11 ms·

An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

96 points by cocacola1 4y ago

j7ake 4y ago
“Austrian employers, like those in America, are currently having difficulty hiring people to take hard, poorly paid jobs” Maybe make those jobs less poorly paid ?
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  That's just another way of saying that those jobs should disappear, as usually people aren't willing to pay a lot for those jobs as they don't get that much perceived value from them. You can look at high skilled workforces like in Sweden, where there just aren't a lot of the entry level jobs you see in the U.S. So there aren't so many people working in landscaping or providing personal services, and people do more things for themselves. It's unusual to hire house cleaners, nannies, etc. If you are painting your house, you are going to have a hard time hiring people to help you, or hiring someone to come by and wash your windows. If there is a factory that requires lots of low skilled work, it doesn't open in Sweden -- only the highly automated factories open there. So that's fine, it's a high-wage, high skilled economy in which all workers are expected to be productive -- and Swedish workers are highly productive. People are expected to have strong skill levels and a high educational level, so they can provide a lot of value and get paid well (here, we are ignoring the issue of taxes, because it's still a high wage earned by the workers even if they only get half of it after tax). Which is great, until you admit a large number of immigrants without skills. Now, you can't absorb them into your labor force. Or until you realize you have a lot of structural unemployment and it takes much longer for laid off workers to re-enter the labor force. In the U.S., we absorb migrants easily and have much lower rates of long term unemployment - but then people complain about migrants doing low skilled jobs and some workers being taken advantage of since they don't earn high salaries. Bottom line, there are trade offs, and while you can't please everyone, you can at least make them aware of the trade offs. All I can think of is that it's good to have both places like Sweden that tend to require high skills and places that have low skill/low pay jobs mixed in with the high pay/high skill jobs, so that low skilled workers can still find employment. The whole world can't work like Sweden, but it's also good that places like Sweden exist.
brntsllvn 4y ago
> Work is a source of structure, esteem, and motivation, and its disappearance can lead to depression, anxiety, addiction, and interpersonal turmoil. So true
- gumby 4y ago
  That’s why, as we strive towards the morally necessary system of universal unemployment (with robots doing all the work) we will need for the robots to create jobs for those who want them (and to convince the job holders of the importance of these ”jobs“). I mean this in all seriousness and am only sorry that I’m unkikely to live long enough to enjoy this paradise. Of course I’m one of those who loves to work.
  - pfortuny 4y ago
    Work is not production or service by itself. This is something we all tend to forget. A bonsai is as much work as shining shoes.
    - 988747 4y ago
  - brntsllvn 4y ago
    I also love work. It's such a great way to meet and work with other people. Crucial for mental health.
    - Hizonner 4y ago
      Nobody's ever going to STOP you, you realize...
      - brntsllvn 4y ago
        True. For better or worse. Sometimes I feel a little anxious when I can't work.
cocacola1 4y ago
These two paragraphs in particular stuck out to me: > Critics of labor-market programs such as the Job Guarantee argue that they enable precisely this sort of choice—they make it easier to decline work that one doesn’t like. One program participant in his thirties told me that, while on unemployment benefits, he’d been offered a job cleaning toilets at a gas station; he’d decided that he didn’t want “that sort of job,” and had instead found work in the carpentry workshop. If everyone were guaranteed a reasonably pleasant job, suited to their interests and needs and paying a living wage, who would do the grungy, difficult work? Austrian employers, like those in America, are currently having difficulty hiring people to take hard, poorly paid jobs; many of the workers in Austria who wash dishes or clean hotel rooms are immigrants from Eastern Europe, and during the pandemic many of them went home, some for good. Jörg Flecker, a sociologist at the University of Vienna who is evaluating the program in Gramatneusiedl, told me that pressure from employers could prevent its expansion across Austria. “Employers say, ‘There are so many unemployed. We have to have a tougher regime for them because we have jobs to fill.’ ” > > Lukas Lehner and Maximilian Kasy, economists at Oxford who are evaluating data from Gramatneusiedl, argue that competition with the private sector is a good thing. “I think, from an economic perspective, that argument doesn’t make much sense,” Kasy said, of the dirty-jobs view. “If they’re shit jobs, try to pay them as well as possible. Try to change the working conditions as much as possible until you reach the point that somebody wants to do them, or automate them if you can. And then, if nobody wants to do them, maybe we shouldn’t do them.” Kasy thinks that an important function of initiatives like job guarantees—and of universal basic incomes—is to improve the bargaining positions of people who want to change their lives. “Whether it’s abuse from an employment relationship, a bureaucrat in the welfare state, or a romantic relationship, the question is, What’s your outside option?” he said. “Having the safety of the basic income or a guaranteed job improves your outside option. If your boss is abusive, or doesn’t respect your hours, or is harassing you or whatever, you have the option to say no.”
- mgrthrow 4y ago
  This is the classic answer to the classic question about anarchy: "who will do the unpleasant, demeaning work?" "We only think it's unpleasant because we make it unpleasant. We can have clean, well lit factories. We just have to prioritize making that work more pleasant."
Proven 4y ago
maerF0x0 4y ago
https://archive.ph/Bzgjm https://archive.ph/Bzgjm
thriftwy 4y ago
In Soviet Union, they were. Among other things, universal employment shown to do the same as no employment: a lot of people binge drinking and not caring to do anything useful with their life. Work ethic problems surfaced in a bad way.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mgrthrow 4y ago
  The soviets also had the problem that they were an autocracy who had little regard for the conditions of their people. They were also huge. Community level programs like this can be much more functionally democratic and uplifting.
  - thriftwy 4y ago
    Late Soviet communities mostly ran themselves within the existing law/power frameworks. Soviet society indeed had comparatively little regard for the conditions of people, but it is more of a cultural problem, and not an unique one.
  - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
    > The soviets also had the problem that they were an autocracy who had little regard for the conditions of their people. This is just false. In the USSR life expectancy went from 30 years in 1925 to 69 years in 1990[0]. On the other hand, in the US it started declining in 2015 without having recovered yet[1]. In the USSR, "In 1926, the literacy rate was 56.6 percent of the population. By 1937, according to census data, the literacy rate was 86% for men and 65% for women, making a total literacy rate of 75%"[2]. The USSR was also the first country in the world to legalize abortion, and it championed gender equality. In the meantime the US is going in the direction of banning abortion once again. I have yo ask you, what you do mean by "conditions of the people"? - [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-expectancy-russia-all-time/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-expectancy-... - [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-... - [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union
dukeofdoom 4y ago
[flagged]
- oraetlabora 4y ago
  nah, that was a different program.
maerF0x0 4y ago
One idea I've toyed with is that unemployment is actually a societal refusal to help eachother. Yes we all need sustenance, but consider something like this If I'm laid off I can choose to still program. If I don't my time might simply be wasted (eg on videogames, netflix, or even job applications). But I can also choose to continue to program. Maybe by helping local businesses, contributing to FOSS etc. While I understand the near impossibility of it all, but we actually could continue to have lots of good things so long as folks refuse to stop working even if told they're no longer employed. Obviously this fails the moment some unit in the chain refuses to participate, but I think in small ways it can actually blunt the pain felt in recessions/depressions by creating small communes of collusion amongst your social circle. You collude together to ensure that eachother gets what they need, at least amongst the valuable skills in the circle.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  > If I don't my time might simply be wasted (eg on videogames, netflix, or even job applications). So how many hours per week do you believe we should be allowed to waste whilst still being a valid member of society?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  How do they pay for food, housing, and healthcare in this model? A family member who is retired performs volunteer work (adjacent industry to what they did while employed) because their Social Security comfortably covers all of their expenses (and Medicare covers their healthcare). Without these age tested basic income and benefits (and me providing no cost housing), this would not be an option. They would be toiling in a bullshit job.
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    It's meant as a stop gap not to ride out a temporary situation like a recession or depression, not a permanent perfect solution. But for example, if someone gets foreclosed on, up to some limit they can still reside with the pool, but perhaps now they're doing labor work for everyone, or they're being a child caretaker, or cooking etc.. ideally they have some trade skills to contribute. I agree that the global economy and contemporary life has become sufficiently complex that it would not just be a non-change, but my point is kind like why do we have so many homeless families being kicked out, only for the house to sit empty (often rapidly depreciating for lack of maintenance) etc, sometimes its about seeing that if you contribute to the decline, your own decline becomes inevitable.
newaccount2021 4y ago
skybrian 4y ago
It seems like this sort of thing will make more sense in rural areas with a low cost of living, like where they tried this? If so that's fine. Programs don't need to be universal to work well.
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  > Programs don't need to be universal to work well. Love this attitude! So often on HN we see responses like "It doesnt work in <this one case>, because <nuance>" ... To which it seems so obvious like "then dont do it in that case?"
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Is there a name for this response template? It would be helpful to be able to reference by name rather than prototype when it comes up again.
    - Zigurd 4y ago
      Seems like a subcategory of whataboutism.
    - vijayr02 4y ago
      Not a name, but I think it's called making the perfect the enemy of the good.
    - 8note 4y ago
      Middle aged health care? Hey doctor, my back hurts when I do X. Then stop doing X
odiroot 4y ago
In communist Poland (probably whole Warsaw Pact), not only were they guaranteed, there was an obligation to work. You could go to jail if you avoided work. This created a somehow funny effect, were many just did the absolute minimum on the job.
- haunter 4y ago
  Yes that was true for Hungary too. From the 50s up until to 1989 it was a crime to be unemployed.
  - kbelder 4y ago
    In Belarus, you have to pay an extra tax if you're unemployed. A coworker of mine was struggling with that, because she was having trouble proving she was working in the US, they were trying to tax her parents. Corrupt hellhole, that country.
- dudzik 4y ago
  My grandma used to tell me about this situation. Specifically, how infuriating it was to work with people that would do the absolute minimum and be rewarded like people making an effort.
  - loa_in_ 4y ago
    And there's also some kind of a real psychological incentive for some, like myself, to be basically unable to do "absolute minimum" when I come to do the job and engage myself, because that would drive me crazy.
  - itronitron 4y ago
    That is the human condition and also prevalent in capitalist economies.
- pydry 4y ago
  >many just did the absolute minimum on the job. Just like here then.
jemmyw 4y ago
The way I see it is competition. The government in a particular place sees that wages and conditions are poor so they offer guaranteed jobs with better wages and conditions - now companies have to compete for their workers. And if that sounds like a tax payer burden, consider that low wage workers tend to be net tax beneficiaries their whole lives, it probably saves the state money long term. You just get to exchange higher priced goods and services for lower tax (or more tax services).
Barrin92 4y ago
I think these programs are very positive. One thing that worries me today is the reductive way we talk about work often. On the one hand there's the "just give them cash, let the market figure it out" aspect that just reduces work to a commodity, on the other there's the 'all work is terrible' mentality. Oddly enough both have a sort of similar disregard for work in a way. There's really a lack of discussion about the meaning-giving and social aspect of work and how to actively design work in communities. I wonder whether the parallel decline of both traditional labor and religious groups had a strong impact on the perception of work because those were the two main camps resisting that reductive mentality.
- Hizonner 4y ago
  If you don't want work to be treated as a commodity, then you need to stop coupling it tightly to how you make your living (the problem being that we're not yet quite technologically ready to do that...). If work is so "meaning-giving and social", then people will presumably do it even if they don't have to do it to eat, and even if the boss isn't breathing down their necks.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    I sort of disagree with that. Work can provide meaning if its entirely voluntary, but for many people the fact that it's necessary, sustaining and vital is part of what makes work meaningful. An important aspect of the value of work is that if you didn't do your work, there's real consequences to that. Otherwise very quickly you go from work to something that is more like a game or a hobby in nature. And while games and hobbies are great, they don't really fulfill the same need. On the boss part I agree of course, but that's an orthogonal issue.
    - Hizonner 4y ago
      So, the problem with that is that, if we ever did get to the point where work was not technologically necessary, I don't think I would want to be told "work or starve" in order to provide you with a feeling that your work was meaningful. I don't have a lot of truck with that concept of "meaning". I guess you can get past commodification in the narrow sense with enough market and social restructuring, but I can't see how you can get what you're asking for here without forcing everybody else to work for no good reason other than to support your preference. Not an immediate problem, of course...
VictorPath 4y ago
Karl Marx said unemployment was a foundational necessity of capitalism (although not the feudalism that preceded capitalism), so I don't see this program lasting long ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour ).
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  No need to bother Marx, plenty of economists will tell you that the market needs unemployment or "bad things will happen". I think unemployment simply can't be solved in a capitalist society, as it would expose a major contradiction of liberist economies. We tell people they have to work or they're parasites and don't deserve to have their basic needs covered, but at the same time we need a mass of them to be out of work, in order to be able to exploit the rest. So much of our lifestyle is built on exploitation of the working class, be it local or foreign.
pjmorris 4y ago
Job guarantees make more sense to me than UBI; the government only has to pay for those who aren't employed elsewhere while it still sets a floor for the entire economy about how bad a job can be, squeezing out jobs that are worse than the JG jobs. But I'm still collecting facts and quite open to being wrong. On my list to read: 'The case for a job guarantee', Tcherneva. [0] 'http://pavlina-tcherneva.net/the-case-for-a-job-guarantee/ http://pavlina-tcherneva.net/the-case-for-a-job-guarantee/'
- pengaru 4y ago
  It seems like a no-brainer to me for Social Security to include Guaranteed Employment of a full-time federal minimum-wage income position. Just add a debit card to the social security card citizens receive. They can use the debit card to withdraw up to a full-time minimum-wage amt of money per month. If they take the income, it's assumed they did some kind of proportional work. I don't think there's even any need to police it. Simply characterizing it as employment and establishing the expectation that consumers of the program perform work for their country/community commensurate for what they withdraw is miles better than UBI in my opinion. Most people are honest, and frankly a lot of the people I know would work more hours than full-time, it'd just be volunteer-like work helping people and cleaning up around the neighborhood, and probably creating a lot of public art. Positive things to facilitate, and largely not things for-profit businesses would pay for. It's also nice to couple it to the already established federal minimum-wage, which already has an (admittedly lacking) process for adjusting to keep up with inflation. We should ensure the minimum-wage reflects a minimum livable wage by modern standards, and guaranteed employment would always provide a worst-case income of a minimum livable wage. I don't think we're lacking of good options for these style solutions. We're just lacking support in the general public for such a socialist-looking program. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and all that.
  - JoeyBananas 4y ago
    What you are suggesting would not be guaranteed employment, it would be UBI wrapped in a lie. Ignoring problems with the system (i.e., fraud) would not address any of the reasons why there is not already UBI in the United States. Your idea is crazy beyond the Overton window.
blue039 4y ago
History has shown full employment does not work. The most famous example being communist countries such as the USSR. They achieved full employment, except that it was mostly useless labor. Sure, you have a job. But your job is to count buckets of nails by hand all day. When you're done with that you go back to the beginning and count them again. You'll get paid a pittance for your trouble. However, I would not call this "valuable work". Or, work that the article supposes would provide someone some meaning. > So far, a hundred and twelve people have used the Job Guarantee, as the program is known, to find work; at least fifty more are expected to do so before 2024, when the program is scheduled to end. Participants complete an eight-week training course, then receive a job offer; they’re free to decline it without losing their unemployment benefits, but so far everyone who’s been offered a job has chosen to work. This is insane on principle when scaled up to a society. You can get trained, be offered a job (under the assumption of livable pay), and then can refuse it and stay on the government tit? NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. This will never work. It's the BS machinations of an overeducated academic trying to prove a point. If you accept tax payer funded job training you should be obligated to take the first job, in that field, that pays you the minimum liveable wage. Otherwise it's anarchy. > Sven Hergovich, the regional director of the Public Employment Service of Lower Austria, essentially agrees with this analysis. He thinks that rising demands for productivity and efficiency mean that, now and in the future, not everyone will be able to find a job without support. “There are not sufficient jobs available for all of the long-term unemployed,” he told me. “In fact, we have only two options. Either we finance long-term unemployment, or we create a job guarantee.” Some people are useless. This is not any different than any other time in history. There are people who, if it wasn't for menial work, would actually be fundamentally useless by the definition of the term. The internet calls these people NEETS. They are generally burdens on society and IMO we should just let nature run it's course. They will either starve or skill up. Either way, society wins.
- Hizonner 4y ago
  > Otherwise it's anarchy. Omigod! Not ANARCHY! > just let nature run it's course. They will either starve or skill up. You sound nice. I actually agree with you about universal employment being a crock. Just do a UBI already. Not only will that work better, but it will have entertainment value when your head explodes.
protoman3000 4y ago
Wait a second, if somebody asks an overinflated way-over productivity wage for cleaning toilets because of a supply shortage, this is considered being unethical and "unwilling to do the dirty work, while receiving benefits", but asking a way way overinflated price for housing because of a supply shortage is considered good and healthy for the market and drives investment without shaming the investors for receiving undue housing benefits? Why do we yell at people artificially shortening toilet cleaner supply, while at the same time not yelling at developers for artificially shortening housing supply? Don't people need to live AND shit? Looks like it is not about an economic argument after all. Seems like it’s again a pattern of abusing less privileged, weaker, less defensible people. Shaming them for what they naturally and humanly want - and which is the same what the privileged naturally want: To be able to say no, when they want to say no. Where do these schemes of maliciously founded shame on false grounds come from? How did we start to listen to the voice of the psychopaths which want to divide us?
- marcusverus 4y ago
  > if somebody asks an overinflated way-over productivity wage for cleaning toilets because of a supply shortage, this is considered being unethical and "unwilling to do the dirty work, while receiving benefits", but asking a way way overinflated price for housing because of a supply shortage is considered good and healthy for the market and drives investment without shaming the investors for receiving undue housing benefits? The clear difference is who bears the cost of demanding an artificially high price. If you're asking an overinflated wage as a ploy to stay on unemployment, or to keep a low-effort make-work job, who bears the cost of that decision? Not the worker! By shunning gainful employment, he chooses to remain on the dole, for his own benefit and to the detriment of his neighbors--who are paying his bills. He also short-changes society, which could benefit from his employment through taxes paid, and by virtue of his doing work that's actually in demand. So it's unethical for this person to take money out of his neighbors' pockets (many of whom do dirty work) because he's too good to do his fair share. The person who chooses to try to sell their house for a high price doesn't gain anything by setting too-high a price--quite the opposite! Every month they don't sell the property, they're paying the mortgage and insurance. So it's not unethical to set an artificially high price, since the seller is the one who pays in the end. If someone actually buys the house, then I'm not sure that you could say that the price was artificially high--the buying of the house indicates that the price was right. > Why do we yell at people artificially shortening toilet cleaner supply, while at the same time not yelling at developers for artificially shortening housing supply? I'm not really sure what you mean here. > Looks like it is not about an economic argument after all. Seems like it’s again a pattern of abusing less privileged, weaker, less defensible people. This sort of self-righteous hysteria has no place on HN. Fiscal conservatives are not ghouls who abhor the poor and seek to harm them. The fact that you don't know or don't understand the economic argument doesn't mean there is no economic argument--it means you are uninformed. If you're actually interested in an introduction to the economic arguments underpinning fiscal conservatism, try reading "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt. > Shaming them for what they naturally and humanly want - and which is the same what the privileged naturally want: To be able to say no, when they want to say no. They're being shamed for the extraordinarily selfish expectation that society should pay 30K/year to save them from doing a yucky job. How many taxpayers does it take to fund this guy's make-work job? Based on a quick google search, you'd probably have to take every penny of tax revenue raised from 3-4 middle-class families. That's 4 families that forewent 30% of their income--and for what? So that one dude can save face? This is an egregious waste of resources and a giant middle-finger to the working class people who fund the Austrian welfare state. > How did we start to listen to the voice of the psychopaths which want to divide us? I find this to be hysterical in every sense of the word.
my_city 4y ago
An experimental program I propose: give the proletariat the means of production.
- nlitened 4y ago
  Most people have a phone and/or a desktop computer, that’s enough for production of many valuable things. Problem solved, right? Now people don’t have an excuse to not work anymore.
yrgulation 4y ago
All financed by the east eu countries Austria is extracting revenue from. Perhaps a reverse of fortunes might be in order?
- dxdm 4y ago
  Could you link to anything that explains what you're talking about?
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    Here is one example: https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/eastern-europes-biggest-wood-processor-demanded-free-timber-from-suppliers-for-years https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/eastern-europes-bigg... Then there’s banking, oil, and other resources. And of course the audacity to veto countries schengen membership unless more control over these is granted. Hiding behind made up excuses.
- zokier 4y ago
  Same east EU countries that are net beneficiaries of EU funding that Austria is net contributor to? https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-budget/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    Yes, same east eu countries that gave up duty fees and sold their industries to countries such as austria, so that people can then cite tired stats. A bit like austria having built a lot of castles with money stolen from its former empire subjects and then pointing out that said subjects are poor and dont own castles.

96 points by cocacola1 4y ago

“Austrian employers, like those in America, are currently having difficulty hiring people to take hard, poorly paid jobs” Maybe make those jobs less poorly paid ?

rsj_hn 4y ago
That's just another way of saying that those jobs should disappear, as usually people aren't willing to pay a lot for those jobs as they don't get that much perceived value from them. You can look at high skilled workforces like in Sweden, where there just aren't a lot of the entry level jobs you see in the U.S. So there aren't so many people working in landscaping or providing personal services, and people do more things for themselves. It's unusual to hire house cleaners, nannies, etc. If you are painting your house, you are going to have a hard time hiring people to help you, or hiring someone to come by and wash your windows. If there is a factory that requires lots of low skilled work, it doesn't open in Sweden -- only the highly automated factories open there. So that's fine, it's a high-wage, high skilled economy in which all workers are expected to be productive -- and Swedish workers are highly productive. People are expected to have strong skill levels and a high educational level, so they can provide a lot of value and get paid well (here, we are ignoring the issue of taxes, because it's still a high wage earned by the workers even if they only get half of it after tax). Which is great, until you admit a large number of immigrants without skills. Now, you can't absorb them into your labor force. Or until you realize you have a lot of structural unemployment and it takes much longer for laid off workers to re-enter the labor force. In the U.S., we absorb migrants easily and have much lower rates of long term unemployment - but then people complain about migrants doing low skilled jobs and some workers being taken advantage of since they don't earn high salaries. Bottom line, there are trade offs, and while you can't please everyone, you can at least make them aware of the trade offs. All I can think of is that it's good to have both places like Sweden that tend to require high skills and places that have low skill/low pay jobs mixed in with the high pay/high skill jobs, so that low skilled workers can still find employment. The whole world can't work like Sweden, but it's also good that places like Sweden exist.

brntsllvn 4y ago

> Work is a source of structure, esteem, and motivation, and its disappearance can lead to depression, anxiety, addiction, and interpersonal turmoil. So true

gumby 4y ago
That’s why, as we strive towards the morally necessary system of universal unemployment (with robots doing all the work) we will need for the robots to create jobs for those who want them (and to convince the job holders of the importance of these ”jobs“). I mean this in all seriousness and am only sorry that I’m unkikely to live long enough to enjoy this paradise. Of course I’m one of those who loves to work.
- pfortuny 4y ago
  Work is not production or service by itself. This is something we all tend to forget. A bonsai is as much work as shining shoes.
  - 988747 4y ago
- brntsllvn 4y ago
  I also love work. It's such a great way to meet and work with other people. Crucial for mental health.
  - Hizonner 4y ago
    Nobody's ever going to STOP you, you realize...
    - brntsllvn 4y ago
      True. For better or worse. Sometimes I feel a little anxious when I can't work.

cocacola1 4y ago

These two paragraphs in particular stuck out to me: > Critics of labor-market programs such as the Job Guarantee argue that they enable precisely this sort of choice—they make it easier to decline work that one doesn’t like. One program participant in his thirties told me that, while on unemployment benefits, he’d been offered a job cleaning toilets at a gas station; he’d decided that he didn’t want “that sort of job,” and had instead found work in the carpentry workshop. If everyone were guaranteed a reasonably pleasant job, suited to their interests and needs and paying a living wage, who would do the grungy, difficult work? Austrian employers, like those in America, are currently having difficulty hiring people to take hard, poorly paid jobs; many of the workers in Austria who wash dishes or clean hotel rooms are immigrants from Eastern Europe, and during the pandemic many of them went home, some for good. Jörg Flecker, a sociologist at the University of Vienna who is evaluating the program in Gramatneusiedl, told me that pressure from employers could prevent its expansion across Austria. “Employers say, ‘There are so many unemployed. We have to have a tougher regime for them because we have jobs to fill.’ ” > > Lukas Lehner and Maximilian Kasy, economists at Oxford who are evaluating data from Gramatneusiedl, argue that competition with the private sector is a good thing. “I think, from an economic perspective, that argument doesn’t make much sense,” Kasy said, of the dirty-jobs view. “If they’re shit jobs, try to pay them as well as possible. Try to change the working conditions as much as possible until you reach the point that somebody wants to do them, or automate them if you can. And then, if nobody wants to do them, maybe we shouldn’t do them.” Kasy thinks that an important function of initiatives like job guarantees—and of universal basic incomes—is to improve the bargaining positions of people who want to change their lives. “Whether it’s abuse from an employment relationship, a bureaucrat in the welfare state, or a romantic relationship, the question is, What’s your outside option?” he said. “Having the safety of the basic income or a guaranteed job improves your outside option. If your boss is abusive, or doesn’t respect your hours, or is harassing you or whatever, you have the option to say no.”

mgrthrow 4y ago
This is the classic answer to the classic question about anarchy: "who will do the unpleasant, demeaning work?" "We only think it's unpleasant because we make it unpleasant. We can have clean, well lit factories. We just have to prioritize making that work more pleasant."

Proven 4y ago

maerF0x0 4y ago

https://archive.ph/Bzgjm https://archive.ph/Bzgjm

thriftwy 4y ago

In Soviet Union, they were. Among other things, universal employment shown to do the same as no employment: a lot of people binge drinking and not caring to do anything useful with their life. Work ethic problems surfaced in a bad way.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mgrthrow 4y ago
The soviets also had the problem that they were an autocracy who had little regard for the conditions of their people. They were also huge. Community level programs like this can be much more functionally democratic and uplifting.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  Late Soviet communities mostly ran themselves within the existing law/power frameworks. Soviet society indeed had comparatively little regard for the conditions of people, but it is more of a cultural problem, and not an unique one.
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  > The soviets also had the problem that they were an autocracy who had little regard for the conditions of their people. This is just false. In the USSR life expectancy went from 30 years in 1925 to 69 years in 1990[0]. On the other hand, in the US it started declining in 2015 without having recovered yet[1]. In the USSR, "In 1926, the literacy rate was 56.6 percent of the population. By 1937, according to census data, the literacy rate was 86% for men and 65% for women, making a total literacy rate of 75%"[2]. The USSR was also the first country in the world to legalize abortion, and it championed gender equality. In the meantime the US is going in the direction of banning abortion once again. I have yo ask you, what you do mean by "conditions of the people"? - [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-expectancy-russia-all-time/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-expectancy-... - [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-... - [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union

dukeofdoom 4y ago

[flagged]

oraetlabora 4y ago
nah, that was a different program.

maerF0x0 4y ago

One idea I've toyed with is that unemployment is actually a societal refusal to help eachother. Yes we all need sustenance, but consider something like this If I'm laid off I can choose to still program. If I don't my time might simply be wasted (eg on videogames, netflix, or even job applications). But I can also choose to continue to program. Maybe by helping local businesses, contributing to FOSS etc. While I understand the near impossibility of it all, but we actually could continue to have lots of good things so long as folks refuse to stop working even if told they're no longer employed. Obviously this fails the moment some unit in the chain refuses to participate, but I think in small ways it can actually blunt the pain felt in recessions/depressions by creating small communes of collusion amongst your social circle. You collude together to ensure that eachother gets what they need, at least amongst the valuable skills in the circle.

TheHappyOddish 4y ago
> If I don't my time might simply be wasted (eg on videogames, netflix, or even job applications). So how many hours per week do you believe we should be allowed to waste whilst still being a valid member of society?
toomuchtodo 4y ago
How do they pay for food, housing, and healthcare in this model? A family member who is retired performs volunteer work (adjacent industry to what they did while employed) because their Social Security comfortably covers all of their expenses (and Medicare covers their healthcare). Without these age tested basic income and benefits (and me providing no cost housing), this would not be an option. They would be toiling in a bullshit job.
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  It's meant as a stop gap not to ride out a temporary situation like a recession or depression, not a permanent perfect solution. But for example, if someone gets foreclosed on, up to some limit they can still reside with the pool, but perhaps now they're doing labor work for everyone, or they're being a child caretaker, or cooking etc.. ideally they have some trade skills to contribute. I agree that the global economy and contemporary life has become sufficiently complex that it would not just be a non-change, but my point is kind like why do we have so many homeless families being kicked out, only for the house to sit empty (often rapidly depreciating for lack of maintenance) etc, sometimes its about seeing that if you contribute to the decline, your own decline becomes inevitable.

newaccount2021 4y ago

skybrian 4y ago

It seems like this sort of thing will make more sense in rural areas with a low cost of living, like where they tried this? If so that's fine. Programs don't need to be universal to work well.

maerF0x0 4y ago
> Programs don't need to be universal to work well. Love this attitude! So often on HN we see responses like "It doesnt work in <this one case>, because <nuance>" ... To which it seems so obvious like "then dont do it in that case?"
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Is there a name for this response template? It would be helpful to be able to reference by name rather than prototype when it comes up again.
  - Zigurd 4y ago
    Seems like a subcategory of whataboutism.
  - vijayr02 4y ago
    Not a name, but I think it's called making the perfect the enemy of the good.
  - 8note 4y ago
    Middle aged health care? Hey doctor, my back hurts when I do X. Then stop doing X

odiroot 4y ago

In communist Poland (probably whole Warsaw Pact), not only were they guaranteed, there was an obligation to work. You could go to jail if you avoided work. This created a somehow funny effect, were many just did the absolute minimum on the job.

haunter 4y ago
Yes that was true for Hungary too. From the 50s up until to 1989 it was a crime to be unemployed.
- kbelder 4y ago
  In Belarus, you have to pay an extra tax if you're unemployed. A coworker of mine was struggling with that, because she was having trouble proving she was working in the US, they were trying to tax her parents. Corrupt hellhole, that country.
dudzik 4y ago
My grandma used to tell me about this situation. Specifically, how infuriating it was to work with people that would do the absolute minimum and be rewarded like people making an effort.
- loa_in_ 4y ago
  And there's also some kind of a real psychological incentive for some, like myself, to be basically unable to do "absolute minimum" when I come to do the job and engage myself, because that would drive me crazy.
- itronitron 4y ago
  That is the human condition and also prevalent in capitalist economies.
pydry 4y ago
>many just did the absolute minimum on the job. Just like here then.

jemmyw 4y ago

The way I see it is competition. The government in a particular place sees that wages and conditions are poor so they offer guaranteed jobs with better wages and conditions - now companies have to compete for their workers. And if that sounds like a tax payer burden, consider that low wage workers tend to be net tax beneficiaries their whole lives, it probably saves the state money long term. You just get to exchange higher priced goods and services for lower tax (or more tax services).

Barrin92 4y ago

I think these programs are very positive. One thing that worries me today is the reductive way we talk about work often. On the one hand there's the "just give them cash, let the market figure it out" aspect that just reduces work to a commodity, on the other there's the 'all work is terrible' mentality. Oddly enough both have a sort of similar disregard for work in a way. There's really a lack of discussion about the meaning-giving and social aspect of work and how to actively design work in communities. I wonder whether the parallel decline of both traditional labor and religious groups had a strong impact on the perception of work because those were the two main camps resisting that reductive mentality.

Hizonner 4y ago
If you don't want work to be treated as a commodity, then you need to stop coupling it tightly to how you make your living (the problem being that we're not yet quite technologically ready to do that...). If work is so "meaning-giving and social", then people will presumably do it even if they don't have to do it to eat, and even if the boss isn't breathing down their necks.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  I sort of disagree with that. Work can provide meaning if its entirely voluntary, but for many people the fact that it's necessary, sustaining and vital is part of what makes work meaningful. An important aspect of the value of work is that if you didn't do your work, there's real consequences to that. Otherwise very quickly you go from work to something that is more like a game or a hobby in nature. And while games and hobbies are great, they don't really fulfill the same need. On the boss part I agree of course, but that's an orthogonal issue.
  - Hizonner 4y ago
    So, the problem with that is that, if we ever did get to the point where work was not technologically necessary, I don't think I would want to be told "work or starve" in order to provide you with a feeling that your work was meaningful. I don't have a lot of truck with that concept of "meaning". I guess you can get past commodification in the narrow sense with enough market and social restructuring, but I can't see how you can get what you're asking for here without forcing everybody else to work for no good reason other than to support your preference. Not an immediate problem, of course...

VictorPath 4y ago

Karl Marx said unemployment was a foundational necessity of capitalism (although not the feudalism that preceded capitalism), so I don't see this program lasting long ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour ).

pastacacioepepe 4y ago
No need to bother Marx, plenty of economists will tell you that the market needs unemployment or "bad things will happen". I think unemployment simply can't be solved in a capitalist society, as it would expose a major contradiction of liberist economies. We tell people they have to work or they're parasites and don't deserve to have their basic needs covered, but at the same time we need a mass of them to be out of work, in order to be able to exploit the rest. So much of our lifestyle is built on exploitation of the working class, be it local or foreign.

pjmorris 4y ago

Job guarantees make more sense to me than UBI; the government only has to pay for those who aren't employed elsewhere while it still sets a floor for the entire economy about how bad a job can be, squeezing out jobs that are worse than the JG jobs. But I'm still collecting facts and quite open to being wrong. On my list to read: 'The case for a job guarantee', Tcherneva. [0] 'http://pavlina-tcherneva.net/the-case-for-a-job-guarantee/ http://pavlina-tcherneva.net/the-case-for-a-job-guarantee/'

pengaru 4y ago
It seems like a no-brainer to me for Social Security to include Guaranteed Employment of a full-time federal minimum-wage income position. Just add a debit card to the social security card citizens receive. They can use the debit card to withdraw up to a full-time minimum-wage amt of money per month. If they take the income, it's assumed they did some kind of proportional work. I don't think there's even any need to police it. Simply characterizing it as employment and establishing the expectation that consumers of the program perform work for their country/community commensurate for what they withdraw is miles better than UBI in my opinion. Most people are honest, and frankly a lot of the people I know would work more hours than full-time, it'd just be volunteer-like work helping people and cleaning up around the neighborhood, and probably creating a lot of public art. Positive things to facilitate, and largely not things for-profit businesses would pay for. It's also nice to couple it to the already established federal minimum-wage, which already has an (admittedly lacking) process for adjusting to keep up with inflation. We should ensure the minimum-wage reflects a minimum livable wage by modern standards, and guaranteed employment would always provide a worst-case income of a minimum livable wage. I don't think we're lacking of good options for these style solutions. We're just lacking support in the general public for such a socialist-looking program. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and all that.
- JoeyBananas 4y ago
  What you are suggesting would not be guaranteed employment, it would be UBI wrapped in a lie. Ignoring problems with the system (i.e., fraud) would not address any of the reasons why there is not already UBI in the United States. Your idea is crazy beyond the Overton window.

blue039 4y ago

History has shown full employment does not work. The most famous example being communist countries such as the USSR. They achieved full employment, except that it was mostly useless labor. Sure, you have a job. But your job is to count buckets of nails by hand all day. When you're done with that you go back to the beginning and count them again. You'll get paid a pittance for your trouble. However, I would not call this "valuable work". Or, work that the article supposes would provide someone some meaning. > So far, a hundred and twelve people have used the Job Guarantee, as the program is known, to find work; at least fifty more are expected to do so before 2024, when the program is scheduled to end. Participants complete an eight-week training course, then receive a job offer; they’re free to decline it without losing their unemployment benefits, but so far everyone who’s been offered a job has chosen to work. This is insane on principle when scaled up to a society. You can get trained, be offered a job (under the assumption of livable pay), and then can refuse it and stay on the government tit? NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. This will never work. It's the BS machinations of an overeducated academic trying to prove a point. If you accept tax payer funded job training you should be obligated to take the first job, in that field, that pays you the minimum liveable wage. Otherwise it's anarchy. > Sven Hergovich, the regional director of the Public Employment Service of Lower Austria, essentially agrees with this analysis. He thinks that rising demands for productivity and efficiency mean that, now and in the future, not everyone will be able to find a job without support. “There are not sufficient jobs available for all of the long-term unemployed,” he told me. “In fact, we have only two options. Either we finance long-term unemployment, or we create a job guarantee.” Some people are useless. This is not any different than any other time in history. There are people who, if it wasn't for menial work, would actually be fundamentally useless by the definition of the term. The internet calls these people NEETS. They are generally burdens on society and IMO we should just let nature run it's course. They will either starve or skill up. Either way, society wins.

Hizonner 4y ago
> Otherwise it's anarchy. Omigod! Not ANARCHY! > just let nature run it's course. They will either starve or skill up. You sound nice. I actually agree with you about universal employment being a crock. Just do a UBI already. Not only will that work better, but it will have entertainment value when your head explodes.

protoman3000 4y ago

Wait a second, if somebody asks an overinflated way-over productivity wage for cleaning toilets because of a supply shortage, this is considered being unethical and "unwilling to do the dirty work, while receiving benefits", but asking a way way overinflated price for housing because of a supply shortage is considered good and healthy for the market and drives investment without shaming the investors for receiving undue housing benefits? Why do we yell at people artificially shortening toilet cleaner supply, while at the same time not yelling at developers for artificially shortening housing supply? Don't people need to live AND shit? Looks like it is not about an economic argument after all. Seems like it’s again a pattern of abusing less privileged, weaker, less defensible people. Shaming them for what they naturally and humanly want - and which is the same what the privileged naturally want: To be able to say no, when they want to say no. Where do these schemes of maliciously founded shame on false grounds come from? How did we start to listen to the voice of the psychopaths which want to divide us?

marcusverus 4y ago
> if somebody asks an overinflated way-over productivity wage for cleaning toilets because of a supply shortage, this is considered being unethical and "unwilling to do the dirty work, while receiving benefits", but asking a way way overinflated price for housing because of a supply shortage is considered good and healthy for the market and drives investment without shaming the investors for receiving undue housing benefits? The clear difference is who bears the cost of demanding an artificially high price. If you're asking an overinflated wage as a ploy to stay on unemployment, or to keep a low-effort make-work job, who bears the cost of that decision? Not the worker! By shunning gainful employment, he chooses to remain on the dole, for his own benefit and to the detriment of his neighbors--who are paying his bills. He also short-changes society, which could benefit from his employment through taxes paid, and by virtue of his doing work that's actually in demand. So it's unethical for this person to take money out of his neighbors' pockets (many of whom do dirty work) because he's too good to do his fair share. The person who chooses to try to sell their house for a high price doesn't gain anything by setting too-high a price--quite the opposite! Every month they don't sell the property, they're paying the mortgage and insurance. So it's not unethical to set an artificially high price, since the seller is the one who pays in the end. If someone actually buys the house, then I'm not sure that you could say that the price was artificially high--the buying of the house indicates that the price was right. > Why do we yell at people artificially shortening toilet cleaner supply, while at the same time not yelling at developers for artificially shortening housing supply? I'm not really sure what you mean here. > Looks like it is not about an economic argument after all. Seems like it’s again a pattern of abusing less privileged, weaker, less defensible people. This sort of self-righteous hysteria has no place on HN. Fiscal conservatives are not ghouls who abhor the poor and seek to harm them. The fact that you don't know or don't understand the economic argument doesn't mean there is no economic argument--it means you are uninformed. If you're actually interested in an introduction to the economic arguments underpinning fiscal conservatism, try reading "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt. > Shaming them for what they naturally and humanly want - and which is the same what the privileged naturally want: To be able to say no, when they want to say no. They're being shamed for the extraordinarily selfish expectation that society should pay 30K/year to save them from doing a yucky job. How many taxpayers does it take to fund this guy's make-work job? Based on a quick google search, you'd probably have to take every penny of tax revenue raised from 3-4 middle-class families. That's 4 families that forewent 30% of their income--and for what? So that one dude can save face? This is an egregious waste of resources and a giant middle-finger to the working class people who fund the Austrian welfare state. > How did we start to listen to the voice of the psychopaths which want to divide us? I find this to be hysterical in every sense of the word.

my_city 4y ago

An experimental program I propose: give the proletariat the means of production.

nlitened 4y ago
Most people have a phone and/or a desktop computer, that’s enough for production of many valuable things. Problem solved, right? Now people don’t have an excuse to not work anymore.

yrgulation 4y ago

All financed by the east eu countries Austria is extracting revenue from. Perhaps a reverse of fortunes might be in order?

dxdm 4y ago
Could you link to anything that explains what you're talking about?
- yrgulation 4y ago
  Here is one example: https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/eastern-europes-biggest-wood-processor-demanded-free-timber-from-suppliers-for-years https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/eastern-europes-bigg... Then there’s banking, oil, and other resources. And of course the audacity to veto countries schengen membership unless more control over these is granted. Hiding behind made up excuses.
zokier 4y ago
Same east EU countries that are net beneficiaries of EU funding that Austria is net contributor to? https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-budget/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
- yrgulation 4y ago
  Yes, same east eu countries that gave up duty fees and sold their industries to countries such as austria, so that people can then cite tired stats. A bit like austria having built a lot of castles with money stolen from its former empire subjects and then pointing out that said subjects are poor and dont own castles.