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.
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.