patrick.net

SunnyvaleCA says

Unfortunately, many of the people in poverty are that way due to their own bad decisions

This.
My own parents made consistently poor financial decisions throughout their lives. Now they are sort of ok, but not at all prepared for retirement and well past the normal ages for that. I expect that the burden of supporting them in their old age will fall on us, their kids. But hey, they wanted to not save for retirement, rack up large credit card debts, take out equity loans on their house, buy stupid things, and “invest” in every MLM they heard about. My dad even did “Trump University” which was a total scam. The list of stupid ways they blew their money instead of investing or whatever is super long. But I’ll end up having to bail them out.

Some people will always be broke no matter how much money they make. I have several coworkers in this category. New $70k truck but can’t save cash for a down payment on a house... the list goes on.

Quigley says

It’s still cheaper and more practical to have people do most jobs. And somehow, even as automation replaces people, we are at historically low unemployment levels.

Right now, there's a lot of deadwood at places like State Street, MetLife, Blue Cross Blue Shield, never mind the local & state govts. These headcount heavy places will be the first targets for automation and I suspect that in 15 years, they'll be able to reduce headcount by 80% along with actuaries, auditors, and the general financial analyst.

So you don't need to automate all plumbers, electricians, handymen, etc, to create to drop in aggregate demand. You just need to torpedo a bunch of formerly stable white collar jobs and that in itself, will start the ball rolling.

Rin says

So with that in mind, currently, UBI would end up as a subsidy for increasing rent, food stuff, and legal/illegal drugs.

A better approach, prior to let's call it a full age of automation, circa 2035-2040, is a job training program where there are clear metrics to achieve along with an actual job at the end of the training.

Part of implementing UBI would be to get rid of all the other welfare subsidies. Section 8 vouchers increase rent (for the rest of us), for example. Other existing welfare handouts increase prices for the rest of us. People commonly extract cash from their food stamps from various fraudulent schemes.

As for job training, etc, that's again a heavy-handed government approach that doesn't really work in practice. If you're making $20k/year at McDonalds and receiving $20k/year in various welfare (food stamps, earned income tax credit, section 8), what's the point up "upgrading" to a $35k/year job and losing all your benefits? That's a disincentive to improve yourself. Even if you upgrade to $45k/year, you've added additional effort and responsibility; probably not seen as worth it to a large set of people.

With UBI, you get your $10k/year. If you upgrade your job you still get your $10k/year and whatever extra money you earn from the better job. That's the right incentive.

With UBI, if you pump out a few more kids, you do not get more welfare. Your $10k/year is for you and your kids to share. That's the right incentive.

If you "father" a bunch of kids, you get to share your $10k/year with them. (Single mother can force DNA tests and payment.) That's the right incentive.

Of course I'm dreaming about all of the above. Liberals remove all the "right incentive" stuff and it'll just be an additional handout that is means tested. You in the end it'll just be more free stuff for the unproductive.

SunnyvaleCA says

As for job training, etc, that's again a heavy-handed government approach that doesn't really work in practice. If you're making $20k/year at McDonalds and receiving $20k/year in various welfare (food stamps, earned income tax credit, section 8), what's the point up "upgrading" to a $35k/year job and losing all your benefits? That's a disincentive to improve yourself. Even if you upgrade to $45k/year, you've added additional effort and responsibility; probably not seen as worth it to a large set of people.

I think the point is not that large set of ppl.

Realize, the deadwood at State Street, MetLife, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and a slew of other govt positions are the white collar version of welfare, where the only difference is that the aforementioned have some 'college degree or certificate' so that HR folks allow their hiring. In reality, they're doing a job which a high schooler could perform, with few skills aside from talking BS.

If a form of UBI, between now and let's say 2045 (the year of high automation) gives a poor person a chance to transition into a $35K-$45K position, which can even include being let's say an apprentice plumber or some other trade, then that's an opportunity for someone who wasn't born into the right conditions.

If the rest don't want the training then so be it. They'll be the welfare/dole class version of that MetLife loser who only got that job because his parents sent him to college & asked someone in the firm to hire their loser offspring.

Rin says

If the rest don't want the training then so be it. They'll be the welfare/dole class version of that MetLife loser who only got that job because his parents sent him to college & asked someone in the firm to hire their loser offspring.

Trust me, when you transition from studying and working in engineering to the financial services sector, you really get the culture shock of seeing how many stupid and useless ppl there really are, out there.

Rin says

Trust me, when you transition from studying and working in engineering to the financial services sector, you really get the culture shock of seeing how many stupid and useless ppl there really are, out there.

I see those people every day. Not in finance here, but man there are boat loads of useless no skill people out there. They can't do shit, have no tools to do the job, and want to be paid like a fucking professional too.

No one else sees the financial disaster in government redistribution of wealth, eh?

I get why some politicians support this idiotic notion. Not sure why some of the rest of you do. Rin sort of has a point in the automation thing, though I still think thats rather a disaster, but we do have 55 years or of multigenerational poverty that is living breathing evidence in the projects that demonstrates how epically bad an idea government distribution of wealth is.

Happy to escort anyone who needs proof here:

SunnyvaleCA says

Rin says

So with that in mind, currently, UBI would end up as a subsidy for increasing rent, food stuff, and legal/illegal drugs.

A better approach, prior to let's call it a full age of automation, circa 2035-2040, is a job training program where there are clear metrics to achieve along with an actual job at the end of the training.

Part of implementing UBI would be to get rid of all the other welfare subsidies. Section 8 vouchers increase rent (for the rest of us), for example. Other existing welfare handouts increase prices for the rest of us. People commonly extract cash from their food stamps from various fraudulent schemes.

As for job training, etc, that's again a heavy-handed government approach that doesn't really work in practice. If you're making $20k/year at McDonalds and receiving $20k/year in various welfare (food stamps, earned income tax credit, section 8), what's...

The liberals say that there won't be any additional funds for pumping out kids, but you know when push comes to shove...we have to it is for the children.

SunnyvaleCA says

Inequality is a straw man

Wondering if you know what a "straw man argument" is.

If you say for example that my argument is a "straw man," it means that you're saying that I am mischaracterizing your argument, that I am more or less tearing apart a position that is not your position.

THat doesn't work here. I don't claim that you are in favor of inequality.

That's a freudian slip if I ever saw one...

Rin says

Not really, because it isn't tied to some training program like being let's say a nurse assistant

Yang believes sexes are a social construct.

marcus says

SunnyvaleCA says

Inequality is a straw man

Wondering if you know what a "straw man argument" is.

If you say for example that my argument is a "straw man," it means that you're saying that I am mischaracterizing your argument, that I am more or less tearing apart a position that is not your position.

THat doesn't work here. I don't claim that you are in favor of inequality.

You're right. I misspoke. Thanks for clearing that up! Would you go for: Red Herring? As in: claiming the goal is to eliminated inequality is leading the discussion elsewhere, when I'm saying the right discussion is lifting those on the bottom up.

Cousin!
SunnyvaleCA says

Thanks for clearing that up! Would you go for: Red Herring?

Yang is a homo

What always amazed me was.that the useless individuals always got paid higher than some.of.the.most talented workers.

This is from my phone:

Just figured I'd share with anyone else who'd like to register their displeasure.

Oh, and UBI will just cause prices to rise. Case in point: I will soon after raise rents on my renters. Something I've never done and I've got one who's been there 4 years.

Quigley says

While it’s true that automation is making progress in many types of work

It's so over blown. I do AI development at a biotech. I use the same libraries everyone else does. Yeah, it'll take out some low level and maybe a dozen white collar roles. But the white collar losers are only those who don't work to find out how to leverage it.

For example: Say someone develops AI to look at MRI scans better than a radiologist. (Already done)

The radiologist that insists they are going to manually review scans will be a dinosaur soon. With AI the radiologist that continues training (something ALL healthcare workers should do) can now do 10x the work. Or more.

So this dickhead either:

1. Should never have reached the heights he did in tech because he's too stupid to understand it or
2. He's a fucking liar and just trying to scare people and give free shit to get elected. (stick and carrot)

My guess is it's a combo of both.

mell says

Yang is a homo

Yeah, even if true: so what. Let's debate Yang's proposal on its merits.

SunnyvaleCA says

mell says

Yang is a homo

Yeah, even if true: so what. Let's debate Yang's proposal on its merits.

I've heard enough from that guy. It was a joke. But he's probably on par with or worse than the squad.

just_dregalicious says

ALL healthcare workers should do) can now do 10x the work. Or more.

You are discussing doctors and high level nurses.

What about people w 83 IQ's? Isn't that 6% of the population?

CBOEtrader says

What about people w 83 IQ's? Isn't that 6% of the population?

Remove the minimum wage. Open the bottom rungs of the ladder. I knew a retarded guy in the 80s who made and sold jump ropes. Paid for his cigarettes.

A flood of 3rd world illegal aliens doesn't help either.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/andrew-yang-fired-me-for-getting-married-ex-employee

Andrew Yang fired me for getting married: Ex-employee

mell says

SunnyvaleCA says

mell says

Yang is a homo

Yeah, even if true: so what. Let's debate Yang's proposal on its merits.

I've heard enough from that guy. It was a joke. But he's probably on par with or worse than the squad.

I think you are mistaken. Yang is merely ahead of his time. 20 years from now, believe it or not, this will be on the table in a serious way.

100 years ago, nobody thought the form of welfare we have today was a serious proposal worth discussing. And yet we have welfare. I prefer to think of UBI as a less-bad approach to welfare.

Whether it be food stamps, or other forms of welfare that aren't enough to live on, but are enough to supplement a minimum wage job, isn't supplementing minimum wage to the point that people can actually live on it, in a way also a form of welfare to all the companies that hire workers for minimum wage ?

MY fear about UBI is that too much of it will go directly to rent increases (not just housing rents). But that alone may not make it a bad idea.

marcus says

Whether it be food stamps, or other forms of welfare that aren't enough to live on, but are enough to supplement a minimum wage job, isn't supplementing minimum wage to the point that people can actually live on it, in a way also a form of welfare to all the companies that hire workers for minimum wage ?

MY fear about UBI is that too much of it will go directly to rent increases (not just housing rents). But that alone may not make it a bad idea.

If that UBI goes to the pockets of rent seekers, that would surely be a bad outcome. If done "right" (ha ha! we're talking about politicians here) the UBI would replace many other forms of welfare that definitely do go directly to rent seekers. The hope is that UBI could be less exploitable by rent seekers. Check out Sam Harris and (of "The Bell Curve") Charles Murray on the topic; there's at least a theoretical possibility that UBI could be better than welfare.

I've always liked the flat payout characteristic of UBI over welfare, and SunnyvaleCA enumerated the incentive structure benefits well.

But, if the payout is enough to replace welfare, then it's enough to create a massive new class of leeches who're content just living ultra-frugally in exchange for a life devoid of work. We would see an amazing surge in people who "cant work" or other BS fake disability excuses that they use the sound less loser-like.

Sometimes I wonder how it would work if we were to make welfare benefits come with unpleasant aspects, proportional to the benefits received. Make people do SOME type of work, and if "they cant work", then impose something else on them, even if it's just a fools errand type task. Basically, they get their "human rights" such as food and shelter, but it's not enjoyable. Those who work towards a life without welfare, such as making real progress on school / training, would have less unpleasant restrictions imposed upon them. Make it hurt, and magically all those "disabled" people would start lifting themselves up by their bootstraps instead of watching tv all day.

I wrote about this earlier ...

http://patrick.net/post/1317782/2018-07-30-if-you-want-socialism-then-focus-on-automating-all-white-collar-jobs-first

Here's the problem, socialists want the whole "let's make the system fair" when there are still a lot of stupid white collar jobs, which anyone with a HS diploma & some training can do, where a college degree is little more than an HR stamp of approval.

Once expert system/machine learning tools eliminate 80% of these jobs, which include places like BNY-Mellon, JP Morgan, MetLife, etc, you'll see a massive cry for socialistic reforms like Universal Income, etc.

So start with the basics .... because that's what I did at my firm, and that's to learn to grow your enterprise, without adding additional headcount.

The fewer the workers, the better the bottom line.

Automate and fire workers.

And then, we can start to talk about UBI but don't put the horse before the carriage.

marcus says

komputodo says

No, not even close...Trump is the most underrated.

Trump is different because he's simultaneously the most over rated.That's the thing about Trump that makes him so much different than anyone else....who else was ever the most over rated and under rated at the same time?

Hircus says

if the payout is enough to replace welfare, then it's enough to create a massive new class of leeches who're content just living ultra-frugally in exchange for a life devoid of work

Yes, that's bad. But what we have now is worse: People incentivized to have (more) kids that they can't take care of; fathers moving out of the house so the mother gets more; not taking a job because of loss of free stuff, etc.

I see UBI as just theoretical right now. But starting the conversation now means having better conversations later when the discussion about UBI picks up pace and becomes serious. It takes some time for people to hear about, think about, and reach some conclusions about any sort of new idea.

Hircus says

But, if the payout is enough to replace welfare, then it's enough to create a massive new class of leeches who're content just living ultra-frugally in exchange for a life devoid of work. We would see an amazing surge in people who "cant work" or other BS fake disability excuses that they use the sound less loser-like.

It would also attract more immigrants.

Crybaby:

marcus says

Trump is different becasue

Way different.

Here’s a new video i watched today. It’s about capitalism and inequality and about how raising wages makes customers that drive our economy further.
www.youtube.com/embed/q2gO4DKVpa8

Quigley says

Here’s a new video i watched today. It’s about capitalism and inequality and about how raising wages makes customers that drive our economy further.
www.youtube.com/embed/q2gO4DKVpa8

This guy presented a series of lies and delusions in the video:

1. How can banning all workers with productivity lower than $15/hr and forcing employers to buy automation equipment to replace those banned workers be "inclusive"? The total wage paid out of course would drop as minimum wage laws work through the banning of lower-productivity jobs; minimum-wage laws don't work like Milton Friedman's "negative income tax" idea.

2. Where is he getting the idea that Seattle is doing great? How does he explain the fact that Seattle restaurant growth rate is falling way behind other big cities in the country that haven't imposed the $15 minimum wage? How does he explain companies like Boeing and Amazon have been trying to relocate out of Seattle? Do we need to review that Seattle is Dying video?

3. Henry Ford didn't pay workers $5/day in order to make them well off, but in order to slow down the high turn-over rate at his extremely emotionally draining production line; the lie that he fed to the media was just there to make life more difficult for his competitors who had lower productivity using traditional craftsman approach to car-making. The idea that a carmaker can become better off by paying workers enough so they can afford cars themselves makes about as much sense as the idea that a snake can feed itself by eating itself! The model T alone sold 15 million copies, whereas his workforce numbered less than 15,000 at the time of his pay raise. How would increasing sales by 0.1% make any significant difference? The real reason for his drastic wage raise was the company having to hire 52,000 people a year in order to fill those less than 15,000 jobs; i.e the turn-over rate was over 300% in a year! because the job was excruciatingly draining both physically and emotionally. So he had to raise wages in order to keep workers in order to reduce training cost and accident cost.

4. The French Revolution did not come about due to Feudalistic inequality. The conditions in Germany and in Russia were far more unequal than in France. 18th century France was actually very liberal by the standards of the day (tabloids were making fun of the King and the Queen without consequences). The problem with France was having too many "leftists": too many over-educated professional "students" with little marketable skills. That's why they took their chances in revolution, financed by British money. When Russia finally had similar over-supply of over-educated "students" with little marketable skills a century later, they embraced even more bloody revolutions.

5. Like himself said, him making 1000 times the median wage doesn't mean him buying 1000 pairs of pants. That's actually a good thing! His wife demanding a bag costing 1000 times the price of an average pair of pants would actually cost the society much less natural resources than 1000 pairs of pants would cost. Investors are allocating more resources into his hands because his self-acknowledged fore-sight! Wouldn't we want to allocate more of the society's resources / savings into the hands of people with foresight? and allow the market to re-allocate resources when they make mistakes?

6. How would taking resources away from those people with foresight and give them to risk-averse bureaucrats help a society? It never does. The hind-bound economies of the "East" (18th century France relative to England, mid-19th century Germany relative to France, late 19th / early 20th century Russia relative to Germany, mid-20th century China relative to Russia) may have witnessed short bursts of fast economic growth as they copied the technology leaders to their respective "West," but every time that rapid growth came to a crashing halt and massive internal strife as such high rates of growth couldn't be sustained once the bureaucrats can't find obvious targets to copy.

7. His faint praises of capitalism sounds like trying to displace a Capitalistic Free Market with national socialism.

Reality says

4. The French Revolution did not come about due to Feudalistic inequality. The conditions in Germany and in Russia were far more unequal than in France. 18th century France was actually very liberal by the standards of the day (tabloids were making fun of the King and the Queen without consequences). The problem with France was having too many "liberals": too many over-educated professional "students" with little marketable skills. That's why they took their chances in revolution, financed by British money. When Russia finally had similar over-supply of over-educated "students" with little marketable skills a century later, they embraced even more bloody revolutions.

Ferme generale (Tax Farming) and the huge national debt from many wars (inc. to help our asses out in the Revolutionary War), which made France even more dependent on selling offices, which the holders then used to squeeze money out of the populace.

Revolutions happen because of opposing forms of modernization. For the Glorious Revolution, it was James II trying to make England more like authoritarian France vs. more like the Dutch Republic represented by William the Silent. In the French Revolution, the bureaucratic state insisted it could further glorify France from Versailles but was opposed by liberals who wished to professionalize the bureaucracy and rationalize the huge numbers of polities (tons of internal tariffs and differing legal systems). Unlike the Glorious Revolution (which was a Revolution, involving riots and uprisings against James and his centralizing, bureaucratizing ways imitating an Earlier King of France).

Once the King was sidelined, it became a battle between Liberal Republican Moderates/Constitutional Monarchists versus the Usual Centralizing, hyperrational Leftist Suspects, which is why Robespierre's reign is consider the first Modern Leftist Revolution. However, it didn't start that way.

A sloppy and general view:
1. Absolute Monarchism, with centralized bureaucracy and the State, It Is Me!
vs.
2. Liberal Republicanism, looking to Britain (whom they regarded as Nobel Savages!), rationalized (one law for all, doing away with countless local laws and internal tariffs) but more (not necessarily totally) decentralized
vs.
3. Authoritarian Republicanism, completely rationalized but not decentralized at all.

Continentals, unlike Anglo-Americans, don't know when to stop and take a break, they have to go to the Extremes.