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Comment by laotzu | Hacker News Reader

>At the moment the problem in the US is labor scarcity. Robots haven't replaced these jobs, these jobs just don't get done.

Labor scarcity in the sense that there's not enough people who need work, or in the sense that there is not enough people who have the necessary skills? I would have to assume the latter. If that is the case, aren't most of these scarce skills the type which are used to service and maintain the very automation which would be used to implement a UBI?

>When robots provide the same level of services to the US middle class, that would be a signal that we might need to think about something like a BI.

Automation already provides a much higher level of services than human workers in many areas. Do we really want to wait to the very end of this process to begin the transition?

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The work I'm describing is all minimally skilled labor.

Automation already provides a much higher level of services than human workers in many areas. Do we really want to wait to the very end of this process to begin the transition?

Right now our problem is too little labor, not too much. Maybe we should wait until we at least have enough labor before we take steps that will reduce the labor supply?

Note that according to the experiments which BI proponents cite as "successes", BI reduces labor supply by 10% or so (e.g. mincome reduced labor by 13%).

https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money...

http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20(2).pdf

For comparison, the great recession reduced labor supplied by 5%.

Under circumstances of labor scarcity, BI would be wildly counterproductive.

Implementing a BI now is like a fat person eating 5 cheeseburgers on the theory that they might starve in some distant apocalyptic future.

>Right now our problem is too little labor, not too much. Maybe we should wait until we at least have enough labor before we take steps that will reduce the labor supply?

At what point would you know there is enough labor and how would you measure that? It would have to be once a certain goal is achieved, correct? What is that goal?

I'm curious because in a time where there are 7 billion people I have rarely, if ever, seen someone say on the whole there are too many jobs and not enough laborers. Rather it's more often said that there are too many laborers and not enough jobs. Which is precisely the type of sentiment that drives anti-immigration xenophobia.

As a start, how about once we run out of unskilled work that people are willing to pay minimum wage for, but which isn't performed?

Concretely, I'd pay for twice weekly house cleaning if it cost me $7.25/hour. An actual housecleaning costs me about $50. Most middle class homes in India are cleaned daily, which suggests this is very achievable. Many working women would happily pay $7.25/hour for child care. Lots of folks would love a driver while they sit in the back of a car and work, as several of my work colleagues do. Etc.

Are there no tasks in your life that you'd be happy to pay $7.25 for a human to handle for you?

(India has a labor scarcity too. Why isn't someone cleaning up all the garbage?)

This is because most of those folks simply want to protect a privileged position they were born into. Rather than competing in the labor market with a Mexican or Indian, they'd rather have someone threaten the Mexican with violence for the crime of economic competition.

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