News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on India floats the idea of a universal basic income. Parent comment

Re:India floats the idea of a universal basic income by harryh on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @08:50PM (#13594972)
If a particular company is making outsized profits other firms will enter the market to capture them. Those firms will bid up the cost of the labor necessary to serve the market.

The historic share of labor as a % of GDP is pretty constant. It has dipped slightly in the last ~15 years and some people see this as the beginning of a major change but that's highly speculative.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:India floats the idea of a universal basic income by taneq on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @09:21PM (#13595137)
> The historic share of labor as a % of GDP is pretty constant.

What time scale are we talking about? I'm pretty sure that 5000 years ago, labour was close to 100% of GDP. I'm equally sure that it's well down below 20% now.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:India floats the idea of a universal basic income by harryh on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @09:24PM (#13595154)
Looking at US data for the past 100 years or so.

And no, it's not at 20%. More like a bit over 50%. If you take out depreciation and gov't because what you really care about is return to capital & labor it's about 30/70.

[ Parent | on HN ]