I saw this when I arrived in America, and it's the reason I left. I take the bus and seeing literally every day that there were people with families who worried and laughed and were kind who spent 2 hours a day transporting themselves to service or manufacturing industry job when I sat in an air conditioned office making 3x their wages was making me feel terribly guilty. I eventually went back to a country with a social safety net where the working class people on my bus talk about their vacations.
Maybe if the "favored class" Americans took the bus or went to the laundromat like I did for years they'd want poor people to do well too.
I work in tech. My wife does not. We came to the EU and I noticed that I make a good deal less, but she makes more. Even more important, though, instead of me getting lots of vacation time and her getting almost nothing, we both get a month off a year, protected by law (no bullshit "unlimited vacation" policy can take it away). We can finally take proper holidays together.
Western European countries hardly take immigrants. When you live in a homogenous, solely middle-class country like Sweden/Denmark/Norway, of course everything seems nice and comfortable.
But America accepts some very poor immigrants and allows them to make money and be lifted up. Those are many of the people you saw on the bus.
And if everyone is entitled to the same portion of the pie, what’s the incentive to work harder? Seeing your neighbor put in a third of the effort and produce the same economic result is demoralizing.
This is becoming more common, but has been true for a long time.
I remember working at the mall as a student in mid-90s, you could see that the key to being moderately successful in that environment was maintaining a car. Without a car, you couldn't move up to a management role (as you'd often have to come in early/late when bus transit was least effective), couldn't get a second job that paid more and you couldn't go to school to gtfo of retail.
If I put in my time, if I learn valuable skills, if I make smart choices, if I choose to do something complex over something menial, then I would want to see myself doing better than people who did not choose to do those things, no matter how nice and kind they may be.
Anything else, would be unfair and make me question the point of my efforts.
When I came to America I had nothing: no social network, no college degree, no money!
But America is a place full of opportunity and so after 10 years here and a lot of work I can look back and say that am much happier than I ever was in Europe since the day I got here! The deal is simple: work hard and the sky is the limit.
I started a family, have worked at Fortune 20 companies in management positions, bought a house a couple years ago. I am gonna retire at 50.
I hated living in Europe, the socialism makes people dead on the inside and there is no upward mobility for people that weren’t born into the right circumstances with the right degree’s and relationships :(
America has been excellent to me and I have done my best to do my part of the deal!
It’s not for everyone of course, there is some nice things about Europe and their socialism too...but overall I hated it simple because of what it does to people’s spirits.
America sure has its own problems...but IMO Europe is off much worse
> I eventually went back to a country with a social safety net where the working class people on my bus talk about their vacations.
I sincerely wish that everyone who wanted socialism just went to a socialist country instead of trying to import it here, and I really appreciate that you did. Thank you! We can admire and appreciate each other from afar. (100% genuine, well intended comment here). My family came to the US from a socialist country, seeking freedom and capitalism. I have no idea what to do now that socialism is arriving here.
The problem is that as a society we believe that people need to work 40 hours a week to survive.
We replace people with robots and retain the same output. We are more productive than ever before, yet work the same amount. Physical and uneducated work is being replaced by automation, yet we expect these people replaced by robots to find jobs to survive where there are now none.
I don't believe in Universal Basic Income though, we live in a society and it is our duty to contribute to that society. I think the answer is that we need to move towards a shorter workday. Raise wages and shorten work hours. People used to work 12 hours a day, now we work 8, why not move to a 6 hour workday? Eventually we may move into a post-scarcity society where all our basic needs are automated and work becomes an optional extra, but we're not at that point yet.
> I don't believe in Universal Basic Income though, we live in a society and it is our duty to contribute to that society.
There are plenty of things people do that are valuable to society yet are not captured in the GDP, and are thus not highly valued by contemporary society. They range from visiting and looking after elder parents, playing with your children, writing poetry etc. Then there are undervalued activities which, due to being undervalued, are often rejected by people who would be good at them but can't afford a sacrifice (e.g. teaching, various kinds of social work, etc).
As the marginal cost of production asymptotes towards nil, peoples' sense of self worth from work (which is largely a modern belief anyway dating from the middle of the industrial revolution) can be sloughed off.
> I think the answer is that we need to move towards a shorter workday. Raise wages and shorten work hours.
I agree that we should do this urgently, but beware a belief in the "lump of labor fallacy".
Also, because people currently do develop a sense of self worth from their work, we should be investing heavily in helping people readjust to the loss of economic value in their work. For example governments offer retraining programs, but while a 20 year old coal miner may be able to find a job repairing trucks or writing reactive web apps, a 60 year old coal miner, who after two years of training becomes a 62 year old auto mechanic or web developer, will struggle to find employment. These people (both at 20 and 60) need assistance that also preserves their dignity.
Higher wages with shorter work hours would be a great step in the right direction. I believe Keynes even suggested it.
But, a post-scarcity society, where labor is nearly valueless, still requires everyone have their needs met regardless of what they "own". But in that future as through all the past, most people are born owning little more than their labor.
So a post-scarcity society does not just require the technology we are approaching. It also requires a radically different perception of ownership. This is the harder problem.
In the language of today, it means a person without property and whose labor will always be essentially valueless, gets the produce of someone else's robots, ownership of which will be passed down though generations. Changing this is close to unthinkable in current society.
But unless this massive social shift emerges, it appears that larger and larger portions of society will be converted into a euphemistically renamed servant class where their labor has not intrinsic value except prestige or amusement value to the person hiring.
Pardon the following if it's upsetting, but I notice our current path is to add more and more store clerks, waiters, maids, sign spinners etc. Not because machines/systems can't do theses things (amazon, self serve restaurants, billboards) but because the customer enjoys/gets a kick out of them.
On the current path, what would have become a post-scarcity society will instead have vast numbers of such people earning their minimum requirements at such jobs. Plus perhaps homeless people permanently converted into a prison workforce.
Amen to that - more than this, I worry that "we" didn't decide anything, but rather that keeping people in a state of imagined scarcity proved handy for preserving the status quo in terms of concentration of power.
What would a population do if people were able to act freely and do the things they cared about? How many folks would be fighting climate change but are _instead_ doing Dumb Shit That Doesn't Matter (most jobs) because we have to pay bills?
How many people work a job that is at best a net neutral to society, and at worst parasitic, because it personally enriches them, but makes everyone else poorer? How many are doing that only because they decided to buy a house close to work, so now they have a pile of debt, so now they _have_ to spend their time working for the last owner of the house instead of for themselves?
Why do we make it so goddamned hard to live cheap? Want university? That'll be an arm and a leg. Want a house? Expect to pay many, many years of income for it. Decide you're ok with a small home and riding your bike or taking the bus? Screw you, that's illegal, build a damn parking spot and make sure you meet minimum size reqs and oh btw you're not allowed to build in this old neighborhood because the existing homeowners' cartel made it illegal.
You can build a modest home for ~$40,000. It's expensive because we made it (mostly) illegal to build new homes anywhere near jobs. Not only that, instead of putting homes where they're cheap to serve (close to electric, water, etc) we push everyone out to the middle of nowhere where it's massively expensive to provide services. Not to mention that instead of relying on your feet and a $300 bicycle to get around you now need a gigantic money incinerator (a car) for basic mobility.
God help you if you get sick or hurt. A broken wrist could bankrupt plenty of people in the wrong circumstances.
How many people make six figures (yes, that's a lot of money relatively speaking - try leaving SF before sneering) and still manage to somehow worry about money? How the fuck did we decide this was the best way to build a society? Why did we make everything so goddamn expensive?
Building supplies and calories are cheap after all - practically free.
Maybe it's because keeping a population in fear ensures they can't organize to better their situation at the cost of tearing down existing power structures.
It's not that simple though - if you read the article it talks about how
1: High paying jobs aren't really increasing in number but are becoming ever better paid
and
2: Low paying jobs are exploding in number but not in wages paid.
So part of the problem is that there aren't many mid level jobs that get people in and help them then increase. Tech doesn't really automate the stuff that's not super low level (like cleaning toilets, or mopping floors), and it doesn't do stuff at the high end (M&A banking, negotiating policy, writing code). But it eats a ton of stuff in the middle.
I think a three day weekend with a "day of service" is a much better solution.
Working 8 hours a day already leaves enough downtime in my schedule to get bored, but not enough to turn that boredom into something productive. 6 hours would be outright hell.
The problem is, the extra two hours don't really provide me with any compelling new opportunities to contribute! That's barely enough time to get at a school and volunteer and get back to work. Barely enough time to get into the flow of things if I'm volunteer programming. Etc.
But an entire additional day off of work would be great. I could commit to do real things. I could bake so much bread for the church's food shelter. I could build an entire web app using the city's open data to help people avoid tickets. I could spend an entire day in a classroom. Etc.
If you distribute service days evenly and treat them like "just another business function" for businesses, then you could pretty much replace the teaching aspect of higher ed with volunteers. 2-3 people prep+lecture+office hours one day a week, 2-3 people are spending all their service hours helping design curriculum, 2-3 people do a day of grading each week. A <10 person team can teach an entire university course @ 1 day per person per week. Multiply across the whole city, every company. Universal 4 year higher education for "free". And there's still tens of millions of volunteer days per week left over for all the other stuff.
People can contribute in many ways, I don't agree that only contributions that furthers someone else's economic goals should be judged worthy.
That said, I don't think we will see shortening of the workday without some sort of incentive for employers. From their point of view, why not simply make more money? Indeed, for many boards of directors profits is the only goal.
IMHO, this is where a basic income would fit in. Perhaps when people are allowed more freedom of movement they will find novel ways to contribute to society.
The problem with moving from 8 hours to 6 hours is that there will always be workers willing to do 10 hours or even 12 hours. These workers end up producing 50-100% more with about the same overhead. If you have a worker that will work 12 hours, you only need to pay for one health insurance plan as opposed to having to pay for two insurance plans if you need to get two 6-hour employees.
On top of that, the 12-hour employee is accruing experience at twice the speed of the 6-hour employee. For some fields, putting in the additional hours can make the employee willing to work more hours more productive on a per hour basis. Obviously this doesn't apply to all professions, but for many professions it does apply to some degree.
You'd basically have to outlaw working more than 6 hours to keep overachievers from taking all the good jobs.
Our productivity has indeed grown immensely, but, for good or for bad, instead of making things cheaper we're directing all our free resources to making them better.
Instead of cheaper cars we're making safer cars, instead of cheaper houses we're building bigger houses, and so on.
But I DON'T work just 40 hours a week. I work more like 50-55 hours most weeks. I LIKE my work, and I don't want to do less.
I agree that the belief that we must work 40 hours a week in order to be a good person lies at the root of many of society's problems. And I do think that people ought to contribute to society. But somehow that does not lead me away from the idea of a Universal Basic Income, but instead leads me to believe that something roughly that shape is what we need to save society.
I guess the key difference is who defines "contribute to society". If it is employers, then we need a system where as many people as possible must report to an employer who controls how they spend their time. (Requiring people to get paid a salary seems to do that quite effectively.) If it is the government that defines how one ought to "contribute to society" then we get mandated work programs. But if you believe that each individual is the best judge of how they ought to "contribute to society" then it leads to the belief that we should order society such that as many individuals as possible have a choice about how they spend their time. Some variant of UBI seems to me like a good way to achieve that goal in a society no longer tightly constrained by scarcity.
> We replace people with robots and retain the same output
That's not how manufacturing works. Most manufacturing still requires human input because robots aren't very flexible. You have to build an entire line around a robot which means you adapt slowly to changes in the market.
What is your evidence that UBI reduces people’s contribution to society? If you’re referring to people not “working” in the traditional sense, not all contributions map nicely to economic output.
I'm curious how you plan to have a less-than-40-hour workweek while still having living wages? It's going to be hard enough to get the capitalists on board with just paying people who do work they find inferior enough to live.
I don't see how this tracks. Particularly in relation to many of the jobs going away, productivity isn't inversely related to hours worked. People working 6 hours instead of 8 will get three quarters as much done. How would their wages go up?
If you are proposing the government cover the difference, then you're effectively proposing a bastardized version of UBI with an employment requirement, and payout that is proportional to current economic advantage. I'm not even sure it wouldn't cost more than current UBI proposals given that proportionality.
I don't understand why you would be in favor of this, but think UBI was bad. Or how it could possibly work, if it wasn't the government paying for it.
There are two solutions: Part one, a more educated populace. Education will help those that can work in the "good jobs" get the good jobs. Part two, tax policy. Wealth needs to be redistributed so that there are masses to buy the products that the wealthy are creating.
Edit: I just watched this post go up to 10 points, down to 3 and then back to 5. Clearly this is controversial. I find it interesting that wealth redistribution is this controversial. I'm curious as to why people would be against it. Is it really just "I worked hard for it why should I give it away" or something deeper?
I am in favor of higher taxes, but that does not solve the dignity issue at all.
Taking from the rich to give to the poor only solidifies the division between the two groups. It makes givers and takers, and there will be resentment on both sides.
We as a society need to find a way to not only feed and clothe and house everyone but to give them purpose and a voice. Paying off half the workforce doesn't do it.
We're heading toward a future where more and more is automated and there is less and less room for non-creative work. Let's face it, not everybody can be creative in a way that is lucrative. Do we really want to doom more and more of the population to a subsistence income, while more and more of the gains due to automation go to a shrinking segment of the population? I tend to think that a generous UBI is really the only sensible thing to do.
In case anybody has not read it, Mana, is a short story based on an extrapolation of this kind of rise of automation. I highly recommend it: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Came here to post the link to manna. Thanks for doing that.
It's important to emphasize that while it seems like our economy is beyond human control, it is a human constructuon and the rules can be changed. They were changed in the late 1800s in the USA by populists and they can be changed again. Not easily, to be sure. But possible.
This has been the case for all of human history. The solution is that the economically unfavoured do not reproduce, and the favoured do. We are all the children of European tribal leaders, kings and nobles thousands of years ago.
Follow this approach, and the problem disappears in one generation. Enact some kind of wealth redistribution or welfare system and the problem will continue to grind on.
Not only is lucrative creative work elusive, _rewarding_ creative work is too. Is it really rewarding to make unremarkable art that no one cares about or consumes? Maybe for some people, but not for most.
I think everyone can be creative but most will struggle to monetize their creativity. Maintaining an elaborate garden outside the front of your house requires a great deal of creativity and skill and you could argue that its a benefit to society but it earns the one who put the effort in no money. Some will be able to get jobs as gardeners but there are a limited number of people willing to pay to have a garden maintained.
There are people who work in the old economy, actually doing things in the world. These people are still "tied to the land" in a sense. Their income isn't high enough to live alone, so they still maintain strong familial and neighborly bonds. Their work is physical (that doesn't mean unskilled or low paid, just that it requires physical manipulation), and requires them to physically be in a specific location at a specific time. For the most part this refers to the interior US, so housing is cheap and they generally don't have too much of a commute; they live and work in the same community. They have pride in a sense of place, and feel that they definitely "belong" somewhere because of this. They pinch pennies, compare prices, and generally are not overly wasteful. They might take a vacation once in a lifetime. These people are not poor, they just know the true meaning of a dollar because they are forced to physically work for it.
Compare this to the newly emerged technologically enabled upper middle class whose lives have become entirely abstracted from their physical existence. Our jobs are remote. Our "worksites" are mental abstractions. Our communities are digital. Our clothes are cheap and meaningless. Our connection to neighbors is nonexistent. Our physical location is arbitrary and changes based on a whim. Weekend vacations to Paris are a thing. We don't acknowledge strangers on the street, and if you do you're the insane weirdo. The result is two completely separate world views. A member of the former class simply cannot comprehend things like $14 sandwiches and $50,000 cars because it offends their sensibilities, not because they don't have the money.
I honestly don't think there is a solution here. There will always be a large percentage of the population that don't have the motivation or capacity to learn the skills required to get "good jobs". Unless top earners are willing to sacrifice (tax reform, charity, etc), which is extremely unlikely given human nature, others will need to scrape by with low paying menial jobs. That's how it's always been.
> Adair Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking in London, argues that the economy today resembles what would have happened if farmers had spent their extra income from the use of tractors and combines on domestic servants. Productivity in domestic work doesn’t grow quickly. As more and more workers were bumped out of agriculture into servitude, productivity growth across the economy would have stagnated.
That's an interesting point - maybe extra income is being spent in ways that don't encourage further growth.
Perhaps things are even worse, though: you could argue that in the past the average person used technology to make themselves more productive (a washing machine instead of hours spent washing by hand, etc.) but in recent years technological innovation is used for entertainment purposes - people use their new smartphones to play games or for social networking, etc.
How many years do people spend in Prussian-model government schools or private schools with mandated State-sponsored curriculum? 12? And the average person isn't imparted enough skills to work on anything besides a precarious assembly-line or perpetual min-wage job?
The story here is not an indictment of robots taking menial jobs; rather, it is an indictment of the atrocious education system that teaches people NOTHING of value. Maybe even less than nothing, since it propagandizes and infantilizes them.
If Walmart ran the schools and produced a bunch of know-nothings as a result, we would never hear the end of it. But somehow the State gets a pass. Even worse; they get more money!---per capital spending has increased 3x in the last 60 years with worse results.
Is this inherently a bad thing, or does it just call for more progressive taxation that can fund services that benefit the broader set of people (transit, housing, health care, etc).
A big problem is looking at markets locally and ignoring all the people who contribute to that economy but don't live locally. Many of the tools and other resources used by those in Arizona are produced by workers elsewhere. Software might be created by people in the Bay Area. Robots may be designed and engineered by people in Germany or Japan. Etc.
When you only looking locally, you miss out on all the employment elsewhere that contributes to the local economy you're analyzing.
>But automation is changing the nature of work, flushing workers without a college degree out of productive industries, like manufacturing and high-tech services, and into tasks with meager wages and no prospect for advancement.
Meanwhile wages for construction continue to grow as the labor shortage intensifies. Something doesn't add up.
in a sense there is a split between bodies and brains.
The bodies are competing with robotics and other physical manifestations of things that people value. This field seems to be decades ahead of the other group.
The brains are competing with AI and other informational/decision value sets.
The wage gap is real, although I feel like I see an anti ${insert_tech_company_here} article on NYT just about everyday attacking Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc.
None of these tech companies are on a moral pedestal but also, none of these media outlets are on any moral pedestal. These are the same folks who championed the Iraq war. Look, I’m not saying there isn’t a significant wealth disparity, but I do think people should consider the NYT motives.
It couldn’t be that thry hate tech because these large tech companies are direct competitors in the advertising space?
No, tech is continually rendering an ever increasing section of the population's labour economically irrelevant.
It just looks very dramatic right now because its left the lower strata and is now sweeping across the middle.
The end game is a tiny few that have acquired the keys to all of the machines through natural consolidation. The only question is, will the machines be off because there is no reason to run them because the world is full of poor sods who can't buy anything, or will we be running them because we finally figured out how to share their output.
I agree. I thing Americans are drifting apart because we aren't making an effort to create a social fabric that can support those less fortunate around us.
But I strongly disagree that this is a good job for the government. I think empathy exists, but we aren't going to find it in the hearts of the government or enterprises. Empathy comes from people.
[+] [-] arandr0x|7 years ago|reply
Maybe if the "favored class" Americans took the bus or went to the laundromat like I did for years they'd want poor people to do well too.
[+] [-] CalRobert|7 years ago|reply
Life is better here.
[+] [-] sol_remmy2|7 years ago|reply
But America accepts some very poor immigrants and allows them to make money and be lifted up. Those are many of the people you saw on the bus.
[+] [-] aantix|7 years ago|reply
And if everyone is entitled to the same portion of the pie, what’s the incentive to work harder? Seeing your neighbor put in a third of the effort and produce the same economic result is demoralizing.
[+] [-] Spooky23|7 years ago|reply
I remember working at the mall as a student in mid-90s, you could see that the key to being moderately successful in that environment was maintaining a car. Without a car, you couldn't move up to a management role (as you'd often have to come in early/late when bus transit was least effective), couldn't get a second job that paid more and you couldn't go to school to gtfo of retail.
[+] [-] supermw|7 years ago|reply
Anything else, would be unfair and make me question the point of my efforts.
[+] [-] rock_hard|7 years ago|reply
But America is a place full of opportunity and so after 10 years here and a lot of work I can look back and say that am much happier than I ever was in Europe since the day I got here! The deal is simple: work hard and the sky is the limit.
I started a family, have worked at Fortune 20 companies in management positions, bought a house a couple years ago. I am gonna retire at 50.
I hated living in Europe, the socialism makes people dead on the inside and there is no upward mobility for people that weren’t born into the right circumstances with the right degree’s and relationships :(
America has been excellent to me and I have done my best to do my part of the deal!
It’s not for everyone of course, there is some nice things about Europe and their socialism too...but overall I hated it simple because of what it does to people’s spirits.
America sure has its own problems...but IMO Europe is off much worse
[+] [-] jdlyga|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linkmotif|7 years ago|reply
I sincerely wish that everyone who wanted socialism just went to a socialist country instead of trying to import it here, and I really appreciate that you did. Thank you! We can admire and appreciate each other from afar. (100% genuine, well intended comment here). My family came to the US from a socialist country, seeking freedom and capitalism. I have no idea what to do now that socialism is arriving here.
[+] [-] linkmotif|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|7 years ago|reply
We replace people with robots and retain the same output. We are more productive than ever before, yet work the same amount. Physical and uneducated work is being replaced by automation, yet we expect these people replaced by robots to find jobs to survive where there are now none.
I don't believe in Universal Basic Income though, we live in a society and it is our duty to contribute to that society. I think the answer is that we need to move towards a shorter workday. Raise wages and shorten work hours. People used to work 12 hours a day, now we work 8, why not move to a 6 hour workday? Eventually we may move into a post-scarcity society where all our basic needs are automated and work becomes an optional extra, but we're not at that point yet.
[+] [-] gumby|7 years ago|reply
There are plenty of things people do that are valuable to society yet are not captured in the GDP, and are thus not highly valued by contemporary society. They range from visiting and looking after elder parents, playing with your children, writing poetry etc. Then there are undervalued activities which, due to being undervalued, are often rejected by people who would be good at them but can't afford a sacrifice (e.g. teaching, various kinds of social work, etc).
As the marginal cost of production asymptotes towards nil, peoples' sense of self worth from work (which is largely a modern belief anyway dating from the middle of the industrial revolution) can be sloughed off.
> I think the answer is that we need to move towards a shorter workday. Raise wages and shorten work hours.
I agree that we should do this urgently, but beware a belief in the "lump of labor fallacy".
Also, because people currently do develop a sense of self worth from their work, we should be investing heavily in helping people readjust to the loss of economic value in their work. For example governments offer retraining programs, but while a 20 year old coal miner may be able to find a job repairing trucks or writing reactive web apps, a 60 year old coal miner, who after two years of training becomes a 62 year old auto mechanic or web developer, will struggle to find employment. These people (both at 20 and 60) need assistance that also preserves their dignity.
[+] [-] TomMckenny|7 years ago|reply
But, a post-scarcity society, where labor is nearly valueless, still requires everyone have their needs met regardless of what they "own". But in that future as through all the past, most people are born owning little more than their labor.
So a post-scarcity society does not just require the technology we are approaching. It also requires a radically different perception of ownership. This is the harder problem.
In the language of today, it means a person without property and whose labor will always be essentially valueless, gets the produce of someone else's robots, ownership of which will be passed down though generations. Changing this is close to unthinkable in current society.
But unless this massive social shift emerges, it appears that larger and larger portions of society will be converted into a euphemistically renamed servant class where their labor has not intrinsic value except prestige or amusement value to the person hiring.
Pardon the following if it's upsetting, but I notice our current path is to add more and more store clerks, waiters, maids, sign spinners etc. Not because machines/systems can't do theses things (amazon, self serve restaurants, billboards) but because the customer enjoys/gets a kick out of them.
On the current path, what would have become a post-scarcity society will instead have vast numbers of such people earning their minimum requirements at such jobs. Plus perhaps homeless people permanently converted into a prison workforce.
[+] [-] CalRobert|7 years ago|reply
What would a population do if people were able to act freely and do the things they cared about? How many folks would be fighting climate change but are _instead_ doing Dumb Shit That Doesn't Matter (most jobs) because we have to pay bills?
How many people work a job that is at best a net neutral to society, and at worst parasitic, because it personally enriches them, but makes everyone else poorer? How many are doing that only because they decided to buy a house close to work, so now they have a pile of debt, so now they _have_ to spend their time working for the last owner of the house instead of for themselves?
Why do we make it so goddamned hard to live cheap? Want university? That'll be an arm and a leg. Want a house? Expect to pay many, many years of income for it. Decide you're ok with a small home and riding your bike or taking the bus? Screw you, that's illegal, build a damn parking spot and make sure you meet minimum size reqs and oh btw you're not allowed to build in this old neighborhood because the existing homeowners' cartel made it illegal.
You can build a modest home for ~$40,000. It's expensive because we made it (mostly) illegal to build new homes anywhere near jobs. Not only that, instead of putting homes where they're cheap to serve (close to electric, water, etc) we push everyone out to the middle of nowhere where it's massively expensive to provide services. Not to mention that instead of relying on your feet and a $300 bicycle to get around you now need a gigantic money incinerator (a car) for basic mobility.
God help you if you get sick or hurt. A broken wrist could bankrupt plenty of people in the wrong circumstances.
How many people make six figures (yes, that's a lot of money relatively speaking - try leaving SF before sneering) and still manage to somehow worry about money? How the fuck did we decide this was the best way to build a society? Why did we make everything so goddamn expensive?
Building supplies and calories are cheap after all - practically free.
Maybe it's because keeping a population in fear ensures they can't organize to better their situation at the cost of tearing down existing power structures.
[+] [-] seem_2211|7 years ago|reply
1: High paying jobs aren't really increasing in number but are becoming ever better paid and 2: Low paying jobs are exploding in number but not in wages paid.
So part of the problem is that there aren't many mid level jobs that get people in and help them then increase. Tech doesn't really automate the stuff that's not super low level (like cleaning toilets, or mopping floors), and it doesn't do stuff at the high end (M&A banking, negotiating policy, writing code). But it eats a ton of stuff in the middle.
[+] [-] zjs|7 years ago|reply
1: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
[+] [-] throwawayjava|7 years ago|reply
Working 8 hours a day already leaves enough downtime in my schedule to get bored, but not enough to turn that boredom into something productive. 6 hours would be outright hell.
The problem is, the extra two hours don't really provide me with any compelling new opportunities to contribute! That's barely enough time to get at a school and volunteer and get back to work. Barely enough time to get into the flow of things if I'm volunteer programming. Etc.
But an entire additional day off of work would be great. I could commit to do real things. I could bake so much bread for the church's food shelter. I could build an entire web app using the city's open data to help people avoid tickets. I could spend an entire day in a classroom. Etc.
If you distribute service days evenly and treat them like "just another business function" for businesses, then you could pretty much replace the teaching aspect of higher ed with volunteers. 2-3 people prep+lecture+office hours one day a week, 2-3 people are spending all their service hours helping design curriculum, 2-3 people do a day of grading each week. A <10 person team can teach an entire university course @ 1 day per person per week. Multiply across the whole city, every company. Universal 4 year higher education for "free". And there's still tens of millions of volunteer days per week left over for all the other stuff.
[+] [-] cmiles74|7 years ago|reply
That said, I don't think we will see shortening of the workday without some sort of incentive for employers. From their point of view, why not simply make more money? Indeed, for many boards of directors profits is the only goal.
IMHO, this is where a basic income would fit in. Perhaps when people are allowed more freedom of movement they will find novel ways to contribute to society.
[+] [-] malandrew|7 years ago|reply
On top of that, the 12-hour employee is accruing experience at twice the speed of the 6-hour employee. For some fields, putting in the additional hours can make the employee willing to work more hours more productive on a per hour basis. Obviously this doesn't apply to all professions, but for many professions it does apply to some degree.
You'd basically have to outlaw working more than 6 hours to keep overachievers from taking all the good jobs.
[+] [-] AlexTWithBeard|7 years ago|reply
Instead of cheaper cars we're making safer cars, instead of cheaper houses we're building bigger houses, and so on.
[+] [-] twblalock|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcherm|7 years ago|reply
I agree that the belief that we must work 40 hours a week in order to be a good person lies at the root of many of society's problems. And I do think that people ought to contribute to society. But somehow that does not lead me away from the idea of a Universal Basic Income, but instead leads me to believe that something roughly that shape is what we need to save society.
I guess the key difference is who defines "contribute to society". If it is employers, then we need a system where as many people as possible must report to an employer who controls how they spend their time. (Requiring people to get paid a salary seems to do that quite effectively.) If it is the government that defines how one ought to "contribute to society" then we get mandated work programs. But if you believe that each individual is the best judge of how they ought to "contribute to society" then it leads to the belief that we should order society such that as many individuals as possible have a choice about how they spend their time. Some variant of UBI seems to me like a good way to achieve that goal in a society no longer tightly constrained by scarcity.
[+] [-] refurb|7 years ago|reply
Or are you suggesting we ban working?
[+] [-] skybrian|7 years ago|reply
Partial basic income would fit right into that if it helps people afford to work one job instead of two, or move to part time.
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|7 years ago|reply
That's not how manufacturing works. Most manufacturing still requires human input because robots aren't very flexible. You have to build an entire line around a robot which means you adapt slowly to changes in the market.
[+] [-] pmiller2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FussyZeus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnbgfher|7 years ago|reply
If you are proposing the government cover the difference, then you're effectively proposing a bastardized version of UBI with an employment requirement, and payout that is proportional to current economic advantage. I'm not even sure it wouldn't cost more than current UBI proposals given that proportionality.
I don't understand why you would be in favor of this, but think UBI was bad. Or how it could possibly work, if it wasn't the government paying for it.
[+] [-] jedberg|7 years ago|reply
Edit: I just watched this post go up to 10 points, down to 3 and then back to 5. Clearly this is controversial. I find it interesting that wealth redistribution is this controversial. I'm curious as to why people would be against it. Is it really just "I worked hard for it why should I give it away" or something deeper?
[+] [-] habosa|7 years ago|reply
Taking from the rich to give to the poor only solidifies the division between the two groups. It makes givers and takers, and there will be resentment on both sides.
We as a society need to find a way to not only feed and clothe and house everyone but to give them purpose and a voice. Paying off half the workforce doesn't do it.
[+] [-] drewg123|7 years ago|reply
In case anybody has not read it, Mana, is a short story based on an extrapolation of this kind of rise of automation. I highly recommend it: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
[+] [-] mooreds|7 years ago|reply
It's important to emphasize that while it seems like our economy is beyond human control, it is a human constructuon and the rules can be changed. They were changed in the late 1800s in the USA by populists and they can be changed again. Not easily, to be sure. But possible.
[+] [-] beerlord|7 years ago|reply
Follow this approach, and the problem disappears in one generation. Enact some kind of wealth redistribution or welfare system and the problem will continue to grind on.
[+] [-] freewilly1040|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baroffoos|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aphextron|7 years ago|reply
There are people who work in the old economy, actually doing things in the world. These people are still "tied to the land" in a sense. Their income isn't high enough to live alone, so they still maintain strong familial and neighborly bonds. Their work is physical (that doesn't mean unskilled or low paid, just that it requires physical manipulation), and requires them to physically be in a specific location at a specific time. For the most part this refers to the interior US, so housing is cheap and they generally don't have too much of a commute; they live and work in the same community. They have pride in a sense of place, and feel that they definitely "belong" somewhere because of this. They pinch pennies, compare prices, and generally are not overly wasteful. They might take a vacation once in a lifetime. These people are not poor, they just know the true meaning of a dollar because they are forced to physically work for it.
Compare this to the newly emerged technologically enabled upper middle class whose lives have become entirely abstracted from their physical existence. Our jobs are remote. Our "worksites" are mental abstractions. Our communities are digital. Our clothes are cheap and meaningless. Our connection to neighbors is nonexistent. Our physical location is arbitrary and changes based on a whim. Weekend vacations to Paris are a thing. We don't acknowledge strangers on the street, and if you do you're the insane weirdo. The result is two completely separate world views. A member of the former class simply cannot comprehend things like $14 sandwiches and $50,000 cars because it offends their sensibilities, not because they don't have the money.
[+] [-] president|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctoth|7 years ago|reply
Reduce the 'techlash' to another front in the forever culture war without considering how your hacker birthright is under attack.
Associate yourselves with megacorps and money, nice cars and 401(k)s.
Ally with those who hate privacy. [0]
Ally with those who practice psychological manipulation on a global scale. [1]
* Stallman warned us. [2]
* Wu warned us. [3]
* Doctorow warned us. [4]
* Schneier warned us and tried to explain it to everyone. [5]
> Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind.
> On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. [6]
[0] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/29/zuckerberg-privacy...
[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/8/8/17664580/persuasive-technology-...
[2] Anything the man has written in the last 35 years
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...
[4] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
[5] https://www.lawfareblog.com/security-or-surveillance (He has another better article about the start of the new crypto wars but I can't find it)
[6] https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
[+] [-] azakai|7 years ago|reply
That's an interesting point - maybe extra income is being spent in ways that don't encourage further growth.
Perhaps things are even worse, though: you could argue that in the past the average person used technology to make themselves more productive (a washing machine instead of hours spent washing by hand, etc.) but in recent years technological innovation is used for entertainment purposes - people use their new smartphones to play games or for social networking, etc.
[+] [-] SovietDissident|7 years ago|reply
The story here is not an indictment of robots taking menial jobs; rather, it is an indictment of the atrocious education system that teaches people NOTHING of value. Maybe even less than nothing, since it propagandizes and infantilizes them.
If Walmart ran the schools and produced a bunch of know-nothings as a result, we would never hear the end of it. But somehow the State gets a pass. Even worse; they get more money!---per capital spending has increased 3x in the last 60 years with worse results.
[+] [-] ENOTTY|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malandrew|7 years ago|reply
When you only looking locally, you miss out on all the employment elsewhere that contributes to the local economy you're analyzing.
[+] [-] ummonk|7 years ago|reply
Meanwhile wages for construction continue to grow as the labor shortage intensifies. Something doesn't add up.
[+] [-] maerF0x0|7 years ago|reply
The bodies are competing with robotics and other physical manifestations of things that people value. This field seems to be decades ahead of the other group.
The brains are competing with AI and other informational/decision value sets.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwaway98121|7 years ago|reply
None of these tech companies are on a moral pedestal but also, none of these media outlets are on any moral pedestal. These are the same folks who championed the Iraq war. Look, I’m not saying there isn’t a significant wealth disparity, but I do think people should consider the NYT motives.
It couldn’t be that thry hate tech because these large tech companies are direct competitors in the advertising space?
[+] [-] noonespecial|7 years ago|reply
It just looks very dramatic right now because its left the lower strata and is now sweeping across the middle.
The end game is a tiny few that have acquired the keys to all of the machines through natural consolidation. The only question is, will the machines be off because there is no reason to run them because the world is full of poor sods who can't buy anything, or will we be running them because we finally figured out how to share their output.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kyleperik|7 years ago|reply
But I strongly disagree that this is a good job for the government. I think empathy exists, but we aren't going to find it in the hearts of the government or enterprises. Empathy comes from people.
[+] [-] dba7dba|7 years ago|reply
Execs, senior programmers, project managers make a lot.
And than there are the office support staff, customer service staff, etc that are not really in the 'Tech' company pay scale.