I am on similar lines, but i have a stable job .. (changed 3 jobs in the last 6 years). I quit my own startup because its boring. I cant stick to a project for more than a month.
Try working with a really growing startup you might like it. I was into infra for a while, the QA team, then development, then scaling dbs etc... Keep changing the role.
It is not just about the job. Try doing a course on coursera/edX. I do multiple courses across very different domains. I did Mathematics, biology, Electronics, then philosophy, Quantum computing etc. It gives you the element of "novelty" if the job doesnt interest you.
The ultimate winners here would be the software employees in my opinion. The money flows from investors/public to the geeks. Dont know how the economy is going to work out with that though.
That's a false narrative. Owners and executives are the winners here. We are underpaid for the value we bring in and the industry has been caught trying to keep it that way.
Probably, but an increasing number of software employees are striking out to become software employers as well. Software is interesting in that virtually all capital is human capital, and that small changes in the environment (a shift from web to mobile, for example) can invalidate large swaths of accumulated domain knowledge.
Who were the true winners of the industrial revolution? The employees making the machines? Nah. The true winners here will be the ones that always have been and always will be the winners.
Maybe. There is also a lot of work going into providing tools for domain experts so that entry-level programmers aren't needed for, e.g. data visualization. So it's not clear to me that the dynamic is any different in software engineering than anywhere else.
But again, there is no shortage of engineers as the article says. The only problem is the quality. Atleast from what i saw in India people just take computer science as a degree because it pays more, not because they love to code.. There is a problem with this kind of people. People who LOVE what they do always over take people who dont.
Well, the distinction between those that love what they do and those that don't isn't the only way to slice things. You don't have to love what you do to want to conduct yourself in a professional manner. Even if you aren't passionate about your work, so long as you take pride in it you won't be producing "crap code."
There is a shortage of experienced engineers willing to work for an entry-level salary. Also there is "change your job for this fantastic opportunity - we gonna give you a 10% raise max".
Somehow nobody is discussing a shortage of CEOs... Maybe because they are compensated fairly?
Nothing new.. If i can replace a security guard of my office for a cheaper more efficient, less error prone, robot/software instead of a human for half the price, WHY NOT! The exact same philosophy goes into "software is eating the world".
Universal Basic Income is the best post-labor system I've read of.
Everything is still based on the same capitalism we have now, and the ~20% of people who work will still be able to make income (meaning there will still be incentive for enterprise).
I'm getting really tired of hearing Basic Income cited to handwave away the real problems of economic dislocation. Look, I support the idea of a basic income, but when your simple solution is a radical top-to-bottom change in the entire economic system then I can't take you any more seriously than someone who thinks that communism would make all our problems go away if only every country would adopt it at once.
I mean we can't get single-payer healthcare going in this country, despite the numerous models of it working quite well (and at lower cost than our system) in a number of other developed countries that are glad to share their experience with us. UBI is a fine idea, but proponents are awfully short on specifics. It would be very nice if people would cite a particular scheme or gameplan they consider to be credible when they mention the topic.
> UBI is a fine idea, but proponents are awfully short on specifics. It would be very nice if people would cite a particular scheme or gameplan they consider to be credible when they mention the topic.
Social Security and Medicare expanded to everyone, regardless of age.
No handwaving, that's the general idea. The devil is in the details, and there are many details to work out.
Of course I know what the idea is. I'm saying that UBI proponents need to say 'it'll cost X, we'll save Y by slashing all this bureaucracy, the rest will come from Z,' as well as some sort of strategy to shepherd it through the political process, figure how it will mesh with immigration policy, and so on.
What I'm complaining about is that hardly anyone seems to be making a serious effort to fill out those details, and if proponents of the idea can't even point to a detailed proposal for how to implement it over a reasonable timeframe, how do you expect to convince people to sign on to it? 'Let's elect politicians who support it and then work out the details once they're in office' has not IMHO worked out very well historically.
I'm not saying you have to come up with the whole plan or type it out every time the subject comes up, f course! But I wish you could point me to who you think has something resembling an actionable plan.
I've run some numbers in the past, though I don't have them in front of me anymore. While of course they should be taken with a rather large grain of salt, providing $6-9k/yr to every American doesn't seem to produce crazy numbers. It's also an amount that's low enough that we're not likely to see crazy numbers of people opting out of the workforce, while high enough to increase the bargaining power of workers a bit. If I had to pick an optimal level of UBI to institute nationwide (which in some senses must exist), I would guess it to be around there.
That said, recently I've been thinking of a different approach. Concerns about scale (and migration) are smaller if we start with a smaller amount. I've been thinking an approach might be creation of a private institution tasked with designing and coordinating a basic income program for regions (probably at the city or county level, in the US) that opt in and who meet whatever necessary standards. The program would then apply to anyone who lives or works in a participating locality. The program could then be gradually rolled out and scaled up as (/if) it's found to work. National benefits can be phased out by treating BI income as income. One thing that makes this plan seem more workable is that the organization could raise money from supportive individuals to build a buffer for the program, to serve as something of a carrot for prospective localities.
> Social Security and Medicare expanded to everyone, regardless of age.
That's an idea, but its not the idea of UBI. Medicare is a complex health insurance system consisting both of government provided and government-subsidized-private health insurance, it isn't anything like UBI.
Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouse's) past contributions, as such its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI.
> That's an idea, but its not the idea of UBI. Medicare is a complex health insurance system consisting both of government provided and government-subsidized-private health insurance, it isn't anything like UBI.
Single-payer healthcare removes a HUGE problem with providing basic income. I don't see how providing universal healthcare interferes with UBI.
> Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouss) past contributions, its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI.
And.....? The SSA is already extremely efficient at distributing funds. Allow them to issue no-fee debit cards they issue, remove age/disability testing, ignore contributions, and then get funding from the general fund.
I'm not saying its easy. I'm saying its how you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
> Single-payer healthcare removes a HUGE problem with providing basic income.
Whether or not that's the case, single-payer healthcare is a different idea from UBI, not a component of UBI (and, indeed, something that conservative supporters of UBI -- of which there are quite a few -- are more likely to see UBI as an alternative to rather than to see as part of UBI.)
> > Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouse's) past contributions, its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI.
> And.....?
And so your claim that the idea of UBI is Social Security and Medicare for everyone regardless of age is simply grossly inaccurate.
You seem to be objecting to an attempt at defining UBI. I'd interpreted the context as "give me a proposal for how to do UBI", in which case "Social Security and Medicare for everyone" does seem an attempt at such a proposal. The proposal is substantially incomplete, as the question certainly arises of how to calculate social security benefits for those who haven't worked long enough to qualify under existing rules... but with certain answers to that question, it would be implementing a UBI system (along with other stuff as well).
Except you'll have increasing encroachment on motivation of the productive.
When Ronald Reagan was a top-billed Hollywood actor, he faced a ~90% tax bracket. Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns. Same for plenty of us motivated ones: if 80% are living off the 20%, that will require taking so much from the 20% that most of those will opt for doing something interesting and untaxable. The "seriously productive" ones you're expecting to leech off MUST have lots of less-but-still-productive people working for them - and you're tearing out the incentive to do so. Raise my taxes enough (only to "redistribute" to those opting to not work) and I'll switch to untaxable yet satisfying "off the grid" living.
> Raise my taxes enough (only to "redistribute" to those opting to not work) and I'll switch to untaxable yet satisfying "off the grid" living.
That's actually not a harm, and its exactly why you aren't tearing out the incentive for productive activity; when you devote more of your time to that because you've hit a high-enough marginal tax rate that the marginal benefit post-tax from additional gain through taxable activity is not sufficient to meet your marginal opportunity cost from that activity, simple supply and demand increases the incentive for others for whom that balance works out differently -- perhaps because they are lower on the progressive tax scale so that the marginal realized net monetary return is greater, or perhaps because they are at a similar place to where you are but weigh the costs differently -- to engage in the activity you are forgoing. In fact, a net upward (on the wealth/income) scale shift in tax burden increases the incentive for productive activity at the lower end of the scale.
I understand this issue of maintaining motivation under conditions of artificial full employment was a problem under the Soviet system, but I'm not sure it is necessarily a problem in a post-scarcity economy. For one thing employment can be increased by reducing the work week. After all we went from 60 hour work weeks to 40 hour, even less in Europe where there are longer vacations than in the US. Education over the past century has gone from mostly primary only to mostly college, absorbing excess labor capacity.
I think the idea of 80% leeches living off the 20% productive is just wrong headed. What we will see is the general quality of life improved for everyone. Sure there will some that need to be entirely supported by the rest of us: the homeless, the mentally ill, the infirm, the elderly. The real danger is that the increases in productivity are being siphoned off by the rich and not being equitably distributed. Capitalism is inherently an unstable system tending towards monopoly and the destruction of the commons (pollution and the like) and must be reasonably constrained.
> I understand this issue of maintaining motivation under conditions of artificial full employment was a problem under the Soviet system, but I'm not sure it is necessarily a problem in a post-scarcity economy.
Post-scarcity economy is a contradiction in terms, and if post-scarcity conditions existed, one wouldn't have any need to worry about economy -- which is, after all, nothing but the system by which scarce resources are allocated.
But we're not really discussing post-scarcity conditions, we're talking about managing conditions where the rewards from production are increasingly concentrated in the holders of capital and the returns to labor are mostly extremely low with a (proportionally) very small set of high-value labor positions available.
I think the point (in the context of this discussion) is that we don't need everyone to be maximally productive - machines and automation can do so much that we could all enjoy a very nice standard of living if everyone worked ~2 hours/day.
I'm a little skeptical of basic income as well, just like I'd be skeptical of any untested widespread social policy, but the orthodox reasons why it doesn't work are based on a model of reality that's ~3 generations and 70+ years old. I suspect that if it doesn't work, it'll be because of some problem we haven't thought of yet, not the old "tax on the productive". The top candidate, IMHO, is that we're outcompeted by some other society that doesn't have basic income.
> Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns.
Sounds good to me. More actors, more variety. Maybe we wouldn't see every single sci-fi/action movie star Tom Cruise.
>The "seriously productive" ones you're expecting to leech off MUST have lots of less-but-still-productive people working for them - and you're tearing out the incentive to do so.
The situation UBI applies to is in a more post-labor world. One where a McDonald's only needs 2 people working instead of 16. At this point it's not going to be taxing those 2 workers but the company itself.
If you want to earn more money than your UBI check (which you would still get if you work), you will still have an incentive to earn more money.
Movie stars aren't a very good example. Ronald Reagan was not 100X times better actor than the next guy. He could command a big salary because he won a tournament market based on name recognition. If he works less, someone just as good gets a chance and there is the same output.
Where a 90% tax really hurts is entrepreneurship and risk taking. If that 90% tax includes taxes on capital gains, then I have no incentive to start a business or invest in a business. If it fails I lose my money and sweat equity. If it succeeds, I get taxed so much I barely make more money than if I had just worked.
One of the reasons the economy was good in the 50's despite the high taxes was that those high taxes only applied to salaries, not capital gains. Also, there were lots and lots of loopholes so a lot of people didn't end up paying that 90%.
That all said. Americans already pay a ton of taxes. There is plenty of money for UBI already. It just needs to be reallocated from failed programs and bureaucracies - such as 90% of the educational system.
"If he works less, someone just as good gets a chance and there is the same output."
Given the pay disparity, if he works less there's probably more output.
(... note that this is considering his decision to work less, in isolation - not the effect of the tax level that purportedly motivated that as a whole, which would take a much deeper analysis...)
The problem is, labor capital is the only thing that everyone has. And most people don't have the other form of capital. So if their labor capital has no value, then they're probably going to starve.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your example seems to imply the existence of a marginal propensity to consume. I don't think this is commonly accepted in light of work by Friedman and others on the permanent income hypothesis, which puts to question relatively simplistic supply-side and "Going Galt" scenarios.
"When Ronald Reagan was a top-billed Hollywood actor, he faced a ~90% tax bracket. Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns."
Is that what happened? Or did he simply realize that he had enough, and he didn't need to work himself to death to have all the money? Seriously, what's wrong with people realizing they have enough, and don't need to overwork themselves just to have more?
Given the political landscape today, we need a different solution. That's basically socialism (something I don't have a problem with), and I'm sure you've seen how well things with even the hint of socialism have gone over in the US. Most Tea Partiers would be completely happy to have things turn out Hunger Games style, as they're assuming that they'd be on top, rather than having to send their child in to fight.
This isn't socialism at all. The main tenants of socialism are ending profit and private property. UBI embraces the same kind of capitalism we have now with private property and profit. In order to say that UBI is socialist, you also have to be calling Social Security socialism, and you have to think that President Obama is a socialist.
I think you would find a lot more support among conservatives than you think (it seems like you have quite the caricature of them). It seems like there would opposition from left, and UBI would require a complete dismantling of all non-healthcare entitlement programs, a serious reduction of the tax code, and heavily clamping down on all immigration.
UBI is absolutely a kind of socialism; it may embrace the same kind of 'capitalism' we have now, only in that what we have now and sometimes call 'capitalism' is a system which blends many elements of socialism with some structures of capitalism in an attempt to address the kind of problems with capitalism that were the center of the critique by the socialists who named "capitalism" as a thing while at the same time maintaining the desirable features of capitalism, e.g., reward mechanism and incentives. UBI builds on that to, to be sure, but it certainly reflects an idea of common ownership of some commons on which rents are collected (and, if its going to work at all in an increasingly capital-intensive and less-labor-dependent economy, those "commons" are going to include a share of superficially privately-held capital -- i.e., the means of production -- so its pretty hard not to see the direct connection with socialism.)
I think the fact that the use and disposition of the "superficially privately-held capital" is determined by individual private entities is actually fairly significant, even if they're losing a cut of the revenues. It strikes me as similar to the way in which paying taxes on our labor does not make us "slaves". Whether the lack, in this sense, of "state control of the means of production" is enough to make it "not Socialism" seems to be something people could reasonably disagree about.
"In order to say that UBI is socialist, you also have to be calling Social Security socialism, and you have to think that President Obama is a socialist."
And that's exactly what the Tea Party types are saying.
Something actually being socialism or not has never stopped those on the right from rallying against it. All they'll hear is taxes and people getting money, and they'll be all against it.
>I think you would find a lot more support among conservatives than you think (it seems like you have quite the caricature of them).
I don't. And it's not a caricature when based on statements they've actually made. Remember Mitt Romney's 47%?
The net production capacity of humanity (per capita and absolute) is constantly increasing. Why would you ever run out of consumers? Just because fields occasionally become irrelevant doesn't mean that those workers and their descendents will never find work ever again.
I'm not sure where you get that idea. There may well be individual capitalists who believe that, and certainly in the heat of speculation some individuals act as if that is their belief, but the system itself has no such requirement.
Both parties are supposed to gain additional utility from any trade or it doesn't happen. That's not to say that both parties gain utility from any trade that could be made (obviously), and there's nothing that implies an infinitude - just a difference in how much people value different things.
Of course, past Econ 101, we also get into issues of people making trades they think will be beneficial but aren't.
Alright, we have an economist here. So the bank makes you a loan and they expect you to pay it back with interest. Where is that extra capital supposed to come from?
The extra money ("capital" means something else in econ than finance) comes from trading things valued, by another, more highly than that other values the money.
It comes at a cost, but a person and the bank might both come out ahead in utility if the person has a stronger preference for money in the short term than the long term (see "Time Value of Money", "Hyperbolic Discounting") compared to the bank. There are a number of forms this can take, but one worth calling out is when the person is able to use the money to produce the thing they are going to trade for more value.
Does all of this assume growth? Not really. It assumes someone is creating something somewhere, but it doesn't assume society is creating more tomorrow than today.
That said, even that is not assumed by Economics - because nothing in Economics says banks will always be willing to make loans. If conditions are such that they do not expect to be able to be paid back (often enough to have a positive expected value), Economics says banks stop lending. There is no assumption of infinity.
It's not broken, it's just that reality of labor is changing to the point that the ideas we have about how to create a healthy economy won't work anymore. It's similar to how Marx's theories were only applicable when the vast majority of labor was simple factory or agricultural work, and you assume everything about the industrial revolution would remain static.
The #1 method for creating a strong economy has been to try reaching maximum labor participation - everyone has a job, and government does what it can to move people into a position to meet labor demand.
Once we move into a post-labor economy, we will just have to adjust how we make capitialism work through things like Universal Basic Income.
Do you mean people trading with others on a voluntary, win-win basis, or do you mean what today is labeled capitalism but is characterized by coercive force and cronyism?
> or do you mean what today is labeled capitalism but is characterized by coercive force and cronyism?
That's what has always been labeled capitalism, starting with the socialist critiques of the dominant system (filled, as it was, with coercive force and cronyism) in the developed world in the mid-to-late 19th century who invented the term "capitalism" as a label for that system.
Outside of incoherent, fantasies the neither exist in the real world or stand up to much examination even in theory -- fantasies constructed largely as a propaganda to defend that coercive, cronyistic system from its critics -- nothing else but coercive, cronyism-dominated systems has ever been referred to with the label "capitalism".
Only in the corporate welfare system we have today (see Chevrolet bailout). Without corporate welfare in the forms of subsidies, bailouts, and regulations, companies like Telsa would be destroying the major auto manufactures. What old major companies would still be around without un-capitlistic like interventions from the government?
No, it was true for East India, it was true for Standard Oil, and it's still true today. Much of regulation was intended for the protection of consumers, not to cement incumbents, and the subversion of the same is evidence of capitalism's predatory nature.
Businesses continue their regulatory capture in the US. The line between corporations and government grows thinner every time a burdensome regulation is created that only companies with significant resources can follow.
Having an economy dominated by private, profit-seeking businesses isn't really the problem here. For example, communist societies also face some awkwardness when there isn't enough work to go around, albeit to a lesser degree. The fundamental problem is the assumption that people have to work to live.
Why would i run out of money if i pay half of what i pay to a normal guard.. would i not be saving more money? there is more money to spend on more gadgets :)
You would have money. The people who used to work the security positions would not have money, and it's an open question whether your consumption of many products (such as food) could keep up the consumption rates to justify the production to keep the market operating at its current flow levels. If they can't, the market would have to contract, which means if what you're guarding is a food store, you may also find yourself out of a job because we no longer need to guard the food nobody is buying. This is how Great Depressions occur.
And that's just looking at the numbers. Stepping away from the simulation and getting into what it represents, we realize we're looking at a situation where some people have the money to do whatever they want and many, many more starve. If the system is structured to make that happen, the system is flawed by several quite reasonable metrics.
Where do you get your money? I'm assuming from customers paying you. But customers will only pay you as long as they have money. If the trend toward this kind of automation keeps going, then the number of customers with money will keep shrinking and shrinking.
From your perspective, it's pretty black and white. However, from society's perspective, it's pretty nuanced. What are the people who would have taken that guard position going to do now? They have to eat and pay rent too. Some might be able to go study and get better jobs, but many will not. They simply may not have the economic freedom to not have a job and go study, which is a HUGE luxury. So what is to become of them?
