ProfessorMoran
Member
How can society afford to pay for welfare when EVERYONE is put on welfare? It's already hard enough for society to support the people currently on welfare.
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As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need A Guaranteed Basic Income
- Thread starter GusBus
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How can society afford to pay for welfare when EVERYONE is put on welfare? It's already hard enough for society to support the people currently on welfare.
It's easy if software and robots produce everything.
Good news, you'll never see that in your lifetime
ProfessorMoran
Member
This. If goods and services are so cheap to produce the costs would be minimal for society.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
No it's not. You should compare spending to our other much less necessary programs.
well the math says is possible, but sociology says that some people will resist the idea of sharing their wealth, specially those with more.
Another thing all of us(or almost all of us) is on some form of welfare, health, education, security all that is welfare.
The vast majority of AI experts believe that we'll have above human intelligence AI before 2100, with many being even more confident.
So there's actually quite a good chance you could have total automation before you die.
So you're in favor of disability benefits but against welfare?
I'm assuming by more worthless you mean is it is has less worth and not that it's actually worthless.
And? What's your point? There wages are lower of power dynamics in the economy. This difference in wages is good because it has utility to society, not because markets are normal and natural and the way everything has to be. The argument here is that markets will need adjusting to actual prove useful to society as a result of automation.
The market exists for society's use, not the other way around.
Why do people seek higher paying jobs today. The answer is the same. The marginal utility of an hours pay is worth more than the marginal utility of an hour of leisure up to a certain point.
The basic income argument needs to die, it is inherently flawed in almost every respect, at least as society is currently constructed, a few points as to why:
1. Current standard is a 40+ hour work week. Before paying a large section of the populous to not work why wouldn't we move this down to 30 or even 20 hours per week? The labor force is measured in hours and production, not bodies. If you move the standard work week down to 20 hours there would literally be twice as may jobs. That would require some manipulation of the income received for those 20 hours to maintain standard of living, but that's far more realistic and achievable than basic income.
2. Removing a large portion of the populous from the productivity of a nation is, frankly, incredibly dangerous for a democratic state. Why would the productive segment of the population continue to maintain this welfare system? Civil unrest? If we're in that kind of automated society we would have automated policing of the masses already well in place, so good luck with that. Disconnecting people from the economic engine removes society's need for them.
3. I'm becoming distinctly aware of how myopic the proponents of basic income really are to the kinds of labor efforts available in this country. They see automation of fast food restaurants as a threat to the working class, yet across the first world infrastructure systems decay and last I checked we weren't about to let automated systems run heavy equipment and perform installation of piping, wiring, concrete, etc. completely without human interaction. Automated systems are a very long way off from accounting for all the variables in running a trash route in all reality, as no matter how much you sell the automated curb side pickup as a viable notion too many people deviate from the rules in too many ways for an AI to accurately account for it.
No, what we'll see is an job easing. Instead of slinging bags of trash in the back of a truck we now have automated arms to lift and dump cans. In time the operator of a trash truck will have even more AI systems at his disposal to make his job easier, but he'll still need to be part of the process. Fast food machines might remove the need for all but a handful of on-site staff, but that on-site staff will stop slinging fries for minimum wage and start servicing machines for wages befitting someone with greater technical proficiency.
Basic income, at this time, has no real place among the real solutions to underemployment and economic wealth disparity. Those real solutions are:
1. Decoupling healthcare and (ideally) retirement benefits from employers. Employment mobility is restricted and employers taken on additional workload outside their industry of expertise for a basic human right. Not necessarily single payer but a single point source where people can then make their own decisions would get us to where we need to be here just fine.
2. Destroying hereditary wealth. The founding fathers of capitalism specifically spoke to the need for near complete estate taxation to reset the tables for each generation. This is the real source of wealth inequality. Bill Gates making brilliant business moves and becoming the richest man in America isn't a bad thing, he did something exceptional and earned what he made. The Koch brothers or Donald Trump inheriting daddy's millions/billions and using all of the muscle they were gifted to unfairly step on any competition while rigging systems in their favor is a purely bad thing. This taints the entire purpose of capitalism and the power of the free market to self-regulate to the best of it's abilities. To make matters worse, a large portion of the nation's wealth are tied up in the bank accounts of these kinds of people, leading to economic inflation that pushes everyone else down so they can amass a larger theoretical total wealth figure.
3. Begin rolling back the >40 Hr. work week many professionals do, followed by rolling back the "full time employment" figure to 30 hours a week, both while pushing the minimum wage up, but as something chained to regional cost of living. The first item is a cause of significant underemployment in college graduates where a company staffs four professionals working 50 hour weeks to cover 200 hours versus five professionals working 40 ours a week. We have already seen some movement from Obama on this in raising the exempt threshold. The second is where you start giving time back to people to improve quality of life, but it needs to be paired with the third to keep wages at a livable level. The third is something we already have the ability to implement but instead people want to argue over no minimum wage versus a national $15/hr. minimum wage, both sides making no logical sense. The IRS produces a cost of living index for the vast majority of the country already. Calculate a reasonable living wage off the national average, divide that by 40 (initially, when part two above goes in that changes to 30), then multiply by the IRS cost of living index. So if you live in NYC it might well be a $15/hr. minimum wage. But if you live in Bumfuck, Iowa it's probably going to be somewhere in the $8-$10 an hour range. This will push manufacturing back out to the suburban and rural areas for cheaper labor, decreasing inflationary pressure on urban areas.
Basic income is something we might get to some day but that's just one step shy of having replicators in our homes. There are far more reasonable, achievable methods to improve the economic balance and work force utilization in the first world available right now but once again the us v. them narrative of our political discourse has both sides staking out fringe stances and acting like what they're championing isn't unvetted extremism.
1. Current standard is a 40+ hour work week. Before paying a large section of the populous to not work why wouldn't we move this down to 30 or even 20 hours per week? The labor force is measured in hours and production, not bodies. If you move the standard work week down to 20 hours there would literally be twice as may jobs. That would require some manipulation of the income received for those 20 hours to maintain standard of living, but that's far more realistic and achievable than basic income.
2. Removing a large portion of the populous from the productivity of a nation is, frankly, incredibly dangerous for a democratic state. Why would the productive segment of the population continue to maintain this welfare system? Civil unrest? If we're in that kind of automated society we would have automated policing of the masses already well in place, so good luck with that. Disconnecting people from the economic engine removes society's need for them.
3. I'm becoming distinctly aware of how myopic the proponents of basic income really are to the kinds of labor efforts available in this country. They see automation of fast food restaurants as a threat to the working class, yet across the first world infrastructure systems decay and last I checked we weren't about to let automated systems run heavy equipment and perform installation of piping, wiring, concrete, etc. completely without human interaction. Automated systems are a very long way off from accounting for all the variables in running a trash route in all reality, as no matter how much you sell the automated curb side pickup as a viable notion too many people deviate from the rules in too many ways for an AI to accurately account for it.
No, what we'll see is an job easing. Instead of slinging bags of trash in the back of a truck we now have automated arms to lift and dump cans. In time the operator of a trash truck will have even more AI systems at his disposal to make his job easier, but he'll still need to be part of the process. Fast food machines might remove the need for all but a handful of on-site staff, but that on-site staff will stop slinging fries for minimum wage and start servicing machines for wages befitting someone with greater technical proficiency.
Basic income, at this time, has no real place among the real solutions to underemployment and economic wealth disparity. Those real solutions are:
1. Decoupling healthcare and (ideally) retirement benefits from employers. Employment mobility is restricted and employers taken on additional workload outside their industry of expertise for a basic human right. Not necessarily single payer but a single point source where people can then make their own decisions would get us to where we need to be here just fine.
2. Destroying hereditary wealth. The founding fathers of capitalism specifically spoke to the need for near complete estate taxation to reset the tables for each generation. This is the real source of wealth inequality. Bill Gates making brilliant business moves and becoming the richest man in America isn't a bad thing, he did something exceptional and earned what he made. The Koch brothers or Donald Trump inheriting daddy's millions/billions and using all of the muscle they were gifted to unfairly step on any competition while rigging systems in their favor is a purely bad thing. This taints the entire purpose of capitalism and the power of the free market to self-regulate to the best of it's abilities. To make matters worse, a large portion of the nation's wealth are tied up in the bank accounts of these kinds of people, leading to economic inflation that pushes everyone else down so they can amass a larger theoretical total wealth figure.
3. Begin rolling back the >40 Hr. work week many professionals do, followed by rolling back the "full time employment" figure to 30 hours a week, both while pushing the minimum wage up, but as something chained to regional cost of living. The first item is a cause of significant underemployment in college graduates where a company staffs four professionals working 50 hour weeks to cover 200 hours versus five professionals working 40 ours a week. We have already seen some movement from Obama on this in raising the exempt threshold. The second is where you start giving time back to people to improve quality of life, but it needs to be paired with the third to keep wages at a livable level. The third is something we already have the ability to implement but instead people want to argue over no minimum wage versus a national $15/hr. minimum wage, both sides making no logical sense. The IRS produces a cost of living index for the vast majority of the country already. Calculate a reasonable living wage off the national average, divide that by 40 (initially, when part two above goes in that changes to 30), then multiply by the IRS cost of living index. So if you live in NYC it might well be a $15/hr. minimum wage. But if you live in Bumfuck, Iowa it's probably going to be somewhere in the $8-$10 an hour range. This will push manufacturing back out to the suburban and rural areas for cheaper labor, decreasing inflationary pressure on urban areas.
Basic income is something we might get to some day but that's just one step shy of having replicators in our homes. There are far more reasonable, achievable methods to improve the economic balance and work force utilization in the first world available right now but once again the us v. them narrative of our political discourse has both sides staking out fringe stances and acting like what they're championing isn't unvetted extremism.
Spiral Insanity
Banned
Leave this to dreamers and philosophers, for now. Better get to work.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
There are fleets of self-driving cars working in big cities RIGHT NOW. Did you call this a decade ago? We didn't even have an iPhone or Twitter then. We barely had YouTube and Facebook, and now we have cars operating independently.
JeTmAn81
Member
I think youre mischaracterizing the self driving cars thing. That's not in mass consumer use anywhere yet. Everything's still in test.
Everyone has the ability to think critically about things. What a ridiculous dismissal.
Fenderputty
Banned
A. We don't need total automation for the economey to
Crumble.
B. I have a child
It's expected to hit the consumer market by 2020
I'm pretty young. We can definitely get rid of most jobs if we really try.
Alpha Phoenix
Member
Artificial General Intelligence is thought to be possible by 2029, according to Ray Kurzweil. And according to Moore's Law, a $1000 computer will have the same computational power as the human brain by 2025.
Most people these days are working jobs that would be better off automated. The 'skills' that are required for these jobs are things that computers could do much more efficiently than a human. It's a sad truth, but that's the way it is, whether we like to admit it or not.
Actually, desktop computer advancement fell off a cliff years ago. Just GPUs making dramatic improvements. This is one of the big hurdles for the fully automated economy.
Goro Majima
Kitty Genovese Member
I don't think there'll be a weird dystopian future where everyone is unemployed and no one can afford anything except for the 1% because of automation. That's crazy simply because automation typically benefits high volume industries the most. Everything would simply go out of business and nothing would be automated long before we had unemployment on such a massive scale.
To me the bigger issue is what to do with the impending ~15-20% unemployment that could still support all that automation with our current economic system. The 2008 economic crisis in many ways was a signal that nobody really "needs" at least 10% of the workforce.
It's going to be interesting going forward politically because if that many people are out of work, we're going to inevitably have all these conversations about UBI on a national level.
To me the bigger issue is what to do with the impending ~15-20% unemployment that could still support all that automation with our current economic system. The 2008 economic crisis in many ways was a signal that nobody really "needs" at least 10% of the workforce.
It's going to be interesting going forward politically because if that many people are out of work, we're going to inevitably have all these conversations about UBI on a national level.
ProfessorMoran
Member
I'm against putting every able-bodied person on welfare.
Alpha Phoenix
Member
I was oversimplifying a bit, but you're right.
The polemic here is too strong for me to touch this with a 10 foot pole. But I've got to know who are the "founding fathers of Capitalism"? No one sat down in the 16th century and said "Aight boys time to bring about Capitalism".
ProfessorMoran
Member
It'll be like that movie Wall-E where we're all fat and robots just do everything.
What if able-bodiness isn't useful because robots are far stronger and dextrous?
Spoiled Milk
Banned
We're already about to replace millions of truck drivers with automated vehicles. My dad has already inspected a few working for California Highway Patrol. Replace all cash register jobs in the country with kiosks. Those two examples alone are like... 20% of the economy.
ProfessorMoran
Member
I think we should worry less about welfare for everyone and instead robots taking over and killing us all. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
That and zombies.
Probably, but it's also possible. There's production ready burger flipping robots.
HappyBivouac
Member
They're right.
Automation is not the problem in and of itself. Technological advancement that increases productivity should always be a positive thing. It should be good that we can provide more people with food, housing, clothing, transportation, etc. With this technology, it takes less people working to produce the same amount or, in most cases, more than we produced with an entirely human workforce. We're manufacturing more than ever before with less people than ever before.
How can this be a bad thing? The issue, again, is not automation itself. The problem is how we deal with automation in our capitalist society. In the current status quo, those who own the means of production reap all the rewards and get increasingly bloated bank accounts, abuse tax loopholes, etc. While they continue to fire more and more people. Not only us it leaving a lot of people suffering, but it's a recipe for utter economic collapse.
When you have a steady increase in production and a steady drop in people getting paid for said production, significant redistribution of wealth is necessary just to sustain the economy. This should be painfully obvious to anyone with even the most basic critical thinking ability, and yet virtually nobody in a position of money and power wants to talk or even think about it.
Hell, we might be near having the technological means to provide for 99% of the starving and homeless people on the planet. We need to change our mentality from "increased production means more profit" to "increased production means providing for more people."
(Note there are numerous problems here, however. Keeping the means of production in the hands of the few while providing for the many is a dangerous concentration of power and influence,for example. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but there are some simple, obvious realities we need to confront very, very soon.)
Automation is not the problem in and of itself. Technological advancement that increases productivity should always be a positive thing. It should be good that we can provide more people with food, housing, clothing, transportation, etc. With this technology, it takes less people working to produce the same amount or, in most cases, more than we produced with an entirely human workforce. We're manufacturing more than ever before with less people than ever before.
How can this be a bad thing? The issue, again, is not automation itself. The problem is how we deal with automation in our capitalist society. In the current status quo, those who own the means of production reap all the rewards and get increasingly bloated bank accounts, abuse tax loopholes, etc. While they continue to fire more and more people. Not only us it leaving a lot of people suffering, but it's a recipe for utter economic collapse.
When you have a steady increase in production and a steady drop in people getting paid for said production, significant redistribution of wealth is necessary just to sustain the economy. This should be painfully obvious to anyone with even the most basic critical thinking ability, and yet virtually nobody in a position of money and power wants to talk or even think about it.
Hell, we might be near having the technological means to provide for 99% of the starving and homeless people on the planet. We need to change our mentality from "increased production means more profit" to "increased production means providing for more people."
(Note there are numerous problems here, however. Keeping the means of production in the hands of the few while providing for the many is a dangerous concentration of power and influence,for example. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but there are some simple, obvious realities we need to confront very, very soon.)
Fenderputty
Banned
I actually think deep learning algorithms and AI will be a larger problem than full on robotic automation. At least on a timeline. You would need a very dexterous robot to replace an electrician for example. white collar jobs don't need this physical hurdle to be jumped.
http://www.popsci.com/hitachi-hires-artificial-intelligence-bosses-for-their-warehouses
http://www.popsci.com/hitachi-hires-artificial-intelligence-bosses-for-their-warehouses
Spoiled Milk
Banned
Robots already make the best music. It's only a matter of time.
Andrew Korenchkin
Member
Call me old fashioned, but I think the traditional server in restaurants has its place. I love the kind folks who serve folks in restaurants, and think it helps enhance the experience. Replacing them with automation kind of kills the experience.
And what about five star restaurants? Being a chef is a very rewarding activity.
And what about five star restaurants? Being a chef is a very rewarding activity.
Robots already make the best music. It's only a matter of time.
True.
This will almost certainly happen, but it will not solve any of the issues that UBI seeks to address. It is definitely not more realistic to suggest that you can simply halve working hours and double job positions; in the end, there's a huge proportion of people for whom they will simply not be able to do any jobs if automation hits hard. And it's not an education issue either, some people will simply never have the ability to do higher skilled work no matter how much effort they put in.
Not to mention, that automation will have differing effects dependent on industry. In some areas there will still be plenty of work to go around, so you can split up everyone's job in two and employ double the numbers. But in others, one machine will be able to do the work of 5, 10 or even 20 employees. So it's not a case of splitting one job in two, you would have to split some jobs into 2hour work weeks to employ the same numbers.
Frankly, if reducing hours worked was all that was necessary to deal with this issue then there would be plenty of economists supporting such a concept. It is just far too complicated a scheme compared to Basic Income to be worth persevering with.
This is going to happen whether it is dangerous or not, and I'm pretty sure giving people some kind of fake job is just as bad for happiness as having no job anyway, so I don't think creating additional jobs for these people is the answer.
The best solution to this issue is changing the live to work culture.
Job easing in practice always means job reduction. If you put mechanical arms on a truck, then yes you would still need somebody to do some of the work. But most garbage trucks have 2 people at the back and a driver. Take out the driver, plus take out one of the men, since 2 are no longer needed with the mechanical arms.
Or in your fast food example, one repairman can probably service a whole restaurant where 20+ employees would work. Heck, they can probably serve several restaurants. And what of the various unskilled McDonald's employees? Can they all train to be technically proficient?
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
You're using a term that's inaccurate.
I don't believe in everyone needing to work on things they don't care about because capitalism.
BarringGaffner
Member
No, it isn't hard enough. Look at the budget on military, war, or how much the richest have, and tell me we can't afford welfare.
This WILL happen in the future. It's the only way it can go. There is plenty enough space, resources, we just need to be smarter.
Sweetjebus
Member
Lot's of people saying basic income is not feasible, how about thinking it this way:
Automation isn't going make companies less money, actually more, and they don't need as many jobs there. The taxes must be collected more from the companies then to fund the basic income.
Also why do we need to work the full work week as things get more and more automated? Why can't we cut the hours to work and have more free time to whatever we want?
Automation isn't going make companies less money, actually more, and they don't need as many jobs there. The taxes must be collected more from the companies then to fund the basic income.
Also why do we need to work the full work week as things get more and more automated? Why can't we cut the hours to work and have more free time to whatever we want?
Stevey
Member
Which will continue to be collected.
Mr. Wonderful
Member
Maybe one day. We don't need it yet.
Simply giving out money is one of the worst ways to grow the economy and raise the standard of living compared to investing in infrastructure, education, etc.
Rather than reducing hours, businesses are also responding to the increased productivity by making employees wear multiple hats (for better and for worse).
Simply giving out money is one of the worst ways to grow the economy and raise the standard of living compared to investing in infrastructure, education, etc.
Rather than reducing hours, businesses are also responding to the increased productivity by making employees wear multiple hats (for better and for worse).
And the basic income budget would also come from taxes.
Look at the money lost on tax breaks and loopholes to companies. Look at the humoungous unecessary budget the US has for it's military. Try to fix those issues and you will end up with lots of money to go around for a basic income.
Adam Smith, followed by (at least from a US-centric standpoint) the philosophical driving forces of US policy such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, etc.. A large number of the major revolutionary figures in early US history were quite vocal that the economic system they were espousing was directly in conflict with the notion of inherited wealth as a largely unregulated institution.
Portugeezer
Member
I always just thought that governments would intervene and have some sort of tax against automated systems, and to me this seems the most likely as more jobs that would have traditionally be done by humans become automated. I mean, technically there are so many jobs that could be done by machines but the cost of creating and/or operating said machines wouldn't be cost effective... yet.
The idea of a basic income sounds good on paper, just on a human level. But I don't know how it would work.
You don't think they could have some AI in the near future which doesn't do a better job than a human lawyer?
The idea of a basic income sounds good on paper, just on a human level. But I don't know how it would work.
You don't think they could have some AI in the near future which doesn't do a better job than a human lawyer?
Sure. Burger King and (I think) Wendys have those today. The burgers run down a conveyor belt and are cooked by a machine. Somebody pulls them out the other end And plops tgem in a sandwich. I don't think McDonalds Mans a grill with a human being anymore either.
But if everything is done by machines, Who will clean up at the end of the night? Need to have a few people to actually monitor the machines. What do you do when something major is broken? That means you need to have better trained emplyees that know how to fix the robots. And you probably not need one there all the time.
Someone needs to set up in the morning too, get everything out of the fridge, take deliveries, clean the bathrooms, mop the floors, take out the trash, etc.
What happens when you want to do a limited time offer or bring back the mcrib? How flexible are these machines really? Probably not flexible enough to make a mcrib on the burger machine. Sure you can eliminate some jobs by automating fast food, but it's not easy.
Though, I am for a guaranteed basic income regardless. I think having people live under the poverty line is inhumane.
Austriacus
Member
I pictured this in my head and almost fell off my chair laughing, well done.
90TilInfinity
Member
Employers pay less than they should according to a labourer's productivity. They labourer takes this because they effectively have no choice. The leverage is extremely lobsided.
Theoretically, BI would have to indexed against inflation.
disappeared
Banned
Well said.
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