While that may be true, they fail to realize that they are in the extreme minority of actually-motivated people who would make a good use-case of basic income.

The vast majority of the world will fall into other categories, such as non-productivity or black markets. Not everyone wants to go build the next great app, folks!

I personally believe that this is the most important decision that humans must make over the next half-century, as we automate nearly everything and have little need for cheap human labor:

What do you do with all of those idle hands and minds?

In my opinion, if you allow the masses to do absolutely nothing while providing them the necessities for life, society will collapse upon itself over time, as people vote themselves more and more benefits for doing less and less work, while ostracizing the working and ownership classes. Question is only how many generations it takes.

My favorite example is what happens when you put rats into such a utopia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM

IMHO, humans are no better than they (possibly far worse, in fact), and I see no reason to believe how anything else will happen over the course of several generations of "free stuff".

Humans without responsibilities and accountability = chaos. Tell me it hasn't already begun.

Perhaps I'm underestimating the issue, but isn't there already today a sizeable chunk of the population in the world that does nothing or close to nothing, but still enjoys a good quality of life? Some people have the drive to work and create things, others are content with just consuming and making families; we have always had that, the only difference is that BI would make life easier for the latter group, but it doesn't strike to me as something that would radically change society as a whole.

.... and where do you see the majority of violent crimes occurring??

> The vast majority of the world will fall into other categories, such as non-productivity or black markets. Not everyone wants to go build the next great app, folks!

The ratio of people who will find themselves something to do vs. people who will just veg and watch TV is unknown. You don't know and I don't know. Making an assumption either way is asinine, which is why we need things like this study.

Personally, I think we should introduce a small BI, gradually raise it until we find the sweet spot, then tie it to appropriate economic metrics, such as or median supplemental income. Ideally, this would be paired with a gradual reduction in the minimum wage so that number of economically viable jobs for those "idle hands and minds".

I am open to other suggestion for "What do you do with all of those idle hands and minds?", but you don't provide any. The only other solution I can see is to outlaw or limit automation.

I don't think there's any perfect solution, once automation is truly nailed. People don't want to be told what to do or forced into work, but I also think that they need something to work for otherwise we'll collectively go insane.

Ever watch Black Mirror? If not, go see the episode titled "Fifteen Million Merits". Something along those lines, sadly....

An EITC keeps people engaged with the economy. So sure it starts with me hiring you to clean my gutters and you hiring me to clean your gutters, but eventually I discover that my comparative advantage is cleaning gutters, and then I can provide value to my neighborhood cleaning other people's gutters, and maybe even grow that into a business.

Sociologists and economists have measured what happens to people on unemployment, and while the overachiever population of HackerNews might be the kind to do more exercise and do more home repair, most people don't.

The problem with it is that it makes the restriction a waste of paper. Anybody can satisfy it just by formally accounting for the reciprocal favors people already do for each other. You might as well make it unconditional and save everyone the paperwork.

> An EITC keeps people engaged with the economy. So sure it starts with me hiring you to clean my gutters and you hiring me to clean your gutters, but eventually I discover that my comparative advantage is cleaning gutters, and then I can provide value to my neighborhood cleaning other people's gutters, and maybe even grow that into a business.

Which doesn't really work when your comparative advantage isn't cleaning gutters and you're only looking for some generic labor to use to claim the EITC.

> Sociologists and economists have measured what happens to people on unemployment

...which you lose as soon as you get a job, creating a perverse incentive that a basic income doesn't.

I know predictions could be off. But if in 20 years there are simply no jobs available to 60% of the population. What are they gonna do? Just all starve to death? BI is the inevitable step towards a post scarcity society. When majority of people not only don't want to work but that there are simply no jobs for most people yet there is plenty still to buy/consume because automation.

This has nothing to do with your 1980s example because there were still plenty of jobs to be had that needed doing.

20 years ahead projections are always wrong, sometimes VERY wrong.

It's just another case of "X will kill jobs" where X could be steam machines, electricity, robots, whatever... In the 80s my dad who worked in the automotive industry told me I should study IT because robots would eventually replace men. Today I'd say he was wrong: it's good to be in IT because of the Internet and mobile revolutions, which have nothing to do with robots.

The only sure thing is that we can't predict the future accurately.

Betting tremendous amounts that 60% of the population will be out of work in 20 years seems foolhardy to me. But so would be assuming that it can't happen. Building systems (and our understanding of how we can build systems) that can help, in those circumstances or others, seems like a good move.

Said people in the early 1800s. And early 1900s. Look, it's just not gonna happen. Jobs will change, but there will always be work for those willing to do it. You may not like the job - hell, you may not like your current job either - or it may be a better job than any that exists today.

Look around you, how many of the jobs you see people doing in your office existed 100 years ago? How about 50? 20?

Close to 95% actually. Customer service and sales existed since the introduction of money; and 50-100 years ago, our company probably would have required many more employees to provide a comparable level of service that we do today.

Maybe that's not true for a silicon valley office, but for the vast majority of companies out there, the sales, customer service and management still comprise the bulk of the employee force.

No there won't, the past doesn't predict the future and post scarcity is a different problem than past automation. If you're looking to the past for examples, you don't understand the problem being discussed because the whole point is that automation is at a level that even white collar jobs are no longer immune and most people simply aren't going to be able to compete with machines at anything they're capable of doing.

Yes, it is.

> it's a distant future that will lead to vast social upheaval long before it's actually achievable.

Retrocausality -- something causing something else before it even exists -- is also nonsense. Increasing productivity that is more limited by capital than labor, such that returns flow to capital, will cause much social upheaval, precisely because even as this occurs, scarcity of goods valued by people will still be present as an unalterable feature of life.

As long as there is an opportunity cost to anything, you aren't post-scarcity.

> The problem is long term structural unemployment numbers that will continue to grow until our current economic system is no longer feasible.

Yes, and that problem has nothing to do with "post-scarcity". Employment is only important for welfare because people, in our current system, need it for money to buy goods and services, and money, which is ultimately a rationing system, is only a thing because of scarcity.

It would be, if that's what I'd said or implied, but it isn't because something like post-scaricity isn't binary, it doesn't just occur at one point in time, we'll grow in that direction slowly and problems will arise long before we get there due to rising unemployment, but I think you know that and you're just being obtuse. We are not discussing post-scarcity, we're discussing the problems along the way there if/when it occurs.

You seem intent on pendantically ignoring points being made by re-framing them as strawmen. This is dishonest and not how to have a civil discussion. Since you seem unable to communicate rather than quibble over words you don't like, we're done.

It doesn't occur at all, and the problems you point to aren't problems that are even related to an absence of scarcity, they are problems stemming directly from scarcity.

> we'll grow in that direction slowly and problems will arise long before we get there due to rising unemployment, but I think you know that and you're just being obtuse.

No, we won't "grow in that direction". You seem to be be unable to comprehend the idea of someone disagreeing with your basic premise, so instead you assume that I agree with you and am being obtuse.

There's no route from here to there, and there's not even any there to get to.

We'll continue to progress toward greater abundance, but the basic economic problem that relative abundance does not alter the basic nature of scarcity will not be affected. Its sort of a perennial mistake to confuse greater relative abundance with the absence of scarcity.

It means we are living in paradise. There is nothing to be cleaned. There is nothing to be fixed. There is nothing to be repaired. There is nothing to be trimmed or maintained.

Like how Ireland('s landed gentry) was exported potatoes during the potato famine. There was plenty of food; the locals just couldn't afford it.

I dunno, this doesn't sound like what I learned in my official concentration at MIT.

Hey, how about a real argument, instead of one that doesn't rely on accusations of ignorance or appeal to credentials? That would be awesome.

> There might be things to do, but the owners would not be willing to pay people a living wage to do them.

The proper response is EITC or NIT. This takes the work that is below the worker's reservation wage and puts it above the worker's reservation wage.

Saying "there are no jobs available to 60% of the population" is a solution (BI) looking for a problem (no employment). If you were to actually come across this problem in the wild, where there was lots of work to be done but it was all below labor's reservation wage, the obvious answer would be to subsidize labor.

My living quarters could use a good sweeping, but I ain't doing it, and I ain't paying anyone to do it, even though I could easily afford it.

I guess I'm an armchair internet expert, but I don't see how a theoretical 60% unemployment or the 10-30% under-employment/poor compensation we have now means there's no work to do.

This one doesn't apply to BI, since you get the same amount of BI money whether you work or not and regardless of how much you earn.

I assume it is funded through taxes and that people that earn more income will pay higher taxes. So once you take BI received - taxes paid, people that earn more outside income get less from the BI program than those that don't. And we are back in the same situation where a welfare program creates disincentives for work.

So your first $10k (from BI) would be tax free. If you don't work, you don't pay any taxes.

Let's say you have a part-time job which pays $20k a year and the lowest marginal tax rate is 30%. You'd then pay $6k in taxes on that $20k.

Thus, your overall income would be $24k, much more than you got from just BI. This works if your only work is a single $100 lawn mowing job. BI, when coupled with an adequate standard deduction, eliminates disincentives to work.

Such a system looks a lot like the systems which are currently used in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. True, there are some differences: BI is called 'unemployment benefit' for those who don't work. And for those with a low income, there is no BI, but instead there are subsidies on housing, health insurance etc.

The personal standard deduction is not "income tax"—it's the opposite of a tax. It's the amount of your income which is not taxed.

This system wouldn't even necessarily require progressive taxation (though I would favor it). A flat tax rate of even 40% could be more than enough to provide for BI and everything else (and everyone would receive their BI tax-free).

It's very different from unemployment insurance because unemployment disappears once you start working. So there's no incentive to take on jobs which pay less than unemployment, or even to take on jobs which pay less than (unemployment + opportunity cost of working).

It might be helpful to do some research on how taxes (particularly deductions and marginal rates) actually work.

If you fund a UBI program by, say, eliminating preferential rates for capital income, and adding supplemental brackets above the current maximum brackets, and tie the level of the UBI to (because the former actually simplifies reporting in a way which prevents doing this exactly rather than by estimates) an estimate of the revenue resulting from those changes, there's no actual disincentive to work compared to the status quo ante due to the UBI except for very high income workers(this isn't no additional disincentive compared to those in other welfare programs from the UBI, its no disincentive at all.)

There's a disincentive compared to the status quo ante to generating income from long-term capital gains, but the practical effect of that is probably only in the upper end of the distribution (in the lower and middle ranges, the relative comparative disincentive to earning that form of income is probably more than offset by the having more surplus income to invest.)

Typical proposed implementations just increase taxes at higher income levels. So there is a taper starting somewhere above the basic income where people that are working are benefiting less than people who aren't working, and there is some income level where the basic income is effectively a pure cost. But all those people have a higher effective income than they would have from the BI.

And it likely would represent a massive increase in spending for most countries, even if it was more efficient than welfare programs. Especially if you make payments outside the tax code, which ends up with a lot of spending that is just accounting.

Doesn't this mean that BI will be even more expensive?

There is absolutely no associated "cost" of the program, and there is demonstrable evidence that the poorer you are, the more efficient your dollar is at stimulating growth, because you are much more likely to have real goods demand rather than capital growth demand like the rich, where inevitably the money for a UBI comes from.

Everything a government does has some rate of ROI on it, determining how much it impacts the economy and how well the dollars are spent. Infrastructure and education are known force multipliers where every dollar spent produces many times more economic growth in return, making almost any infrastructure or education worth it until you get particularly exploitative. Likewise, having a good healthcare system compared to the American one would produce significant returns in quality of life, and economic factors like time working and it would cost less to use more preventative medicine to mitigate problems before they are life threatening catastrophes that cost the state millions.

In the same vein of thinking, healthcare is certainly a net positive investment. You spend a ton on it, but the alternative is people getting sick and dying and lost potential productivity from that outweighs the money you spend preventing it. In the same way, if UBI prevents social unrest, crime, violence, despondence, and death, then it also likely offsets the money going in and then some as well, despite possible overhead, since unlike healthcare / infrastructure / etc money going in does not take years to get a return on - the people who get it predominantly will turn around and spend it immediately on goods and services to keep your consumerism strong.

UBI, by its design, creates incredible demand for a standard of living equal to it. Even if your margins are razor thin, the market is still very desirable because the revenue is some of the most reliable money there is (government money) and it is insanely consistent (people will need housing at the minimum level).

Which should terrify you. Any shift in real market demand for necessities post-UBI just represents how many people were impoverished without it, who did not have their base needs fulfilled and how much human rather than fiscal demand for needs was going unmet. The kind of progressive taxes necessary to redistribute so much money on so regular a basis would of course be significant for the higher earners, which would of course significantly curtail their economic influence, because while innovation is not zero sum, the annual allocation of finite resources is distributed in accordance with capital allocation to it - and that of course includes the spending habits of the poor.

It is a simple reality of markets that the more money you have the louder your demands are heard. So if you take from the rich and give to the poor, their relative voices change, but everyone grows together insofar as progress is always being made somewhere.

But that would happen anyway. If you are taxing the ultra-rich period, at almost any % of income, there are strong incentives when the taxable total is in the millions or billions to evade taxes.

It still happens, but I doubt a BI would significantly impact this one way or the other. Right now, people in the bottom percentiles of pay get most or all of their taxes refunded, but still like to have under the table jobs to maximize what they take home every payday, and under BI, they would still likely remain unaffected by tax increases. The middle class would likely be affected, but they tend to work jobs that aren't as easy to do for unreported cash, and have more to lose from an audit if they get caught, so its still safer to work legally. The richest would naturally get the highest absolute burden, but they are likely already doing all they can to avoid taxes, since they can have a lot of effort put into it relative to the potential gains, so I don't see a huge migration to illegal undeclared income there, either.

Unemployment insurance reduces the incentive to work because it pays people to not work. It similarly incentivizes black market labor.

BI does not do that. It does (if we get replace minimum wage with basic income) allow people to do work that pays nothing or very little. However, I would see that as boosting overall economic productivity since it allows a wider range of job and thus helps offset the loss of jobs to increasing automation.

As far as the expense. I would advocate scaling BI up as we scale the minimum wage down, allowing us to grow the program as we can afford it while boosting the economy (and thus tax revenue) with lower labor costs.

> Unemployment insurance reduces the incentive to work because it pays people to not work. It similarly incentivizes black market labor.

I'd say that BI also reduces the incentive to work, but I agree that it does this less than unemployment benefits. Same for black market labor. So a win for BI here.

But there is one other difference where BI is far and far more expensive than unemployment benefit: BI is also paid to people who work. Maybe some BI advocate should try to convince me but to me it looks like this will far outset the advantage above.

Of course BI will require increasing marginal taxes on the people who work. This shouldn't be economically catastrophic though, because you can structure the system such that there aren't disincentives to work and the UBI everyone receives is tax-free.

https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basi...

This is why most BI proponents are so averse to arithmetic.

Calculate the marginal tax rates people would pay under a BI funded by a flat tax vs. the existing welfare system when disqualification from benefits is calculated as a tax. The existing system has low and middle income people paying absurdly high marginal rates. BI would increase their incentive to work.

BI would have high income people paying somewhat higher marginal rates (but not necessarily higher taxes net of BI because they would receive the BI), but high income people are extremely unlikely to give up their high income in exchange for a subsistence level basic income.

The marginal utility changes from working vs not working in a BJ scenario are higher than in a BI scenario, almost by definition. Do you disagree that Utility(No Job, no money) < Utility(No job, money)?

BI would have high income people paying somewhat higher marginal rates (but not necessarily higher taxes net of BI because they would receive the BI)...

More words. Still no arithmetic. Why are BI proponents so averse to actually crunching numbers?

That isn't the interesting question for a basic job. If you replace existing welfare with a basic job then the utility function for working is a binary value which asks if you want to starve to death. You can't actually say no.

But most of the basic jobs are going to be makework jobs with minimal economic value. Things that have economic utility approximately equal to (and possibly less than) sitting on your couch and watching Netflix.

The real question with the basic job is whether people will pick the makework basic job over an actually productive real job. The relevant utility function for a basic job is utility(Basic Job, $10,000) vs. utility(Real Job, $10,000), the equivalent of which for the basic income is utility(No Job, $10,000) vs. utility(Basic Income + Real Job, $20,000). But then the basic job falls on its face because people will too often choose the basic job which is easier to get, has more stability, may be easier to do, etc. The Basic Income doesn't have those problems because in that case the income from the Real Job supplements the Basic Income instead of replacing it, so you get compensated for the amount that getting a real job is worse than not getting one.

A basic income also does a much better thing in the case where people choose not to work for a private business. In the basic job case that person is digging ditches and filling them back in, whereas in the basic income case it can be taking care of their children or writing open source software or doing investigative journalism without a wealthy patron -- choices that are socially beneficial but the basic job doesn't give you.

> More words. Still no arithmetic. Why are BI proponents so averse to actually crunching numbers?

The math and the words both mean the same thing.

You want math, fine. Suppose the economy is full of Adams, Betties and Charlies in equal numbers.

In the hypothetical existing system there is a progressive income tax where you pay nothing up to $50,000 and 20% thereafter.

Adams make $20,000, pay no taxes and receive $6,000 in food/housing government assistance which the government withdraws at a rate of $.80/$1 if the Adam were to make more money.

Betties make $30,000, pay no taxes, are not eligible for any of the food/housing benefits Adams get but receive $4,000 in government college assistance which the government withdraws at a rate of $.50/$1 if the Betty were to make more money.

Charlies make $100,000, pay $10,000 in taxes (20% on everything over $50,000) and receive no government benefits.

Now we throw away the existing welfare and tax system and replace it with a $10,000/year basic income and a flat tax of 20%.

Adams make $20,000 but now receive a $10,000 BI and pay $4,000 (20% of $20K) in taxes. Their net transfers from the government are still $6,000 but now if they make another dollar the government takes 20% instead of 80%.

Betties make $30,000 but now receive a $10,000 BI and pay $6,000 (20% of $30K) in taxes. Their net transfers from the government are still $4,000 but now if they make another dollar the government takes 20% instead of 50%.

Charlies make $100,000 but now receive a $10,000 BI and pay $20,000 (20% of $100K) in taxes. Their net transfers from the government are still -$10,000 and their marginal tax rate is still 20%.

Really? Fixing our crumbling infrastructure isn't valuable? Providing childcare to working mothers is useless? Glad to know there is nothing useful the govt can possibly do with more labor.

But then the basic job falls on its face because people will too often choose the basic job which is easier to get, has more stability, may be easier to do, etc.

This can be resolved by making BJ suck and pay below min wage.

The Basic Income doesn't have those problems because in that case the income from the Real Job supplements the Basic Income instead of replacing it, so you get compensated for the amount that getting a real job is worse than not getting one.

On the other hand, you seem to be ignoring the third option: watch TV all day while collecting money. We already know that free money (typically in the form of welfare and unemployment) induces this behavior.

As for the arithmetic, the question is this: ...BI is far and far more expensive than unemployment benefit: BI is also paid to people who work. Maybe some BI advocate should try to convince me but to me it looks like this will far outset the advantage above.

Your calculations seem to work in your hypothetical society. Do they work on something approximating reality?

Building infrastructure isn't unskilled labor so can't be used as a basic job. Moreover, the fact that the government sometimes needs to hire people to do things doesn't mean they can't do that but only when things actually need doing, and then independently have a basic income.

> Providing childcare to working mothers is useless?

This is what I'm talking about. Let's take some mothers who need to provide for their children and give them jobs digging ditches and filling them back in, then pay some strangers to watch their children while they're doing it. Might it be better to allow mothers to be paid when they take care of their own children?

> Glad to know there is nothing useful the govt can possibly do with more labor.

This is the most basic flaw in the basic job. The government is not qualified to decide this. It's the fallacy of the centrally planned economy that the government is better at allocating labor than individuals.

> This can be resolved by making BJ suck and pay below min wage.

In which case you can't give people jobs doing economically productive things because you have to give them jobs that are more demeaning and loathsome than jobs doing economically productive things, and then they can't actually live on wages below minimum wage so you still need the existing welfare system.

> On the other hand, you seem to be ignoring the third option: watch TV all day while collecting money. We already know that free money (typically in the form of welfare and unemployment) induces this behavior.

...when getting a job causes you to lose the welfare or unemployment benefits.

> As for the arithmetic, the question is this: ...BI is far and far more expensive than unemployment benefit: BI is also paid to people who work. Maybe some BI advocate should try to convince me but to me it looks like this will far outset the advantage above.

If the average person pays $10,000 more in taxes to fund a basic income and then receives the $10,000 basic income, it didn't cost them $10,000, it's just a no-op.

> Your calculations seem to work in your hypothetical society. Do they work on something approximating reality?

Please specify what part of the calculations you find unrealistic.

Obviously the numbers there are chosen to balance exactly so that nobody loses or gains anything and in practice throwing out a huge system with complicated rules and then replacing it with something simpler is going to have winners and losers. But the general principle that wealthier people pay more taxes than they receive benefits and poorer people receive more benefits than they pay taxes will continue to hold and the result will be lower marginal tax rates on effectively everyone (or, if BI is large enough that the new system is more redistributive than the existing one, everyone other than high income people).

FDR did exactly that.

Let's take some mothers who need to provide for their children and give them jobs digging ditches and filling them back in, then pay some strangers to watch their children while they're doing it. Might it be better to allow mothers to be paid when they take care of their own children?

Or, lets have one mother watch 4 children - her own and those of 3 strangers. This is a common arrangement in most of the world. Are Americans just somehow less capable than Indians, Mexicans, Peruvians and South Africans?

Please specify what part of the calculations you find unrealistic. Obviously the numbers there are chosen to balance exactly

So now take the actual distribution of income in the US (rather than a hypothetical one) and calculate what numbers would be necessary to balance exactly.

And a lot of those people died.

"Building infrastructure" is also not a long-term plan. We need it right now because we haven't seriously invested in infrastructure in three generations, but if we spent 10 years building all new bridges then we would be good for another three generations again. Which would be great, but then what?

> Or, lets have one mother watch 4 children - her own and those of 3 strangers. This is a common arrangement in most of the world. Are Americans just somehow less capable than Indians, Mexicans, Peruvians and South Africans?

Which the mother receiving the basic income can still do in return for money or favors or in kind services. But with the basic job, at some point the government says we have enough people providing daycare and you're digging ditches all day even if you would prefer to be raising your kids.

And notice how those arrangements work in other countries (and here for that matter) -- you watch all the kids today, someone else watches all the kids tomorrow. When you're not watching the kids you're washing clothes or doing errands or preparing food. And people tend to be much happier when they're doing that kind of work for their own families and communities than doing it for rude strangers at minimum wage.

> So now take the actual distribution of income in the US (rather than a hypothetical one) and calculate what numbers would be necessary to balance exactly.

OK, let's see. Mean household income is $72,641, there are 122,952K households so total income is $8,931,356,232K, therefore providing a $10,000 basic income for 245M adults would require a flat tax rate of ~27.43%. Or if you like a progressive tax then maybe a 20% bracket and a 30% bracket. And that rate is an overestimate because it doesn't include any revenue from corporate taxes.

And that's ignoring taxes needed to fund a functioning government - e.g. roads, law enforcement, blowing up Afghani weddings, etc. So 65-70% flat tax rates? Or just a 37-42% tax rate, plus we've cut wealth transfers in half? Concretely, which one are you proposing?

(Incidentally corporate taxes are just taxes on people, merely hidden from view.)

No it doesn't. You haven't explained where you got your numbers but those numbers are presumably for a household rather than an individual (which would then receive more than one basic income) or some atypical edge case where a person qualifies for an uncharacteristically large collection of benefits.

A basic income is a pure redistributive program. It can't possibly cost more than a program which is more redistributive than it is because there is nowhere else for the rest of the money to go.

> And that's ignoring taxes needed to fund a functioning government - e.g. roads, law enforcement, blowing up Afghani weddings, etc.

All of that other than the military costs a comparatively small amount of money. And we could probably stand to blow up not so many weddings as we do.

> (Incidentally corporate taxes are just taxes on people, merely hidden from view.)

That doesn't mean including it wouldn't reduce the rate. US GDP is $16.7T. Total US personal income from above was $8.9T. That's quite a difference. An economy-wide flat tax would require a rate of ~14.7% for $10,000 per adult and ~29.3% for your unrealistically high $20,000.

And keep in mind that that is the marginal rate. The effective rate under a basic income is lower than that for everyone. If you make $60,000 and pay 15% but get a $10,000 basic income then your effective tax rate is negative, as it is at a 30% rate and $20,000.

That's a contradiction. Productivity is defined as output divided by hours worked. Output is defined roughly as "sales of things that people want".

Putting aside market failures for a moment, work that pays nothing is very often work that nobody wants done. There are lots of people who will happily churn out poems about their personal angst all day if they had the opportunity to do so and call it 'work' but if nobody wants to buy their poems then it's not considered economic productivity. And it must be this way as otherwise you could get idiotic situations like someone who just goes running every day and says they were "productive" because they did "work", ignoring that it was income free because it didn't help anyone else. At some level the notion of productive work must be tied to an exchange of goods or services or else the phrase becomes kind of meaningless.

I used the wrong word, I meant 'overall economic production'. Economic participation is falling during this "recovery", and that is not just due to baby boomers aging: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-the-real-unemplo...

> work that pays nothing is very often work that nobody wants done

I disagree, but I think this disagreement boils down to underlying problems I see with the ways in which we tend to measure economic output and GDP.

If I write a poem that brings me no pleasure and I sell it to you, and you write a poem that brings you no pleasure and you sell it to me. That "counts" as economic productions. However, if I write a poem that brings me pleasure and you write a poem that brings you pleasure and nothing is sold, the same value is produced but it doesn't "count" towards economic production.

You may not like poetry, but there are tons of other examples:

Grandparents who babysit their grandchildren, people who fix their own cars, people who grow and cook their own food, people who write open source software, people who volunteer with non-profits, the list goes on and on.

> At some level the notion of productive work must be tied to an exchange of goods or services or else the phrase becomes kind of meaningless.

While it is hard to measure productive work that isn't tied to the exchange of goods or services, that doesn't make that work meaningless, nor does it mean it has no value.

Conversely, I would argue that there is a large amount of "unproductive work" or "busy work" that doesn't really produce value, but does involve the exchange of goods and services. Specific examples are controversial, but some potential ones are: fighting frivolous lawsuits, political fundraising, defensive patents, and many types of advertising.

see: https://medium.com/basic-income/basic-income-meaningless-job...

I think many of these many of these jobs provide "competitive advantage" in marketplace but produce little to no actual value to society. Every corporation needs someone doing these jobs so they can stay competitive, but it ends up becoming an arms race of economic waste.

My hope is that by reducing the necessity of work that get paid well, we are able to start weeding out some of the BS work and enabling people to do more of the less/un paid work that produces hard to measure value.

I think we should accomplish this by incrementally phasing in basic income pair with gradually phasing out minimum wage. Each increment should happen at the start of a recession so the the increase in government spending on BI paired with the availability of cheaper labor (due to lower minimum wage) can prompt growth and shorten the recession.

[0] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/finland-to-co...

And that's before the economic benefits of increasing the incentive to work for low and middle income people by not reducing their government transfer payments when they get a job.