[asg70]

"We should go back to sticks and digging tools?"

Isn't that the whole neo-primitivist manifesto? Hand-grinding your own grains like the Dervaes family in the heart of modern Pasadena?

And haven't you spent years trying to convince us that progress has stalled and we simply won't have said shiny AI future in the first place?

I just don't think you even know what you're trying to say anymore it is so riddled with contradictions.

[Newfie]

Kub

Leisure is a huge problem. Either genetic or cultural, probably a good bit of each.

Without a guaranteed universal income leisure is just any other word for unemployed or homeless.

But also we need something to do, some reason for existence. Without that we have lots of behavioral problems. Idle hands/ devils work etc.

[asg70]

Work is a generic term. People want something to do but they also don't want to busy themselves with work they find meaningless, exhausting, and/or soul-crushing.

[Newfie]

It seems everything is riddled with contradictions.

It seems we don’t well know who and what we are and what we want.

[Outcast_Searcher]

This surprised me, looking at most of the "The 1% is raping the proles" productivity charts it looked like labor's share was finally rising, this looks like it was falling moderately but then plunged during the oughts

At least labor's share seems to have leveled out during the economic recovery since the great recession. Given the scale, the total drop for the past 45 years is only a bit over 10%. Given the rise of computers, automation, and all the efficiencies that come with that, plus how poor the US public educational system has been overall -- it's actually kind of amazing to me that the results haven't been WORSE.

I'm not advocating labor be given a hard time -- I'm merely pointing out some realities in an increasingly globally competitive labor market, which is of course, enhanced in its ability to widely compete by technology.

[Outcast_Searcher]

AI creates more wealth (not less) by replacing inefficient human foibles. Robots don't take breaks,call in sick or demand union-scale wages. Robots don't require that oil/coal/NG be converted to food. Robots work 24/7/365 and only gobble electricity.

"Young workers" aren't necessary when automation substitutes for human labor and intellect. Why are we complaining about leisure? Makes no sense.

Human workers are expected to buy what is produced by robots, and businesses expect that because that's the only way they get returns on investing in automation in the first place. But the money used by human workers to buy goods and services comes from income received from work.

If we look at things beyond some old fashioned "if you don't work, you don't eat" ethic, I STILL think modern American society is crazy not to at least CONSIDER a robot tax and a UBI.

As long as the UBI is kept small enough not to be some big incentive not to work, but just to stabilize things AND the UBI replaces the vast majority of the current MESS that is the complex government network of social programs, it seems like a logical step, or at least contingency plan. This applies if robots truly replace a huge proportion of low skilled jobs AND the low skilled labor is just redundant -- AND the robots can adequately produce, ship, etc. the basic things people need so society isn't destabilized.

But a huge proportion of people seem to just go "full Turrettes" when a UBI or a robot tax is introduced, though the arguments look more emotional than rational to me -- assuming the robots really end up taking over.

Now, if the jobs are there (which they seem to be thus far in the current economy), then a UBI isn't needed, IMO.

The money for the UBI would still come from "work" -- it would just largely be via work done from robots instead of from humans. As long as everybody eats, has medical care, food, clothing, etc., I don't see what all the concern is about. That's very much like the result in the US today, except we have a giant, complex, corrupt system, which could be replaced by something far simpler to implement and understand, as well as being far more efficient.

[Cog]

Never have I seen a people, (Americans) who cry so much about how bad they have it. Compared to 90% of the planet, you live like kings. Jeez. Get a grip. You are living large even if you don't have a job. Did I miss the memo that work HAD to be fulfilling and enrich your life? Apparently no one of the millions trying to bust down our borders to get in here, have heard about how bad we have it in the USA.

The problem with you people is you have had it so good for so long is you have no concept of what true poverty is like in the third world. That poverty is soul-destroying and soul-grinding real. What we have in the USA, poverty-wise, is but a shadow of that.

Were you promised rose gardens and unicorns when you were born here? I wasn't but it seems you might have been.

[Pops]

I'm not usually in favor of money without some strings attached. Not yet anyway. But the one thing about a UBI would be to allow people to take risks they otherwise would not.

Sure, the risk might be to skip work, get drunk and hook up but it might also be inventing another Apple.

Everyone talks about Steve Jobs confidence but the one thing I remember about reading his bio is he said he was willing to take risk because his skill/education/family meant he could always find a job so wasn't worried about failing and winding up on the street. Lots and lots of people have no backstop.

I'm no Jobs and don't have family resources or a particularly sharp mind so my confidence is all a front, or maybe I'm just less sharp than I think, but, most of my life I felt I could get by with various skills so when it came time to jump ship for a different career or independent shot I have.* Lots of folks aren't as fortunate as me and who knows what big idea they might come up with?



* That is once my T1 diabetic stepdaughter aged out of my health insurance. Prior to that I was not able to change jobs for many years, let alone become independent, because of pre-existing exclusions. This was before HIPPA. An emergency hospital stay (especially common for younger diabetics) could easily ruin a typical working class family's finances.

[Cog]

Take risks on your own dime and time, not mine. UBI is just an excuse to be lazy. And most people who support it do so for that exact reason.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Take risks on your own dime and time, not mine. UBI is just an excuse to be lazy. And most people who support it do so for that exact reason.

So the $trillion dollar-ish annually set of US social programs designed to help the poor, as it is working and growing now is a good thing? That's what you want to keep?

By my reading of the way things are going, such programs are going to be a key mechanism in bankrupting us in coming decades.

If you don't have a solution (which is better than wishful thinking, like that all the social programs will magically go away) then why is one mode of being "lazy" and needing social programs is so much better than another?

(Look, if the liberals want to just add a UBI on top of everything else, then I, and most of the moderate to right wing modest-sized UBI supporters are VERY against that).

[Pops]

Your every argument seems dependent on two essential assumptions;

Generically speaking (I've had cog on ignore for years) it's actually just one assumption,

You're not the victim, I'm the victim!

[Pops]

So the $trillion dollar-ish annually set of US social programs designed to help the poor...

You really need to calibrate your "objectivity"— the middle get more goodies from .gov than "the poor"

This is Piketty et al. it includes SS but looks similar excluding SS with the top receiving less as a percentage.

[kublikhan]

Kub

Leisure is a huge problem. Either genetic or cultural, probably a good bit of each.

Without a guaranteed universal income leisure is just any other word for unemployed or homeless.

But also we need something to do, some reason for existence. Without that we have lots of behavioral problems. Idle hands/ devils work etc.

I assume this comment was meant to be addressed to pstarr? He was the one talking about leisure. I was the one talking about demographics.

[Newfie]

Kub,

Quite right, my apologies.

[Outcast_Searcher]

So the $trillion dollar-ish annually set of US social programs designed to help the poor...

You really need to calibrate your "objectivity"— the middle get more goodies from .gov than "the poor"

I didn't say the poor get it all, but the programs are largely DESIGNED, as I said, to help the poor. But if it looked like I was saying the poor get most of Social Security, then I freely admit -- that's wrong. And unfortunately (IMO), with things like the ACA, yeah, the middle class and even upper middle class are getting more and more handouts from the government.

Why a family of four with an income near $100,000 needs help paying for health insurance, for example, is beyond me. Before the ACA, catastrophic policies were available, for example.

The idea of Social Security having problems, for example, is a far bigger problem for poor seniors who rely on it (and Medicare) almost exclusively, than, say, the upper middle class, where it is just an income sweetener.

This is why I'm actually in favor of "fixing" Social Security primarily by means testing. If you're fortunate to have plenty of income in retirement, then congrats, you don't need Social Security. (I, for example, don't "need" Social Security as long as Medicare works. I'm pretty sure billionaires don't "need" it either.)

I'm quite sure this will make folks like Cog go ballistic, but it's supposedly retirement insurance. Insurance isn't supposed to pay off if you have no problem.

[Pops]

Just for the record, this is a different chart this one pre-retirement — working age people—

middle 40% still get substantially more than the bottom 50%


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