"what if jobs are not the solution but the problem?"

[JHan]

I took the title from an article I read today which got me thinking about the election, so I'll frame it as such.

Much of the discussion on "why we lost" is centered on the Democrats not effectively selling our jobs strategy to the rust belt. I'll put aside my skepticism that this is the singular reason that cost us under 100,000 votes across the states in question because I want to keep focus on Jobs.

Even though we are better off in many respects compared to our grandparents , we feel more stressed, bummed out and aeither angry or apathetic. Many of us reserve our most volatile feelings for the "elites" who changed the world, supposedly to line their pockets and while this isn't completely true, we believe it to be absolutely true.

Globalization brought great opportunities and wealth, but as with any change in the economy, it also had its victims. The Free Market will always have its victims, and the arrogance of the elites in their failure to mitigate harmful effects has many railing against the establishment today. Free market advocates rub salt into the wound by callously blaming victims for their predicament, as if in an unpredictable economy things don't happen beyond anyone's control. So many feel irrelevant, left out and their concerns ignored because of reasons which aren't entirely their own.

We had the bailout which was the ultimate hand out, with few conditions attached. Rampant consolidation/ merging of companies rendered large corporations "Too big to fail" and almost impossible to efficiently regulate. The public perceived that the Elites got us into trouble and the bailout offended us. We ignored that we may have been complicit in our spending practices but the rage was justified for those of us who work hard, get hounded to pay our taxes or get judged for being on Government Assistance.

So 8 years later, 2016 became the year to really attack the "establishment"- And what is the establishment? A consortium of high powered players who control every aspect of our lives? Cynical congressmen and women? Cynical bureaucrats? Or .. <insert whatever group you're most pissed off at who makes a lot of money> ?

To frame the disappointment of many Americans in the Elites, a narrative of Nostalgia emerged - Wouldn't you like to go back to the days when ---- you could get a good education and be sure to get a decent job? when debt didn't eat you alive? when everyone spoke english and didn't have to walk on eggshells all the time? When campus "free speech" was really "free speech" ? When you could worship Jesus openly and good Christian values were promoted? When our schools were better ( supposedly)? When a good American could get a good job and retire prosperously , and able to afford the occasional vacation in the tropics?

For many Americans, any one or all of these odes to Nostalgia, are important. And of course much of it is a lie, - America was never perfect and good however the feeling and sense of something precious, now lost, prevails. We've seen numerous theories about the thing that was lost- white privilege vis a vis identity conflicts and issues? Jobs? Economic opportunities? Integrity in our Institutions? Functioning Government?

So it should come as no surprise, with this wave of nostalgia, that the political figures who dominated this election cycle - Bernie, HRC and Trump - are all baby boomers.

( Well it's not surprising to me at least.).

All three were born at a time when America was the only country with a roof left on her head during and after WW2. They grew up in an America burgeoning with promise. Economic prosperity and dominance lends itself to myth making, and those looking back on those halcyon days may forget little details such as the fact that we've always had an elite wielding heavy influence in politics, that we have a history of favoring immigration restrictions, that there was segregation, redlining and so on and so on.

When Donald Trump speaks of "Making America Great Again" , he's thinking of the 50's- Donald "the 50's guy" (thanks Bill Maher!) . Bernie similarly wants to turn back the hands of time , but uses for his inspiration, the Scandinavian Model- Unfortunately he doesn't seem to get that many of his policy positions conflict with Scandinavian principles on trade and the economy. But he yearns of yesteryear too, before everyone was too greedy , before "neo-liberalism". He speaks of a reality that could be if only we had the guts to grasp it, even if (from my perspective,) he hasn't been able to properly articulate it himself . And as for HRC, her support for trade deals in the past gets her a lot of flack but she is consistent and her views are framed with worker's rights in mind but there too, is an ode to the past - her ideas about worker's rights are absolute, which blinds her to the reality of the job market today which is so flexible because of automation that assuming change in the status of a worker is solely because of the unscrupulousness of employers is myopic.

It's hard to accept that Jobs will continue to become scarce. Yearning for a yesteryear where jobs will once again be plentiful is a fool's errand. There's no way to reverse this trend. And instead of fighting against it, let's embrace it. Why support obsolete industries which will disappear in 10 years time? Why do we persist to keep the status quo?

And I feel this is where democrats can lead the conversation- it's risky, but if not now then when?

A Universal Income:

Throughout human history we've been working. As part of tribe to survive. As laborers, as slaves, as servants. In spite of labor laws, human beings across this planet find themselves resorting to demeaning work just to survive and just barely. How much of this can humans take? The "lower classes" can only be subjected to unfairness for so long before the seeds of revolution sprout and stability, the foundation of civilization, succumbs to violence and volatility. Perhaps , the 21st century will be the time we break this cycle of abject poverty, exploitation, revolution, stability - rinse and repeat.

As technology looms large with AI and Robots, this is an opportunity to end the trend of back breaking labor, demeaning labor and to free ourselves of our outdated concepts of "jobs" and "work" . As we leave it to the machines to do the heavy work, humans get a universal income, and are free to pursue our own endeavors , not pressured by market forces or desperation. These same market pressures are responsible for a ...

"definition of ourselves (which) entails the principle of productivity – from each according to his abilities, to each according to his creation of real value through work – and commits us to the inane idea that we’re worth only as much as the labour market can register, as a price. By now we must also know that this principle plots a certain course to endless growth and its faithful attendant, environmental degradation."

Ask yourself - Should a human being work long hours in a chicken factory, on their feet, hurting their backs? Should a human being spend hours driving ? Should a human be trapped in a cubicle, in an unending cycle of monotony - -- , what else could that human being be doing - bonding with family perhaps? Pursuing a hobby? Starting a new business? doing something he or she actually enjoys instead of the monotony of the same job everyday- wouldn't this freedom be a spring board for innovation ? If all of us could do what we want to do instead of what we HAVE to do and are required to do to make a living?

This could be the future for us - it's scary because it is potentially our next great evolutionary step -- but I'm ready to embrace it .
The article that inspired these thoughts is here:

https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-the-problem

[guillaumeb]

1. A universal income? What a Marxist idea.

Except for the fact that one President already proposed a universal basic income, or UBI. We all know that it was not President Obama, but the President who proposed a UBI was that well known ultra-liberal Richard Nixon.

And the fact that a conservative proposed that idea should not really be a surprise. Today's GOP is dominated by Libertarians, not classic conservatives. A conservative argument for a UBI is that, given that consumer spending makes up 70% of the GDP, a UBI would almost guarantee that the GDP would remain relatively steady. So businesses would know that consumers would always have enough income to keep spending on at least a basic level.

This UBI would allow people to take part time jobs such as Uber type jobs if they wished, with the thought being that the Uber non-living wage job would be in addition to the UBI.

Recommended.

[JHan]

2. Yes Marxist :D :D

[JHan]

8. Yep.

Unfortunately I can already see the Ted Cruz's and Paul Ryans and Mitch McConnell's balking at the idea.

But I really believe this is something the Democrats need to have on their agenda. Trump's ideas, or rather Bannon's ideas, are some of the most regressive shit I've ever seen/read.

[guillaumeb]

19. The GOP loves to frame unemployment and/or underemployment

as a personal failing due to an individual deliberately making poor choices. That makes it easier for them to deny any help to the undeserving or lazy workers. And it makes it easy to sell supply side tax cuts for the job creators.

They call it rewarding good behavior and sanctioning bad behavior.

[anarch]

3. eventually, this pretty much has to be the answer

Well in my opinion anyway. Then again I'm pretty much for universal healthcare and free education too, with the likely trade-off of not spending so much on "defense" as we do now. Socialism, pretty much. A pipe dream? I think only as long as these ideas are anathema to the majority of the American people.

If people really feel like they need to have a "job" for reasons of self-esteem, I'm sure there would still be plenty of work that people could do to help rebuild and/or maintain our infrastructure or help administer and/or deliver all these expanded social services--in that case, the government actually could create jobs directly, unlike in the current, unplanned economy.

I feel like this all only seems unthinkable because of our conditioning. That and the fact that this scheme sort of assumes a post-scarcity economy is within our grasp...if technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, I actually think we could get there within the next couple of centuries...if we collectively wanted to, and if we don't destroy ourselves first.

[guillaumeb]

4. In my view, the reason that this idea is anathema to todays Libertarian driven GOP

is that American Libertarian capitalists need a low paid, marginal workforce to keep the employed workers in line. Any universal guaranteed income would deprive them of that whip.

Plus cutting the obscene war budget would also cut into the very profitable war industry unless a massive rebuilding infrastructure industry could take its place.

[JHan]

9. We'll just quote Hayek right back at them..

" I have no objection against a flat minimum security to everybody who cannot earn enough in the market." - Hayek.

[guillaumeb]

20. I respond with #8. eom

[anarch]

10. humanitarian missions could largely supplant the current military-industrial profit center

In a mixed economy, that is (that kind of profit would be sort of meaningless in a purely socialist arrangement). Government contractors could make plenty of profit supporting aid delivery and infrastructure construction efforts...swords into ploughshares, kinda.

Ideally (again, just in my opinion), the bulk of human employees that would need to be kept in line would be almost completely eliminated, if we can develop advanced enough AI in combination with automated production methods. All human labor would be voluntary...

The problem I see is that our current concept of wealth depends on a certain relative position of privilege in society as compared to others. If we didn't have poverty, we couldn't have extreme wealth either...and somehow or other extreme wealth became a thing that people strive for.

To me, it's always boiled down to the question of whether we want to cooperate and live together as a society, or if we want it to be everyone for themselves, just a fight for survival. People generally always find some way to create problems rather than working on solutions to the problems we already have. Maybe someday we will evolve.

[guillaumeb]

21. And as others have pointed out,

millions could ne trained to weatherproof houses.
Or insulate houses.
Or install solar collectors.
Or fix roads and bridges.

All of these infrastructure jobs cannot be outsourced to foreign countries.

I agree that humans are social animals, but there are just enough Libertarians/sociopaths that wish to reward anti-social behavior.

[hatrack]

5. There's a quote I remember from Jacques Attali about 20 years ago (still true):

"There will be winners and losers in the global economy. The losers will outnumber the winners by an unimaginable margin."

[mike_c]

6. I have always believed that providing a universal minimum income...

...should be one of the proper roles of government, either by providing an actual income or by making basic services such as housing, health care, food security, education, etc free.

I have my own perspective about work and jobs. I dropped out of high school and performed unskilled (first) and later somewhat skilled trade work until I was in my 30s, then went back to school, earned a doctorate, and became an academic scientist by my 40s. I'm now approaching retirement after 20+ years in academia.

I returned to school when I realized that most of the employer's I'd worked for up until that point in my life regarded my time-- the actual hours of my life-- as the primary asset, often the ONLY asset, that I brought to the labor market. Employers who offer those kinds of "jobs" seek to buy the most precious asset any of us owns, the very hours and minutes of breath we have on the planet, for the lowest price possible. When I understood that, I also realized that I would never be satisfied with a "job" again, ever. I needed a calling, a career, whatever-- work that I performed because it interests me, compels me, and defines me. And of course I need to be paid for doing it.

The last 23 years have been so much more rewarding than my early working years were, or ever could be. Of course, I had to go deeply into debt to achieve it, a debt that I cannot ever repay (there are not enough years left in my working life to repay my student loan debt). This is where a minimum universal income comes in, one sufficient to permit Americans to obtain a public education, and gives them the opportunity to do MEANINGFUL work instead of drudgery to line someone else's pockets, literally selling the hours of our lives in exchange for some degree of economic security.

[JHan]

12. thanks for sharing your story mike..

"often the ONLY asset, that I brought to the labor market. Employers who offer those kinds of "jobs" seek to buy the most precious asset any of us owns, the very hours and minutes of breath we have on the planet, for the lowest price possible. When I understood that, I also realized that I would never be satisfied with a "job" again, ever. I needed a calling, a career, whatever-- work that I performed because it interests me, compels me, and defines me."

Well stated. There's an important distinction between a "Career" and a "Job". And we can look at rates of depression, anxiety disorders and a whole host of other psychological issues we're now talking about and how that is connected to leading an unfulfilled life and living in poverty.

My concern is really what the world is going to look like 10-20 years from now. If we continue to ignore the inevitable, it will catch up on us with disastrous consequences. These are conversations we need to have today.

[WhiteTara]

7. who/what provides the revenue stream that

would implement the universal income?

[JHan]

11. As percentage of GDP for starters...

Unfortunately our congress is conservative at the moment and the only way Libertarian types and Conservative types will accept it is if we scrap part of the current social safety net - I don't support that move. For instance, Charles Murray proposed a plan where "every American citizen age 21 and older would get a $13,000 annual grant deposited electronically into a bank account in monthly installments. Three thousand dollars must be used for health insurance (a complicated provision I won’t try to explain here), leaving every adult with $10,000 in disposable annual income for the rest of their lives." - to pay for this Charles wants to eliminate social security and medicaid.

However I'd rather universal income be pegged to Nominal GDP. We can reduce entitlements payouts to those in higher income brackets, or even introduce some sort of progressive consumption surtax on luxury goods spending so this would impact the "1%"

But firstly, we need to see taxation as GOOD rather than bad. I am in favor of smart high taxes where it is shown to be effective (my preference is a flat tax across the board (with differing rates by income of course)) - but I am not in favor or high taxes where it is shown not to be effective - for example I'm in favor of dropping the corporate tax rate.

But the best idea I've ever come across to address affording the UBI was actually a comment I read on a site, under an article addressing these concerns, all worth the read:

"To get to a liveable BI, we have to drop our obsession with not raising tax rates. There's a lot of room for rates to go up, especially since the marginal rates will have plummeted for the bottom 30% of the income distribution. Barring that, I should find the present distribution preferable.

But that's year one. Right now, based on a wide-ranging study of national poverty lines, we can estimate that for every 1% real growth in per capita GDP, the ideal poverty line increases in real terms by less than 0.2%.
http://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/GentiliniandSum...

So partial indexation, and annual cuts in the income tax rate, or dramatic reductions in debt, not just in GDP but nominal terms, funded by this structural trajectory to lower and lower spending/GDP ratios is a significant possibility.

This, ultimately is the grand bargain a Basic Income represents if done right: The left gets the effective elimination of poverty and a guarantee that the minimum standard of living will look less and less like poverty and more like a somewhat austere but middle-class existence, as the economy grows, and the right gets a guarantee of a higher GINI index in the future, and that spending as a percentage of the economy will shrink. The pro-capitalists get a market economy (complete with employees who bargain harder) and the anti-capitalists get participation in same to become voluntary.

But if all that's on offer is a promise to take single parent, two child, families from the 61% of GDP they receive today in Pennsylvania to 51% of GDP, well... I'll take the present system in a heartbeat if that's what's on offer.

That said, with some defense cuts, a carbon tax, broadening inheritance duties, a more aggressive stance on social security, and a 60% marginal rate on the top percentile, I have run some back-of-envelope calculations that suggest that you could enact a BI covering 25% of per capita GDP tomorrow with a flat income tax rate of 36% (and that's including the payroll tax) only hitch is that said tax falls on the first dollar of earned income. Also, presuming CBO's growth projections, a 50%-indexation rate would bring that flat tax rate down to 19% within 50 years.

And finally, I think to some extent, in a period where the economy still suffers from insufficient demand, the unique moment we are in where a Basic Income does not have to be revenue neutral. Of course, if the present political sclerosis continues, we may well see another depression of similar magnitude in my adult life. Suddenly you don't need to raise 25% of GDP, but 22% or perhaps 20%, and partial indexation will bring those numbers down on their own.

For a more rapid drawdown of a BI as stimulus programme, other options exist. Consider indexation to CPI until the budget is balanced and then indexation to nominal per capita GDP until similar levels of real growth occur. Assuming 1.6% real growth, a Basic Income introduced at 25% of per capita GDP with an intended 3% of GDP to be deficit financed, could become budget-neutral after 8 years. That would've been, had it been introduced in 2009, a fiscal stimulus of about $2 Trillion, $1.2 trillion, or 8% of GDP of that in the first three years.

We can, now, afford this program, funded to the levels required to eliminate poverty for everyone, not just families of two adults and two children, with tax rates that are reasonable.

......."

http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2014/01/13/could-we-afford-a-universal-basic-income/

[WhiteTara]

16. Thanks for the explanation.

But if no one produces how can there be a GDP?

[JHan]

17. Our GDP is low, for some reasons I won't get into now, but we do produce ;)

We're leaders in hi-tech manufacturing globally and we've had massive productivity gains (meaning robots and automation etc) over the last couple of decades. Our top exports : electrical equipment, fabricated metal products, medical equipment, petroleum by products, food, hi tech products/electronics, machinery, chemicals - pharmaceuticals as well.

[alarimer]

13. So many jobs have been lost to automation that this is probably the only answer

Unless you want a dystopian future (which is where I think we are headed, if we are not there already), where people are at each other's throats over scraps.

I do feel that the Democratic Party has been captured by Wall Street and Silicon Valley. The only answers they can come up with have to do with "job retraining" (retraining for what jobs? What replaces jobs lost to outsourcing or automation? Usually low-paid service sector jobs) or some kind of high tech work, which is largely automated.

Really, though, maybe we should look to Germany for the answers. They seem to have figured it out, more than anyone else has anyway.

[JHan]

14. Germany is very different culturally..

We'll have to be careful with easy comparisons.

I want my party engaged with Wall Street and Silicon Valley - I just want to be part of the conversation.

[JHan]

15. And one more point about outsourcing --

We "outsource" more jobs to automation than foreign workers. What's the solution when a company "Outsources" a production line to robots?

[HughBeaumont]

18. Our new government will be "Three Branches Bush on Steroids" by Dec 2017.

More than a few dozen of these Congressional privatization asswipes call Social Security and Medicare "handouts" . . . mostly folks who will never need either one.

More than several dozen Congress and Senate critters are along the lines of Reagan when he said of unemployment insurance: "A pre-paid vacation for freeloaders".

This country loves these assholes because they aren't "poor" . . . they're "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".

I ask . . . with all of these obstacles . . . forget about GMI, because it's not going to happen in our lifetimes; how do we keep the current social safety net as is (which, sorry, isn't even close to being enough) INTACT?