Are you currently only working just to subsist? Because most people on HN work much harder than they need to and make much more than they need to just to subsist.
You currently don't have the option to not work. Most people work more than they need to because they realize that the future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if there's trouble at some point in the future. Give the same people a trust fund that takes care of them and that they trust to last for their life time, and most will stop working as hard. They may still work, but much less and most likely on very different things.
It isn't a binary option between work and not work. Most people on HN make much more money than they need to subsist. If the goal is to only subsist, there is an option to reduce hours worked in exchange for reduced pay. The exact form that could take varies as not everyone works at a company that would support either a shorter workday or workweek. However other options exists that don't rely on your employer such as taking regular sabbaticals or a very early retirement.
There are also numerous financial options available to you such as annuities or insurance if you are worried about protecting yourself from unforeseen financial hardships.
> If the goal is to only subsist, there is an option to reduce hours worked in exchange for reduced pay.
No. You need to factor in the future.
The whole passive income/early retirement crowd is a great example of it. They want to create regular income (from projects/businesses or investments) to allow them a simple life for all of their future years, while they go do whatever they please. Few people do that, because it typically entails working much harder today so you don't have to work as much or at all tomorrow.
If you removed the hurdle or working harder today, many people would choose that route.
> There are also numerous financial options available to you such as annuities or insurance if you are worried about protecting yourself from unforeseen financial hardships.
Absolutely. And you need to pay for those. To do that, you need to earn more than you currently need to subsist.
Maybe I didn't explain my point well enough since you are just talking past it. People generally don't stop once they get to a level that would guarantee them subsistence living for the rest of their life. Most of us could buy a combination of annuities and long term care insurance that could provide for ourselves for the rest of our lives well before we actually retire. Very few people actually pursue this path and most of us continue to work until a point that would provide a higher standard of living in retirement.
I know quite a few people who have achieved that level of wealth, all but one have dropped their work load massively, down from 40+ hours/week to 2-4 hours. They still love making money, but they value their leisure time much more and enjoy their largely work-free life, so I have some doubts that people generally continue working as usual when they have enough money to guarantee work-free subsistence for the rest of their life.
Maybe I have a different understanding of subsistence than you? They don't live of the land and sleep in a tent, they live pretty average lives, living in an apartment in the city, buy food from the super market, wear normal clothes and ride bicycles. It does take quite a bit of money to guarantee enough secure long-term passive income (so "just invest it at 15% profit" is not an option) to pay for the basics, I'd put it at 300-500k Euros in my area, post tax.
> Most people work more than they need to because they realize that the future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if there's trouble at some point in the future. Give the same people a trust fund that takes care of them and that they trust to last for their life time, and most will stop working as hard. They may still work, but much less and most likely on very different things.
Where does this "trust fund" come from? It doesn't just magically appear.
What you are actually saying is: you don't want to have to exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the future in your own life, so instead, you want the government to forcibly take resources from other people (like me) who do exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the future, and use those resources to provide you a "trust fund" to take care of you. If I can't avoid having my resources stolen from me, my only other option is to stop producing any excess over my own minimum needs. Which means the "trust fund" you are counting on is no longer there, because now nobody has any incentive to exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the future--because you punished all the people who did that by taking their resources away.
This is (a) incompatible with having a free country, and (b) a very, very bad idea in general, since society cannot survive if people do not have any incentive to exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the future.
> Where does this "trust fund" come from? It doesn't just magically appear.
I agree completely. People work more than they currently need to because they don't have a trust fund. I'm not arguing that we should give everybody their personal trust fund, I'm explaining why people work and try to save up money even though they don't need those savings in the next 10 minutes.
> People work more than they currently need to because they don't have a trust fund.
No, people work more than they currently need to because they are exercising prudence, common sense, and planning for the future. Which every adult human being is supposed to take responsibility for doing for themselves, and not expect a "trust fund" to magically take care of for them.
You're arguing that if people had a "trust fund", they wouldn't need to plan and save for the future. But no such "trust fund" can exist in the first place unless some people are exercising prudence, common sense, and planning for the future. You can't get rid of uncertainty about the future or the need to plan and allow for it. So, again, you are saying that the people who are going to take responsibility for planning and allowing for that uncertainty are going to be punished by having the fruits of their planning be taken from them to provide a "trust fund" to people who didn't bother to plan and allow for uncertainty.
In other words, you disagree with me completely. I think I should plan for my future, and you should plan for yours. You think I should plan for both our futures, and then you should get to just take resources from me when you need them in the future since it's a "trust fund".
UBI feels like a way of addressing the incoming loss of jobs due to automation.
> No, people work more than they currently need to because they are exercising prudence, common sense, and planning for the future. Which every adult human being is supposed to take responsibility for doing for themselves, and not expect a "trust fund" to magically take care of for them.
It may not be materially possible for everyone to actually do this within our current economic organization in light of automation. People that benefit from UBI may very well be responsible and organized.
We can twist this a little and say that the responsible and organized thing is to plan for automation, to develop skills that make sure you aren't put out of work, etc. Personally I find that position logically valid, but I ideally would push for UBI while also making sure I have a good chance for not needing it.
A cynical take is that UBI is just enough to ensure the masses of unemployed would be complacent enough to not riot.
> UBI feels like a way of addressing the incoming loss of jobs due to automation.
A better way of doing that would be to allow automation to make the necessities of life drastically cheaper, so that the amount of work required to obtain them is drastically reduced. In the limit, if automation can produce all the necessities of life for everyone at essentially zero cost, then those necessities should simply be free, the way air is free now.
A big part is anxiety about the future. You are not guaranteed economic opportunities in the future, so we make the most we have of the present to ensure we can provide for ourselves in the future.
You also enjoy not subsisting. I enjoy not subsisting.
You don't want to starve if your industry becomes obsolete, you have an accident that leaves you unable to work or some other twist of fate changes your ability to work 10 hours a week at your current level.
> Most people work more than they need to because they realize that the future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if there's trouble at some point in the future.
That really says very little. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you're unable to save for the future, because all of your income goes out to pay for rent, food etc.
It's a different story if those 58% contain plenty of SV SWEs who make half a million a year and still only have $1000 in savings. My intuition tells me that there are very few of them in the 58%.
Do they have the option to work more to make more? Is more work available? Are they already working close to or at maximum capacity and their current level of wealth is the result? Without the contextual information available, that's hardly useful. I'm sure somebody that's unemployed and wants to work would work more than they currently are, but can't, because, well, they don't have a job to work at.
Some random singular statistic doesn't say anything.
> Most people work more than they need to because they realize that the future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if there's trouble at some point in the future.
It really does contradict the above statement. This "random singular statistic" is a broad survey of the American populace which concludes that 58% of Americans do not have savings worth mentioning. Those people are clearly not working more than they need to because the "future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial", otherwise they'd have savings. And 58% is in fact a majority, so the "most people" in the above statement makes it unequivocally false.
If you have "better" stats that don't falsify your premise, I'm happy to look at them.
