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I'd like to see a world where the government provided a job for anybody who wanted one. If you're not enjoying your corporate job you can go back to planting tr

I'd like to see a world where the government provided a job for anybody who wanted one. If you're not enjoying your corporate job you can go back to planting trees to offset carbon emissions. Getting to old to plant trees? Go work in the library. Want to develop it skills? get a job helping the government transition to Libre Office

eru 1mo ago
Compare and contrast https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic-jobs-against-hijacking-utopia/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic...
- YZF 1mo ago
  I agree with the work sucks bullet point. So nobody should work. We can all just sit at home, get our UBI money, and pay our rent, get our groceries, buy a car, get fuel, go on vacation. That sounds perfect to me. But.. who makes the car? who grows the fruit and veggies? Who works in the store? Who builds houses? Who repairs and cleans those houses. Hm. maybe somebody has to work after all. Seriously I support having a decent social net so that nobody is starving on the street without healthcare etc. but the preference is always that if work is available someone should work (assuming it's reasonably suitable, they're not taken advantage of, they are able to work etc.).
  - bryanlarsen 1mo ago
    UBI has to be significantly lower than the average taxes paid. If it isn't the books don't balance and eventually inflation kicks in hard and eventually it reaches that equilibrium. If nobody works then taxes are $0 and UBI is $0. So if you do the math using fairly roughly you'll find that the US can support a UBI of about $1500/month without significant inflationary pressure. That'll pay your rent (if you're sharing an apartment) and cover groceries (if you mostly live on rice and beans). If you want a car, vacations or the latest iPhone you have to work. So most would work and build those cars et al.
  - danaris 1mo ago
    You are indulging in a Black And White Fallacy here. UBI doesn't mean no one works. It means no one has to work just to live. And even if you want to ignore the actual scholarly research on the subject (which is ample), we have plenty of examples of people who would never have to work a day in their lives, and yet they still do so, sometimes even despite millions of people actively hating them for it: the very wealthy, particularly those who inherited generational wealth.
- jay_kyburz 1mo ago
  Scott Alexander uses a lot of words to argue his points, but I don't think he makes them very successfully. Almost every point in the linked essay can be easily refuted without thinking too much. Perhaps he is arguing for a spercific implementation, but if we are dreaming about utopia, why not be generous in our interpretation for how the jobs for all might work. We are comparing it to the dream of UBI after all. 1. We could provide jobs for disabled people that makes feel better about themselves. Also remember this is jobs for all who _want_ to work. There is still disability for those that need it. 2 & 3 Government provided jobs could help caretakers and parents because they could be more flexible with hours and shifts. Work while your kids are at school. 4. Jobs causing poverty because you have to drive somewhere and eat out because there is no break room is ridiculous. I laughed out loud when he argued that if you work you are too tired to drive to the shop where the cheap groceries are sold. 5. Yep, some people need to be fired. I'm not sure what he is trying to say here. I think these government jobs need to be run well, and employees need to be paid bonus if they do good work. (Compared to other teams that do the same work) I could go on.. but seems a little pointless.
YZF 1mo ago
This doesn't work though. The government needs to pay you. Where does the money come from? People working for the government tend to not really work that hard because what's their incentive to work hard? Are you getting paid per tree? If the government wants trees planed it's better for everyone that they hire a company that plants trees. Even that isn't always that great but it's less worse. The government doesn't want that and doesn't have the money for that. They could get that money by raising taxes which increases cost of living for everyone that works and that tends to be not popular. Anyways- that's what the USSR looked like or maybe China before they switched to their version of a free market. Due to human nature and other factors it doesn't work.
- ab5tract 1mo ago
  Ah yes. A great example is how much cheaper and more efficiently our military support is since we fired all the military cooks and gave all the contracts to KBR and Haliburton. People don’t work hard for crap wages unless you beat them with a stick. Government jobs are seen as cushy because there are actual rules and regulations being followed as to how much work should be done. Corporations just skirt that, do a worse job, and then spread your type of propaganda everywhere. People wouldn’t be jealous of the government job holders if they could achieve a similar work life balance at Joes Tree planting service.
xp84 1mo ago
This is a beautiful fantasy and it sounds like what most college freshmen think the world should be like. When that was practiced IRL in the Soviet Union, the issue is that if you are owed a job, people figure out really quickly that they can just phone it in, so those trees don’t really get planted, etc. The managers of the tree planters also don’t do their job of making sure the work gets done - they just report to their managers that the tree planting project is going great. Everyone gets paid. But the jobs that actually need doing also don’t get done either, so you have shortages of everything constantly. What you’ve created is an economy that barely subsists at best, since everyone does the absolute minimum and just lines up for their paycheck.
- jay_kyburz 1mo ago
  Why would you assume you can't be fired for phoning it in. If you want to daydream about utopia you have to assume we can solve trivial problems. I mean, you could just pay per tree for example? There is no rule that says you can't have performance bonuses as a government employee, nor are there any rules to say you can't have competition within government departments. I'm no expert, but I think the problem with the Soviets were that you were not rewarded for effort, and I think we all understand why that's important. I've read in the US there are teachers that can't be fired because of public school tenure laws and union contracts. So yeah, first thing you have to do is have a sane and functioning government. Then you can start dreaming about a better society.
  - 9x39 1mo ago
    Would you staff the sane and functioning government from people outside or inside the society you're trying to fix? Bad societies are a reflection of their people.
    - jay_kyburz 1mo ago
      I guess one good thing the Trump administration demonstrates is that you _can_ just ignore past norms and laws and do what you want. You can bring a wrecking ball, swing it around, and force change if you need to.

eru 1mo ago

Compare and contrast https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic-jobs-against-hijacking-utopia/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic...

YZF 1mo ago
I agree with the work sucks bullet point. So nobody should work. We can all just sit at home, get our UBI money, and pay our rent, get our groceries, buy a car, get fuel, go on vacation. That sounds perfect to me. But.. who makes the car? who grows the fruit and veggies? Who works in the store? Who builds houses? Who repairs and cleans those houses. Hm. maybe somebody has to work after all. Seriously I support having a decent social net so that nobody is starving on the street without healthcare etc. but the preference is always that if work is available someone should work (assuming it's reasonably suitable, they're not taken advantage of, they are able to work etc.).
- bryanlarsen 1mo ago
  UBI has to be significantly lower than the average taxes paid. If it isn't the books don't balance and eventually inflation kicks in hard and eventually it reaches that equilibrium. If nobody works then taxes are $0 and UBI is $0. So if you do the math using fairly roughly you'll find that the US can support a UBI of about $1500/month without significant inflationary pressure. That'll pay your rent (if you're sharing an apartment) and cover groceries (if you mostly live on rice and beans). If you want a car, vacations or the latest iPhone you have to work. So most would work and build those cars et al.
- danaris 1mo ago
  You are indulging in a Black And White Fallacy here. UBI doesn't mean no one works. It means no one has to work just to live. And even if you want to ignore the actual scholarly research on the subject (which is ample), we have plenty of examples of people who would never have to work a day in their lives, and yet they still do so, sometimes even despite millions of people actively hating them for it: the very wealthy, particularly those who inherited generational wealth.
jay_kyburz 1mo ago
Scott Alexander uses a lot of words to argue his points, but I don't think he makes them very successfully. Almost every point in the linked essay can be easily refuted without thinking too much. Perhaps he is arguing for a spercific implementation, but if we are dreaming about utopia, why not be generous in our interpretation for how the jobs for all might work. We are comparing it to the dream of UBI after all. 1. We could provide jobs for disabled people that makes feel better about themselves. Also remember this is jobs for all who _want_ to work. There is still disability for those that need it. 2 & 3 Government provided jobs could help caretakers and parents because they could be more flexible with hours and shifts. Work while your kids are at school. 4. Jobs causing poverty because you have to drive somewhere and eat out because there is no break room is ridiculous. I laughed out loud when he argued that if you work you are too tired to drive to the shop where the cheap groceries are sold. 5. Yep, some people need to be fired. I'm not sure what he is trying to say here. I think these government jobs need to be run well, and employees need to be paid bonus if they do good work. (Compared to other teams that do the same work) I could go on.. but seems a little pointless.

YZF 1mo ago

This doesn't work though. The government needs to pay you. Where does the money come from? People working for the government tend to not really work that hard because what's their incentive to work hard? Are you getting paid per tree? If the government wants trees planed it's better for everyone that they hire a company that plants trees. Even that isn't always that great but it's less worse. The government doesn't want that and doesn't have the money for that. They could get that money by raising taxes which increases cost of living for everyone that works and that tends to be not popular. Anyways- that's what the USSR looked like or maybe China before they switched to their version of a free market. Due to human nature and other factors it doesn't work.

ab5tract 1mo ago
Ah yes. A great example is how much cheaper and more efficiently our military support is since we fired all the military cooks and gave all the contracts to KBR and Haliburton. People don’t work hard for crap wages unless you beat them with a stick. Government jobs are seen as cushy because there are actual rules and regulations being followed as to how much work should be done. Corporations just skirt that, do a worse job, and then spread your type of propaganda everywhere. People wouldn’t be jealous of the government job holders if they could achieve a similar work life balance at Joes Tree planting service.

xp84 1mo ago

This is a beautiful fantasy and it sounds like what most college freshmen think the world should be like. When that was practiced IRL in the Soviet Union, the issue is that if you are owed a job, people figure out really quickly that they can just phone it in, so those trees don’t really get planted, etc. The managers of the tree planters also don’t do their job of making sure the work gets done - they just report to their managers that the tree planting project is going great. Everyone gets paid. But the jobs that actually need doing also don’t get done either, so you have shortages of everything constantly. What you’ve created is an economy that barely subsists at best, since everyone does the absolute minimum and just lines up for their paycheck.

jay_kyburz 1mo ago
Why would you assume you can't be fired for phoning it in. If you want to daydream about utopia you have to assume we can solve trivial problems. I mean, you could just pay per tree for example? There is no rule that says you can't have performance bonuses as a government employee, nor are there any rules to say you can't have competition within government departments. I'm no expert, but I think the problem with the Soviets were that you were not rewarded for effort, and I think we all understand why that's important. I've read in the US there are teachers that can't be fired because of public school tenure laws and union contracts. So yeah, first thing you have to do is have a sane and functioning government. Then you can start dreaming about a better society.
- 9x39 1mo ago
  Would you staff the sane and functioning government from people outside or inside the society you're trying to fix? Bad societies are a reflection of their people.
  - jay_kyburz 1mo ago
    I guess one good thing the Trump administration demonstrates is that you _can_ just ignore past norms and laws and do what you want. You can bring a wrecking ball, swing it around, and force change if you need to.