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Ouze wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
[And yes, you have to work for X amount of time to qualify in the first place. 3-4 months at a temp job gets you that qualification. Seriously, if I didn't see this sort of stuff in person, I wouldn't rail about it. I think the resource is absolutely necessary, and goes a long way to helping people who are indeed in need, but at the same time I also am aware of the welfare crowd that goes out of their way to abuse that. .

Pretty confident you can't qualify for unemployment for another 26 week cycle with a single quarter of work; and again, you need to lose that job through no fault of you own. These details matter because it's the difference between identifying an issue and inventing a narrative.

Also, why lump in unemployment with welfare? It's like attaching a stigma to workers comp; it's insurance that was paid into and earned.

Malachon wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Assuming, of course, that everyone on long term unemployment is on it because of those reasons, and not to collect benefits. I think it's the nature of any entitlement that there will always be people to abuse it.

Even if people (which I doubt happens a lot, but there will always be some) initially 'go' into longterm unemployment just to get the benefits, if they stay there long enough, chances are they will lose the skills needed to be a good employee even if they had them before. Their knowledge becomes outdated, many of them become socially isolated which generally does not improve your people skills, they may lose the discipline to get up early enough for work every morning.

First, it was not my intent to lump all unemployment benefit claimants with all welfare claimants. I saw what I posted, and it was indeed far clunkier than what I wanted to convey. This, once again, comes from my own personal experiences seeing people out to abuse the system to get as much of a free ride as possible, as I will be addressing in Seb's post briefly. And I was trying to reference THAT group, and wound up with fairly poor wording. I blame the forced speed of messaging while at work along with general fatigue.

Now the part that both of you address here in a roundabout sort of way. Some people are forced to go on unemployment for reasons beyond their control, totally acknowledged. Some of what I've seen, which is brought up at the end of Malachon's post, is where someone becomes... accustomed to the lack of schedule that being on unemployment provides. Granted, this is not the kind of income that will keep a nice house afloat or anything of the sort. We had a gamer at one of our stores, we'll call him Stinky Bob. Now, Stinky Bob bounced from place to place, staying wherever he could, and bounced from job to job, doing routine stints on unemployment. He lost his job at Chuck E Cheese's and wound up living in the back of one of the local gaming stores for a brief period in time. He managed to get a job at a cab company as his benefits were expiring. This guy would come into the game shop with his Magic cards and his phone provided by the cab company so he could respond to fares. During a rather lengthy run of M:TG gaming, we watched this dude ignore at least 5 calls on the phone so he could game instead of attempting to work. There was no drive as he'd simply fall back on his safety net in his mind. His termination from the cab company was such that he couldn't draw unemployment afterwards, and seeing him ditch the calls led the store owner to refuse him a place to stay at the store from then on out. I honestly have no idea what happened to the guy now.

My point is that I've seen more than one Stinky Bob in my lifetime. The fact that I saw even one was bad enough, and illustrates the lengths some people will go to if given the chance.

sebster wrote:

As far as the morality question, I think that for the most part you have a stigma attached to being on welfare which elicits that visceral impulse reaction you mentioned.

No, I have no issue with someone being on welfare, and I don't think any less of someone who needed help. That's life, it happens. That's why I found my reaction interesting - I have no issue with someone being on welfare, but I had a strong reaction against someone reading a book on how to work the system for the maximum gain.

sebster wrote:Interesting story, thanks for telling it. I've got a foot in both camps on the stigma of welfare. On the one hand people shouldn't be stigmatised for being in need, that's just not cool. On the other hand, I'm really not comfortable with the kind of mentality where everyone looks to government and policy as a way of getting paid as much as possible without regard for actual need.

There needs to be a stigma on people taking when they don't need to, and the same stigma for people who avoid paying what they ought to, without stigmatising people who have genuine reasons to draw on the system. Not an easy thing to achieve.

It's incredibly rare for us to agree on something politically, but here we are. I'm fully in support of government assistance programs such as these, but I'm realistic enough to realize they get abused. If there was a way to make it happen less, I'd be all ears.

sebster wrote:

[I also realize that part of the experiment was an attempt to see if losing benefits was the driving force for keeping people out of the job market, at least that's how I was understanding it.

That's a key part of UBI, yeah, the idea that having a government conditional on not working encourages some people to stay out of work. The other part, which they never got to, is that there might be a significant economic loss from people who are unable to take risks to try and start a new business or go back to school or whatever, because they have to keep their current job just to keep their heads above water. By paying UBI to literally everyone, it means people would be free to leave work for a short time to try a business or whatever.

I'm off at this point. The government already has programs to pay for your college, at least here stateside. I have no reason to think otherwise for the rest of the Western world. It's the part where the government is expected to pay someone's light bills on TOP of paying for their college that I find flaws in. Work nights and go to school in the day, or vice versa. It's what I did. Actually, it's the thought that since my taxes will be funding said government program, it will be ME expected to pay someone's light bill while they go back to school.

sebster wrote:

I'm wondering if it's either far too few people actively looking for real work while on the program which might paint things in a poor light, or more that steering towards more taxable income to help pay for said benefit.

The people who ran the experiment were upset it was closed down, so I doubt that was it. It's more likely that the idea is probably a least a decade ahead of being seriously viable on either a cultural or economic level, and run as a limited experiment was weird and just kind of unfair. As such, this got shut down as soon as the political winds shifted even slightly.

Will there ever be a perfect storm of events to make the time "right"? It's my understanding that any change like this will not be smooth.

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm fully in support of government assistance programs such as these, but I'm realistic enough to realize they get abused. If there was a way to make it happen less, I'd be all ears.

There are ways to make it happen less, have more investigators looking into people in the program and such. But you reach a point of diminishing returns, eventually you end up spending more money on preventing something from happening than the cost of it actually happening. The often discussed Florida mandatory drug test comes to mind, it costs far more than it catches in abuse.

At a certain point we just have to accept it happens on a certain scale, but its less expensive to have it occur on that scale than to combat it further.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

How can you be long term unemployed if you hadn't even had your first full job? From summer jobs I assume you're young, maybe in your late teens at the time? We don't consider children who haven't had a job unemployed. You better be joking, because else you just made yourself an even worse example for this UBI trial as you would be as far off the mark for it as possible.

Dunno. Do you call mid 20's children?

You make awful lot of assumptions and pulling ideas out of your head of people you don't know at all. Howabout stop that? Assuming you don't want to appear fool of course.

You had a little job to make some money on the side, this isn't about money on the side. This is about adults that need a job to survive because else they have no income. When a job isn't worth taking financially that is a company problem, not a government problem!

I had money what that job gave me BUT if I had taken that extra stint I would have lost money.

It's goverment problem because goverment is the one doing unemployment supports that don't reward taking job and indeed give you incentive to NOT take job. Creating more work doesn't help if the workers would be hurting themselves financially to take it.

I would have been better off saying to company "no sorry, finland's system doesn't allow me to do the job".

Not every job requires 40h/week guys. But yeah bad companies for not wanting to hire people even for periods when the workers would have to sit idle not doing anything.

I know personally people who have a) been unemployed b) have found job where hourly rate is decent enough(not that different from mine actually) but due to weekly hours being rather low realized they are better off simply saying "no". They would have got the job so holes in CV etc were irrelevant. But they would have paid for goverment for taking job...No surprise they refused those...

...Now how many Finnish unemployed people YOU know and what are their reasons for unemployment? Not hearsays, not theories, not rumours. Actual direct knowledge. I presume more than 0 since you seem to claim to know how this works or doesn't work but out of curiosity how many?

tneva82 wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

How can you be long term unemployed if you hadn't even had your first full job? From summer jobs I assume you're young, maybe in your late teens at the time? We don't consider children who haven't had a job unemployed. You better be joking, because else you just made yourself an even worse example for this UBI trial as you would be as far off the mark for it as possible.

Dunno. Do you call mid 20's children?

You make awful lot of assumptions and pulling ideas out of your head of people you don't know at all. Howabout stop that? Assuming you don't want to appear fool of course.

You said you only had summer jobs on your CV. The assumption is that you're young in that case, at least a full time student or living at home? Idk how else you could afford to have only worked summer jobs? I'm sorry if that assumption offends you, but when you put it like that its easily made. Saying you only had summer jobs creates that impression. And I didn't mean you were a child, I'm saying that we also don't include children under long term unemployed even if they never had a job, because its not an accurate representation until you fully enter the job market.

Nevertheless, that still isn't long term unemployment in the way you describe it. Because you only work summers, that sounds like a choice. Have you been actively looking and failing for years to acquire a full time job?

tneva82 wrote:

You had a little job to make some money on the side, this isn't about money on the side. This is about adults that need a job to survive because else they have no income. When a job isn't worth taking financially that is a company problem, not a government problem!

I had money what that job gave me BUT if I had taken that extra stint I would have lost money.

It's goverment problem because goverment is the one doing unemployment supports that don't reward taking job and indeed give you incentive to NOT take job. Creating more work doesn't help if the workers would be hurting themselves financially to take it.

I would have been better off saying to company "no sorry, finland's system doesn't allow me to do the job".

Not every job requires 40h/week guys. But yeah bad companies for not wanting to hire people even for periods when the workers would have to sit idle not doing anything.

I know personally people who have a) been unemployed b) have found job where hourly rate is decent enough(not that different from mine actually) but due to weekly hours being rather low realized they are better off simply saying "no". They would have got the job so holes in CV etc were irrelevant. But they would have paid for goverment for taking job...No surprise they refused those...

...Now how many Finnish unemployed people YOU know and what are their reasons for unemployment? Not hearsays, not theories, not rumours. Actual direct knowledge. I presume more than 0 since you seem to claim to know how this works or doesn't work but out of curiosity how many?

That job would have cost you money only because the employer didn't want to pay you a salary that actually gave you money. Why is it the responsibility of the government to make sure you get enough money, when your employer has a job to be done but doesn't want to pay you adequate compensation?

You're still advocating bad business. If those companies can't find people to fill their positions its up to the company to create more incentive by offering higher wages. Its not on the government to fill up the incentive gap! You're just rewarding companies that don't offer proper employment terms.

I never said that companies should hire people 40 hours a week. I'm saying its not up to the government to subsidize these companies in finding workers if they can't find any, its basic market supply and demand principles. If these companies don't attract employees there is a problem in what the company offers.

When it comes to B how is that the fault of unemployment benefits? If the company really needs someone to do that job than its up to the company to fix that. Its not up to the government to subsidize a worker just so the company can have someone part time. Don't you see how open to abuse that is? You're forcing the government to make up for a shortfall that is to the benefit of for profit companies.

I don't know anyone in Finland. But this UBI trial and unemployment isn't just a Finnish occurence. Believe it or not, but in the Netherlands we also have UBI trials, unemployed people and almost the same benefits system.

Regarding the common "minimum wage is meant for students" argument, let's just go back to the statements when minimum wage was first proposed and passed:

"By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level -I mean the wages of a decent living." FDR, 1933

Around my area, I think of the jobs that were traditionally for Teens; babysitting, dog care, and lawn mowing.

Unfortunately, kids in my community can't compete for those jobs anymore because adults have moved in on their territory with fancy LLCs and expensive equipment. Places like Day Care Centers, Landscapers, and Pet Care specialists have removed any chance for teens to make money.

Therefore, if all these adults are moving into this territory, imagine how terrible minimum wage must be to make these pre-employment jobs worth taking over from the kids!

 Easy E wrote:
Around my area, I think of the jobs that were traditionally for Teens; babysitting, dog care, and lawn mowing.

Unfortunately, kids in my community can't compete for those jobs anymore because adults have moved in on their territory with fancy LLCs and expensive equipment. Places like Day Care Centers, Landscapers, and Pet Care specialists have removed any chance for teens to make money.

Therefore, if all these adults are moving into this territory, imagine how terrible minimum wage must be to make these pre-employment jobs worth taking over from the kids!

Its curious how American based those teenage jobs are. Here its mainly supermarket jobs and newspaper/flyer delivery.

As for minimum wage, from personal experience even in the Netherlands its pretty terrible. The unofficial motto is basically "never forget you're replacable." I can't imagine you would survive your whole life in such a work enviroment, but not everyone manages to get out. Minimun wage as an adult is almost a trap, enough money till the end of the month, no money left for self improvement.

 sebster wrote:
I remember on the bus one time my wife and I saw a lady reading a book the cover of which was something like 'getting every dollar you can out of welfare'. Looking over her shoulder we could read the blurb on the back, which argued that every person is entitled to using any trick they can to get everything possible out of welfare. It pissed me and my wife right off.

A day or two later we were telling friends about it, full of righteous anger, and a bell went off in my head, and I wondered how that the attitude in that book caused me to be outraged on a moral level, but the exact same attitude applied to tax avoidance didn't. Both were just people working with the rules they were given to try and get the most they could out of the system. But I accepted tax avoidance as just something people did, I even worked in a tax office that was pretty aggressive in creating tax avoidance set ups. And the reality is tax avoidance costs government far more than welfare manipulation ever could, so my different level of outrage wasn't based on the scale of each problem.

I actually still don't know the exact answer to this. The best I've been able to come up with was normalisation, everyone I knew paid taxes and wanted personally to pay less, but I knew barely anyone who'd ever been on welfare, not even on part welfare. So perhaps people who are familiar with life on welfare, because they're on welfare and/or grew up around people on welfare, perhaps to them it's just a normal thing to talk about working welfare to get a little more, and they are outraged that middle class people invent mechanisms to reduce their taxes?

Whatever it is, I think it showed to me I had some very moralistic ideas that actually didn't make a lot of sense when given some perspective. And while someone else's exact stance might be quite different, I still notice that those positions are often infused with their own kind of moralism, that also doesn't make a lot of sense when given some perspective.

You've just stumbled on the great cleave in worldview around welfare in general.

People get way more mad when they think someone else gets something we didn't, especially if was "free", regardless of the circumstances around it, and especially if it goes to someone seen as a social inferior (for any of the multitude of reasons that may be). That is basically the fundamental emotional driver that drives much of the conversation.

From a rational perspective, we *should* be wanting people on welfare to get every bit out of it they can, to be putting the resources devoted to that purpose to good and proper use, maximizing that investment by society for the greatest good.

But instead we overfocus on free riding, to an obsessive degree, because of that inherent lizard brain status-conscious instinct.

People can be shown that a system to catch welfare cheats costs more than simply accepting a level of abuse, but will still complain about "cheats getting MY money" and vote accordingly. It's madness.

 Just Tony wrote:
It's incredibly rare for us to agree on something politically, but here we are.

Not for long, I suspect

I'm fully in support of government assistance programs such as these, but I'm realistic enough to realize they get abused. If there was a way to make it happen less, I'd be all ears.

I agree, but think the abuse of welfare is often overstated, and dwarfed by abuse in other areas, such tax avoidance.

We seem to have drifted from the point about stigma...

I'm off at this point. The government already has programs to pay for your college, at least here stateside. I have no reason to think otherwise for the rest of the Western world. It's the part where the government is expected to pay someone's light bills on TOP of paying for their college that I find flaws in. Work nights and go to school in the day, or vice versa. It's what I did. Actually, it's the thought that since my taxes will be funding said government program, it will be ME expected to pay someone's light bill while they go back to school.

We come at this from very different POV. You look first and foremost at what government should do, vs what they shouldn't have to do for someone. In contrast, I don't really care what someone should do, I just care about what works. If a person is grinding away 60 hours a week working a couple of minimum wage jobs just to survive, then a UBI allows them to stop working and go and complete a degree and start up a flourishing IT company that employs a dozen people, then I don't care about who should be paying for who, I just care that a change in the system allowed society to become more prosperous overall. Note I'm not saying UBI will make that happen (in fact I'm fairly skeptical of that part), but if it did work that way I'd certainly have no moral problem with it.

This isn't to say your POV or mine is right or wrong, they're just very different, which makes how we look at UBI very different. And its worth noting that your POV is way more common than mine, which is a huge obstacle that people who argue for UBI haven't really addressed.

Will there ever be a perfect storm of events to make the time "right"? It's my understanding that any change like this will not be smooth.

The way I can see it happening is if we reach a point where we really are looking at unemployment well in to the double digits, and not just a recessionary dip that is recovered. I mean 12 or 15% because there is just that many people who simply aren't needed in the economy any more. It would be if we simply don't see new jobs in new economic sectors. Thing is, people talk about the jobs lost to AI and the like, but that's only a small bit of the story. We're always making jobs redundant, that's just a natural part of technological improvement and progress. The problem will come if we stop creating new economic sectors to replace the lost jobs. And that isn't certain, but it possible. Resource extraction has its limits, we are reaching the point where the marginal costs of extraction are getting pretty steep. Without more resources to pour in to the economy, then making human labour more efficient won't allow more creation, it will just drive a reduction in the level of human labour used. Potentially that would mean we adjust and work less hours for the same overall pay, but maybe not. If people keep working 40 hours, that means a slow pressure pushing people out of the economy.

In that context, I can see UBI not only being possible, but essential to social stability. But I wouldn't even want to guess how likely that is. Somewhere between 5% and 50%.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
You've just stumbled on the great cleave in worldview around welfare in general.

People get way more mad when they think someone else gets something we didn't, especially if was "free", regardless of the circumstances around it, and especially if it goes to someone seen as a social inferior (for any of the multitude of reasons that may be). That is basically the fundamental emotional driver that drives much of the conversation.

I think the part 'especially if it goes to a social inferior' is a huge part of the issue. We write a very different set of rules for people beneath us than we do for people above is. It's an issue that goes way beyond tax avoidance vs welfare manipulation. Getting slightly off-topic but there was a case recently of a candidate found guilty of using fake signatures to secure his place on a ballot for a judicial election. It was contrasted against a woman in the same district who voted while on parole. He was the former judge in the district, a wealthy man, and got probation. She was a former convict, and got five years.

And that's far from an isolated incident. People often think rich people get lighter sentences because they have better lawyers, but there's also a strong element of people just seeing people with more wealth and status in a more favourable light than we see people with neither.

And I'm not saying for one second this is a problem other people fall for. It was definitely a big part of why I saw welfare manipulation so differently to tax manipulation. It's in the brain, we're hierarchical creatures.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 feeder wrote:
People can be shown that a system to catch welfare cheats costs more than simply accepting a level of abuse, but will still complain about "cheats getting MY money" and vote accordingly. It's madness.

Sort of, thing is despite people talking about the cost of welfare they don't actually know or care what it costs. Seriously, ask anyone complaining about welfare what it costs and either they won't answer or they'll give you a wildly inaccurate guess. If it was really about a concern for the affordability of the program, they would at least know the actual cost and the burden it places on the government coffers.

Instead it's about an idea of fairness. It's the idea that if they have to put up with crap for eight hours a day, five days a week, then no-one else should get to bludge either.

There was an experiment done with some monkey a while back. The monkeys were taught they had to do some awkward and time consuming tasks to get a treat. They had to work for a reward. It was fine and the monkeys did it often. Then they put some other monkeys in with them, and gave those monkeys treats without making them do the task. The first set of monkeys got pissed and stopped doing the work entirely. They still had the same personal work to reward ratio, but they no longer wanted to work when other monkeys got the reward for free.

 sebster wrote:

 feeder wrote:
People can be shown that a system to catch welfare cheats costs more than simply accepting a level of abuse, but will still complain about "cheats getting MY money" and vote accordingly. It's madness.

Sort of, thing is despite people talking about the cost of welfare they don't actually know or care what it costs. Seriously, ask anyone complaining about welfare what it costs and either they won't answer or they'll give you a wildly inaccurate guess. If it was really about a concern for the affordability of the program, they would at least know the actual cost and the burden it places on the government coffers.

I think you wildy underestimate people's ability to care very strongly about something they know very little about.

Instead it's about an idea of fairness. It's the idea that if they have to put up with crap for eight hours a day, five days a week, then no-one else should get to bludge either.

I guess. That's a pretty awful way to live your life though, constantly comparing your life to strangers.

It's not like welfare is any life though. Even during my minimum wage days, I was making significantly more than welfare rates. I think welfare was around $550 a month for a single person, and my dish washing take home pay was around $900.

There was an experiment done with some monkey a while back. The monkeys were taught they had to do some awkward and time consuming tasks to get a treat. They had to work for a reward. It was fine and the monkeys did it often. Then they put some other monkeys in with them, and gave those monkeys treats without making them do the task. The first set of monkeys got pissed and stopped doing the work entirely. They still had the same personal work to reward ratio, but they no longer wanted to work when other monkeys got the reward for free.

Interesting. I like to think we are smarter than monkeys, though.

Why should those monkeys work for something that others receive without question?

 feeder wrote:
I guess. That's a pretty awful way to live your life though, constantly comparing your life to strangers.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Why should those monkeys work for something that others receive without question?

Because those apes haven't been born with a silver spoon in their mouth

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Why should those monkeys work for something that others receive without question?

I ask that question sometimes when I look down from my ivory tower.

sebster wrote:There was an experiment done with some monkey a while back. The monkeys were taught they had to do some awkward and time consuming tasks to get a treat. They had to work for a reward. It was fine and the monkeys did it often. Then they put some other monkeys in with them, and gave those monkeys treats without making them do the task. The first set of monkeys got pissed and stopped doing the work entirely. They still had the same personal work to reward ratio, but they no longer wanted to work when other monkeys got the reward for free.

You know, that may be one of those experiments where you could kind of guess how it was going to end before you even started it.

feeder wrote:Interesting. I like to think we are smarter than monkeys, though.

Interesting. I'd like to think that the "smarter" thing to do would be to realize that organisms work for reward, whether it be pleasure or profit. That's universal. It's the entire reason that the only long term communist economies are enforced by totalitarian governments strong arming people into being incentivized to work. The ideal behind the "greater good" and the emotional attachment some have to charity beyond sustainability doesn't overcome the instinctual drive to gain profit or pleasure. And before it's thrown in, feeding yourself or your young goes under profit. Do you farm because it looks pretty? No, you farm to gain the fruits of your labor. People don't get on the tractor out of a sense of social nobility, they get on the tractor because someone will pay them for the work, their family will be fed from their work, OR in the case of a communist country, having armed personnel there telling you "I'm going to pop a hole in your bean if you don't get on that fething tractor". I think the monkeys are smarter than some of the human population solely because they can figure that part out.

 feeder wrote:
I think you wildy underestimate people's ability to care very strongly about something they know very little about.

True, but you'll find the reason they actually care is not related to the reason that happens to be coming out of their mouths. People will say they're worried about the deficit, but if the actual concerned was the deficit and welfare was just a downstream concern, then they would know their country's basic financial figures. And welfare concern would decline in periods of strong government results. That doesn't happen, because the impact on the deficit is a justification for opposing welfare, it is not the actual cause.

I guess. That's a pretty awful way to live your life though, constantly comparing your life to strangers.

I think you wildly underestimate people's ability to make themselves utterly miserable by constantly comparing their lives to strangers.

Interesting. I like to think we are smarter than monkeys, though.

I think you wildly underestimate... okay I think you know where this is going


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Why should those monkeys work for something that others receive without question?

Because the monkey wants the treat, and was previously happy to do that amount of work to get the treat. If the monkey was rational, then other monkeys getting the treat for no work wouldn't change its own choice. But of course the monkey isn't rational and nor are most humans. So instead monkeys and many humans will stop engaging in the activity they were previously happy to do for the reward.

It is weird, and frankly fairly stupid. But it is how we are hardwired.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:
You know, that may be one of those experiments where you could kind of guess how it was going to end before you even started it.

Not really. I mean we all know that if you start taking half of a farmer's crop because now Lenin is in charge, the farmer is going to work a lot less hard. But that's easy to explain with marginal utility, because the farmer is now losing his own produce, so he's less inclined to work to produce more.

But this is something different. In this example, the original monkey gets just as much from the same activity, his own reward from doing the task is unchanged. But it still impacts the monkey's decision making.

Interesting. I'd like to think that the "smarter" thing to do would be to realize that organisms work for reward, whether it be pleasure or profit. That's universal. It's the entire reason that the only long term communist economies are enforced by totalitarian governments strong arming people into being incentivized to work. The ideal behind the "greater good" and the emotional attachment some have to charity beyond sustainability doesn't overcome the instinctual drive to gain profit or pleasure. And before it's thrown in, feeding yourself or your young goes under profit. Do you farm because it looks pretty? No, you farm to gain the fruits of your labor. People don't get on the tractor out of a sense of social nobility, they get on the tractor because someone will pay them for the work, their family will be fed from their work, OR in the case of a communist country, having armed personnel there telling you "I'm going to pop a hole in your bean if you don't get on that fething tractor". I think the monkeys are smarter than some of the human population solely because they can figure that part out.

It's way more complex than that. Thing is, in communism people didn't all get the same. The doctor was paid more than the teacher. Communists were at least that practical. And sure, the pay differential wasn't anywhere near as extreme, it was 50% more rather than 500%, but that didn't produce an undersupply of doctors, in fact medical care in communist countries was okay for the most part. Remember a lot of the reward in a job is in status and in actually enjoying the work, not just the money.

No, the problem with communism is more long term. What they didn't have was business investment. No-one was able to start a business, and use earnings to re-invest. There was no business innovation. There was n private sector R&D. That's why Soviet Russia was able to fast track from agricultural to heavy industry inside of 20 years, but then hit a wall and went nowhere. As long as government can point to an ore deposit and order a mine built, communism works great, but developing and improving consumer goods - oh man did they suck.

 sebster wrote:
Because the monkey wants the treat, and was previously happy to do that amount of work to get the treat. If the monkey was rational, then other monkeys getting the treat for no work wouldn't change its own choice. But of course the monkey isn't rational and nor are most humans. So instead monkeys and many humans will stop engaging in the activity they were previously happy to do for the reward.

Ah, but like feeder said, the only reason they were working for the treat was the assumption that it was the only way to receive said treat. The basic principles of compensation for any work done. People generally only work for the incentive of pay, not the joy of it. Only a lucky few enjoy their work. So if they then see that others are receiving the same reward for doing no work at all then of course they're going to question why the hell should they give up their time for nothing.

I had this conversation so many times whilst working as a garbage man. We were in work Monday to Friday for 7:30 am. And whilst doing the routes we could see this whole scenario in play, especially during the summer. Half the homes would be deserted as the people inside were out working, but the other half, the homes of the "scroungers", would be a hive of activity. As it was summer they'd be out in force in their gardens getting drunk before noon and chain smoking (20 packs of cigarettes are over £8 now in the UK). They are living in the exact same houses as the workers, they have cars in their driveway (bought and paid for by the government under the DLA scheme) and they have the money to get drunk and smoke. And we'd always wonder why we bothered working when we could just claim 'depression' and get paid to sit around and get drunk day in and day out.

I think the only reason they still went out every day was because they got slightly more than them in wages. That seemed to be the only thing keeping them going. It certainly wasn't for the love of the job if the complaining was anything to go by. Tellingly, what really irked them was the idea that they were having to 'serve' the scroungers. Because despite not working they never ever had their bins out on time and were constantly coming after the lorry, stopping it and making it come back to their house etc. among other things. As one of my colleagues summed it up, they would have you wiping their asses if they could.

 d-usa wrote:
Regarding the common "minimum wage is meant for students" argument, let's just go back to the statements when minimum wage was first proposed and passed:

"By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level -I mean the wages of a decent living." FDR, 1933

Woah woah woah, are you questioning the corporate overlords here? Because you know what the free market says about these things! Something something corporations are people too.

Did I do that right?

 Future War Cultist wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Because the monkey wants the treat, and was previously happy to do that amount of work to get the treat. If the monkey was rational, then other monkeys getting the treat for no work wouldn't change its own choice. But of course the monkey isn't rational and nor are most humans. So instead monkeys and many humans will stop engaging in the activity they were previously happy to do for the reward.

Ah, but like feeder said, the only reason they were working for the treat was the assumption that it was the only way to receive said treat. The basic principles of compensation for any work done. People generally only work for the incentive of pay, not the joy of it. Only a lucky few enjoy their work. So if they then see that others are receiving the same reward for doing no work at all then of course they're going to question why the hell should they give up their time for nothing.

But we think we're the same or smarter than the monkeys, but we're not. If the reward is money then the test is the same, some humans in live just get the reward handed to them by virtue of being born in a wealthier family. We work not because we're incentivized, we work because we have to. A paycheck isn't a reward, its the most basic necessity required to survive. You might enjoy the work you do, but that is irrelevant, even if you love your job you would still need a paycheck, because it isn't a reward, its necessity. A paycheck is only a reward to those rich enough to do without it.

Plenty of people are already getting the same 'reward' for absolutely no work, yet most of us still slog through life having to work hard and even electing people that implement policies benefitting the rich, those that get the 'reward' for free. Yet most of those people only get up in arms when it comes to welfare and unemployment benefits. We're worse than the monkeys, we look at some who receive the 'reward' for free and admire them, while we vilify others.

To continue the monkey example, a rich monkey did the work to get the reward. But now all subsequent children of said monkey just waltz in and get the reward for free. Meanwhile the children of other working monkeys just have to keep working, because they weren't lucky enough to be born in the rich monkey's family.

@Sebster&monkeys: in this particular example monkey behavior becomes clear if you account for a quite simple fact: before culture emerged all living organism, including early apes were simple "differential engines" aware only of their immidiate surroundings and recent history of their lives, and even most inteligent species were capable of only two levels of reasoning regarding their situation - absolute inner (am I hungry, am I cold etc...) and relative outer (do I fare better or worse than others of my kind). This is because pre-cultural species have no means to see larger picture, the thing you call "reason" behind systems they are put into.

Now remember, that we have only about 10k years of cultural history behind us and c.a. 20 times that of biological evolution of our species alone and we still have some traits that connect us to our amphibian evolutionary ancestors (those annoying hiccups). Trying to understand human psychology and sociology on "rational agents" levels only is one of the main faults of all left leaning "tabula rasa" concepts and ideologies. People do not work because they feel fundamental need of being occupied by socially productive tasks, they work because our current age of social organisation requires us to work in order to survive. Take away this necessity and completely another social structure will inevitably emmerge. This lears me to my main issue with this concept as it is discussed here - what Finland did was NOT UBI, it was just an unconditional and simplified welfare program. "True" UBI is more of a civilisation advancement and one of the possible answers to problems caused by globalisation, production automatisation and work as we know it becoming obsolete or economically unproductive (there are already whole unproductive sectors of economy that are grossly subsidised only because it allows to perpetuate current work-based social structure).

Interesting. I'd like to think that the "smarter" thing to do would be to realize that organisms work for reward, whether it be pleasure or profit. That's universal. It's the entire reason that the only long term communist economies are enforced by totalitarian governments strong arming people into being incentivized to work. The ideal behind the "greater good" and the emotional attachment some have to charity beyond sustainability doesn't overcome the instinctual drive to gain profit or pleasure. And before it's thrown in, feeding yourself or your young goes under profit. Do you farm because it looks pretty? No, you farm to gain the fruits of your labor. People don't get on the tractor out of a sense of social nobility, they get on the tractor because someone will pay them for the work, their family will be fed from their work, OR in the case of a communist country, having armed personnel there telling you "I'm going to pop a hole in your bean if you don't get on that fething tractor". I think the monkeys are smarter than some of the human population solely because they can figure that part out.

Nicely leaving out that capitalism has a gun too - it's called 'work or starve to death'. And just like in the mass of hyperbole above it's garlanded with nice phrases about bootstraps and how the people living hand to mouth working two jobs "deserve" it for being "lazy".

The only difference is capitalists get to crow about their system being better because they use economic violence rather than physical. And as we move into another gilded age we're going to start seeing even more of it than we have already.

 ScarletRose wrote:

Interesting. I'd like to think that the "smarter" thing to do would be to realize that organisms work for reward, whether it be pleasure or profit. That's universal. It's the entire reason that the only long term communist economies are enforced by totalitarian governments strong arming people into being incentivized to work. The ideal behind the "greater good" and the emotional attachment some have to charity beyond sustainability doesn't overcome the instinctual drive to gain profit or pleasure. And before it's thrown in, feeding yourself or your young goes under profit. Do you farm because it looks pretty? No, you farm to gain the fruits of your labor. People don't get on the tractor out of a sense of social nobility, they get on the tractor because someone will pay them for the work, their family will be fed from their work, OR in the case of a communist country, having armed personnel there telling you "I'm going to pop a hole in your bean if you don't get on that fething tractor". I think the monkeys are smarter than some of the human population solely because they can figure that part out.

Nicely leaving out that capitalism has a gun too - it's called 'work or starve to death'.

Not even close to the same. Under a capitalist economic system you are more than capable of simply "going off the grid" and living a life where you provide all your own sustenance. It's still "work or starve to death" but that "gun" as you so eloquently put it was placed there by nature, not by capitalism. But yeah, go ahead and bang the propaganda drum instead of dealing in facts. Communism as it exists today blows up without either changing doctrine (such as the Soviet Union replacing "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to " from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution") to compensate for the inherent shortcomings of the economic model, force people through physical violence to produce (What we see most commonly in communist economies), or to essentially brainwash the working class into working for the enjoyment of work and the betterment of society, which is what Marx explicitly pushed in his writings as having to be necessary for the model to work.

 ScarletRose wrote:
And just like in the mass of hyperbole above it's garlanded with nice phrases about bootstraps and how the people living hand to mouth working two jobs "deserve" it for being "lazy".

Wow, I figured it would be Peregrine who'd kneejerk throw down the anti-capitalism tropes.

Working two jobs to make ends meet isn't lazy, in fact that's the exact OPPOSITE of lazy. I worked three when my wife was recovering from childbirth, if you count being in the National Guard as a job, which you should.. Now, working two minimum wage jobs when there are ample opportunities to make better income, that's stupid. Not lazy. Figuring that you could make enough to scrape by on government assistance without putting forth ANY work, or doing a menial part time job just so you can draw said benefits without having to work more, then THAT would qualify as lazy. The issue is that the onus for self improvement is on the self, not on the government subsidized by everyone currently already working to better themselves. The funny thing about that is that the taxes taken to subsidize programs like that get taken from the lower class as well as the middle and upper class. Anyone who is marginally above the minimum effort plus assistance class gets drug down to that group's level by that group's sycophancy. Are there people that legitimately need those programs? Absolutely. Are there people who don't NEED them but chase after them solely to work less? Absolutely.

 ScarletRose wrote:
The only difference is capitalists get to crow about their system being better because they use economic violence rather than physical.

No, the differences between capitalism and communism is opportunity and choice.

 ScarletRose wrote:
And as we move into another gilded age we're going to start seeing even more of it than we have already.

Gilded Age? Adorable. I'd love an explanation where any non-capitalist economy wasn't "glittery on the outside, but corrupt underneath" as fits the description of Gilded Age.

 Just Tony wrote:

 ScarletRose wrote:

Interesting. I'd like to think that the "smarter" thing to do would be to realize that organisms work for reward, whether it be pleasure or profit. That's universal. It's the entire reason that the only long term communist economies are enforced by totalitarian governments strong arming people into being incentivized to work. The ideal behind the "greater good" and the emotional attachment some have to charity beyond sustainability doesn't overcome the instinctual drive to gain profit or pleasure. And before it's thrown in, feeding yourself or your young goes under profit. Do you farm because it looks pretty? No, you farm to gain the fruits of your labor. People don't get on the tractor out of a sense of social nobility, they get on the tractor because someone will pay them for the work, their family will be fed from their work, OR in the case of a communist country, having armed personnel there telling you "I'm going to pop a hole in your bean if you don't get on that fething tractor". I think the monkeys are smarter than some of the human population solely because they can figure that part out.

Nicely leaving out that capitalism has a gun too - it's called 'work or starve to death'.

Not even close to the same. Under a capitalist economic system you are more than capable of simply "going off the grid" and living a life where you provide all your own sustenance. It's still "work or starve to death" but that "gun" as you so eloquently put it was placed there by nature, not by capitalism. But yeah, go ahead and bang the propaganda drum instead of dealing in facts. Communism as it exists today blows up without either changing doctrine (such as the Soviet Union replacing "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to " from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution") to compensate for the inherent shortcomings of the economic model, force people through physical violence to produce (What we see most commonly in communist economies), or to essentially brainwash the working class into working for the enjoyment of work and the betterment of society, which is what Marx explicitly pushed in his writings as having to be necessary for the model to work.

This is hilarious, go off the grid? Seriously? So as a person living in one of the most densly populated countries with no real nature to speak of how would that go? As a person with no skill in surviving off the grid how would that go? Why isn't going off the grid possible for communism then, going off the grid means they can't find you so they can't force you to work either.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 ScarletRose wrote:

Interesting. I'd like to think that the "smarter" thing to do would be to realize that organisms work for reward, whether it be pleasure or profit. That's universal. It's the entire reason that the only long term communist economies are enforced by totalitarian governments strong arming people into being incentivized to work. The ideal behind the "greater good" and the emotional attachment some have to charity beyond sustainability doesn't overcome the instinctual drive to gain profit or pleasure. And before it's thrown in, feeding yourself or your young goes under profit. Do you farm because it looks pretty? No, you farm to gain the fruits of your labor. People don't get on the tractor out of a sense of social nobility, they get on the tractor because someone will pay them for the work, their family will be fed from their work, OR in the case of a communist country, having armed personnel there telling you "I'm going to pop a hole in your bean if you don't get on that fething tractor". I think the monkeys are smarter than some of the human population solely because they can figure that part out.

Nicely leaving out that capitalism has a gun too - it's called 'work or starve to death'.

Not even close to the same. Under a capitalist economic system you are more than capable of simply "going off the grid" and living a life where you provide all your own sustenance. It's still "work or starve to death" but that "gun" as you so eloquently put it was placed there by nature, not by capitalism. But yeah, go ahead and bang the propaganda drum instead of dealing in facts. Communism as it exists today blows up without either changing doctrine (such as the Soviet Union replacing "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to " from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution") to compensate for the inherent shortcomings of the economic model, force people through physical violence to produce (What we see most commonly in communist economies), or to essentially brainwash the working class into working for the enjoyment of work and the betterment of society, which is what Marx explicitly pushed in his writings as having to be necessary for the model to work.

This is hilarious, go off the grid? Seriously? So as a person living in one of the most densly populated countries with no real nature to speak of how would that go? As a person with no skill in surviving off the grid how would that go? Why isn't going off the grid possible for communism then, going off the grid means they can't find you so they can't force you to work either.[/quote

]

If communism is so great, how come it is always imposed by violence? It has wrecked every country it has come to. Its nothing more than compulsion and terror.

 thekingofkings wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 ScarletRose wrote:

Interesting. I'd like to think that the "smarter" thing to do would be to realize that organisms work for reward, whether it be pleasure or profit. That's universal. It's the entire reason that the only long term communist economies are enforced by totalitarian governments strong arming people into being incentivized to work. The ideal behind the "greater good" and the emotional attachment some have to charity beyond sustainability doesn't overcome the instinctual drive to gain profit or pleasure. And before it's thrown in, feeding yourself or your young goes under profit. Do you farm because it looks pretty? No, you farm to gain the fruits of your labor. People don't get on the tractor out of a sense of social nobility, they get on the tractor because someone will pay them for the work, their family will be fed from their work, OR in the case of a communist country, having armed personnel there telling you "I'm going to pop a hole in your bean if you don't get on that fething tractor". I think the monkeys are smarter than some of the human population solely because they can figure that part out.

Nicely leaving out that capitalism has a gun too - it's called 'work or starve to death'.

Not even close to the same. Under a capitalist economic system you are more than capable of simply "going off the grid" and living a life where you provide all your own sustenance. It's still "work or starve to death" but that "gun" as you so eloquently put it was placed there by nature, not by capitalism. But yeah, go ahead and bang the propaganda drum instead of dealing in facts. Communism as it exists today blows up without either changing doctrine (such as the Soviet Union replacing "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to " from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution") to compensate for the inherent shortcomings of the economic model, force people through physical violence to produce (What we see most commonly in communist economies), or to essentially brainwash the working class into working for the enjoyment of work and the betterment of society, which is what Marx explicitly pushed in his writings as having to be necessary for the model to work.

This is hilarious, go off the grid? Seriously? So as a person living in one of the most densly populated countries with no real nature to speak of how would that go? As a person with no skill in surviving off the grid how would that go? Why isn't going off the grid possible for communism then, going off the grid means they can't find you so they can't force you to work either.

If communism is so great, how come it is always imposed by violence? It has wrecked every country it has come to. Its nothing more than compulsion and terror.

I'm not seeing anyone arguing communism is great, all that is being pointed out if that if your at the ass end of the economy then capitalism isn't great either. Regardless, a move towards socialism might be inevitable if jobs are going to disappear with no replacement due to technological advancement. Socialism in no way is the same as 20th century communism.

 thekingofkings wrote:
If communism is so great, how come it is always imposed by violence? It has wrecked every country it has come to. Its nothing more than compulsion and terror.

And yet it is still better than the alternative. Capitalism only succeeds because it is not capitalism anymore, it is capitalism moderated by socialism. Take away the socialism and you have a brutal Darwinian dystopia where the privileged few are supported by the slavery of the masses and death by starvation is the acceptable fate for anyone who is not productive as a slave.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:
Under a capitalist economic system you are more than capable of simply "going off the grid" and living a life where you provide all your own sustenance.

Only if you are willing to remove yourself from society and all of its benefits. No electricity, no health care, nothing. Get a minor infection, the kind of thing that is easily treated with modern medicine? You're probably dead. Enjoy scavenging for food in the middle of the wilderness until you finally die, miserable and alone. But that's not really an endorsement of capitalism, it's simply acknowledgement that the state is not all-powerful and can not force anything upon you if you are determined to disappear into the remote wilderness. The exact same thing would happen in a communist state occupying the same geographical area.

It's still "work or starve to death" but that "gun" as you so eloquently put it was placed there by nature, not by capitalism. But yeah, go ahead and bang the propaganda drum instead of dealing in facts. Communism as it exists today blows up without either changing doctrine (such as the Soviet Union replacing "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to " from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution") to compensate for the inherent shortcomings of the economic model, force people through physical violence to produce (What we see most commonly in communist economies), or to essentially brainwash the working class into working for the enjoyment of work and the betterment of society, which is what Marx explicitly pushed in his writings as having to be necessary for the model to work.

Capitalism also blows up without changing its doctrine to incorporate socialism. And as automation continues to make people unemployable in any meaningful way capitalism will either continue to change in this direction or will be destroyed. Capitalism can only survive so long as the unemployable masses are brainwashed into thinking that they can become rich with enough bootstraps. Allow them to know the truth, that they can execute the tyrants and replace their state with a socialist one, and capitalism ends.

Working two jobs to make ends meet isn't lazy, in fact that's the exact OPPOSITE of lazy.

But that's not what the anti-socialists say. The belief is that if you're poor it's because you're lazy and deserve to be poor, that if you really cared you'd bootstraps yourself into being rich instead of being poor with multiple jobs.

Are there people who don't NEED them but chase after them solely to work less?

Perhaps you should ask yourself why people do this. Why are people willing to accept a life of poverty to avoid working? Why are the jobs that are available so unappealing that barely struggling along with the absolute minimum required for survival is a desirable alternative? Answer this and you will understand why capitalism is doomed, and why socialism is inevitable.

The biggest problem with capitalism is that people believe the lie that successful people are only there because of their hard work. Hard work has a hygiene effect on success, meaning that success is harder to achieve without hard work but working hard will not increase your chances of success.

The biggest factor that leads to success is basically luck. Genetics, social circle, upbringing, time and place of birth, lack of something bad happening, less competition, your family, and what other people are doing. All things that are outside of your control and have a much higher effect on success.

I don’t know what to call myself, but I don’t believe in unrestricted capitalism myself. You end up with situations were billionaires can pay zero tax whilst making a killing selling off services that the lower orders (who pay 20%-40% in taxes) need.

I guess I believe in a hybrid of capitalism and socialism. I’m sure there’s a name for it.

Rawsian Ethics is a good place to start