Switzerland and "Star Trek" economics: $2,800 a month for everyone?

While there may be problems with a phased UIG, this isn't one of them if you phase it out at 50¢ per dollar earned, or somewhat faster if you want to effect a lower minimum wage. Which is basically what this does, sets a subsidized higher minimum wage.

I think if you want to have a radical economic restructuring, probably the least invasive way to do it would be to limit the work-week to, say, 20 hours, down from 40. Not to say that it's not invasive (and with an employer mandate to provide health insurance, there are any number of spill-over effects, the total of which probably can't be understated), but it will have the effect of basically doubling the demand for hourly labor, raising wages, and, not unimportantly, giving hourly laborers a lot more free time for self-improvement (possibly of the kind that will land them a salaried position), naturally at the cost of higher costs for everything and higher prices for everyone.

As economies become more advanced, we will likely face a surplus of labor, and then ideas like a 20 hour work week might become very important.

Yes, that would work, and it's worth thinking about. But I'm no fan. I feel that that is more invasive than a basic unconditional income. Yes, the latter means everyone that pays taxes pays into these handouts, but it's in the contourless fashion of money. Fixing how long a person may work structures their whole life. To say nothing of the emphasized difference between jobs that allow such a reduction and those that don't -- a head manager will always be a head manager, 7 days a week, for whatever they manage.

So checking back into the thread, a 20 hour work week huh?

Can I assume that my 80 hour week will be cut to forty, or will three more Flows be designated to do my job, splitting it into 20 hour shifts? Or better yet, should my production of grain and meat by but by 75%? Will I be compensated for that, like the set aside farm programs from the 80's?

Tsk. You'll obviously be replaced by Cylons who can work 24/7.

Unfortunately, they went to a 20-hour work week at the Cylon plant, and Cylon production is running far behind...

Silly-food production will simply be outsourced or mechanized.

He'll have to turn over one of the little Flow's for two days a week in the corporation's labour pool anyway.

I know that was tongue-in-cheek but, really, automation almost exclusively replaces lower-skilled manual jobs, so it's hard to imagine why a future company would WANT child labor. Employees are an expensive burden; the capitalist dream is having a plant where materials come in, products go out, and no human labor is required.

The reason I've theorized a labor surplus is because we will see the end of many jobs, maybe not Flow's or many the rest of us have? But we aren't likely to soon see a time where everybody can do skilled labor, so what happens if most unskilled labor goes the way of the do do? Do the lucky few get full time McJobs, or do we come to a new paradigm?

I'm not sure that that is true. I see machines calculating differential equations, steering ships and managing car pools. But no roomba has ever completely replaced a cleaning human.

That's the transition that will result in a genuine Star Trek-like universe, where people work because they want to, not because they have to.

The rationale that "people are lazy and money is their only incentive" is usually said while looking in a mirror by someone who hates going to the cubicle farm every day but doesn't have the whatever-it-takes to try something else.

So far. What if you could push a button, leave the room, and have it sanitized by sound waves? I think it was "Yesteryear" that posited that.

If we're gonna bring up Trek, all we've ever seen is the people driven enough to "work anyway". How does a society like that handle the countless dregs that would opt for the free ride?

There are exceptions, of course. But the difference between the low-end and the high-end is that at the low-end, the automation COMPLETELY replaces the human being. Not too many guys painting cars or carrying parts around at a big car plant.

I think we may have discussed this before, but my working theory is that the resources required to keep a person fed, clothed, and sheltered, become so minimal relative to what's available, that nobody really cares about these dregs as you call them. I'm more concerned that we will reach a place where we demand that people work, but due to labor surplus, many simply can't. Hence the suggestion for a shorter work week.

This is the discussion we came to in another thread.

(Disclaimer: Star Trek is fiction. Any discussion of REAL 23rd Century economics is impossible, because we cannot know what they will be. What follows is a discussion of what's shown on Star Trek analyzed according to 21st Century economics.)

My claim is that very few people would choose to be busboys (like at Sisko's Restaurant in DS9) or janitors (like at Starfleet Academy in TWOK). We would certainly NOT expect these to be necessary jobs in the 23rd Century, so the questions are: Why do these jobs even exist? and What motivates people to take these jobs?

The answers I got I found less than convincing: (1) Perhaps the busboys are budding restaurateurs, and they have to apprentice. (2) Perhaps people are janitors it because they like doing manual labor. (3) Perhaps people "take turns" doing the less glamorous work. (4) Perhaps this kind of work pays very well, so people flock to it.

I found these unconvincing. (1) would be a silly and unnecessary complication in the 21st Century, let alone the 23rd, and, anyway, how would this be enforced? The rationale behind (2) is that people sometimes enjoy uncomplicated manual labor and, while this is true, I doubt many people enjoy it so much they would choose to spend much of their lives doing it. (3) fails because it is ridiculously inefficient and impractical: yes, the pilot can probably serve as an adequate (if somewhat over-skilled) flight attendant, but I don't want to be on the plane the day it's the stewardess turn at the controls. (4) is absurd; that kind of work isn't highly valued now, why would it be moreso in the 23rd Century?

It wouldn't apply to you; you're not paid hourly.

It's not how long someone may work, it's how long someone may work without being paid at overtime rates (which affects how many people will be hired to cover a day's work). Are you really against the 40-hour workweek as well? Do you really think that people should be able to contract for 80- or 100- or 112-hour weeks at base pay rates? I mean, I might, but that seems quite out of character for you.

Naturally this couldn't apply to salaried positions. I'd have thought that was obvious, but given the replies I've had to make so far, maybe not.

Also, it wouldn't be contourless, a UIG. For one thing it radically distorts the housing rental market. For another, it would require collecting ~2/3 of the current GDP ($10.416 trillion) in taxes, to get to $2800/month per person in the US. That's not going to do nothing.

Is this a version of 'some people are born lazy'? Nature or nurture, in your view?

Maybe only the people with good work ethics were left after the Post-Atomic Horror.

It isn't just "some people" and it isn't "laziness" per se. It's human nature borne of having senses and reason. There's no nurture that will override that and, every time someone has tried, it's ended up somewhere between disappointment and catastrophe.

Look at how much people procrastinate to avoid even simple tasks, grudgingly/half-heartedly do their jobs, and complain endlessly about their work now. Does anyone really believe that anywhere near the same amount of work would get done if people didn't have a compelling reason--i.e., not starving/begging/giving handjobs behind a dumpster--to do it? Of course not.

The idea that people who have their needs taken care of would just want to go work is absurd. Oh, yes, a great many people would "work" on things of interest to them. But to go do some task largely for the benefit of OTHERS? Fuhgedaboutit.

All those lottery tickets they sell aren't to people dreaming of keeping their jobs...

The thing about cleaning is that 'clean' doesn't really correspond to a specific physical state. Sound waves don't take out the garbage, straighten the sheets, or iron the curtains. In order to automatize cleaning, we'd need actual AI. Not impossible, but very far removed from current automatization, and not an obvious solution to labour ethics, as AIs might well be as unhappy doing menial tasks as are many humans.

Because in this assumed 23rd century, much as with a UBI, nobody has to work to survive. The only reason to do a job is because it offers additional benefits: Accomplishment and money. If a job is very low in personal accomplishment, it should be very high in pay.

This is one of the ways in which the so-called free market clearly misjudges the worth of work. My own job rewards me quite highly intrinsically for each hour that I work. Why do I earn several times as much as a person whose job I would hate, and who hates his job? Because in the negotiation for remuneration, it is only the demand of the employer, and not the demand of the employee, that settles the value of the work sold. This would change under a UBI. My work, 90% of which I'd gladly do for free if I could still survive, would pay exactly what it is worth: I'd be doing it for free while still surviving. The nurse, policeman, cleaner, or soldier, on the other hand, would quite rightly be paid somewhere near the highest wages of anyone in this society. At least that's the theory.

I see why you would say that, but my opinions differ strongly depending on what level an argument addresses. Within our current flawed system, I accept the 40-hour-week (35/42 in Germany depending on type) as a necessary evil, but still very much as an evil. I've never held down a job that could be limited by the amount of hours per week that would suffice to do it. The very idea of designing a job along those lines is symptomatic of a worker's estrangement from their work.

But when we talk about such radical changes as a UBI or cutting the work week in half, I feel we are recosidering the basic assumptions of our market. In that case, I will argue my true belief: That minimal social standards should no more be tied to an epmloyer/employee relationship than any other kind of basic security (cf. healthcare), and once those securities are established, the market works best when it is as free as possible within those limits.

Depends on how bad you want the $700.

however, to be fair, no job that pays $700 a month ask for 160 hours in a month either. That's more like 80-100 hours a month.

That depends on how you define "survive"

if "survive" means living in a cardboard box under a bridge and eating at the soup kitchen...then you're correct.

If on the other hand "survive" means basic shelter, buying your own food, being clothed in something other than rags, having transportation to your place of employment - then a LOT of Americans are BELOW subsistence in terms of their earned income.

But that undermines the whole concept of the UBI, unless prices are somehow fixed and the economy is planned. If people can obtain financial reward for working above the UBI, many people will do so, and competitive pressures will serve to make the UBI level insufficient. The guy who's collecting his UBI stipend is going to have to bid against the guy who also works 160 hours/month for his apartment, his food, his entertainment, etc.

If the market is free, prices will ALWAYS change to match supply to demand.

Uh, the free market price is the DEFINITION of the value of work. All other valuations are purely subjective.

Because how well you or he like your jobs is completely irrelevant. You're either willing to perform the labor for the negotiated wage or you are not. If you're not, you shouldn't seek that job.

Huh? That's absolute nonsense; everyday experience refutes it. If the wage were solely the prerogative of the employer, it would be zero or very nearly so. The employer has to pay based on what the market will accept. You can offer doctors, lawyers, and engineers $5/hour, but you're not going to get any takers.

Ever heard of anyone turning down a job offer? Or getting a better counter-offer?

Good for you. That's not most people. In fact, I'd guess that around 95% of people would not continue doing their job for free or for anything close to free. I actually like my job, but I certainly wouldn't.

The "rightly" in your sentence indicates how entirely subjective your stance is. "Right" depends entirely on who you ask.

Arbitrarily setting a wage higher than its market value not only forces society to consume more resources for labor it should be able to obtain more cheaply, it also motivates more people to pursue those higher wage professions than is needed. If being a janitor suddenly pays $150,000/year, there'll be many more people trying to become janitors than there are janitorial jobs.

Assuming that the policy didn't result in other changes that radically altered the way things are (which is a stretch, I know), I would continue doing my job for free. In fact, cutting my own salary and living on a UBI instead would make my job a lot more enjoyable: we're a small nonprofit, and bringing in enough money to keep operating is a constant source of stress. Cutting myself from the organization's budget would make things a lot easier and more fun.

Okay, but that just points out another problem.

Let's suppose the UBI comes along and, miraculously, nothing changes. Everyone gets their $2800 (or whatever) and it's enough for a decent place, food, cell phone, Internet, whatnot.

Let's also suppose that quite a few people would, like you, continue working their job and would even appreciate being liberated from pressures brought on by the bottom line.

Let's consider a company that makes widgets and they get several employees together who just like making widgets, people who would make widgets for recreation if they could. Let's put some numbers on it: 10 employees and the widget factory consumes $50,000 of raw materials every month. The business brings in $60,000/month in sales and, thanks to the UBI, the owner profits $10,000. Remember, his employees work for free and he only has to pay $50,000/month for materials.

Let's also say that, in a market system, the owner would have to pay his employees, aw, heck, let's just say $2800/month, the same rate they receive from the UBI. So, no difference in either case to the employee, right?

With me so far?

So where's the problem?

Here it is: in this situation, the UBI allows this owner to DESTROY WEALTH rather than create it. Not only that, he makes a pretty generous profit of 20% ($10,000 profit from $50,000 of expense) for his trouble.

If the widget factory operated in a market environment, the owner would have to take in $78,000 to offset his costs ($50,000 in materials, $28,000 for 10 employees) before he made a cent in profit. A company that has to take in $78,000/month to operate would very quickly die if it took in only $60,000/month.

No matter how you do the accounting, the widget factory is not truly profitable unless it brings in more than $78,000 month. But, thanks to the UBI, it can continue to operate at a revenue level of $60,000/month.

Why is that bad?

Because $78,000 of resources (people [whether paid the market rate or the UBI] and materials) are consumed in order to attain $60,000 in revenue. That's an $18,000 net loss to the economy. That $50,000 in raw materials IS consumed, and that $28,000 for the employees is collected from others.

This widget business can operate indefinitely because it is, in effect, subsidized by the UBI. A market system would quickly shutter any such waste of resources.

Okay, maybe that's just our one hypothetical business, right? But remember this: profits on most businesses are not huge, while their labor costs are. Not having to clear that (net) profitability hurdle means a lot of businesses could operate in the subsidized mode and still net their owners a handy profit.

And, of course, the burden would shift EVEN MORE to the productive and profitable businesses to make up the difference.