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Typical Pubbie posted:How is that optimal? An adult who is capable of supporting themselves gets more value out of a free $20k check than a disabled person who can't work and has to spend a shitload of time and money on essentials as a result. Giving people who can support themselves money when they don't need it is not optimal (assuming normal economic conditions). It is a misallocation of resources. If you must you should be giving the disabled person $40k and the able bodied person your gratitude. It is not simply a case of disabled/abled. There is a huge range of economic behavior that happens as one's income increases. Living paycheck to paycheck is a fundamentally different experience than having a modest cushion and some disposable income which is different than building up strong investment and retirement egg with greater quality of life and luxury and so on. Shifting wealth down the ladder to the point where money is no longer a concern is the long, strive-to-achieve ideal. Not just scraping by day to day and stop. Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 07:01
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Typical Pubbie posted:Inheritance above a certain level should be taxed at 100%. A poor person who can work should attempt to find work just like everyone else, and be guaranteed a living income and certain protections and benefits for their trouble. While they are searching for work they may apply for unemployment insurance and other programs just like everyone else. And there is no delay in those programs kicking in, and if you're working you're by default making plenty of money and don't need more Oh I'm sorry, I thought you were still talking about your idiot poo poo
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Jan 9, 2016 07:03
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OwlFancier posted:That isn't mutually exclusive with mincome. I don't expect the entire state to be dismantled in lieu of giving people money. Socialized healthcare is a given, but that doesn't mean everyone gets the same surgery assigned to them at regular intervals, they get the care they need. The problem isn't "does mincome help people? y/n." The problem is "does mincome allocate resources based on need efficiently and without discouraging labor?"
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Jan 9, 2016 07:03
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Typical Pubbie posted:Inheritance above a certain level should be taxed at 100%. A poor person who can work should attempt to find work just like everyone else, and be guaranteed a living income and certain protections and benefits for their trouble. While they are searching for work they may apply for unemployment insurance and other programs just like everyone else. All private inherited property should be taxed at 100%. Any person who can work should do so as best they are able, on a moral basis, but they should not be required to do in order to live, they should be guaranteed a living income and all the protections they can be offered anyway. And "work" does not mean "a thing you are paid to do". Typical Pubbie posted:The problem isn't "does mincome help people? y/n." The problem is "does mincome allocate resources based on need efficiently and without discouraging labor?" No, mincome doesn't allocate resources based on need, except in the broadest sense that all people need money and it gives them money, that's why nobody is suggesting that mincome should replace 100% of the functions of the state. It is supplementary to specialized aid, not a replacement for it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 07:04
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Berk Berkly posted:It is not simply a case of disabled/abled. There is a huge range of economic behavior that happens as one's income increases. Living paycheck to paycheck is a fundamentally different experience than having a modest cushion and some disposable income which is different than building up strong investment and retirement egg with greater quality of life and luxury and so on. OK but if you shift money down the ladder enough eventually you reach a point where people have to work to make money to support the social programs that shift the money. The more income inequality and wealth inequality are reduced the more the burden is shifted downwards. That's why you need to keep people working because eventually they really will be supporting themselves rather than just soaking the greedy capitalists (who are greedy and need to be soaked).
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Jan 9, 2016 07:06
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Typical Pubbie posted:The problem isn't "does mincome help people? y/n." The problem is "does mincome allocate resources based on need efficiently and without discouraging labor?" It discourages highly exploitative, nasty-but-desperate labor. Which is a good thing. No one should be forced into laboring far beyond the cost of their time and health and dignity just to barely scrape by with little to no hope of climbing out of the hole. quote:OK but if you shift money down the ladder enough eventually you reach a point where people have to work to make money to support the social programs that shift the money. The more income inequality and wealth inequality are reduced the more the burden is shifted downwards. That's why you need to keep people working because eventually they really will be supporting themselves rather than just soaking the greedy capitalists (who are greedy and need to be soaked). In our case, at least in the US, there are existing metrics that help to ferret out this point like the difference between the mean and the median wages, and the various analysis of the wealth gaps. Its not an intractable problem. We generate a great deal of wealth in excess of our labor and productivity but a ungodly percentage is consolidated by a tiny fraction of the populace. There are lots of ways to help bring this back into balance, but I would say the vast majority of them involve properly taxing and then shifting that wealth to benefit the lower classes. Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 07:06
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TypicalPubbie I live in NY. Minimum wage just went up to 9/HR Before taxes, assuming I work forty hours a week, that's eighteen grand a year Please tell me about how I don't actually need mincome because I can just work
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Jan 9, 2016 07:07
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Typical Pubbie posted:OK but if you shift money down the ladder enough eventually you reach a point where people have to work to make money to support the social programs that shift the money. The more income inequality and wealth inequality are reduced the more the burden is shifted downwards. That's why you need to keep people working because eventually they really will be supporting themselves rather than just soaking the greedy capitalists (who are greedy and need to be soaked). Correct, which is why you can set the level of mincome as a function of production. If production goes down, so does everyone's income, so people have to start working again if they want to improve their standard of living, but they are not destitute if they do not. Unless you're suggesting that equal share of the product of labour would make everyone just stop working until they collectively starve to death, I really don't see the problem. The desired stable-state should be that people work significantly less, over all, but retain a decent standard of living.
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Jan 9, 2016 07:09
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Berk Berkly posted:It discourages highly exploitative, nasty-but-desperate labor. Which is a good thing. No one should be forced into laboring far beyond the cost of their time and health and dignity just to barely scrape by with little to no hope of climbing out of the hole. We don't actually know if it does this and the conditions which exist to make work unbearable will remain largely in place with a mincome, all else being equal.
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Jan 9, 2016 07:09
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Typical Pubbie posted:We don't actually know if it does this and the conditions which exist to make work unbearable will remain largely in place with a mincome, all else being equal. I too am incapable of connecting the line between "job sucks" and "need money" and understanding why people are willing to work places that treat them badly and how not forcing a reliance on these sorts of jobs would necessitate a change For fucks sake
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Jan 9, 2016 07:12
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OwlFancier posted:Correct, which is why you can set the level of mincome as a function of production. If production goes down, so does everyone's income, so people have to start working again if they want to improve their standard of living, but they are not destitute if they do not. Tragedy of the commons.
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Jan 9, 2016 07:12
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Literally The Worst posted:I too am incapable of connecting the line between "job sucks" and "need money" and understanding why people are willing to work places that treat them badly and how not forcing a reliance on these sorts of jobs would necessitate a change Except you don't know it will give people an out for the reasons I have already mentioned: Migrant workers, imports, people who are desperate and need more money than the mincome provides. But good for you, in this hypothetical world if your job sucks you can sit at home and stare at the loving walls for $20,000 a year.
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Jan 9, 2016 07:14
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Typical Pubbie posted:Tragedy of the commons. That only applies if what is in your personal best interest is contrary to the best interest of the many. If your income goes down, what is in your personal best interest is to get a job to supplement it, which buoys everyone's income back up a bit. You're not proposing tragedy of the commons, you're proposing everyone surrendering to crushing ennui and starving themselves to death. Tragedy of the commons is far more applicable to current low-wage work whereby it's in your best interest to compete against the rest of the reserve labour force and thus keep wages low and conditions poor. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 07:15
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Typical Pubbie posted:Except you don't know it will give people an out for the reasons I have already mentioned: Migrant workers, imports, people who are desperate and need more money than the mincome provides. But good for you, in this hypothetical world if your job sucks you can sit at home and stare at the loving walls for $20,000 a year. As opposed to now where I can work 40 hours a week for far less, you goddamn idiot I'm one of the people at the bottom of the food chain, don't talk down to me like I don't actually know what poo poo is like
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Jan 9, 2016 07:16
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Typical Pubbie posted:We don't actually know if it does this and the conditions which exist to make work unbearable will remain largely in place with a mincome, all else being equal. Actually we do have quite a bit of data on this. Entire textbooks full. You can basically work out things like the labor-hours vs productivity curve and see how driving up working hours per day/week, living wages, or the effect of monetary carrot/sticks act. The takeaway is that it is extremely unlikely and short-lived for there to be -too- much wealth flowing top-to-bottom. Individuals working 2.5 jobs in excess of 60-80 hours a week and living check-to-check with little not no savings and likely rolling debt are well below that threshold. Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 07:16
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So TP are you a douchebag gimmick or...?
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Jan 9, 2016 07:17
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Again, I make 18k a year before tax. I live in a state where minimum wage is mine dollars an hour. There are states where people work as many hours as me and make a fraction of that. Tell me more about how having guaranteed money wouldn't help me or the people like me.
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Jan 9, 2016 07:18
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Literally The Worst posted:Again, I make 18k a year before tax. I live in a state where minimum wage is mine dollars an hour. You are already generating income in excess of what you need to function and continue providing labor. If anything you need to be paid less to motivate you to work harder. You have not yet reached your maximum efficiency.
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Jan 9, 2016 07:30
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Typical Pubbie posted:The problem isn't "does mincome help people? y/n." The problem is "does mincome allocate resources based on need efficiently and without discouraging labor?" One of the key points you seem to be missing is that the labor market is based at least in part on economic coercion as a result of employers having greater bargaining power than employees. This is the direct result of employers being able to remain solvent for longer than employees, who are forced to find another job as quickly as possible if they choose to leave due to low wages or poor working conditions. This creates an environment where labor that is not economically viable is done anyway because businesses are passing the cost of their employees onto society. Like, you understand that an expanded EITC would be a direct handout to businesses with no actual benefits to labor, right? It would allow businesses that refuse or are unable to pay a living wage to continue to exist by transferring their true labor costs to the rest of society. This is the same problem that exists with unemployment benefits. Unemployment is designed to get workers back to work as quickly as possible, which damages the bargaining power of anyone who wants to hold out for a better job and subsidizes businesses that rely on a desperate workforce willing to do low wage labor. And since I know what's coming next: no, collective bargaining does not address these issues. It's possible that it could, but the kind of pro-union, anti-business legislation that would require is frankly less likely than a mincome magically appearing tomorrow. You'd have to allow unions to conduct sit down strikes or other outright disruptive acts, and effectively provide the the ability to shut down their employers' operations as a part of the bargaining process. You'd also need to require businesses to continue paying striking employees. At that point you might as well just go Full Socialism Now and hand the means of production over to the workers. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 09:19
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Paradoxish posted:One of the key points you seem to be missing is that the labor market is based at least in part on economic coercion as a result of employers having greater bargaining power than employees. This is the direct result of employers being able to remain solvent for longer than employees, who are forced to find another job as quickly as possible if they choose to leave due to low wages or poor working conditions. This creates an environment where labor that is not economically viable is done anyway because businesses are passing the cost of their employees onto society. Actually I agree with this statement. Paradoxish posted:Like, you understand that an expanded EITC would be a direct handout to businesses with no actual benefits to labor, right? It would allow businesses that refuse or are unable to pay a living wage to continue to exist by transferring their true labor costs to the rest of society. This may be true to a small degree but it's not nearly as much of a problem as you make it out to be. Taxes and the minimum wage prevent businesses from milking the federal government for practically free labor which is why when economists recommend raising the EITC they usually include a bump in the minimum wage to go with it. I'm also pretty skeptical of the claim (not necessarily made by yourself but I think it has been alluded to in this thread) that welfare subsidizes businesses. That if we ended means tested welfare and the EITC businesses would be forced to pay their employees more (a claim which is very popular among welfare hating libertarians btw). If that is true then one would expect employers to cough up health insurance for all of their employees since there is no solid socialized medicine program for working age adults. Of course that is not the case. Without strong worker protections and/or collective bargaining compensation is a race to the bottom no matter what. A basic income provides an interesting way of subverting this problem but it has a lot of potentially bad side effects which its supporters in this thread either flat out deny or try to hand-wave away. Paradoxish posted:And since I know what's coming next: no, collective bargaining does not address these issues. It's possible that it could, but the kind of pro-union, anti-business legislation that would require is frankly less likely than a mincome magically appearing tomorrow. You'd have to allow unions to conduct sit down strikes or other outright disruptive acts, and effectively provide the the ability to shut down their employers' operations as a part of the bargaining process. You'd also need to require businesses to continue paying striking employees. At that point you might as well just go Full Socialism Now and hand the means of production over to the workers. Sorry, I don't see how laws supporting collective bargaining are less politically viable than a 6+ trillion dollar a year entitlement program. Maybe when chronic unemployment reaches 15%... Typical Pubbie fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 10:00
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Typical Pubbie posted:This may be true to a small degree but it's not nearly as much of a problem as you make it out to be. Taxes and the minimum wage prevent businesses from milking the federal government for practically free labor which is why when economists recommend raising the EITC they usually include a bump in the minimum wage to go with it. I'm not sure how you can agree with my first point and then disagree that EITC represents a major handout to business. Would you agree that there are jobs that exist now that probably couldn't exist at $15/hour or $18/hour or $20/hour? What do you consider an acceptable living wage? How would an EITC that effectively brings low wage jobs up to those levels be anything other than the government subsidizing businesses that can't afford to pay their workers? A mincome would force businesses to actually compete for workers or die. quote:If that is true then one would expect employers to cough up health insurance for all of their employees since there is no solid socialized medicine program for working age adults. Of course that is not the case. You're going to have to expand on this, because I don't think I understand what you're saying. Businesses absolutely pass on healthcare costs to society when they fail to provide healthcare for their employees, it's just that those costs aren't necessarily borne by the government at the moment. Why would I expect employers to provide insurance for all when they can instead not do that and let society bear the cost of an unhealthy populace? One of the major arguments for universal healthcare is that the social costs of not having it are so great that we shouldn't rely on businesses to provide it at all. quote:A basic income provides an interesting way of subverting this problem but it has a lot of potentially bad side effects which its supporters in this thread either flat out deny or try to hand-wave away. The only side effect that you've brought up is that some people may choose not to work, but you haven't really explained why this is bad. Most of us are saying that this isn't a big deal, in part because you're overstating how many people will drop out of the workforce (and this is at least backed up by what few mincome experiments exist) and in part because the people that do drop out will most likely find socially useful things to do. You're taking it as a given that people not quote:Sorry, I don't see how laws supporting collective bargaining are less politically viable than a 6+ trillion dollar a year entitlement program. Maybe when chronic unemployment reaches 15%... Because labor has never been as strong as it would need to be to accomplish the goals you're talking about. Keep in mind I'm entirely in favor of strengthening unions as well, it's just that strengthening them enough to provide the same benefits as minimum income would require strongly anti-business legislation that would almost certainly destroy a large number of jobs and lead us right back to the same thing we're discussing now.
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Jan 9, 2016 10:46
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Paradoxish posted:I'm not sure how you can agree with my first point and then disagree that EITC represents a major handout to business. Would you agree that there are jobs that exist now that probably couldn't exist at $15/hour or $18/hour or $20/hour? What do you consider an acceptable living wage? How would an EITC that effectively brings low wage jobs up to those levels be anything other than the government subsidizing businesses that can't afford to pay their workers? A mincome would force businesses to actually compete for workers or die. I don't see this as being such a problem as long the EITC is funded by a progressive tax code. I'm quite sympathetic to the idea that labor in America is too cheap and I agree that businesses hide the true costs of their products in the form of externalities. But a lot of the really lovely things that are done to workers aren't related to wages, at least not directly. Companies drive their workers to poor health; they disrupt their family lives; they rob them of their free time. These problems can be targeted directly with social programs and regulations. A basic income might help some people wrangle their way through some of these problems, but it wouldn't help everyone because realistically a basic income wouldn't pay much more than a poverty level income. ~$10,000 a year is better than nothing but it's not much of a bargaining chip if you have a mortgage to pay or live in a high rent area. It's an eloquent way of helping solve the welfare trap but another solution is to just pay people more for their labor while making work more pleasant and bearable for everyone--not just the people who receive more benefit in mincome than they pay in taxes. Paradoxish posted:You're going to have to expand on this, because I don't think I understand what you're saying. Businesses absolutely pass on healthcare costs to society when they fail to provide healthcare for their employees, it's just that those costs aren't necessarily borne by the government at the moment. Why would I expect employers to provide insurance for all when they can instead not do that and let society bear the cost of an unhealthy populace? One of the major arguments for universal healthcare is that the social costs of not having it are so great that we shouldn't rely on businesses to provide it at all. I just don't believe that employers will step up and provide better compensation once we stop subsidizing their low-income workers. I cite the abject failure of businesses to provide health insurance packages for their employees in the absence of socialized medicine as evidence. I'm speaking in general here--I understand that one intent of the basic income is to bring employers to heel. Paradoxish posted:The only side effect that you've brought up is that some people may choose not to work, but you haven't really explained why this is bad. Most of us are saying that this isn't a big deal, in part because you're overstating how many people will drop out of the workforce (and this is at least backed up by what few mincome experiments exist) and in part because the people that do drop out will most likely find socially useful things to do. You're taking it as a given that people not I have mentioned several side effects. One is the possible inflationary effect depending on how the program is funded. Another is how much of the tax burden would fall on the middle class (this depends on politics and the size of the program). Yet another is how the program might effect the price of labor (again, I think this would depend on how generous the benefit is), and by extension the price of goods and services in general, and how that would impact people who do not, for whatever reason, receive mincome. The effect on incentive to work is dangerous to disregard, not just economically but politically. I don't think we should tip-toe around reactionaries when making economic policy but I also don't think hard working middle class and petite bourgeoisie will ever buy into a program that gives money to able bodied adults. Not without some serious caveats, like libertarians who LOVE the idea of a UBI because they think it will allow them to liquidate millions of (non-existent) government bureaucrats and dissolve Social Security and SNAP and all the rest. I'm also not convinced by the few studies that have been made on the labor effects of mincome. The participants in those studies knew they were being tested, and likely made the rational assumption that their new income could be taken away at any time. They'd have been fools to stop working. Paradoxish posted:Because labor has never been as strong as it would need to be to accomplish the goals you're talking about. Keep in mind I'm entirely in favor of strengthening unions as well, it's just that strengthening them enough to provide the same benefits as minimum income would require strongly anti-business legislation that would almost certainly destroy a large number of jobs and lead us right back to the same thing we're discussing now. Eh, I just don't think the benefits of a basic income are all that sexy when you factor in the consolidation of existing social programs, potential economic side effects, and its realistic payout (at or near poverty level). I do think it will become a necessity in the future. 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Jan 9, 2016 11:40
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EDIT: I misread something so I retracted the first half here.Paradoxish posted:I'm not sure how you can agree with my first point and then disagree that EITC represents a major handout to business. Would you agree that there are jobs that exist now that probably couldn't exist at $15/hour or $18/hour or $20/hour? What do you consider an acceptable living wage? How would an EITC that effectively brings low wage jobs up to those levels be anything other than the government subsidizing businesses that can't afford to pay their workers? A mincome would force businesses to actually compete for workers or die. This is of course a rehash of arguments past but the moral notion of a living wage and the economic worth of a worker are 100% separate things. In terms of deciding when to use labor or when to automate businesses (or actually whoever is in control including a socialist central planning agency) should only be considering economic variables. In a world where labor is heavily over-supplied it's completely reasonably that labor might be worth $5/hour. If a business can profitatably employ someone at that wage then the right economic choice is for them to do that. This is why in terms of bridging the gap between what we think is moral and what the economic realities happen to be min income and EITC are both great policies. The idea that they're a subsidy to business represents a confused conflation of economic and moral worth. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 15:44
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Typical Pubbie remains an unattractive investment opportunity for my time, but I also enjoy wasting my time on stuff like this, so:Typical Pubbie posted:If the supply of labor contracts then the supply of goods is likely to contract as well. Later on you ask about how it is that only "unnecessary labor" would not get done, or how we even know what labor is unnecessary. Well, one thing to keep in mind is that the supply of goods is excessive already. We produce too much and end up wasting much of it. Look up figures on food waste. Or, have you ever heard of businesses destroying unsold product before throwing it away so that scavengers can't get it for free? In these cases, wasted goods represent wasted effort. If a product is thrown away without being used, then all the labor that went into putting it up for sale is wasted and never had to be done. So if the marginal number of people we can expect to be permanent dropouts from the workforce results in less stuff being made, so loving what? (And again, there is no evidence to suggest that we actually have to worry about mass workforce dropouts. This outcome is ideologically "common-sensible" but no experiment in minimum income supports it.) Typical Pubbie posted:Also I see no one has bothered to address a point I made earlier: A mincome would make America a very expensive place to live and do business for anyone not receiving mincome. This extends to exports. However, this logic applies to every single social welfare program you support. They have the same effects if in different or lesser ways. This is a recurring theme which complicates your proposed alternatives. So for example: Typical Pubbie posted:Inheritance above a certain level should be taxed at 100%. A poor person who can work should attempt to find work just like everyone else, and be guaranteed a living income and certain protections and benefits for their trouble. While they are searching for work they may apply for unemployment insurance and other programs just like everyone else. Is there a qualitative difference between having a "job-seeker's" subsidy while unemployed and a guaranteed minimum income? Or is it just a matter of degree? Because as a form of social welfare it has similar effects, even if it is for a limited duration: it requires taxes to fund and makes quitting a job and getting a better one easier, making things generally more expensive for non-recipients for the same reasons you think a basic income would. So do minimum wages and regulations of workplace safety. So does universal healthcare. You can say that if it is a matter of degree then basic income may require more than is feasible, but your approach to this argument is not purely pragmatic enough for this to be sufficient. You are generally treating this as a moral issue. All of the social welfare programs you favor "make America a very expensive place to live and do business for anyone not receiving" compared to their not existing. If none of them existed, you could just as easily say, "a poor person who can work should attempt to find work without any handouts or benefits while looking and without any guarantees of workplace safety or a living wage just like everyone else." (The "just like everyone else" part goes to show that not only are you arguing moralistically, your moral arguments are lazy as gently caress.) The problem with you arguing moralistically is that, if your objections to being called a poor-hating neocon or whatever are genuine and credible, you have basically the same moral political convictions as most of the people you are arguing with. You favor most of the same social welfare programs they do. So your argument with them needs to be purely pragmatic not only because you have to deal with the fact that your pragmatic reservations apply to your own favored policies in pursuit of your own moral political convictions, but because otherwise people are going to assume that you do not share their values. This is another reason that you're getting the derisive response that you feel so aggrieved by: you sound like the kinds of things they call you when you argue moralistically. Typical Pubbie posted:You're right that this could be helpful to some degree, I just think its proponents are over-stating the efficacy of mincome for bargaining. Employers as monoposony would still be a problem and the individual worker withholding his/her labor by peacing out of the workforce because their job sucks is still acting as an individual rather than as one part of a collective whole. That's because the collective action, so to speak, has already been done in this scenario. We can compare this to how unions organize workers in labor actions. When unions go on strike, they do so to get better benefits and wages by withholding labor. However, they require a degree of organization to ensure that workers can afford to not work for however long the strike lasts. The implementation of a basic income, as a political campaign and as a function of the government, is exactly that kind of organization. What would it take to actually implement a basic income? Probably a lot of cooperative action by ordinary working citizens, but in the realm of politics rather than workplaces. Hence, the entire politically-active citizenry that makes basic income happen is the organization that ensures that workers can withhold labor. It doesn't really matter anyway, though, if workers are acting individually. It's the mere potential for them to act individually in this way, when otherwise they really couldn't, that's at issue. Knowing that employees can more easily quit is something employers will have to keep in mind when deciding how they treat employees because treatment that makes one employee quit will likely make any employee quit. (And, again, this logic also applies to everything you support to the extent that it alleviates the condition of being unemployed.) Additionally, the benefits are not purely financial: Chris Bertram, 'Let It Bleed' posted:Life at Work Ask yourself how much of this kind of poo poo employers could get away with if people in general did not need to work to make capitalists rich in order to survive. Typical Pubbie posted:There seems to be the perception in this thread that the cost of any wage increase would come entirely out of employer's profits. If only there were some way to increase the purchasing power of consumers in this scenario. If only they had the spending money. This isn't just throwaway snark. The basic income is largely going to go back into the economy. If goods and services become more expensive, they'll likely will still be affordable. The critical difference is that in this scenario, not having a job is not as wretched a condition. (And once again, this same logic applies to programs you say you support, like unemployment insurance and universal healthcare.) This has implications for any question of how we can afford to make sure that people do jobs they'd otherwise quit. So... Typical Pubbie posted:Who decides what labor "needs" to be done? What is the formula for calculating what is essential labor? I don't know why you're asking someone else to "show their work" here since you apparently believe that there is "work that has to be done," which implicitly means you have an understanding of what work does not need to be done: Typical Pubbie posted:If your job is poo poo that sucks but someone has to do the poo poo jobs. Why does someone have to do them, though? "What is the formula for calculating what is essential labor?" For example, why not let garbage pile up in the streets or sewage pipes overflow with human waste? Well, probably because these things suck to have to deal with. No one will put up with a garbage and poo poo dystopia, so the idea that trash and sewage will flow freely because all the sanitation workers will up and quit because no one can afford to pay them enough to keep them from quitting just does not wash. This concern is plausible only if you believe that, for some reason, the only way to organize labor such that the tidal wave of trash and sewage can be turned back is a labor market without a basic income policy buoying workers. (Unlike, say, a labor market with unemployment insurance and universal healthcare and free education and job training buoying workers...)
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Jan 9, 2016 17:09
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Coming back to this...Paradoxish posted:One of the key points you seem to be missing is that the labor market is based at least in part on economic coercion as a result of employers having greater bargaining power than employees. This is the direct result of employers being able to remain solvent for longer than employees, who are forced to find another job as quickly as possible if they choose to leave due to low wages or poor working conditions. This creates an environment where labor that is not economically viable is done anyway because businesses are passing the cost of their employees onto society. Employers do not forgo profit and drain down their savings just to spite low skilled workers (seriously?). This should be obvious. Wages are low because there is comparatively high supply of low skilled workers. Monopsony and bargaining power (independent of supply-and-demand) likewise don't make sense in the low-skill market because these workers have potential opportunity in basically every industry in every geographic region including big box retailers and the mom-and-pop pizza shop across the street. These employers are not colluding, they just have an excessive supply of workers to choose from or options to automate and outsource. So in terms of min income its relation to wages runs through supply. Either min income makes people less likely to work which will drive up wages, or everyone keeps their jobs and it will have very little impact.
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Jan 9, 2016 17:47
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asdf32 posted:Employers do not forgo profit and drain down their savings just to spite low skilled workers (seriously?). This should be obvious. I was going to respond to your first post, but I might as well just respond to this one instead. I never said anything about employers spiting low skill workers and I wasn't implying collusion. Economic coercion has nothing to do with anyone acting maliciously. The supply of unskilled/low skill workers is artificially high because everyone has to work, and even $1/hour is worth it if the alternative is actual starvation. I wasn't trying to imply that this is a fact that cackling businessmen gleefully take advantage of, just that the forces driving supply and demand here are naturally coercive. quote:So in terms of min income its relation to wages runs through supply. Either min income makes people less likely to work which will drive up wages, or everyone keeps their jobs and it will have very little impact. The supply will get reduced, though. No one is suggesting that nobody at all will leave the workforce, just that some huge segment of the population won't suddenly decide to sit around on the couch all day because suddenly they can get a minimum wage check from the government.
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Jan 9, 2016 18:15
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Paradoxish posted:I was going to respond to your first post, but I might as well just respond to this one instead. Saying that our current system encourages more people to work than would otherwise choose too (with min income or other services) is fine and I agree to an extent. It has nothing to do with a businesses ability to "remain solvent for longer than employees" which is only relevant if they actually exercise that ability (they don't, they just hire the next guy on the street).
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Jan 9, 2016 18:29
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I haven't read this entire thread, only portions, so forgive me if this has already been posted: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/06/utrecht-city-council-to-begin-experiments-with-a-basic-income/ quote:The Utrecht project will focus on people claiming welfare benefits. One group will continue under the present system of welfare plus supplementary benefits for housing and health insurance. A second group will get benefits based on a system of incentives and rewards and a third group will have a basic income with no extras. ... ‘What happens if someone gets a monthly amount without rules and controls?’ Everhardt is quoted as saying in the Independent. ‘Will someone sit passively at home or do people develop themselves and provide a meaningful contribution to our society?’
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Jan 9, 2016 20:16
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Typical Pubbie has entirely bought into the Protestent work ethic and it's a moral issue for him that people need to be doing "productive work" where productive means jobs as we currently define them.
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Jan 9, 2016 20:17
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GunnerJ posted:Later on you ask about how it is that only "unnecessary labor" would not get done, or how we even know what labor is unnecessary. Well, one thing to keep in mind is that the supply of goods is excessive already. We produce too much and end up wasting much of it. Look up figures on food waste. Or, have you ever heard of businesses destroying unsold product before throwing it away so that scavengers can't get it for free? In these cases, wasted goods represent wasted effort. If a product is thrown away without being used, then all the labor that went into putting it up for sale is wasted and never had to be done. So if the marginal number of people we can expect to be permanent dropouts from the workforce results in less stuff being made, so loving what? (And again, there is no evidence to suggest that we actually have to worry about mass workforce dropouts. This outcome is ideologically "common-sensible" but no experiment in minimum income supports it.) I see. So assuming what you say is true, you think that gross over-consumption is a problem, and your solution is to give consumers a direct injection of disposable income. Brilliant. GunnerJ posted:Is there a qualitative difference between having a "job-seeker's" subsidy while unemployed and a guaranteed minimum income? Or is it just a matter of degree? Incentives matter, so yes? The difference is that a conventional NIT or EITC ties income benefits to work to keep able bodied people productive. This helps offset the cost of social programs for people who, for whatever reason, can't work or cannot find work. The social safety net exists to help those who are able to support themselves get back to producing, while caring for those who can't. Resources are allocated based on need. A basic income is just a shot of money with a wildly varying degree of utility depending on the circumstances of the individual. Its greatest utility is derived by healthy, white, working age adults who generally don't have to worry about supporting themselves outside of an economic downturn. For them it is just free money to expend on additional consumption. I'm not going to bother responding to accusations that I am against a basic income due to some latent protestant love of work. I have made it abundantly clear that I support systems that encourage work as a necessary means of ensuring the strength and long-term sustainability of social welfare as a whole. You can't have entitlements without workers to support them. GunnerJ posted:That's because the collective action, so to speak, has already been done in this scenario. We can compare this to how unions organize workers in labor actions. When unions go on strike, they do so to get better benefits and wages by withholding labor. However, they require a degree of organization to ensure that workers can afford to not work for however long the strike lasts. The implementation of a basic income, as a political campaign and as a function of the government, is exactly that kind of organization. What would it take to actually implement a basic income? Probably a lot of cooperative action by ordinary working citizens, but in the realm of politics rather than workplaces. Hence, the entire politically-active citizenry that makes basic income happen is the organization that ensures that workers can withhold labor. The problem with collective action does not lie in the inability of workers to endure withholding their labor. It has to do with how easy it is to fire workers and replace them. A basic income would undoubtedly make it easier to strike but corporations would still have all the Right to Work tools at their disposable to wipe the slate clean by hiring people who don't care about unionizing and just want to make an extra buck. The primary obstacle to unions in this country are legislative and cultural. GunnerJ posted:It doesn't really matter anyway, though, if workers are acting individually. It's the mere potential for them to act individually in this way, when otherwise they really couldn't, that's at issue. As I have said before, the pithy amount of money that a basic income would realistically offer is not going to count for much in bargaining. It will place noticeable upward pressure on wages but the basic income itself would not be enough for most people to live on with any degree of comfort or security. You'd have to be naive to think corporations wouldn't leverage this fact. It will help people at the absolute rock bottom to be paid a little more and treated a little better, which is a good thing, but the benefits will rapidly fall off as you leave poverty level work and get into lower middle class family territory. Especially when you consider that a lot of social programs are supposed to be consolidated into the basic income to save on costs and make it more politically viable. It's really not as great as it first appears. GunnerJ posted:Ask yourself how much of this kind of poo poo employers could get away with if people in general did not need to work to make capitalists rich in order to survive. Realistically most people will still need to work even with a basic income. A basic income that is high enough to change this would be incredibly expensive and have unintended consequences for the economy. GunnerJ posted:If only there were some way to increase the purchasing power of consumers in this scenario. If only they had the spending money. I thought there was too much consumption? At any rate, the pseudo-Keynesian belief that increasing demand is always good no matter what really needs to go away. It's cargo cult economics which ignores the importance of the business cycle. Specifically, the importance of counter-cyclical spending. A basic income is not counter-cyclical. GunnerJ posted:I don't know why you're asking someone else to "show their work" here since you apparently believe that there is "work that has to be done," which implicitly means you have an understanding of what work does not need to be done This is just ridiculous. There is work to be done as long as people are demanding work. We pay people to clear garbage from the streets because we want to and because we can afford it. You're assumption that we will pay garbage men as much as it takes to collect the trash is insane in light of history and everything we know about economics. I'm reading hints of good ol' fashioned command and control economics dictating "objective value" in your post. That has been a disaster every time it has been attempted on a large enough scale. Typical Pubbie fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 23:17
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Typical Pubbie posted:So assuming what you say is true, you think that gross over-consumption is a problem It's actually somewhat interesting how someone could see over-consumption in a post about over-production. Is it some unconscious assumption that business owners always behave optimally? That if product is being thrown out it must be because greedy wasteful poors are buying more than they need despite claiming to be suffering. EDIT: Seriously, It's like reading an article about all the buried copies of the Atari ET game and concluding that it must have been wildly popular. Reicere fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Jan 10, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 23:56
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Reicere posted:F- Did not read the prompt, resubmit before the end of class tomorrow. It's a terrible argument either way and bringing up food waste (which is consumption by the way) in this context is identical to conservatives citing government waste. The bottom line is that these large systems (government/market) are already reasonably efficient and more importantly, there is no magic way to make them more efficient. So waste is almost completely irrelevant when talking about budgets.
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Jan 10, 2016 00:01
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Reicere posted:F- Did not read the prompt, resubmit before the end of class tomorrow. What in the gently caress? Food waste occurs because we subsidize food production to ensure that food is as cheap and plentiful as possible, because food is highly perishable, and because Americans have a low tolerance for spoilage. If you believe that supply is created in response to a demand, which it generally is, then I don't know how you can come to the conclusion that giving consumers more money won't lead to more production and more consumption if you are of the belief that a basic income wouldn't lead to price inflation.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:10
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Food waste also occurs because the producers of food will not give it away because that would impede their ability to sell it. Either you can mandate that suppliers must give food to those who need it or you can give people money so they can buy it, but food waste is not an overproduction problem in the main, as there are plenty of people who would benefit from being able to eat the food.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:42
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Typical Pubbie posted:I see. So assuming what you say is true, you think that gross over-consumption is a problem, and your solution is to give consumers a direct injection of disposable income. Brilliant. My concerns about over-production in and of itself aren't actually at issue here, and even if what you're saying has merit (it doesn't), what results is that I have a new, tangential concern about a basic income in addition to others I already have. It would not address my reservations about your argument about supply contraction, so your evasion of the point is noted. Typical Pubbie posted:Incentives matter, so yes? The difference is that a conventional NIT or EITC ties income benefits to work to keep able bodied people productive. This helps offset the cost of social programs for people who, for whatever reason, can't work or cannot find work. The social safety net exists to help those who are able to support themselves get back to producing, while caring for those who can't. Resources are allocated based on need. I am not really concerned about a downfall in productivity so this does not compel me, but it is a qualitative difference so fair enough. It's just not one that addresses the point, which is that your objections to a basic income in terms of "making things expensive" apply to the programs you favor and in the absence of those programs, someone could come up with the same "a poor person who can work should attempt to find work under [circumstances] just like everyone else" suggestion. That should give you a bit of pause about the way you're approaching this. Typical Pubbie posted:A basic income is just a shot of money with a wildly varying degree of utility depending on the circumstances of the individual. Its greatest utility is derived by healthy, white, working age adults... What?? Why on Earth would it benefit people of color less than white people? I don't believe for a second you'll actually bother to do even a fraction of the work needed to demonstrate this because you're very intellectually lazy, so these are rhetorical questions, but seriously, holy poo poo what complete nonsense. It's like you're just in some bizarre tryhard mode to prove that you're the real progressive and your opponents just don't care about, well, first it was the middle class, and now it's anyone who's not white. Just throwing this poo poo against the wall isn't going to work, though, because none of it actually sticks. Typical Pubbie posted:I'm not going to bother responding to accusations that I am against a basic income due to some latent protestant love of work. That's great, because I didn't make any. Actually, I said the exact opposite and gave you the benefit of the doubt that you're not what people claim you are, you just argue as if your were. Even before, with your stuff about incentives? Someone could take that as proof of your supposed conservative political values. I disagreed with it but I took it as the pragmatic argument it looked like. Are you actually incapable of keeping track of who you're responding to, or are you really that desperate for that kind of antagonist that you want to corner me into that role? Well, I'm not going to do that and keeping you up to date on who your are talking to in every exchange isn't any fun, so this is where I get off the train.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:52
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Given that being black correlates with being poor rather strongly in the US, a minimum income would probably disproportionately benefit black people. Which is good.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:54
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Typical Pubbie posted:I don't know how you can come to the conclusion that giving consumers more money won't lead to more production and more consumption if you are of the belief that a basic income wouldn't lead to price inflation. Gee, and you really have me thinking hard here, but I think food may actually be an area where that relation wouldn't hold up. Personally, I wouldn't double my Big Mac consumption if my income doubled. It would change the nature of my consumption though, possibly shifting it toward foods that are require less labor before reaching market.
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Jan 10, 2016 04:14
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OwlFancier posted:Given that being black correlates with being poor rather strongly in the US, a minimum income would probably disproportionately benefit black people. Which is good. Right. That's what so crazy! 
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Jan 10, 2016 04:25
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Reicere posted:F- Did not read the prompt, resubmit before the end of class tomorrow. Haha, holy poo poo I didn't even notice that. I guess I just subconsciously assumed that was a typo...?
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Jan 10, 2016 04:28
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asdf32 posted:It's a terrible argument either way and bringing up food waste (which is consumption by the way) in this context is identical to conservatives citing government waste. The bottom line is that these large systems (government/market) are already reasonably efficient and more importantly, there is no magic way to make them more efficient. So waste is almost completely irrelevant when talking about budgets. Good thing I wasn't talking about budgets, then.
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Jan 10, 2016 04:37
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