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> The solution I've been thinking of is some sort of work on demand program, where, while your unemployed and reiciving your guaranteed income, you can be asked

by strlen 13y ago

> The solution I've been thinking of is some sort of work on demand program, where, while your unemployed and reiciving your guaranteed income, you can be asked to do short term work for the government (and/or private companies). That's been tried ("workfare") and in some case had worse effect: typical example, requiring someone to commute hours to a minimal wage job. It overrides the natural disincentive for the worker not to take this job (there net utility to them is zero) and has unintended circumstances (while I'm not a fan of Michael Moore's demagoguery, he gives a particularly strong example in Bowling for Columbine -- where a mother was left unable to participate in her son's life). The big assumption there is that employment is intrinsically valuable, which I don't think is the case. Workforce participation is, but they two are not the same. The desire to deal with political externalities and catch "cheaters" is a very understandable one, but I think it's over-stated here. I tend to think of it in almost a reverse way: instead of trying to get beneficiaries of NNI to work by making NNI dependent on employment of some kind (even if it's just "make work" employment or rent-seeking by corportations, which this sounds like), make it such that being employed still allows one to receive NNI on top of their salary (e.g., turning a potentially below minimum wage job to a minimum wage one, turning a minimum wage job into a living wage one, turning a living wage job into a job that allows one to save).

rdl 13y ago
One option might be to require reserve service in exchange for basic income. If a citizen does ~2-4 weeks a year of reserve service (in the military or in other public-good roles), and is potentially available in emergencies (either long-term defense callups, or just public training in EMS and available as a first responder if nearby), give ~12k/yr equivalent in basic income/negative taxation. The disabled or really useless would be another problem, but I think that's a smaller population than is currently on public or private disability.
- Tsagadai 13y ago
  You still aren't listening to the point about low value work. Do you want to be in a military with armed people behind you who have no interest in being there, doing a good job or your welfare? Conscription is a horrible failure of a policy and there is no logical point trying to bring it back for any reason. Bringing it back to force people who don't want to be in paid, productive work to work for free is a terrible, terrible idea. The main advantage of a basic income/negative tax system is that you just pay people and send them one their way, you don't administer it or waste effort on bureaucracy you just accept that there is some slack in the system.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Training the entire populace in basic civil defense or "pre military" skills is a win because they use those skills in daily life. You wouldn't actively call them up except in a draft situation, and at that point you evaluate, train, and direct them. But basic stuff like "if you are on fire, stop drop and roll" or whatever is useful to have widely disseminated. The other advantage of paying people for being trained and theoretically available is it gets around the "moral" objection to basic income unfairly paying people to do nothing.

by strlen 13y ago

rdl 13y ago

One option might be to require reserve service in exchange for basic income. If a citizen does ~2-4 weeks a year of reserve service (in the military or in other public-good roles), and is potentially available in emergencies (either long-term defense callups, or just public training in EMS and available as a first responder if nearby), give ~12k/yr equivalent in basic income/negative taxation. The disabled or really useless would be another problem, but I think that's a smaller population than is currently on public or private disability.

Tsagadai 13y ago
You still aren't listening to the point about low value work. Do you want to be in a military with armed people behind you who have no interest in being there, doing a good job or your welfare? Conscription is a horrible failure of a policy and there is no logical point trying to bring it back for any reason. Bringing it back to force people who don't want to be in paid, productive work to work for free is a terrible, terrible idea. The main advantage of a basic income/negative tax system is that you just pay people and send them one their way, you don't administer it or waste effort on bureaucracy you just accept that there is some slack in the system.
- rdl 13y ago
  Training the entire populace in basic civil defense or "pre military" skills is a win because they use those skills in daily life. You wouldn't actively call them up except in a draft situation, and at that point you evaluate, train, and direct them. But basic stuff like "if you are on fire, stop drop and roll" or whatever is useful to have widely disseminated. The other advantage of paying people for being trained and theoretically available is it gets around the "moral" objection to basic income unfairly paying people to do nothing.