off looking at what candidates and their backers truthfully represent.

dragonwriter5• 11 years ago

It is our own fault: we no longer vote for idealism.

We who?

And the other party will just drag you through the mud if you try to run on something like "hope."

A pretty much immutable property of the two-party system in the US has been -- from day one -- that the other side will drag you through the mud for whatever you say. Whether it is idealistic or pragmatic or anything else.

The idea that this is somehow new is, well, historically blind.

philwelch4• 11 years ago

The guy who ran on "hope" was elected President twice, and then continued doing the same things his predecessor did that we "hoped" that he would stop.

mcguire• 11 years ago

I believe that's incorrect, although I cannot find the article that I read recently: One of the oddities of modern America is that one party promotes idealism strongly (or it's antagonistic synonym, ideology, if you like) and many Americans strongly identify themselves (and vote) by idealism. The other party has been more pragmatic, and apparently a significant majority of Americans like the specific policies. A chunk of them just don't vote for their preferred policies.

sz4kerto• 11 years ago

"Politics today is not about ..."

It has never been. Parties or other representatives will represent (or claim to represent) their backers, not everyone. The more important the backers are the more they will influence the politicians. If there are two parties, one represents everyone equally and the other provides you slightly more advantage than to others, then you will (normally) vote for the latter.

You should _always_ look at politics from the game theoretical and/or evolutionary perspective. (Read 'The Dictators' Handbook').

api• 11 years ago

There's certainly a lot of truth in that, but for whatever reason -- game theoretic or otherwise -- I would practically fall out of my chair if I heard a president today say stuff like what's quoted at the top of this article. Even if it was just politics, it's clear to me that the bar for political speech has dropped considerably.

rayiner2• 11 years ago

Rhetoric is tuned to the sensibilities of the time. We live in a much more cynical time with much lower public faith in government: http://www.people-press.org/2014/11/13/public-trust-in-gover... (75% versus about 20-25%). Which is ironic because we had more to be cynical about back then. After all, JFK was a rapist, and his FBI director was trying to get MLK to kill himself.

It's entirely a function of economics. When JFK gave speeches, the U.S. was on the top of a world in which all its competitors had bombed each other to pieces. When Obama gives a speech, it's in a world where U.S. blue collar jobs have fled to China and Mexico. Idealism just rings hollow under those circumstances.

e402• 11 years ago

We live in a much more cynical time with much lower public faith in government

It also just so happens that one of the main parties in the US has been working tirelessly for the last 40 years to make sure that faith in government is lowered. I believe it's their overarching strategy to get people to disconnect from politics, so they can rule the roost. What other reason for their party's popularity, when the party policies are not in the best interest of those voting for it?

kragen• 11 years ago

Bobby Kennedy never had an FBI director. As for "rapist", [citation needed].

philwelch4• 11 years ago

Obama's rhetoric was uniformly and unironically idealistic during the 2008 campaign. I can't pinpoint when it changed, but he really fooled a lot of people into dropping their cynicism.

philwelch4• 11 years ago

It's pretty clear that J. Edgar Hoover wasn't anyone's FBI director other than himself.

madaxe_again• 11 years ago

What makes life worthwhile?

The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.

It's not just a problem with politicians, it's a problem with all of us. We have, en masse, forgotten what actually matters in life.

replicatorblog• 11 years ago

WRONG! Lets let Conan field this one: "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!"

lgieron• 11 years ago

The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.

I'd probably be sick all the time with all that wind.

NoMoreNicksLeft8• 11 years ago

I can't imagine any current politician giving a speech like the one quoted in the article.

You don't have to imagine... if you like, you could listen to them all day. They hire speechwriters who author stirring oration, and not even just during campaign season.

No one bothers to listen. Ignorance? A disdain for becoming informed?

I actually think that it's we all know how hollow their words are. How conditional and revocable their not-really-promises are. How many excuses they have ready when nothing changes.

astazangasta3• 11 years ago

I find it ironic that the New York Times followed this up with "RFK was right, we DO need more jobs." Personally I'm rooting for 'full unemployment'.

Everyone should read Galbraith's "the Affluent Society". Our economy is built on scarcity; we couple productivity to consumption (thus, we need jobs because we need to have money so we can buy things so we have jobs). This is idiotic, especially when we don't have scarcity any more. It's very likely humanity is productive enough to give everyone a high standard of living, but our economics don't permit it. We're too busy redistributing income upwards.

Basic income seems a way out, at first. But a post-scarcity economy should be fundamentally different. This likely means getting rid of some forms of property; this won't be easy.

mason2402• 11 years ago

This is idiotic, especially when we don't have scarcity any more.

We are nowhere near living in a post-scarcity world - a world isn't possible anyway (assuming an earth based society) because there is a finite amount of resources such as land, water, minerals, ect.

PublicEnemy111• 11 years ago

The key to rhetoric isn't that you have to be correct, its that you have to prove that the other person is wrong(or incompetent). Thus, we have the ad hominem attacks that are so prevalent

wallflower• 11 years ago

Marshall Brain's "Manna" is an interesting take on humans becoming more robot-like with the oversight of efficiency and automation software.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

tomp• 11 years ago

I just love this story. It really describes the ideal world for me, and kind-of gives long-term meaning to my projects.

StevePerkins• 11 years ago

That's an interesting piece of writing, but just a quick SPOILER ALERT for anyone clicking the link for the first time: It isn't a story. It's just a device for painting a picture of one person's concept of a techno-utopia.

Libertarians often recommend Ayn Rand novels, because fiction is a useful medium for showcasing their utopian (or dystopian) ideals. However, at least Ayn Rand novels have intricate plots, and more or less fleshed-out characters.

"Manna" does not. The narrator, speaking to us from the near future, describes the endgame of technology advances within the capitalist order we now know. At the outset of the "story", the narrator is destitute in this order. He meets people from an isolated utopia, who have built a different order. A speaker from that group explains this alternative order to the narrator.

The end.

I still think that "Manna" is recommended reading, but I just want to give people proper expectations going into it. I was actually a bit angry the first time I finished it, because it was presented to me as something it wasn't. It is an essay presenting one possible alternative order for human civilization. While interesting in its own right, it isn't a real "story".

rdlecler1• 11 years ago

I like basic income in principle, but I just don't see how it wouldn't (1) discourage people from joining the workforce (2) the prices of goods and services will still adapt to reflect supply and demand unless we can also increase things like housing, access to education, and healthcare.

JoeAltmaier17• 11 years ago

Those are ok things. If we don't need people in the workforce, let them stay home and watch Survivor. And demand isn't changing, nor supply if we assume automation is the reason there's no jobs. Plenty of houses, plenty of goods, just no reason for people to be involved in making them. It used to be called Utopia; but these days we resist for some reason and call it Unemployment.

karmacondon• 11 years ago

These issues have obviously been addressed by more knowledgeable people, but here is my understanding:

(1) people work out of pride, not necessity. if your only concern was sustenance you could live off of welfare or charity now. even with a basic income, people will still be motivated to work because they want to have nice things

(2) market forces will still apply. if you raise your prices because low income customers now have more money, I'll lower mine. barring cases of outright collusion, you'll see economic growth as opposed to rising prices

Basic Income is still a long way away, but it has been thought through. A practical implementation may or may not succeed, but it won't be because of fundamental flaws in the idea.

zanny6• 11 years ago

A few more points on top of these:

(1) The way jobs are valued would fundamentally change. Rather than higher wage work being the work that fewer people can do, you would also see a rise in cost for jobs that people do not want to do. Today you have your unskilled employees trapped between a rock and a hard place when you offer them a job as a burger flipper - work in wage servitude for us, or starve. The employer has a tremendous amount of sway during negotiations in an economy where employment is effectively mandated to survive.

Ask yourself - "why is McDonalds so cheap?" does it make any sense that having people working in depressing service jobs makes cheap food? Wouldn't the optimization of food be automated delivery, minimizing the people involved? McDonalds can only exist as it does today because all its employees are forced to work for it.

(2) You would also see production shift. Economics goes where the money is - we have too little low income housing and too many McMansions because single family houses are profitable and reliable when sold and low income housing is unreliable and less profitable. If everyone had a minimum of income, there would be a tremendous amount of economic pressure to meet the demands of that crowd that has maximal economic consistency in revenue. So in the short term prices would be a mess, but in the long term the equilibrium state would be that there would be a huge market to provide as much of what the UBI unemployed class wants as possible within their budget for profit.

0x09• 11 years ago

I just don't see how it wouldn't (1) discourage people from joining the workforce

If it's the case that there simply aren't going to be enough jobs for everybody then this would be an intended outcome.

sp332• 11 years ago

If you can buy people out of the workforce for so little money, they probably weren't being very productive anyway.

ufo• 11 years ago

1) Getting a job will let them buy more stuff then just staying at home collecting your gvmt checks.

2) Changing the minimum wage also adjusts the prices of goods and services but in the end it still ends up being a net positive for society. When the minimum wage is increased prices may go up at the same time but usually they don't completely cancel out the wage increase.

bandrami• 11 years ago

Why would we need people "in the workforce"? That's not even a futurist question; why do we need such a high labor participation rate today? Is there some stack of widgets going unmade we desperately need? Are we fighting a two-ocean war I didn't notice?

What won't last very much longer is this antiquated notion that two thirds of the adult population "should" be working. It should probably be more like 25% now, and that will only decrease. (NB: it could be 50% working half time, 75% working one-third time, etc.)

This notion of people having "jobs", and that being a normal thing, is fairly new in the story of H. sapiens (and it's only reaching parts of the developing world now, right as it's becoming obsolete).

vinceyuan• 11 years ago

Because "Becoming Steve Jobs" was mentioned many time recently, when I saw 'Jobs' in the title, I thought "Is it another article about Steve Jobs and that book"?

lordnacho• 11 years ago

I actually like the basic income idea, though I hadn't arrived at it from an automation perspective.

If you're guaranteed money, you do away with the marginal effects of means-tested benefits. Basically, if you're a low income earner it can happen that you face a very high effective tax rate, in many countries. If you're guaranteed money, you don't have this marginal tax problem; you can sit on your ass or work for a bit of extra money. If you already make more, take it as a tax allowance.

This in turn means you do away with the means testing system. No more forms to fill out; no more mandatory courses that do nothing but line the pockets of the course provider. No more looking over people's shoulders to see if they're cheating. No more pressure on doctors to write iffy diagnoses.

There are of course issues with this system. For instance what do you do about immigration?

dantheman• 11 years ago

More importantly the math doesn't work out. Some people have way more costs because they're disabled, sick, have a large number of kids.

eru4• 11 years ago

What's the problem with that? You have an NHS-like system for the sick, and you pay basic income for kids, too. (Perhaps at half the adult rate for people under 18?)

netcan• 11 years ago

These two perspective are almost irreconcilable.

Those supporting the current system think that it triages need and allocates more to those with more needs. The basic income way of thinking doesn't consider this, everyone gets the same. Everyone getting the same is essential

I lean towards the latter, I think the benefits system is an expensive and ineffective way to triage needs. EG, rent allowance. If we could have a basic income set at a level above the median benefits for non workers, almost everyone would be better off, but not everyone.

Some people would be worse off, unless you take the highest possible benefits and use that as the basic income, but that's unaffordable.

The thing is, I think that the state is very far from meeting people's needs and assuming full responsibility for it. There are right now people who should be eligible or are eligible for some benefit, but aren't getting it. The State can help. It can minimize problems, but it can't solve them fully. I think charities, families and such also need to play a role. I think the idea that the state can make sure people's needs are met is just false. A lot of the triage mechanisms are about pretending that it is, not ensuring that it is.

But there are those without other help, that have no other way of supplementing income that have additional costs. These people will be worse off. Other people will be better off. I think the bigger win should inform the decision, but this is unlikely.

huherto2• 11 years ago

There are of course issues with this system. For instance what do you do about immigration?

I am guessing that it will need to be implemented globally or at least regionally (e.g North-America, Europe, etc). Every country according to their possibilities.

smountcastle4• 11 years ago

I'm curious why you think this would be necessary. If UBI was for citizens only and it was funded by consumption, visitors would end up paying into it and then would have to petition for reimbursement (much like I have to do when I visit countries with VAT in Europe). Many folks won't bother because the amounts are small.

As far as immigration, they'd need a job to survive here much like they do today and only once they achieve citizenship would they be eligible for UBI. I wouldn't see this changing much from today.

acheron• 11 years ago

This in turn means you do away with the means testing system. No more forms to fill out; no more mandatory courses that do nothing but line the pockets of the course provider.

But then how do you buy votes to get elected? Decreasing government power and discretion is never a good idea, because it makes it harder to reward your lobbyists and donors.

dataker3• 11 years ago

The only thing one can do is let the market takes care of itself.

In my country(Brazil), unemployment rate is fairly low( ~5% )and the government loves to brag about it. Most of these jobs are 'artificial' in a way the government blocks innovation in order to 'retain jobs' and justify its economic intervention.

As a consequence, products and services are way more inefficient and expensive. At the same time, employees have wages that, from a Western standpoint, would be below poverty line.

For example, the government forbids customers to put gas on their vehicle. To do so, one needs an attendant who works 10h/day with $3/hour wages.

eru4• 11 years ago

Which country is that?

dataker3• 11 years ago

Brazil

fnordsensei• 11 years ago

This is horrible. In my opinion, as soon as something can be done well by a machine, it is from then on unworthy of being done by a human being. That type of artificial job creation seems demeaning and somehow akin to some sort of indirect slavery.

Politicians in my country (like everywhere, I imagine) are going on about how job creation is extremely important, and that they are focusing on lowering unemployment. Well, 1) No it isn't, and 2) No, they are not.

1) What's so great about jobs? They are a side effect of the economic model we have, nothing more. What actually matters to us are the things we support by this model. A job can be a great, fulfilling experience, but it is not by virtue of specifically being a job that it is fulfilling, it's because of all the things we actually care about: interesting problems, great coworkers, a purpose in life. We could very well find other ways to support the things we actually care about, and we will have to, once a sufficient amount of jobs are done by machines.

2) All politicians, from left to right, want unemployment. If there were no unemployment, salaries would spiral out of control, which would trigger a massive rise in prices on goods in order to pay those salaries, which triggers more raises in order for employees to afford the goods and so on. In order to prevent this, an unemployment of 5-6% is required, as far as I understand it. Yet somehow, we also have to pretend that those unemployed are not doing society a service, that the cards are not stacked against them, and that we really want them to have a job.

Blergh. Well, enough ranting.

panglott6• 11 years ago

'Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The Third Industrial Revolution,” said a basic income would enable people to volunteer their time in areas like elder care, child care, culture and the environment.'

This seems like the most important sentence in the article. Raising children, caring for the elderly, editing Wikipedia, free software, &c. creates huge amounts of unremunerated value. If people were freed from economic drudge work, they would have free time not only for leisure, but that kind of valuable work as well.

Japan for example has a time-based currency to coordinate elder care, but that sort of thing will always be an issue of sharing volunteer labor. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11657006

JoeAltmaier17• 11 years ago

Cynical me. I don't see people who've never had to work, doing more than watching the latest Reality TV program and complaining about the quality of the free food. Doing those other things is all about cultural values, and nothing about free time.

vijayr2• 11 years ago

try watching TV non stop for a week or two - it gets boring and annoying, real fast. there will be people who will watch TV all day when they don't have to work, but there will also be people who would spend their time doing useful things. Even if the latter group is just a fraction, it would benefit everyone immensely in the long run. After all, only a few thousand people edit wikipedia out of 7 billion of us, only a few thousand people write open source software but all of humanity benefits from it, right?

iamthepieman2• 11 years ago

Selection bias right there in "people who've never had to work"

What if you took people who have always had to work/chosen to work and give them resources to free up their time. Of course, you'd probably get a lot of bad things as well as good since sudden changes will always generate some churn and chaos short-term.

Think about this for yourself. If you didn't have to work, or only had to work 25-30 hours a week what would you do with the extra time?

Now apply that to every middle class individual. Sure some would spend the time in less productive or even harmful ways. But others would spend it even more wisely than you imagine yourself spending it.

panglott6• 11 years ago

I work, I watch TV, I play with my kid and help him with homework, I make some edits to Wikipedia, I study stuff online, &c. &c. When I was between jobs recently I did more of all of those things—except TV.

I don't know many people in the rentier class that have never had to work, but my understanding is that the status quo already allows them to spend all the time they want watching reality TV ;)

pjc50• 11 years ago

I don't see people who've never had to work

Other than the idle rich, I don't see many people who've never had to work either. I've seen people unable to work, and I've seen people denied the opportunity to work, but the idle poor are really not as prevalent as people seem to think.

jes3• 11 years ago

Who are the people to be freed of the economic drudge work?

How will the economic drudge work then get done, and by whom?

panglott6• 11 years ago

Note that this comment was in response to an article about automation causing a fall in the labor share of the economy.

Shivetya3• 11 years ago

Likely you will end up with people with free time doing what a good number who have no real jobs do, sit on their ass and watch tv or surf the net.

Nothing currently today prevents any person unemployed and receiving assistance from doing what he claims people would do IF ONLY except society does not penalize sloth and laziness.

Before we get onto the give everyone an income train we need to do some work getting people back into the idea of contributing whether they are compensated directly or not. The idea of take take take without doing giving of your own should gradually moved into the idea of simple repulsiveness. This is where the internet/tv come into play.

zanny6• 11 years ago

That culture only exists today because if you ever live in poverty you develop a mindset of a vulture. You need to seize opportunity and give nothing to maximize your position because you are so far behind.

It is socially toxic, and only exists because you can fall through the bottom of society and become forgotten and discarded. It is treading water just to survive. It makes people hostile, selfish, and bitter. Plenty of studies show how poverty will change your brain chemistry for the worse.

Of course the first generation of UBI would be a trying time. It is correcting so many social wrongs at once it upsets your worldview completely. But I cannot imagine anyone beyond the first batch ever having anything but significantly increased happiness, social cohesion, voluntarism, and enterpenurism, because once you can (hate to say it) cull the damaged goods, you have a society where everyone can take risks but always keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, and be as generous as they want while always having a bed to sleep on. That is such a huge psychological advantage for society.

Which is kind of why I find UBI such a no brainer nowadays. You can approach it from so many angles - cultural, microeconomic, macroeconomic, social, psychological, and every one of them in and of itself has so many benefits it seems insane not to implement it at almost any cost just for those benefits alone. But they are not alone, it helps in almost every problem center of the modern world.

ddod2• 11 years ago

I couldn't really disagree more.

In the US, the lower economic rungs are either working incredibly hard for little gains (try making a livable wage when most employers only offer part time hours that are constantly changing, preventing you from getting health insurance or secondary jobs), living off of welfare, or some combination thereof and also working in the drug/sex/theft trade.

That to me shows that most people have a natural interest in gain above the minimum for survival and an interest in working for it. Unfortunately, most of that work isn't really benefiting society or the people doing it, and it creates a poverty loop.

Even if you believe humans are naturally lazy, what is the takeaway? When their labor value decreases to next to nothing, what value is all their willingness to work for survival?

gutnor• 11 years ago

we need to do some work getting people back into the idea of contributing whether they are compensated directly or not

First thing though, the scenario analysed here is a scenario where there is not enough thing to contribute to.

Let's imagine that everything can be done through a computer and only a few million developers worldwide are required to program the machines. Do you want 10 billion uninsterested people fight to get the job or only the motivated ones ? If there are 2 persons for 1 job, that is stupid to chose the one that hates it and just want to be home doing something else.

Secondly, considering that our whole economy is driven be consumption ( nowadays, there is virtually unlimited amount of money available on the investment side ), so a guy consuming the whole day is playing a bigger part in society than a guy working 12 hours a day and saving his money.

Roboprog• 11 years ago

Or, perhaps some of those "volunteer" activities could become actual jobs???

IndianAstronaut2• 11 years ago

Actually, in a sense it is a job. The author and probably most people here are unfamiliar with the concept, but the idea of "maximizing utility" is a major theme in economics. The whole goal of automation and productivity increases is to enable that.

mason2402• 11 years ago

would enable people to volunteer their time in areas like elder care, child care, culture and the environment.'

We recently went through a several year period of mass unemployment where many people had free time and those things didn't happen.

Xylakant• 11 years ago

people did not have free time, they were scrambling to get the bills paid.

jordan0day• 11 years ago

That seems a bit glib, seeing as how many of those people were probably spending a great deal of time worrying about keeping their home and trying to find new employment.

gklotz• 11 years ago

Play this through to its logical conclusions. If 50% of the jobs are eliminated through automation, who will buy things? You may still have a software engineering job creating new automation technology, but who will it be sold to?

If there is 60% unemployment, who will buy those machine picked strawberries, iPads, or the products in Google ads? If this keeps going, big companies like Apple and Google will be the biggest proponents of basic income. Their other option is to go bankrupt.

kra34• 11 years ago

The plan we discussed at SXSW was to establish some sort of hunger games style competition where the unemployed battle for a rich life in the capital far from their respective districts, but admittedly there is a lot of work to do between now and then.

known• 11 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income FTW

Animats2• 11 years ago

Looking at the past won't help. Think of it this way. There's a list of productive things humans can do that machines can't. That list keeps getting shorter. Since computers got really cheap, it's become much shorter much faster. That's new. Previous technologies knocked off one skill. Computers knock off broad ranges of them.

A brief history of manufacturing technology:

Until the 20th century, the big economic problem was simply making enough stuff, and it took about 80% of the workforce to make all the stuff. During the 20th century, manufacturing technology got good, and by the 1950s, there was plenty of stuff in the developed world, but the quality was iffy and it still took about 40% of the workforce to make all the stuff. By the 1980s, the quality was a lot better, and there was a glut of high-quality stuff. Today, in the developed world, about 13% of the workforce makes all the stuff, and there are no significant shortages of any buyable thing. (Is it out of stock on Amazon? No.)

That's where we are.

We have no clue how to organize an economic system where a sizable fraction of the population has negative economic value. Welfare, the dole, and such have been tried - that leads to huge public housing projects warehousing useless people. Then we get riots because there are too many bored people. So that won't work.

That's the problem we face. Where do we go from here?

anonbanker2• 11 years ago

well, he's been in the ground a few years now. chances are, he's pretty dry already. I guess you can dig him up and donate his bones to science?

(didn't read the article)

After Jobs Dry Up, What Then?

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