Comment by api
7 days ago
> for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education
Devils advocate point, and one nobody wants to talk about: what if everyone can't be a high-skill employee?
Imagine if the highest earning jobs required immense physical endurance and strength. Nobody would argue that everyone can do that. It would be obvious that only a subset of people are capable of doing those jobs. For some reason, with intellectual labor, we are able to pretend that there is no threshold and everyone can do it. It's an idea that makes people feel good but what if it's just not true? Can everyone be made above average in something with enough education?
If we're creating an economy where decent jobs only exist for people in the top ~20% of the ability curve, how do we handle that? How do we maintain a democracy? Sometimes people float the idea of UBI, but that could turn out extremely dystopian with a huge underclass of UBI-collecting people in a state of hopelessness and boredom. That doesn't work much better for democracy than a huge underclass of under-employed and unemployed people.
To make matters worse: the fact that our past strategy works so well for increasing GDP means it it tends to inflate assets, including things like housing prices. The end result is a country that looks, to more than half its inhabitants, like a vacation town where outside capital inflates the cost of everything way above what local wages can support. It might not be a coincidence that San Francisco, New York, and other capitals of high margin high skill industries have real estate prices that lock ordinary people out of even "starter homes."
I absolutely do not support Trump's execution here -- it's ham-fisted, reckless, and badly thought out. If we are exiting this neoliberal model, Trump's exit from it is a little bit like Biden's exit from Afghanistan. Still it is obvious to me that the current system is not working for more than half of Americans. It's fantastic for the top ~20% or so and leaves everyone else behind.
We can't keep doing that if we want a democracy. If we exclude 50-80% of the population from anything meaningful or any economic stability, we will get one of two things. Either we'll get the kind of totalitarian state that is required to maintain that kind of inequality in perpetuity, or we will get a string of revolutions or a failed state. People will not just sit around in hopelessness forever. Eventually they will be recruited by demagogues. Ironically Trump has been one of the most effective at this. I'm sure more will eventually show up though. There's a big market for them.
> If we're creating an economy where decent jobs only exist for people in the top ~20% of the ability curve, how do we handle that?
The most important thing here is to do something about the cost of living, i.e. the price of necessities.
Housing isn't inherently as expensive as it is in the US, it's made that way on purpose. Healthcare likewise. If you only make $25,000/year and housing is $20,000/year and healthcare is $12,500/year, you're screwed. If you only make $25,000/year and housing is $10,000/year and healthcare is $5000/year, you're not.
I’ve reflected that resource extraction jobs often end up in the high wage / low educational investment category, and I’ve wondered if that motivates the whole “annex Greenland” bit as much as “securing critical resources” does…
Lowering the cost of high-quality education makes it more accessible, which isn't the same thing as "accessible for all".
But lowering the cost of tuition also have positive effect on economy, because people who are starting their career will have more money roughly at the same age where they will want to spend more money. They are figuring their living situation, they are trying to figure out what independence means, a lot of people will want to start families at the first 10 years of their career.
If you paid your tuition fees for 15 years, then you most likely already figured where you live/had kids and the additional money will go into savings for retirement. It's will not be "buyer" money, that will go to pay for products and services, and so it wouldn't go towards someone's paycheck.
> Devils advocate point, and one nobody wants to talk about: what if everyone can't be a high-skill employee?
You still need education to become a nurse, caregiver, welder or kindergarten teacher. And the right subsidies (free education) allows people to make the switch.
Will the US be able to survive as a superpower while severely cutting down the top 20%'s standard of living? They could simply defect somewhere that offers them a similar position in society as the US, similar to what the US has done to the rest of the world.
> Devils advocate point, and one nobody wants to talk about: what if everyone can't be a high-skill employee?
Agree with this.
Also, what if there's just not a need for it?
Even if "everyone" in some abstract sense is capable of "high-skill" jobs, how many are really needed? Look at software jobs alone and the onslaught that is the current labor market.
I think there's nowhere near enough "work" ("real" or otherwise) to go around to maintain the level of employment necessary to support the population that we have at the costs that we have.
I don't think any sort of "UBI" (assuming you mean direct cash payments) is a realistic solution, either. People need to "work" in some organized fashion to avoid the common negative outcomes associated with "welfare" scenarios.
I legitimately, unironically, support the kinds of "fake" jobs that were prevalent in years' past (day in the life TikToks come to mind, Gov jobs where people send three emails a week, etc).
I guess in another sense I do support "UBI", as long as it's paired with the illusion of "work."
I understand this seems nonsensical, but just from practical experience it makes total sense to me.
Here's an example.
Years back I worked a software gig at a large non-"tech" F500 company. Much of the programming work there was extremely dull--occasional maintenance of large barely functional enterprise Java messes, writing a few SQL queries a week for wretched multi-table joins requiring all sorts of nasty casting and hacks as "normalization" was an alien concept to the original author and the like. Realistically, folks worked on this stuff perhaps 10 hours a week?
Anyway, I know a few people hit with a layoff that worked there a long time (decade+) and now they're back in the Thunderdome looking for work as "developers". The people in question are nearing retirement but presumably not there, for one reason or another.
Hows this going to work for them? I'm not denigrating them, but having worked with these folks, they're not going to be tearing into broken pipelines, adding React components, configuring Docker builds or whatever--there's a skill mismatch and the workload I've seen at roles lately is just so far beyond the pace, scope, and "scale" that there's no way they'd make it, if they can even get an interview at all.
In this example, would it be best to give them "UBI" payments, or some other slow near-sinecure where they have dignity?
Maybe I'm just soft.
> I don't think any sort of "UBI" (assuming you mean direct cash payments) is a realistic solution, either. People need to "work" in some organized fashion to avoid the common negative outcomes associated with "welfare" scenarios.
That's actually the point of a UBI.
The problem with existing welfare programs is that they're a poverty trap. If you have no job or a very low paying job, you get benefits. If you make any more money at all, you lose the benefits, and simultaneously you lose the time and expenses of taking the job. If that means you e.g. have to buy a car to go to work, taking a job causes you to lose money. Sometimes you lose money even before your working expenses because overlapping benefits phase outs can consume more than 100% of marginal income.
With a UBI, the amount you get is only the amount you need to avoid starvation and homelessness, but you get that amount unconditionally. If you can find any work at all, you get the UBI and your wages, instead of getting your wages instead of welfare programs. Which allows you to work, even if you're only qualified to do low paying jobs, without being put in a worse position than you'd have been if you just stayed on welfare.
I'm of a similar mindset, just look how many software adjacent roles are basically UBI already.
With DOGE the US seems to moving backwards, cutting down on gov busywork for what self-defeating purpose? They just end up flooding the market, or worse, sabotaging productive teams with their meetings and ceremonies.
> I'm of a similar mindset, just look how many software adjacent roles are basically UBI already.
Many actual software jobs are, too.
How many people are working/have worked (especially during the covid-boom years) on projects with no path to profitability, minimal practical utility etc.
How many "promo" projects were launched during those years?
My perspective is there's a lot of (unintentional, perhaps) "patronage" that's gone on for some time now, and what we're seeing throughout the industry is a reaction to that.
Pretty ironic, considering that Elon Musk supports UBI.
This is the kind of side debates you get by framing it as “low-skill” versus “high-skill”. Whether the “~20% of the ability” curve should help the poors from their apparent attraction to demagogues.
> Imagine if the highest earning jobs required immense physical endurance and strength. Nobody would argue that everyone can do that. It would be obvious that only a subset of people are capable of doing those jobs.
"pfff it's easy-peasy, just go attend a (literal) bootcamp, you'll be fine, anyone can do it"
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> Still it is obvious to me that the current system is not working for more than half of Americans. It's fantastic for the top ~20% or so and leaves everyone else behind.
god yes
The elephant in the room here: there is no money for anyone not in the top20%, it all goes into their pockets and they just sit on it, leaving only scraps for everyone else, tax the rich, anyone with more than x% of the median amount of wealth should have everything above that taken away and redistributed to everyone, possibly by means such as UBI/welfare/etc!
But we ain't gonna get any of that without revolution. And honestly it feels like Trump's getting us closer and closer to the brink of that.