UBI is a fascinating and likely hugely beneficial idea to improve individual welfare by decoupling choice (and ability) of work from being able to eat. I do worry that it reduces the incentive to choose professions which are in demand.
The idea is that “UBI + job” would still pay better than “UBI only”. It reduces the incentive for people who hate the job, but would hate more to see their families starve. The people who like the job and/or like the extra money would stay. And there is also an option to change the working conditions so that less people will hate the job.
Without the metaphorical gun at their heads, fewer people would be motivated to choose the professions in demand, but it would only be a partial reduction. The working conditions would probably improve, and the prices increase. The exact numbers would depend on the specific profession.
The question is, whether the world where jobs suck less but we can afford less things would be a net improvement. I guess that also depends on specific numbers.
It certainly sucks when you need a surgery, and there are not enough surgeons, because everyone prefers to meditate instead. (On the other hand, perhaps with improved working conditions, less surgeries would be needed.)
It also sucks when you don’t need a surgery and go to a doctor with financial pressures to operate you and remove flexibility from your spine or remove an organ and you believe that doctor and get the surgery.
Oversupply of surgeries is as much of a problem as undersupply when you have doctors who aren’t motivated by helping patients but primarily motivated by money.
Sure. This is likely to happen for any identity-based motivation, not just financial. If someone gets good feelings of contribution and effectiveness by performing surgeries, they’re very likely to recommend it in borderline or not-fully justified cases.
If you don’t need surgery, don’t go to a surgeon. In theory, the price system gives victims of over-surgery a bit of additional motivation to stay away, but the repugnance of calculations about health is such that it doesn’t really work that way in most countries.
Good feelings alone don’t produce the institutional pressures that you have in current Western hospitals that are for-profit businesses.
You currently have a state of affairs where many doctors do have goals about the amount of surgeries that they do from their employer, that they are expected to reach.
I have a friend who worked as an anesthetist. According to his opinion he was part of operations that weren’t medically justified and when he complained with his colleges about it they didn’t justify their decision to operate on medical grounds.
In theory, the price system gives victims of over-surgery a bit of additional motivation to stay away, but the repugnance of calculations about health is such that it doesn’t really work that way in most countries.
That’s not how health care economics works in theory. People pay for health care to show that they care and paying more signals that they care more, see Hanson. There’s also a lot of research about sacred values in decision theory and most people treat health as a sacred value.
I suspect there’ll be enough surgeons—doctors get paid in prestige as well as money. We’re going to run out of orderlies and nurses, though, so the surgeons are far less effective.
Agreed that it depends on specific numbers, and how much of the population satisfices near the UBI level vs how many are still motivated to take unpleasant work.
As I tend to think of it, a UBI is only supposed to cover the basic necessities you need to live and maybe a little on top of that, but little else. If this means that a UBI disincentivizes people to work some jobs, then that means that they were previously only doing those jobs because they were literally the kinds of jobs that you would only do if your only other option was to starve to death on the street.
I tend to think that if a UBI eliminates the need to do those kinds of jobs, then good riddance. Yes, maybe those kinds of jobs are necessary for society to function. In that case, if they really are critical ones, installing a UBI should force us to find a way to improve their working conditions (by e.g. offering a better pay) rather than allowing us to continue cruising on with the system where some people do them because they’ve got no better choice.
This is part of ‘specific numbers matter’. In first-world countries, almost nobody _literally starves on the street_ already, so that UBI number would be 0. Most casual discussion I hear assumes UBI will be somewhere near a state minimum-wage job, not enough to live in a nice part of town, but enough to crowd out at least some current jobs.
In the abstract, I like your “good riddance to bad jobs” attitude. Unfortunatlely, I don’t know which concrete low-paying jobs I’d rather leave undone than to have an unhappy worker doing them.
Unfortunatlely, I don’t know which concrete low-paying jobs I’d rather leave undone than to have an unhappy worker doing them.
Me neither. It’s possible that this is a bad idea, and that we’d end up with a worse society overall; but in general I’m skeptical of this, since you can make those jobs more attractive by increasing their pay; and if they really are valuable then they should still produce net value even if they were more expensive to fund. This logic doesn’t work in every possible case and it’s not that hard to think of counterexamples, but in general there’s a big gap between productivity and wages, and a UBI could be something that would help fix that.
But of course nobody knows how it actually works out until we try.
The idea is that “UBI + job” would still pay better than “UBI only”. It reduces the incentive for people who hate the job, but would hate more to see their families starve. The people who like the job and/or like the extra money would stay. And there is also an option to change the working conditions so that less people will hate the job.
Without the metaphorical gun at their heads, fewer people would be motivated to choose the professions in demand, but it would only be a partial reduction. The working conditions would probably improve, and the prices increase. The exact numbers would depend on the specific profession.
The question is, whether the world where jobs suck less but we can afford less things would be a net improvement. I guess that also depends on specific numbers.
It certainly sucks when you need a surgery, and there are not enough surgeons, because everyone prefers to meditate instead. (On the other hand, perhaps with improved working conditions, less surgeries would be needed.)
It also sucks when you don’t need a surgery and go to a doctor with financial pressures to operate you and remove flexibility from your spine or remove an organ and you believe that doctor and get the surgery.
Oversupply of surgeries is as much of a problem as undersupply when you have doctors who aren’t motivated by helping patients but primarily motivated by money.
Sure. This is likely to happen for any identity-based motivation, not just financial. If someone gets good feelings of contribution and effectiveness by performing surgeries, they’re very likely to recommend it in borderline or not-fully justified cases.
If you don’t need surgery, don’t go to a surgeon. In theory, the price system gives victims of over-surgery a bit of additional motivation to stay away, but the repugnance of calculations about health is such that it doesn’t really work that way in most countries.
Good feelings alone don’t produce the institutional pressures that you have in current Western hospitals that are for-profit businesses.
You currently have a state of affairs where many doctors do have goals about the amount of surgeries that they do from their employer, that they are expected to reach.
I have a friend who worked as an anesthetist. According to his opinion he was part of operations that weren’t medically justified and when he complained with his colleges about it they didn’t justify their decision to operate on medical grounds.
That’s not how health care economics works in theory. People pay for health care to show that they care and paying more signals that they care more, see Hanson. There’s also a lot of research about sacred values in decision theory and most people treat health as a sacred value.
I suspect there’ll be enough surgeons—doctors get paid in prestige as well as money. We’re going to run out of orderlies and nurses, though, so the surgeons are far less effective.
Agreed that it depends on specific numbers, and how much of the population satisfices near the UBI level vs how many are still motivated to take unpleasant work.
As I tend to think of it, a UBI is only supposed to cover the basic necessities you need to live and maybe a little on top of that, but little else. If this means that a UBI disincentivizes people to work some jobs, then that means that they were previously only doing those jobs because they were literally the kinds of jobs that you would only do if your only other option was to starve to death on the street.
I tend to think that if a UBI eliminates the need to do those kinds of jobs, then good riddance. Yes, maybe those kinds of jobs are necessary for society to function. In that case, if they really are critical ones, installing a UBI should force us to find a way to improve their working conditions (by e.g. offering a better pay) rather than allowing us to continue cruising on with the system where some people do them because they’ve got no better choice.
This is part of ‘specific numbers matter’. In first-world countries, almost nobody _literally starves on the street_ already, so that UBI number would be 0. Most casual discussion I hear assumes UBI will be somewhere near a state minimum-wage job, not enough to live in a nice part of town, but enough to crowd out at least some current jobs.
In the abstract, I like your “good riddance to bad jobs” attitude. Unfortunatlely, I don’t know which concrete low-paying jobs I’d rather leave undone than to have an unhappy worker doing them.
Me neither. It’s possible that this is a bad idea, and that we’d end up with a worse society overall; but in general I’m skeptical of this, since you can make those jobs more attractive by increasing their pay; and if they really are valuable then they should still produce net value even if they were more expensive to fund. This logic doesn’t work in every possible case and it’s not that hard to think of counterexamples, but in general there’s a big gap between productivity and wages, and a UBI could be something that would help fix that.
But of course nobody knows how it actually works out until we try.