4 ms·

> too many people who are capable of working will choose to instead just survive on it indefinitely So? We should have make-work jobs and force people to do th

> too many people who are capable of working will choose to instead just survive on it indefinitely So? We should have make-work jobs and force people to do them as punishment for being poor? Forcing people to go and do a menial job that doesn't really need doing just because you think it's character building is not a good way to run a healthy society.

josephcsible 5y ago
Most unskilled jobs today are not "make-work" and do need doing.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  In India, there's a job creation program that guarantees a paid job to anyone who wants it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act,_2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar... Unsurprisingly, most of the job is the "dig a ditch today, fill it in tomorrow" variety.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    If there's so few real jobs in India that that program actually makes sense to have, then maybe UBI does make sense there. But there's plenty of unfilled jobs in the US, so UBI doesn't make sense here.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > there’s plenty of unfilled jobs in the US, so UBI doesn’t make sense here. The point of UBI is to make it easier to fill productive jobs by (1) reducing the marginal disincentive to work posed by the funding structure of means-tested welfare, and (2) putting a bunch of people back into looking for productive jobs who are currently working in government welfare bureaucracy doing jobs that duplicate functions performed in the tax bureaucracy and/or serve the nonproductive purpose of maximizing the disincentive to additional work by welfare recipients.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    We could let them build housing like the Chinese do but houses need more than just labor. They need materials. Wasting the materials to build a ghost town can backfire. Subsidizing salaries for private jobs may backfire through corruption. So digging the hole and filling it back it is.
- Sophistifunk 5y ago
  The rapidity with which they're being replaced by stupid kiosks and robots in countries with strong minimum wage laws says otherwise.

josephcsible 5y ago

Most unskilled jobs today are not "make-work" and do need doing.

Clewza313 5y ago
In India, there's a job creation program that guarantees a paid job to anyone who wants it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act,_2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar... Unsurprisingly, most of the job is the "dig a ditch today, fill it in tomorrow" variety.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  If there's so few real jobs in India that that program actually makes sense to have, then maybe UBI does make sense there. But there's plenty of unfilled jobs in the US, so UBI doesn't make sense here.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > there’s plenty of unfilled jobs in the US, so UBI doesn’t make sense here. The point of UBI is to make it easier to fill productive jobs by (1) reducing the marginal disincentive to work posed by the funding structure of means-tested welfare, and (2) putting a bunch of people back into looking for productive jobs who are currently working in government welfare bureaucracy doing jobs that duplicate functions performed in the tax bureaucracy and/or serve the nonproductive purpose of maximizing the disincentive to additional work by welfare recipients.
- imtringued 5y ago
  We could let them build housing like the Chinese do but houses need more than just labor. They need materials. Wasting the materials to build a ghost town can backfire. Subsidizing salaries for private jobs may backfire through corruption. So digging the hole and filling it back it is.
Sophistifunk 5y ago
The rapidity with which they're being replaced by stupid kiosks and robots in countries with strong minimum wage laws says otherwise.