5 ms·

I'd like to see a version of "basic employment". Can't find a job? The government will guarantee you some baseline pay and give you a job and healthcare benefi

by Hasz 9y ago

I'd like to see a version of "basic employment". Can't find a job? The government will guarantee you some baseline pay and give you a job and healthcare benefits almost unilaterally. You've still gotta show up and do your work, but you are guaranteed something to do. It might be cleaning up roads and parks, building trails, washing streets, and planting trees, but it's a basic job that will provide you with enough money to get by. There would be career counseling, skills-based training, and opportunities to manage other workers. Essentially, an Army without the guns; a group focused on not only improving the public environment, but also the part of the public employed by the program.

gregman1 9y ago
One day we'll discover socialism.
- Hasz 9y ago
  The USA had the WPA, which did something akin to my proposal. Its budget was 1.3bn in 1935 (23.5bn in 2017), and relative to the US military expenditure (521bn in 2016), it's just not that much money for an incredible amount of public good. Wikipedia has an excellent page about what the WPA administration accomplished over 8 years -- I think it's an idea worth reviving.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    The WPA was an reasonable countercyclical government response to a massive cyclical downturn in private-sector employment. That's not the problem UBI is intended to address, and the WPA would be an exceedingly poor fit TO UBI’s problem.
- breckinloggins 9y ago
  You jest, but I think one day we'll discover something that looks a little like socialism, a little like "Star Trek-style" communism, and a little like free market capitalism. And it won't be ideologically driven, but based on all the little experiments that worked combined with all the things that technology and social changes have enabled. Ideologies are epistemic pathogens.
- eikenberry 9y ago
  Once the marginal costs of all essentials is at or close to 0 we will have a chance.
kiliantics 9y ago
This exists to a certain extent in some European countries. I heard in Denmark there is also "basic-education", where you get unemployment welfare if you enroll in job training programmes.
jadell 9y ago
Does something like AmeriCorps fit your description? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmeriCorps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmeriCorps
- Hasz 9y ago
  AmeriCorps seems to be highly targeted at students, with loan deferral and forgiveness programs. I'd like to see such a program for people who recently got out of jail, for example, or at least an addition to AmeriCorps that targets those individuals. 650,000 people get out of jail every year -- having a strong public works program could help those individuals get back to becoming functioning and contributing members of society.
napa15 9y ago
That already exists in the form of minimum wage + an economy that isnt bad. Going to that extra step to say that government should provide the job itself is just an admittance of failure that the economy is so bad that there are no good jobs and the gov has failed to provide an environment for them to be created.
- snakeboy 9y ago
  Isn't the societal benefit received by public works a key component of the parent's proposal? I don't see how the jobs outlined would be accomplished profitably by a private entity.
Frondo 9y ago
I'd like to see both: a basic job for someone who wanted something to do, and a basic income for everyone. For me, the goal is not to have everyone engaged in busywork. For me, the goal is to end mandatory work. Freedom comes not when no one has anything to do, but when everyone gets to do what they want.
QAPereo 9y ago
Instead of a thousand failed experiments to invent work, minimize our impact on the environment, all of our various shortages from housing to opportunities to basic human dignity... maybe we should address the root cause? Population. It’s one of those things we all tend to stay the hell away from because in the past attempts to address it have been so toxic, and frankly it’s hard not to see attempts today being toxic. Having said that however, it just adds to the difficulty of the problem, it doesn’t make it any less real, pressing or important. A lot of the problems we have today are the result of having geometric growth in the numbers of people for a sustained period of time. I’m not proposing a specific solution, I’m nowhere near that bright or compassionate. There are obvious pitfalls to avoid such as eugenics and outright genocide, but beyond that I don’t have any answers. Someone had better before the issue forces itself though, because when that happens we won’t get to choose from the best of the bunch of bad options.
- learc83 9y ago
  The answer to population growth is poverty reduction, healthcare, education, and free access to birth control. Developed countries tend to have birth rates below the replacement rate for native born populations. As much as people like to point out that humans have a problem with understanding exponential growth. There probably just as many people who have a problem extrapolating the growth of dynamic systems without understanding that growth rates are subject to feedback pressure.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    The answer to population growth is poverty reduction, healthcare, education, and free access to birth control. ...And how do you manage that for a fractious planet of many billions?
breckinloggins 9y ago
I've had this thought as well. I call it a "Guaranteed Basic Job". I think it should be the "next rung" on the income ladder. In my opinion, we should always have a GBI safety net and then a GBJ would give you a raise as well as a path to a better job if you want it.
fallingfrog 9y ago
This seems like it might have some unintended consequences. First off, it doesn't help people like students who both need to pay rent and also need time to study. Secondly, if the only jobs available to a large segment of the population are low paying jobs in the employ of the federal government, which they don't have any realistic way to opt out of, it starts looking like a form of forced labor like many prisoners are subjected to now.
- randyrand 9y ago
  > it doesn't help people like students who both need to pay rent and also need time to study What's the issue? You'd work, save money for awhile, then enroll in some school after a few years. Your forced labor argument makes little sense to me. Particularly this argument: "which they don't have any realistic way to opt out of." Why not? You still have free time with a basic-employment job. Learn a skill in your free-time, and then get a job in that skill.
  - fallingfrog 9y ago
    >Learn a skill in your free-time, and then get a job in that skill. The real world doesn't work like this - most jobs above entry level require a college degree or some kind of professional certification. If you have kids to feed and rent to pay, that's a hard row to hoe. I know it's possible to somehow get a job based on self-reported self-training but that's rare. If it was that easy why do you suppose there are so many people that are working as dishwashers and cashiers? Maybe you just think they're lazy and stupid?
- Hasz 9y ago
  Students have a number of opportunities available to them in both academic and private settings, so I doubt a significant amount of them would opt into a program like this. Another comment suggested AmeriCorps, which seems to be aimed at students. As for the second point, I would argue such a situation already exists in the private space. If Walmart is the only employer in your area, and you can't live on SS/Disability/Pension alone, you've got a similar situation -- work for a low wage or go hungry ad infinitum. A public works program with a mandate to improve both the worker and the public good presents a more attractive alternative to a private corporation with little care for the individual worker. Prisons, at least the one's I've visited, have no such mandate to improve prisoners, thus the forced labor.
markshead 9y ago
You aren't alone. From the article: > Hughes is no basic income purist. He believes, for instance, that for this economic moonshot to be politically palatable, it would have to be tied to work. “Not just because it seems more intuitive for people,” he says, “but because work is a key source of purpose in our lives.” The Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps are pretty close to what you are describing. Many of the parks, lakes, and stadiums in my town were built under those programs. A guaranteed paycheck basically creates an incentive to not work very hard. Potential employers didn't look on WPA experience as being a positive thing. A Senate inquiry found that there didn't seem to be much incentive for a supervisor to expect or require good work from the workers. If there were a way to quantify work to the point where everyone is getting paid for what they are contributing I think something like what you describe could work very well. Maybe the solution is a bunch of non-profit businesses that have the goal of creating jobs and breaking event. I think Good Will stores are supposed to do something like this.
- Hasz 9y ago
  I agree. With the ability afforded by technology to quantify and manage work, I think a modern day equivalent of the WPA could be held to a higher standard than the original WPA.
  - markshead 9y ago
    Imagine something that pays based on the work you do kind of like AWS Mechanical Turk but for physical work that benefits the public in a community. Basically, if someone wants to work, there is always work available. The jobs could be paid at a market rate or, if society wanted to supplement the pay, it could be higher with the idea that investing in someone getting a work history will benefit society in the long run.
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      Who funds the pool of money that pays for the always open jobs, and who verifies the jobs were completed to satisfaction?
MaysonL 9y ago
Imagine how many people stuck in shit jobs with abusive bosses might be able to quit. Just as Obamacare enabled many people, especially those with existing medical problems, to quit the job that tied them to their health insurance.
jpao79 9y ago
I agree. Could the basic income payout be at least tied to: * build your own sustainable house to code in a non-hyper inflated coastal city and keep it maintained/painted according to the local home owner's association CC&R's * grow your own food sustainably at the local CSA * don't get into trouble * (optionally for additional income) teach others how to do the above
dragonwriter 9y ago
> I'd like to see a version of "basic employment". That is a clever way to avoid many of the key benefits of basic income, particularly its ability to improve the ability of the labor force to adapt organically by weakening the degree to which present minimal support and retraining for better prospects are at odds. “Basic employment” may make sense as a solution to temporary economic downturns, where it amounts to simple countercyclical spending; unless the goal is to have an ever growing share of the population economically coerced into being a perpetual involuntary government labor force, it's not a good way of dealing with any long-term need.

by Hasz 9y ago

gregman1 9y ago

One day we'll discover socialism.

Hasz 9y ago
The USA had the WPA, which did something akin to my proposal. Its budget was 1.3bn in 1935 (23.5bn in 2017), and relative to the US military expenditure (521bn in 2016), it's just not that much money for an incredible amount of public good. Wikipedia has an excellent page about what the WPA administration accomplished over 8 years -- I think it's an idea worth reviving.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  The WPA was an reasonable countercyclical government response to a massive cyclical downturn in private-sector employment. That's not the problem UBI is intended to address, and the WPA would be an exceedingly poor fit TO UBI’s problem.
breckinloggins 9y ago
You jest, but I think one day we'll discover something that looks a little like socialism, a little like "Star Trek-style" communism, and a little like free market capitalism. And it won't be ideologically driven, but based on all the little experiments that worked combined with all the things that technology and social changes have enabled. Ideologies are epistemic pathogens.
eikenberry 9y ago
Once the marginal costs of all essentials is at or close to 0 we will have a chance.

kiliantics 9y ago

This exists to a certain extent in some European countries. I heard in Denmark there is also "basic-education", where you get unemployment welfare if you enroll in job training programmes.

jadell 9y ago

Does something like AmeriCorps fit your description? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmeriCorps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmeriCorps

Hasz 9y ago
AmeriCorps seems to be highly targeted at students, with loan deferral and forgiveness programs. I'd like to see such a program for people who recently got out of jail, for example, or at least an addition to AmeriCorps that targets those individuals. 650,000 people get out of jail every year -- having a strong public works program could help those individuals get back to becoming functioning and contributing members of society.

napa15 9y ago

That already exists in the form of minimum wage + an economy that isnt bad. Going to that extra step to say that government should provide the job itself is just an admittance of failure that the economy is so bad that there are no good jobs and the gov has failed to provide an environment for them to be created.

snakeboy 9y ago
Isn't the societal benefit received by public works a key component of the parent's proposal? I don't see how the jobs outlined would be accomplished profitably by a private entity.

Frondo 9y ago

I'd like to see both: a basic job for someone who wanted something to do, and a basic income for everyone. For me, the goal is not to have everyone engaged in busywork. For me, the goal is to end mandatory work. Freedom comes not when no one has anything to do, but when everyone gets to do what they want.

QAPereo 9y ago

Instead of a thousand failed experiments to invent work, minimize our impact on the environment, all of our various shortages from housing to opportunities to basic human dignity... maybe we should address the root cause? Population. It’s one of those things we all tend to stay the hell away from because in the past attempts to address it have been so toxic, and frankly it’s hard not to see attempts today being toxic. Having said that however, it just adds to the difficulty of the problem, it doesn’t make it any less real, pressing or important. A lot of the problems we have today are the result of having geometric growth in the numbers of people for a sustained period of time. I’m not proposing a specific solution, I’m nowhere near that bright or compassionate. There are obvious pitfalls to avoid such as eugenics and outright genocide, but beyond that I don’t have any answers. Someone had better before the issue forces itself though, because when that happens we won’t get to choose from the best of the bunch of bad options.

learc83 9y ago
The answer to population growth is poverty reduction, healthcare, education, and free access to birth control. Developed countries tend to have birth rates below the replacement rate for native born populations. As much as people like to point out that humans have a problem with understanding exponential growth. There probably just as many people who have a problem extrapolating the growth of dynamic systems without understanding that growth rates are subject to feedback pressure.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  The answer to population growth is poverty reduction, healthcare, education, and free access to birth control. ...And how do you manage that for a fractious planet of many billions?

breckinloggins 9y ago

I've had this thought as well. I call it a "Guaranteed Basic Job". I think it should be the "next rung" on the income ladder. In my opinion, we should always have a GBI safety net and then a GBJ would give you a raise as well as a path to a better job if you want it.

fallingfrog 9y ago

This seems like it might have some unintended consequences. First off, it doesn't help people like students who both need to pay rent and also need time to study. Secondly, if the only jobs available to a large segment of the population are low paying jobs in the employ of the federal government, which they don't have any realistic way to opt out of, it starts looking like a form of forced labor like many prisoners are subjected to now.

randyrand 9y ago
> it doesn't help people like students who both need to pay rent and also need time to study What's the issue? You'd work, save money for awhile, then enroll in some school after a few years. Your forced labor argument makes little sense to me. Particularly this argument: "which they don't have any realistic way to opt out of." Why not? You still have free time with a basic-employment job. Learn a skill in your free-time, and then get a job in that skill.
- fallingfrog 9y ago
  >Learn a skill in your free-time, and then get a job in that skill. The real world doesn't work like this - most jobs above entry level require a college degree or some kind of professional certification. If you have kids to feed and rent to pay, that's a hard row to hoe. I know it's possible to somehow get a job based on self-reported self-training but that's rare. If it was that easy why do you suppose there are so many people that are working as dishwashers and cashiers? Maybe you just think they're lazy and stupid?
Hasz 9y ago
Students have a number of opportunities available to them in both academic and private settings, so I doubt a significant amount of them would opt into a program like this. Another comment suggested AmeriCorps, which seems to be aimed at students. As for the second point, I would argue such a situation already exists in the private space. If Walmart is the only employer in your area, and you can't live on SS/Disability/Pension alone, you've got a similar situation -- work for a low wage or go hungry ad infinitum. A public works program with a mandate to improve both the worker and the public good presents a more attractive alternative to a private corporation with little care for the individual worker. Prisons, at least the one's I've visited, have no such mandate to improve prisoners, thus the forced labor.

markshead 9y ago

You aren't alone. From the article: > Hughes is no basic income purist. He believes, for instance, that for this economic moonshot to be politically palatable, it would have to be tied to work. “Not just because it seems more intuitive for people,” he says, “but because work is a key source of purpose in our lives.” The Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps are pretty close to what you are describing. Many of the parks, lakes, and stadiums in my town were built under those programs. A guaranteed paycheck basically creates an incentive to not work very hard. Potential employers didn't look on WPA experience as being a positive thing. A Senate inquiry found that there didn't seem to be much incentive for a supervisor to expect or require good work from the workers. If there were a way to quantify work to the point where everyone is getting paid for what they are contributing I think something like what you describe could work very well. Maybe the solution is a bunch of non-profit businesses that have the goal of creating jobs and breaking event. I think Good Will stores are supposed to do something like this.

Hasz 9y ago
I agree. With the ability afforded by technology to quantify and manage work, I think a modern day equivalent of the WPA could be held to a higher standard than the original WPA.
- markshead 9y ago
  Imagine something that pays based on the work you do kind of like AWS Mechanical Turk but for physical work that benefits the public in a community. Basically, if someone wants to work, there is always work available. The jobs could be paid at a market rate or, if society wanted to supplement the pay, it could be higher with the idea that investing in someone getting a work history will benefit society in the long run.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    Who funds the pool of money that pays for the always open jobs, and who verifies the jobs were completed to satisfaction?

MaysonL 9y ago

Imagine how many people stuck in shit jobs with abusive bosses might be able to quit. Just as Obamacare enabled many people, especially those with existing medical problems, to quit the job that tied them to their health insurance.

jpao79 9y ago

I agree. Could the basic income payout be at least tied to: * build your own sustainable house to code in a non-hyper inflated coastal city and keep it maintained/painted according to the local home owner's association CC&R's * grow your own food sustainably at the local CSA * don't get into trouble * (optionally for additional income) teach others how to do the above

dragonwriter 9y ago

> I'd like to see a version of "basic employment". That is a clever way to avoid many of the key benefits of basic income, particularly its ability to improve the ability of the labor force to adapt organically by weakening the degree to which present minimal support and retraining for better prospects are at odds. “Basic employment” may make sense as a solution to temporary economic downturns, where it amounts to simple countercyclical spending; unless the goal is to have an ever growing share of the population economically coerced into being a perpetual involuntary government labor force, it's not a good way of dealing with any long-term need.