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>you can alleviate these negative effects by replacing a basic income guarantee with a basic job guarantee Since a lot of industrialized countries have had hig
by iSnow 13y ago
>you can alleviate these negative effects by replacing a basic income guarantee with a basic job guarantee
Since a lot of industrialized countries have had high unemployment for years, if not decades, that seems like an impossible idea. It might even be worse because if you send the unemployed to clean parks and plant trees, you effectively destroy a labor market for gardeners.
I don't know if a "Mincome" would work but if you want to guarantee everyone a job, you need some pretty clever ideas how to create those jobs - preferably without negative side-effects on existing low-wage markets.
- tptacek 13y agoThe basic job doesn't need to be economically valuable; it can literally be make-work, and is there to correct the incentives, not to (say) clean the parks.
- swift 13y agoThese are human beings we're talking about, with ideas and dreams and goals. I find the idea of wasting their lives with 'make-work' morally reprehensible. We should be trying to free them up to focus on their dreams and big ideas, not throwing away their potential uselessly.
- tptacek 13y agoI'm not sure what this has to do with my point. I was responding to a comment that worried that "basic job" programs would sabotage labor markets, and merely observed that problem had a simple solution.
- swift 13y agoI understood what you were saying. My point is that the "simple solution" you propose is not really a solution at all. If that's the best solution we have for implementing a "basic job guarantee", then such a thing is unworkable.
- iSnow 13y agoThis is a Dickensian nightmare that kind of reminds me of the workhouse of old. Only problem is we don't need oakum today.
- tptacek 13y agoThe need for people to live on state-issued subsistence wages seems like the nightmare to me.