Can't wait till this happens in North America. I hope we realize shorter work days and basic income in the next couple of decades. Then we will truly have a golden age.
I'm kind of Ok with letting other countries try this one out first. I'm receptive to the idea of basic income, but the potential unintended consequences seem terrifying.
More terrifying than the status quo, or the consequences of not implementing income supports for the working class under present and coming economic conditions? Really?
If anyone is to try this, the states are ideal candidates. People can (and do) vote with their feet when states implement negative policies, which is one reason they are "laboratories of democracy". In addition, it is clear that they have the consitutional authority to do this (while the federal government does not).
It feels like something that would fail if only one state did it. A lot of low income people would move to that state for basic income and the high income people seeing massive tax increases would leave. Then the system would collapse.
At a country level it is much more difficult for people to come and go and countries have some control over who does come and go. It would be better tried by some European country.
There still is quite a few hurdles to switching states, not the least of which is having the money to do so, and the ability to find a job and housing in the new state. Usually those that are the most affected by bad policy are the least able to move.
>If anyone is to try this, the states are ideal candidates.
I'm inclined to disagree. It'll be easier to implement in a place like say Canada or a northern European country where there is already wide acceptance of social support structures.
No joke. People are already getting cut to 25 or less hours for health insurance reasons. I was told in a staff meeting that we might be going to a 4-day week with the cut in pay that entails since we will have a budget shortfall and our health insurance is going to do a 3x increase this next year.
I don't think the US will ever switch at the federal (or even state) level. Any changes would be driven from the industry and individual company level.
or time off in general. Just a small sample of the cruelty inflicted on people by many companies:
- Significant other or child dies -- too bad, so sad, go without pay.
- Having a kid? Hope you enjoy not being paid while you have that extra medical expenses, or being marginalized. Worst case? You get fired.
- Sick? Sucks to be you.
(More of an aside, but I never personally understood the reason why the economy doesn't better support having children. An every-increasing supply of future consumers is what drives a lot of economic expansion in this country.)
>"the economy doesn't better support having children"
What do you mean by "the economy"? It is not clear (to me) why employers should pay fertile people more than sterile ones, or those who dislike contraception more than those who use it. Incentivizing child-bearing as a means of increasing future sales is not a good investment, even if we assume that said company will be a going concern by the time the child becomes financially independent.
The solution to most of your issues seems to be increasing the number of opportunities available to people; this would provide them options, and additonal competition between employers would improve treatment of employees. We already see that in-demand employees are treated very well; the key is to make everyone more productive, and increase demand for labor services. How this can be achieved is, of course, a topic of great debate.
If I don't want children of my own because they're ridiculously expensive, why should I subsidize yours? There's no reason a private employer should pay you more because you want a kid.
Children are not personal property, they are a cultural resource, and it is perfectly acceptable to make people invest in the important parts of their culture. If you don't like it, give back all your state-printed social-agreement-enforcing cash and make your own monopoly money to hoard. You, as a participant in an economy, have social responsibilities. Caring for the next generation is a big one.
Yes, thankfully we have to pay for our own children's education, transportation, food, and healthcare because nobody pays taxes. Truly, this makes the US a wonderful place.
No need to wait for it to happen nation wide. You can already start applying it for yourself. Try to negotiate a 4days week next time. If you can't find any employer who would agree to that, accept standard 5days contract, but then take a day off every other week or something. I'm sure there is a lot people can do to reduce their work time (stress) without waiting for it to "happen" country wide.
In all honesty, many knowledge worker jobs in the US are already un-clocked. Essentially, the company has an expectation that a job gets done and the employee has an expectation that they'll generally speaking be present at the office roughly during core hours. The unspoken agreement is that this ends up being roughly 40 hours per week, with concessions made on the employee's part when things get tough and on the employer's part to offset the aforementioned extra time.
Ultimately, this serves the employer's purposes more than the employees', but it's better than the bad old days of clock-in, clock-out. Imho, most managers [at least in tech companies, but not just the big name tech companies] operate this "just get your job done" way.
This is especially common in the Bay Area where a fair number of folks have 1.5-2hr each way commutes.
So ultimately what hours do most tech/knowledge companies work in the US? 9-5? 9-6? I've also heard stories of 9-9 or worse but wonder how much is startup myth.
Except these are companies choosing to shorten their work days. This isn't a top-down imposition by government. I suspect you are envisioning a 6-hour day, with government requiring overtime compensation beyond that. As for basic income, that's another discussion entirely.
A golden age of after-work creative and productive output? If you don't have the passion to create something meaningful with X amount of free-time, what will X+1 do for you?
"Trillions of dollars" doesn't really give any insight into the scope of the problem, it just suggests the number is really large.
The scope of the problem is that we have about 1.5 years worth of GDP in debt. So, with yearly payments of 10% of GDP, we could pay down the debt in 15 years. Suppose through automation we increase productivity by 50%. We could shorten the work week by 25%, add a tax to pay down 10% of the debt each year, and still maintain exactly the same standard of living while paying down the national debt in 10 years.
Point being, the United States has no shortage of money to pay down our obligations.
The obligations extend well beyond the debt. Social security, medicare, and medicaid will be much more costly than the debt for at least 20 years (at current levels). Public sector pensions are another huge non-debt liability.
Another interesting wrinkle that lukeschlather brings up is that if the productivity increases are the result of more and more automation, does that not also mean that there are fewer and fewer people paying into social security? Or am I misunderstanding the statement?
That's only assuming that costs go up or stay the same. They might, but if the tax burden becomes higher than the net increase in production, they could very well lower prices to better compete.
Long story short, you MIGHT be right, but if the economy is depressed by all the newly jobless, it seems a stretch that prices would skyrocket, or even stay flat so long as automation provides more wiggle room at the margins.
Our mounting debt is a real problem, no joke. But the ideas behind basic income and shorter work days do not inherently require our government to spend more than the already astronomical sums it's currently leaking.
