There are rich people pushing themselves work 60+ hour days struggling to keep a smile on their face while people insult and demean them. And there are poor people who live as happy ascetics, enjoying the company of their fellows and eating simple meals, choosing to work few hours even if it means forgoing many things the middle class would call necessities.
There are more rich people that choose to give up the grind than poor people. It’s tougher to accept a specific form of suffering if you see that 90% of your peers are able to solve the suffering with work than if 1% of your peers can. Right now, accepting your own mortality is normal even for rich people, but as soon as the 20% richest can live forever, suddenly everyone who isn’t immortal will feel poor for lacking it. Maybe some will still embrace death rather than endure professional abuse 60 hours per week, but that is suddenly a much harder decision.
My first order guess for the mental definition of poverty would be if >X% of the population in your polity is able to afford a solution to various intense forms of suffering, but you can’t. (Where X seems to be around 50-80%)
A rich 5th century BCE Athenian was a man for who any illness was very likely fatal, who loses half his children between ages ½ and 18, whose teeth are slowly ground down to the roots by milldust, who lived one bad harvest away from famine, and more. But now we characterize poor people by their desperate struggle to escape the things the Athenian rich person accepted as normal and inevitable.
I can see two ways UBI may solve poverty:
Given UBI makes up a sufficiently high fraction of all income, the poorest person does not feel like their wealth differs enough from that of everyone else to conceptualize their suffering as poverty.
Given sufficiently advanced technology, the UBI is enough to solve all major forms of suffering, from death to emotional abuse trauma, and even those with less stuff don’t feel like they’re missing out.
Option (1) may be possible already, especially in more laid-back cultures, but if not then UBI won’t solve poverty yet.
All of that said, why is this the standard you choose to measure it by? Even if UBI doesn’t solve poverty it can relieve suffering. And while other anxieties might take the place of the old on the hedonic treadmill, it does feel like life is better when sources of suffering are taken away. If you offered me $5000 but if I get depressed a child gets eaten alive by wolves before my eyes, I would say no, so apparently I do prefer my worst days over a hunter-gatherer’s worst days.
Quality of life is what matters. UBI can take out financial anxiety and poverty traps, and likely improve exercise and physical health and nutrition and social satisfaction (assuming the economy doesn’t collapse). Those are all things anyone could recognize as valuable, even if they have more urgent matters themselves.
No. I would estimate that there are fewer rich people willing to sacrifice their health for more income than there are poor people willing to do the same. Rich people typically take more holidays, report higher job satisfaction, suffer fewer stress-related ailments, and spend more time and money on luxuries rather than reinvesting into their careers (including paying basic cost of living to be employable).
And not for lack of options. CEOs can get involved with their companies and provide useful labor by putting their nose to the grindstone, or kowtow to investors for growth opportunities. Investors can put a lot of labor into finding financial advisors and engaging in corporate intrigue to get an advantage on the market. Celebrities can work on their performance and their image to become more popular and get bigger signing deals.
Perhaps to clarify, “the grind” isn’t absolute economic value or hours worked, it’s working so hard that it cannibalizes other things you value.
There are rich people pushing themselves work 60+ hour days struggling to keep a smile on their face while people insult and demean them. And there are poor people who live as happy ascetics, enjoying the company of their fellows and eating simple meals, choosing to work few hours even if it means forgoing many things the middle class would call necessities.
There are more rich people that choose to give up the grind than poor people. It’s tougher to accept a specific form of suffering if you see that 90% of your peers are able to solve the suffering with work than if 1% of your peers can. Right now, accepting your own mortality is normal even for rich people, but as soon as the 20% richest can live forever, suddenly everyone who isn’t immortal will feel poor for lacking it. Maybe some will still embrace death rather than endure professional abuse 60 hours per week, but that is suddenly a much harder decision.
My first order guess for the mental definition of poverty would be if >X% of the population in your polity is able to afford a solution to various intense forms of suffering, but you can’t. (Where X seems to be around 50-80%)
A rich 5th century BCE Athenian was a man for who any illness was very likely fatal, who loses half his children between ages ½ and 18, whose teeth are slowly ground down to the roots by milldust, who lived one bad harvest away from famine, and more. But now we characterize poor people by their desperate struggle to escape the things the Athenian rich person accepted as normal and inevitable.
I can see two ways UBI may solve poverty:
Given UBI makes up a sufficiently high fraction of all income, the poorest person does not feel like their wealth differs enough from that of everyone else to conceptualize their suffering as poverty.
Given sufficiently advanced technology, the UBI is enough to solve all major forms of suffering, from death to emotional abuse trauma, and even those with less stuff don’t feel like they’re missing out.
Option (1) may be possible already, especially in more laid-back cultures, but if not then UBI won’t solve poverty yet.
All of that said, why is this the standard you choose to measure it by? Even if UBI doesn’t solve poverty it can relieve suffering. And while other anxieties might take the place of the old on the hedonic treadmill, it does feel like life is better when sources of suffering are taken away. If you offered me $5000 but if I get depressed a child gets eaten alive by wolves before my eyes, I would say no, so apparently I do prefer my worst days over a hunter-gatherer’s worst days.
Quality of life is what matters. UBI can take out financial anxiety and poverty traps, and likely improve exercise and physical health and nutrition and social satisfaction (assuming the economy doesn’t collapse). Those are all things anyone could recognize as valuable, even if they have more urgent matters themselves.
Did you mean to say “There are more poor people that choose to give up the grind than rich people?”
No. I would estimate that there are fewer rich people willing to sacrifice their health for more income than there are poor people willing to do the same. Rich people typically take more holidays, report higher job satisfaction, suffer fewer stress-related ailments, and spend more time and money on luxuries rather than reinvesting into their careers (including paying basic cost of living to be employable).
And not for lack of options. CEOs can get involved with their companies and provide useful labor by putting their nose to the grindstone, or kowtow to investors for growth opportunities. Investors can put a lot of labor into finding financial advisors and engaging in corporate intrigue to get an advantage on the market. Celebrities can work on their performance and their image to become more popular and get bigger signing deals.
Perhaps to clarify, “the grind” isn’t absolute economic value or hours worked, it’s working so hard that it cannibalizes other things you value.