The US has a long history of conscription, I don’t think this concept is as foreign as your response indicates. Conscription, the word, though, is not confined

The US has a long history of conscription, I don’t think this concept is as foreign as your response indicates. Conscription, the word, though, is not confined just to military service, but to state service. Targeting 100% employment is a way of providing a UBI while also allowing the government to extra some value. It doesn’t particularly matter what they do, the government is just subsidising some economic activity (But the money is already spent, they just need a place to spend the labor, which is a good that is taxed by time itself). Works could be provided to companies or industries that are deemed a social good even. Maybe it is advantageous for a government to subsidise farms with labor instead of dollars due to the stability 100% employment could give to people. I think you’re missing the overall point, though, which is that this is the default case. There’s nothing stopping a worker from getting hired at a private entity for whatever wage they want. You can still be a software engineer at your company, your wife still report. What it guards against is labor being priced below the government’s rate unless there is another reason to take the job. The original commenter asked for a way to mitigate risk of people becoming independent contractors competing to a below market wage, this is one solution that seems to alleviate that risk by providing a minimum market wage.