If we no longer force people to work to meet their basic needs, won't they stop working?

[ksen]

Like most people it's lack of capital that's the biggest obstacle.

Well, there are options to mitigate lack of collateral. We could make entrepreneurship easier. But this thread seems to be another whine fest.

I agree that the conservatives are getting their whiners revved up itt.

 

[coloradoatheist]

No, people work for a variety of reasons, but meeting their basic needs is one of them. So the question is how are the finite resources that we want and desire distributed throughout the world.

If you don't want to work it's easy. Create the energy matter converter from Startrek and then most of the resource issue will go away.

So the answer to the OP is no.

Thank you.

However at the same time, as a group we have mixed feelings about other people who take advantage of the system. If we didn't care, we wouldn't worry about what welfare queens are doing with the money we give them.

 

[ksen]

maybe you didn't read the link to the report demonstrating that wherever basic income experiments have been tried they've led to better outcomes?

 

[Harry Bosch]

I agree that the conservatives are getting their whiners revved up itt.

Btw: I meant "lack of capital" not collateral. Damn iPhone!

 

[coloradoatheist]

maybe you didn't read the link to the report demonstrating that wherever basic income experiments have been tried they've led to better outcomes?

On some small scales, but we've also seen big implementations fail miserable of which we are seeing parts of in Venezuela.

 

[ZiprHead]

I just heard a news report the other day that, within the next few years, robotic technology is going to explode and will make a significant impact on employment. Just what are we going to do with people whose jobs are replaced by technology?

 

[Ford]

I just heard a news report the other day that, within the next few years, robotic technology is going to explode and will make a significant impact on employment. Just what are we going to do with people whose jobs are replaced by technology?

Soylent Green?


Actually I think the answer is we're already looking at such a society to a certain degree in a lot of first world countries.


The Industrial Revolution lifted a lot of people out of a life of subsistence farming...and right into a life of backbreaking factory work. Once people like 'ole Henry Ford figured out that paying people more than starvation wages turned them into customers and not just labor, things changed again. Coupled with the efforts of labor movements, we went from having to work sunup to sundown in order to merely survive, to working in order to make a living. A little extra money and a little extra time on the hands of the workers moved things forward. Consumer goods and services became a much larger part of the economy. A middle class emerged, made up of people who would have merely survived a generation or two earlier.

Now, instead of starting work on the farm as a kid and working all the time until you died, you could put in a third of your day working, have weekends off, and still make enough to have a chicken in the pot and a car in the garage.


As leisure time and disposable income grew, the economy expanded.


We're not at a guaranteed minimum income yet, but by some measures we're at least part way there, and the net effect has been overwhelmingly positive. If working all day for a pittance (with no social safety net, no health care, and no labor laws) was the best idea ever, then places like Bangladesh would be the first world countries and Sweden would be a hell hole of socialism.


So we've got a pretty good grasp on the fact that working only a third of the day most of the week, getting paid more than enough to survive (and maybe even enough to thrive) along with a safety net underneath can lead to a positive outcome. What's the next step?


Our intrepid libertarians would tell you that the best step is backwards. Take away the 40 hour week, minimum wages, workplace safety regulations, health care, unemployment insurance, etc. etc. etc. and hand all the power for deciding who gets the benefits of "the free market" to the folks who are at the top of the income pyramid. If you can't make it in such a world - they reason - you can just start a business. Or two. Or three. In fact if you're not an entrepreneur, then you don't really deserve to make a decent living.


Oh, and Venezuela...right?


I'm not sold on the idea of a society where your compensation is entirely divorced from your efforts, but having a "floor" of sorts below which you have to make an effort to fall seems to be working on the limited scale we've tried so far. Let's try a 35 or 30 hour week along with a living wage and see where that goes.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I just heard a news report the other day that, within the next few years, robotic technology is going to explode and will make a significant impact on employment. Just what are we going to do with people whose jobs are replaced by technology?

Soylent Green?


Actually I think the answer is we're already looking at such a society to a certain degree in a lot of first world countries.


The Industrial Revolution lifted a lot of people out of a life of subsistence farming...and right into a life of backbreaking factory work. Once people like 'ole Henry Ford figured out that paying people more than starvation wages turned them into customers and not just labor, things changed again. Coupled with the efforts of labor movements, we went from having to work sunup to sundown in order to merely survive, to working in order to make a living. A little extra money and a little extra time on the hands of the workers moved things forward. Consumer goods and services became a much larger part of the economy. A middle class emerged, made up of people who would have merely survived a generation or two earlier.

Now, instead of starting work on the farm as a kid and working all the time until you died, you could put in a third of your day working, have weekends off, and still make enough to have a chicken in the pot and a car in the garage.


As leisure time and disposable income grew, the economy expanded.


We're not at a guaranteed minimum income yet, but by some measures we're at least part way there, and the net effect has been overwhelmingly positive. If working all day for a pittance (with no social safety net, no health care, and no labor laws) was the best idea ever, then places like Bangladesh would be the first world countries and Sweden would be a hell hole of socialism.


So we've got a pretty good grasp on the fact that working only a third of the day most of the week, getting paid more than enough to survive (and maybe even enough to thrive) along with a safety net underneath can lead to a positive outcome. What's the next step?


Our intrepid libertarians would tell you that the best step is backwards. Take away the 40 hour week, minimum wages, workplace safety regulations, health care, unemployment insurance, etc. etc. etc. and hand all the power for deciding who gets the benefits of "the free market" to the folks who are at the top of the income pyramid. If you can't make it in such a world - they reason - you can just start a business. Or two. Or three. In fact if you're not an entrepreneur, then you don't really deserve to make a decent living.


Oh, and Venezuela...right?


I'm not sold on the idea of a society where your compensation is entirely divorced from your efforts, but having a "floor" of sorts below which you have to make an effort to fall seems to be working on the limited scale we've tried so far. Let's try a 35 or 30 hour week along with a living wage and see where that goes.

Oh, and debt forgiveness.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The myth of Ford again. He paid high wages for the reason of giving people enough money to buy his products. Myth.

He paid those wages to attract the skilled workforce needed to make products of high quality and low price with very low employee turnover. He figured out that if you pay more than competing employers you can take their best employees from them.

Of course that's not how economics works on this forum.

 

[laughing dog]

The myth of Ford again. He paid high wages for the reason of giving people enough money to buy his products. Myth.

He paid those wages to attract the skilled workforce needed to make products of high quality and low price with very low employee turnover. He figured out that if you pay more than competing employers you can take their best employees from them.

Do you have a source for this?

 

[laughing dog]

The answer to the OP question is that some people will stop working and others will not. People work for a variety of reasons. I know people who continue to work even though they will meet their basic consumption needs without working. But they enjoy their jobs and feel they are being productive members of society.

 

[Ford]

The myth of Ford again. He paid high wages for the reason of giving people enough money to buy his products. Myth.

He paid those wages to attract the skilled workforce needed to make products of high quality and low price with very low employee turnover. He figured out that if you pay more than competing employers you can take their best employees from them.

Do you have a source for this?

He didn't even ask me!


Reasoning aside, workers having disposable income is a good thing, right?


Conservolibertarians might disagree, but I've never heard a solid reason why keeping laborers in poverty is more productive.

 

[fast]

http://www.scottsantens.com/if-we-n...meet-their-basic-needs-wont-they-stop-working

What underlies a question like this is that it's okay to force people to work by withholding what they need to live, in order to force them to work for us. And at the same time, because they are forced, we don't even pay them enough to meet their basic needs that we are withholding to force them to work.

What is a good word to describe this?

Now, what if we no longer withheld access to basic resources to meet fundamental shared basic needs? What if work in the labor market was then fully voluntary?

What if we could no longer force people to work for low wages? Maybe wages would go up? Maybe productivity would go up? Maybe automation of human labor would be accelerated?

We could find the answers to these questions. We already know from experiments what they are likely to be. Until basic income is policy though, we won't know for sure, and we will continue forcing each other to work by withholding food and shelter from each other.

When stated baldly our current system does seem to have a pretty barbaric foundation.

We don't force people to work, let alone force people to work to meet their basic needs. Why do people always want to twist things?

 

[ksen]

we don't?

 

[ZiprHead]

The myth of Ford again. He paid high wages for the reason of giving people enough money to buy his products. Myth.

He paid those wages to attract the skilled workforce needed to make products of high quality and low price with very low employee turnover. He figured out that if you pay more than competing employers you can take their best employees from them.

Of course that's not how economics works on this forum.

Actually I've heard the entire story is a myth. Most of the Ford workers did not get raises and Ford himself was against the idea of the raises.

 

[Harry Bosch]

we don't?

Who is forcing you to work?

 

[dismal]

we don't?

Well, you do because I still haven't received all that money in your wallet, house and car you have been withholding from me and here I sit at work.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Oh, and debt forgiveness.

High college debt is a major deterrent to entrepreneurship.

 

[ksen]

Care to explain how "society" and "people" are meaningfully different?

I would say that the meaningful difference is that society (the group of individuals and the political/economic institutions that are in place) allows for individual people to freely give away/share amounts they have beyond their basic needs. Most of the individual people choose not to (at least not very much).

Why should individuals do that when the businesses employing the people whose basic needs aren't being met with the wages the business is paying them can't even be bothered?

Honestly, it sounds like you are in favor of a basic income if you want everyone to contribute to it instead of relying on the good hearts of businessmen.

If that's the case I'm with you buddy.

 

[ksen]

maybe you didn't read the link to the report demonstrating that wherever basic income experiments have been tried they've led to better outcomes?

On some small scales, but we've also seen big implementations fail miserable of which we are seeing parts of in Venezuela.

Care to point me to how Venezuela is trying to implement a basic income program?

Because I can't find it.