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>Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. * Hoover Dam * Lincoln Tunnel * LAX * LaGuardia Airport Just a

>Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. * Hoover Dam * Lincoln Tunnel * LAX * LaGuardia Airport Just a few examples of things created by jobs created primarily to give people work. >Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band?

closeparen 10y ago
Those things weren't created primarily to give people work, they were created to fulfill demand for electricity and transportation, respectively. If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic. We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >Those things weren't created primarily to give people work They absolutely were. They were created under the auspices of the Public Works Administration (originally Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works) - part of the 1933 New Deal: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/135.html https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/1... "Functions: Administered a comprehensive public works program to promote and stabilize employment." >If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic. That does not change the fact that these infrastructure works were created primarily to give the unemployed jobs and wouldn't have existed without it. >We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China. Some of the infrastructure is like that but most has enough users to justify its existence. Their infrastructure-building binge isn't crazy. Our intentional lack of infrastructural improvement (which is entirely about artificially throttling employment and wage growth) is crazy.
  - drdeadringer 10y ago
    Even if they were created to give people work, what is wrong with "we might as well get something useful out of this untapped unemployment"? Define "useful" to your heart's desire, be it Hoover Dam 2.0 or Snowflake Poetry.
- prawn 10y ago
  Examples of work more for work's sake might be landscaping or cleaning up streets. There are loads of rest areas or urban median strips/verges that look really awful worldwide. We could easily give people some responsibility for maintaining those.
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Bridge to Nowhere or pay them to start the next Apple?
- cpursley 10y ago
  Nobody is going to start the next Apple if you pay them. Nobody. Great progress and innovation only come out of great tribulation.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    Because Jobs and Woz were impoverished third world peasants who created Apple with no help from their families, government or investors?
  - dpc59 10y ago
    Gates and Zuckerberg were literally going to Harvard on trust fund money, no effort at all was required of them, butthey had the privilege of resourceful parents with high expectations. If we replace resourceful parents with high expectations by a resourceful society with high expectations, the children that have shitty parents wont have a choice but to do better, that's what happened for my father.
- dsacco 10y ago
  That's not really a fair response to the parent's comment, but I suppose the parent's comment was entirely charitable to the proposed hypothetical either. A more rigorous question with which to start (though maybe a bit leading...) would be: Would you rather pay qualified labor force participants to do labor/construction/civil engineering, or would you rather pay the same number of qualified participants to start high growth technology companies? The nice thing about this question is that it lends itself to empiricism - we can figure out the most rational answer by looking at the ratio of successes to failures in each category of achievement. To put it very precisely: at what percentage of successes out of total attempts are we willing to choose to fund extremely rare but huge successes that employ a lot of people over very consistent but modest successes that employ only the workers and a smaller ongoing number in the long term? I haven't actually done the math, but my intuition (which could be wrong!) is that it makes more sense to pay for people to e.g. fix America's insanely expensive and inefficient transportation system than to pay for them to sit in a garage and try to "innovate." Then again, you could argue that America's transportation projects are inefficient and expensive because they support an elaborate jobs program already :)

closeparen 10y ago

Those things weren't created primarily to give people work, they were created to fulfill demand for electricity and transportation, respectively. If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic. We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China.

crdoconnor 10y ago
>Those things weren't created primarily to give people work They absolutely were. They were created under the auspices of the Public Works Administration (originally Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works) - part of the 1933 New Deal: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/135.html https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/1... "Functions: Administered a comprehensive public works program to promote and stabilize employment." >If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic. That does not change the fact that these infrastructure works were created primarily to give the unemployed jobs and wouldn't have existed without it. >We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no users - in China. Some of the infrastructure is like that but most has enough users to justify its existence. Their infrastructure-building binge isn't crazy. Our intentional lack of infrastructural improvement (which is entirely about artificially throttling employment and wage growth) is crazy.
- drdeadringer 10y ago
  Even if they were created to give people work, what is wrong with "we might as well get something useful out of this untapped unemployment"? Define "useful" to your heart's desire, be it Hoover Dam 2.0 or Snowflake Poetry.
prawn 10y ago
Examples of work more for work's sake might be landscaping or cleaning up streets. There are loads of rest areas or urban median strips/verges that look really awful worldwide. We could easily give people some responsibility for maintaining those.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Bridge to Nowhere or pay them to start the next Apple?

cpursley 10y ago
Nobody is going to start the next Apple if you pay them. Nobody. Great progress and innovation only come out of great tribulation.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  Because Jobs and Woz were impoverished third world peasants who created Apple with no help from their families, government or investors?
- dpc59 10y ago
  Gates and Zuckerberg were literally going to Harvard on trust fund money, no effort at all was required of them, butthey had the privilege of resourceful parents with high expectations. If we replace resourceful parents with high expectations by a resourceful society with high expectations, the children that have shitty parents wont have a choice but to do better, that's what happened for my father.
dsacco 10y ago
That's not really a fair response to the parent's comment, but I suppose the parent's comment was entirely charitable to the proposed hypothetical either. A more rigorous question with which to start (though maybe a bit leading...) would be: Would you rather pay qualified labor force participants to do labor/construction/civil engineering, or would you rather pay the same number of qualified participants to start high growth technology companies? The nice thing about this question is that it lends itself to empiricism - we can figure out the most rational answer by looking at the ratio of successes to failures in each category of achievement. To put it very precisely: at what percentage of successes out of total attempts are we willing to choose to fund extremely rare but huge successes that employ a lot of people over very consistent but modest successes that employ only the workers and a smaller ongoing number in the long term? I haven't actually done the math, but my intuition (which could be wrong!) is that it makes more sense to pay for people to e.g. fix America's insanely expensive and inefficient transportation system than to pay for them to sit in a garage and try to "innovate." Then again, you could argue that America's transportation projects are inefficient and expensive because they support an elaborate jobs program already :)