Comment by RealityNow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RealityNow | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Fantastic article, we've truly been seeing a bifurcation of the workforce, and the development of a plutonomy. The interests of capital and labor are inherently opposed because the incentive of the employer is to reduce costs, and capital has been winning out.

I think there's a false tendency to blame Apple for this predicament. It's not Apple's responsibility to provide for the welfare of our country's citizens, it's our responsibility - and it's only through our government that we can really change things. No vacation, benefits, and 80% of one's paycheck going to rent is our government's responsibility to fix, not Apple's.

The most obvious policy here would be some sort of universal basic income. This would naturally prop up wages for the low-paying jobs like janitor that nobody wants to do.

Having to work under those precarious conditions for such lousy pay (relative to cost of living) and no prospects for advancement must be a downright miserable experience, the literal definition of wage slavery. 6pm-2am shift means she probably never even sees her kids during the week. All for a meager $600/month in disposable income after rent is paid (which when you're a contractor without vacation and benefits isn't much). And she'd never be allowed to complain about it because she'd be told that she should be grateful to have a job, there are people in Africa starving, she should've studied harder in school, and she shouldn't have had kids. What a world we live in.

Many oppose universal basic income on ideological grounds, but enough with this ideologically-driven bullshit that ignores the unnecessary suffering of the wage slaves at the bottom. Nobody in a first world country should have to live a lowly life like that janitor.

Do you know the history of Speenhamland? The empirical results of that experiment in a basic income was that it acted as a subsidy to employers, enabling them to pay below subsistence wages that were made up for by the government-funded UBI. There's a parallel to how food stamps and other support enable large corporations today to pay less in wages, as the difference will be made up through taxpayer funding. I don't want to ignore suffering, but I suspect something like a jobs guarantee would achieve the same ends in a more equitable fashion.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system

So if I understand correctly, the Speenhamland System was a wage supplement system, not a UBI system. That is, if people stopped working, they stopped getting the extra money. This means that employers are free to slash wages and let the supplement make up the difference.

With UBI, people get the money regardless, so employers have to compete with what people can get without working. If you only offer them a meagre income boost for a gruelling work week, you're going to struggle to attract people.

With UBI, the employer now can pay (wage-UBI) for every employee, shifting the wage burden off the employer and onto the state by a factor of UBI x population. With a jobs guarantee, an 'employer of last resort', the government sets the floor on wages through hiring, giving everyone who wants a job but can't find one in the open market at whatever base wage parallels UBI. The government only has to pay for base wage x unemployed rather than UBI x population. This also yields labor for the government for 'New Deal' type projects, and employers now have to do better than the base wage/job conditions to hire, raising the velocity of money. More importantly, everyone has the dignity of a job if they want it as well as the money needed for basic needs.

Are there guarantees that UBI will always be comparable to a living wage?

This is counteracted by the fact that employees now have the option of walking away from their jobs, and thus employers would have to raise wages to draw them in. Wages might rise in the type of jobs that nobody actually wants to do (eg. janitor), though wages may very well decrease in the jobs that everybody wants.

UBI and government job programs aren't mutually exclusive. I do think the government should create more jobs for the public good, especially in scientific research and development. But either way, I think a UBI is necessary so that people have the option of working for themselves rather than being forced to answer to someone else. UBI is like the libertarian approach, while government jobs are the more authoritarian approach. I think both should coexist.

I guess there's no guarantee that UBI would be a living wage. Regardless, I think we need a UBI. Money is one's claim on society's resources, and since we're all shareholders in this economy, we should receive a citizen's dividend, even if that amount isn't that much (eg. Alaska's Permanent Fund)

> This is counteracted by the fact that employees now have the option of walking away from their jobs

I don't see how either a UBI or a job guarantee limits employees from walking away from their jobs. The presence of a job, or an income, hasn't stopped many people from starting their own thing.

> But either way, I think a UBI is necessary so that people have the option of working for themselves rather than being forced to answer to someone else.

The option to work for yourself isn't taken away by a jobs guarantee. I can see how the presence of a UBI would permit people to do things no one would pay for otherwise. As idyllic as I really do think that sounds, I suspect that examples of people doing things no one would pay for would be used over time by UBI opponents to drive down the value of the UBI to below a living wage.

UBI doesn't limit employees from walking away from their jobs, it enables them to.

> The option to work for yourself isn't taken away by a jobs guarantee.

Obviously. Job guarantee programs however still don't allow you to truly walk away from your job unless you're able to financially support yourself, whereas a UBI does.

Yep, I misread your point, and mis-responded.

A UBI that's actually enough to replace a job has the benefits you describe, at the cost of UBI times the population. A UBI that's not enough to replace a job doesn't have the benefits you describe, has the negatives I describe, and costs almost as much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com