It looks like obblekk's comment is getting some down-votes (appears gray to me). I'm honestly curious what people's objection to this comment/idea is?

I'm not saying that this will necessarily happen, but it's not a crazy thought. Anecdotally more then a few people I know have taken the time stuck at home to pursue things like reading, taking online courses, watching/reading tutorials, and working on side-projects.

In any case, hoping that something positive may come out of this bad situation just seems so fundamentally unobjectionable to me, I'm curious what other's thoughts are about this?

If we gave people UBI we could have this "creative creation" happening all the time

Or even a less radical step: guaranteeing healthcare for all citizens so it's not tied to employment at a large company.

Agreed. As long as the country is not capable of pulling that off, any discussion of UBI is a waste of time.

Genuinely curious: why was this downvoted when the parent comment was not?

Civilised countries already do this!

This is exactly how it works in the UK - universal coverage of everyone via the NHS, and additional elective procedures covered either via private insurance or direct payment at private facilities.

I actually think that government healthcare might be a good opportunity to reduce regulation of private healthcare: if the government is paying for it, they dictate the terms, but for a private transaction, much less oversight would be needed. Of course having this happen would require compromise which appears to be completely absent from our current legislative process...

That’s how it works in most countries. People with more money can buy better treatment.

Are electives not covered by your insurance? Do you pay for them entirely out of pocket?

The one thing I don't get about UBI is who does the "shit" jobs. Those jobs that are low-skill low-pay under the current system. Most people who do those jobs do so only because the alternative is worse.

Even in places with generous social-welfare systems there tends to be social pressure against relying on it, but making the payments universal seems likely to remove that stigma.

The first order effects are obviously very positive (lookup the term "wage slavery" for some of the moral arguments against such jobs), but it's hard to predict what the higher order effects of a transition away from a system that has basically been in place since the industrial revolution.

Everyone else thinks something nice and utopian would happen, but my guess is that "working five years at a shit job" would become the new "getting a bachelor's degree in pretty much anything" that employers would look for as a way to prove conscientiousness, when hiring for the high-paying jobs.

Anyone wanting to make more than UBI pays out, would have to first "do their time" in the sucky jobs, in order to get the "credential" of having done so. It'd be a generalization of the concept of internships, where companies would admit that—like with university—where you interned, and what you interned in, doesn't actually matter, so much as the fact that you interned somewhere doing something.

I suppose if those jobs are so terrible that no one who has UBI wants to do them, they'll have to pay a fair wage to attract people. If they're truly necessary, wages will rise until until positions are filled. And yes, you may now have to pay more for work that was woefully underpaid previously.

If your scenario comes to pass, it just means we've been taking advantage of the people who currently work those jobs because they have no other alternative.

But what happens when all prices go up? If everyone gets paid more, wouldn't the UBI be worthless? Landlords will just raise prices since working people will always have more money (UBI + salary) than non workers? Just like now? Same goes for almost every service.

Real supply and demand will stay the same, real economic production will probably stay the same too. So what's the point? 2000$ only feels a lot right now because it's an amount of money that represents a lot of work for a lot of people. Sure, you can link some small scale UBI experiments, but they have all been done in the context of a broader economy where the amounts given still had purchasing power.

There's a reason why most economists don't agree with UBI. I know people on HN love to discredit economists, but the push for UBI here is ridiculous. It is akin to simply denying a whole scientific field because you feel it's are wrong

>It is akin to simply denying a whole scientific field because you feel it's are wrong

Economics isn't a science.

To a certain extent, it's like raising the minimum range, only more so. A lot of jobs will just disappear.

> they'll have to pay a fair wage to attract people.

Wages aren't defined based on what is fair or unfair. They're decided based on supply and demand for labor, thankfully.

A "shit job" is by definition one that creates little value because value is defined as what is lost when someone exits the picture. Workers in those "shit jobs" can be immediately replaced so no value is really lost by their exit, so their value is close to zero.

> A "shit job" is by definition one that creates little value because value is defined as what is lost when someone exits the picture.

There are two people involved in the transaction: the worker and the employer. The employer will value the work at a value greater than the wage, otherwise they would be more profitable just by firing the worker. Similarly the worker will value the wage more than the job, because otherwise they would quit.

When most people talk about the "value" of a job, they tend to not use either local definition, but from a more global definition of "how bad off would society be if nobody did this job" and that more closely aligns with the employer's value than the worker's (e.g. for services jobs the employer makes money on the spread between what customers will pay and what workers will work for, so clearly customers value the job at some margin above the wage, and we can use customers as a proxy for "society")

Without UBI, the wage is what lets the worker not end up homeless and starving (or begging), so someone with no better job prospects will value the wage very highly. Once you add UBI into the mixture though, maybe it's "move into a larger apartment" or "eat out somewhere nice once in a while" and suddenly they value the wage much less.

Those jobs would have to be paid exceptionally well, in order to be attractive, if you want more than just the UBI-life.

It would totally change how we look at people doing those unpleasant jobs. Let's be honest, right now it's a bit of a caste system.

I suspect, many of the "shit" jobs will "die" out, or at least need a lots less people. I could easily imagine trash-collection, deliveries, all-kinds-of driving, cleaning etc to become fully-ish(95%+) automated, if not entirely for large sectors.

Hell, if BostonDynamics can build RoboSoldiers, that can salto and run parcour, they sure as hell can build something, that can scrub my toilet. Currently I can't afford their "house-hold"-chores model, but in ten years Samsung will probably have a line-up of models between 1000€ and 10000€

Plumbing will unlikely ever any time soon be fully automated... it's too varied in terms of existing structures until AI becomes actual life. Similar for a lot of "dirty jobs."

Just look at how poorly the couple of attempts at McD's to automate the cooking processes, they failed miserably... Even today there's a lot of manual work in automated factories.

It was my impression, that OP was using the term "shit jobs" to denote jobs with low pay, but high effort, manual, dangerous, etc.

"Plumbing" is therefore not a "shit job". It's well paid compared to most (Uber/Taxi/etc-)driving, cleaning, trash-collecting and many other jobs.

Trash collecting tends to pay pretty well too.

Yes, but trash collecting is super-easy to automate compared to automated "finding-of-plumbing-solutions".

It all depends on the ratio "Ease-of-implementation" / "Cost of existing manpower" for each sector of job.

Even then, your own definition of shit jobs, " low pay, but high effort, manual, dangerous, etc." doesn't really correspond that well.

High effort and dangerous jobs usually pay well... low paying jobs are inherently manual, and/or likely to be automated away. In the end, some things don't automate well. There's a human aspect to a lot of things, and many of those won't be displaced soon. Of course, I do understand that many other jobs cannot fill the void that will be lost, especially with an ever expanding population.

Providing a UBI doesn't mean market forces vanish, it would just shift/adjust those market forces. I think these "shit" jobs would either cease to exist if they weren't really necessary, be replaced by automated solutions, or be compensated at a high enough rate that someone would be still be willing to do them. It seems like all three of those would be net positives economically.

One person's "shit job", is another persons fun job. We are all brainwashed that "low skill" is bad. I know people who enjoy cleaning. I love cooking, but want to maintain the lifestyle that working in software gives me. If UBI was there in the background, people could pursue their passions. Today, the situation is "what should I pursue so I can make money", not "what should I pursue so I can be happy".

No one wants to clean toilets

So with UBI demand for self-cleaning toilets comes up high enough that they're mass produced and i can pick one up at Lowe's any random weekend? Sounds good.

When noone is forced to do them, the community will have to learn to recognize and honor them as essential public service. This can be done in many ways, not only by paying money.

You pay them more.

well, who does the secretarial jobs now that we eliminated the secretarial class?