3 ms·
A basic level of income is just cutting out the middleman. "Make work" jobs are just a moral fig leaf that governments put on top of basic income because an unc
by dibujante 11y ago
A basic level of income is just cutting out the middleman. "Make work" jobs are just a moral fig leaf that governments put on top of basic income because an unconditional basic income inevitably causes an uproar. "Why, I got a degree that interested me and am working a job I enjoy and making a lot of money, but that guy? He gets a trifling amount of money a year just to sit on his ass! Why, the indignity!"
Most economists agree that directly handing money to people is completely effective economic policy. For cultural reasons, though, we have the fig leaf.
- hodwik 11y agoMost things we need people to do are not enjoyable. There has to be a way to get people to do the work that sucks. The two methods we have found are physical coercion or financial coercion.
- dibujante 11y agoYep. I'm a software engineer and like it, but you could pay me enough money to clean latrines instead. Minimum income probably will raise the price of shitty jobs. This will probably just speed up automation, but no one wanted those jobs anyways.
- hodwik 11y agoI think you have it backwards. If all jobs got roughly the same remuneration, most people would take the easy fun job, as much as they claim otherwise. People don't leave their jobs as parking lot attendants because they're not challenged. They leave because they want to buy a new TV, a car, and some fly threads. If I could make as much reading all day in a little box, occasionally handing people their change, as I do in tech, I'm going to that parking lot. It's not the blue-collar jobs you'd have trouble filling. It's the lawyers, doctors, accountants, and so forth. Outside of the hobby careers (like tech, architect, etc.), most white-collar jobs suck terribly.
- JamesBarney 11y agoWe have a glut of lawyers already. Many people who have a law degree currently don't practices because there are more people who want to be lawyers then positions. Doctors we won't have a problem with because supply of doctors could drop significantly and medical schools would still be full. Most accountants I know like accounting, and would not quite their job in order to make 10k to sit on their butt. I also think your view of being a minimum wage worker is very idealized one. Having worked many minimum wage jobs in college I can tell you I would require a significant raise to work any of them again. Being constantly screamed and cursed at by middle managers, standing for 8 hours straight without a break, not knowing what your schedule looks like in a week, working until midnight, occasionally working 12 hour shifts. No thank you. I would much rather write software, do accounting, or be a doctor. People don't work shitty jobs because it's easy they work shitty jobs because they didn't hired for a better one.
- dibujante 11y agoI think we're approaching the same point from different angles. I just described one of the most enjoyable white-collar jobs, and you contrasted it with less-enjoyable ones. And you brought up one of the most enjoyable blue-collar jobs to contrast my unpleasant blue-collar one. I think the point we're both reaching at is that compensation would correlate more strongly to enjoyability of the job that in currently does. Unpleasant jobs, white- or blue-collar, would need to be compensated more in order to retain staff, or be made less unpleasant.
- s73v3r 11y agoThe problem is, most of the work that sucks also has pay that sucks.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> There has to be a way to get people to do the work that sucks. There is: pay sufficient rewards for doing the work that sucks that it is a net positive, as the utility of the reward exceeds the disutility of doing the work.