4 ms·

How does having someone do busy-work in exchange for the basic income address any of the objections?

by chc 13y ago

yummyfajitas 13y ago
Objection (1) - a BJ creates no disincentive for work. You can earn $7.25/hour at the BJ or $7.50 at McDs. Objection (2) - it reduces the incentives of immigration with the intent of collecting welfare, thereby reducing the objections to immigration. Objection (3) - due to the fact that it has no disincentives for work, and the economic cost will be far less than a BI ( I did some back of the envelope calculations here http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic_job.html http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic... ), it's far less likely to reduce growth than a BI.
- chc 13y ago
  > Objection (1) - a BJ creates no disincentive for work. You can earn $7.25/hour at the BJ or $7.50 at McDs. If the work they are doing has little value — which seems like it would have to be the case, since otherwise we'd already be paying all these people $7.25 an hour to do it — I don't see how it's substantially different from idleness. It seems like you're basically replacing "Do whatever you want and we'll pay you a basic income" with "Do a meaningless ritual as half-heartedly as possible and we'll pay you a basic income." In fact, I'd say a Basic Job program might disincentivize meaningful work more than a Basic Income. Somebody could start a business using their Basic Income, but a Basic Job would not provide the same opportunity.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    With a BI you have three options while still getting paid - productive work, unproductive work or Halo 3. With a BJ, you have only two options - productive work or less productive work. Some of the people who would (given the option) choose Halo 3 will now choose productive work. That will be a net gain for society. Further, we will get some value out of the Basic Jobs. We might pay $7.25/hour for the DMV to be $3.00 cleaner, for a net loss of only $4.25 rather than $7.25. We tried this scheme once already and got a national park system for our trouble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps It's also vastly cheaper than a BI because most people will choose not to use the BJ. Rather than giving $7.25 to 300 million Americans you only give it to 30-40 million.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  > Objection (1) - a BJ creates no disincentive for work. You can earn $7.25/hour at the BJ or $7.50 at McDs. That's the problem, isn't it? It still creates a disincentive for "real" work. You get people who take and stay in the basic job instead of finding a "real" job because the basic job is no harder to do and much easier to get, which reduces economic productivity because the basic job is less economically useful than a bona fide mutually beneficial transaction between private parties. And someone who spends all day working the basic job in order to not starve doesn't then have as much time to earn a degree, practice making art or music, volunteer at the local community center, write open source software or any of a variety of other things that are more personally rewarding and socially valuable than digging holes and filling them back in. > Objection (2) - it reduces the incentives of immigration with the intent of collecting welfare, thereby reducing the objections to immigration. So you don't give immigrants the basic income right away. > Objection (3) - due to the fact that it has no disincentives for work, and the economic cost will be far less than a BI ( I did some back of the envelope calculations here http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic.. http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic.... ), it's far less likely to reduce growth than a BI. What happens when you account for the preference of those making minimum wage to take the basic job over a job that requires much seeking and interviewing to get but pays the same amount, and the cost of paying people to do unnecessary things when they could be doing productive things like working to improve their marketability for higher paying jobs?
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    The simple solution to that is to make the Basic Job worse than other jobs - for example reduce the pay to $7.00/hour and don't make them easy jobs. Then any private sector job will be preferable.
    - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      That doesn't do anything to address forcing people with no skills to do meaningless labor instead of spending their time to learn new skills. And making the labor intentionally hard just to make it undesirable seems unreasonably cruel, especially since the entire premise behind a basic job is to provide a job where none other is available, meaning that choosing to take a private sector job is by definition not possible for many people or the program would be unnecessary. Whereas reducing the pay leaves you in the position of either not providing a sufficient safety net, or having to raise the minimum wage (and correspondingly increase "real" unemployment) just in order to make it sufficiently higher than the amount set for the basic job.
- notahacker 13y ago
  In response to (2), most would-be immigrants dream of entering the US with the intent of picking up work, and to be politically feasible in the US, the BJ would have to offer higher (PPP-adjusted) wages in better working conditions than most people expect in the developing world. BJ jobs would be very attractive to most would-be immigrants. Since BJ labour generally provides less value per hour of work to taxpayers than it costs them to pay for the programme, taxpayers will still want the programme to be as small as possible, which means it's still going to be politically unfeasible to get much closer to open borders.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    True - abolishing the welfare state entirely would be better for the cause of immigration than a BJ. I'm contrasting a BJ to a BI or the current system.

How does having someone do busy-work in exchange for the basic income address any of the objections?

by chc 13y ago

How does having someone do busy-work in exchange for the basic income address any of the objections?

Objection (1) - a BJ creates no disincentive for work. You can earn $7.25/hour at the BJ or $7.50 at McDs. Objection (2) - it reduces the incentives of immigration with the intent of collecting welfare, thereby reducing the objections to immigration. Objection (3) - due to the fact that it has no disincentives for work, and the economic cost will be far less than a BI ( I did some back of the envelope calculations here http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic_job.html http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic... ), it's far less likely to reduce growth than a BI.

chc 13y ago
> Objection (1) - a BJ creates no disincentive for work. You can earn $7.25/hour at the BJ or $7.50 at McDs. If the work they are doing has little value — which seems like it would have to be the case, since otherwise we'd already be paying all these people $7.25 an hour to do it — I don't see how it's substantially different from idleness. It seems like you're basically replacing "Do whatever you want and we'll pay you a basic income" with "Do a meaningless ritual as half-heartedly as possible and we'll pay you a basic income." In fact, I'd say a Basic Job program might disincentivize meaningful work more than a Basic Income. Somebody could start a business using their Basic Income, but a Basic Job would not provide the same opportunity.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  With a BI you have three options while still getting paid - productive work, unproductive work or Halo 3. With a BJ, you have only two options - productive work or less productive work. Some of the people who would (given the option) choose Halo 3 will now choose productive work. That will be a net gain for society. Further, we will get some value out of the Basic Jobs. We might pay $7.25/hour for the DMV to be $3.00 cleaner, for a net loss of only $4.25 rather than $7.25. We tried this scheme once already and got a national park system for our trouble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps It's also vastly cheaper than a BI because most people will choose not to use the BJ. Rather than giving $7.25 to 300 million Americans you only give it to 30-40 million.
AnthonyMouse 13y ago
> Objection (1) - a BJ creates no disincentive for work. You can earn $7.25/hour at the BJ or $7.50 at McDs. That's the problem, isn't it? It still creates a disincentive for "real" work. You get people who take and stay in the basic job instead of finding a "real" job because the basic job is no harder to do and much easier to get, which reduces economic productivity because the basic job is less economically useful than a bona fide mutually beneficial transaction between private parties. And someone who spends all day working the basic job in order to not starve doesn't then have as much time to earn a degree, practice making art or music, volunteer at the local community center, write open source software or any of a variety of other things that are more personally rewarding and socially valuable than digging holes and filling them back in. > Objection (2) - it reduces the incentives of immigration with the intent of collecting welfare, thereby reducing the objections to immigration. So you don't give immigrants the basic income right away. > Objection (3) - due to the fact that it has no disincentives for work, and the economic cost will be far less than a BI ( I did some back of the envelope calculations here http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic.. http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic.... ), it's far less likely to reduce growth than a BI. What happens when you account for the preference of those making minimum wage to take the basic job over a job that requires much seeking and interviewing to get but pays the same amount, and the cost of paying people to do unnecessary things when they could be doing productive things like working to improve their marketability for higher paying jobs?
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  The simple solution to that is to make the Basic Job worse than other jobs - for example reduce the pay to $7.00/hour and don't make them easy jobs. Then any private sector job will be preferable.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    That doesn't do anything to address forcing people with no skills to do meaningless labor instead of spending their time to learn new skills. And making the labor intentionally hard just to make it undesirable seems unreasonably cruel, especially since the entire premise behind a basic job is to provide a job where none other is available, meaning that choosing to take a private sector job is by definition not possible for many people or the program would be unnecessary. Whereas reducing the pay leaves you in the position of either not providing a sufficient safety net, or having to raise the minimum wage (and correspondingly increase "real" unemployment) just in order to make it sufficiently higher than the amount set for the basic job.
notahacker 13y ago
In response to (2), most would-be immigrants dream of entering the US with the intent of picking up work, and to be politically feasible in the US, the BJ would have to offer higher (PPP-adjusted) wages in better working conditions than most people expect in the developing world. BJ jobs would be very attractive to most would-be immigrants. Since BJ labour generally provides less value per hour of work to taxpayers than it costs them to pay for the programme, taxpayers will still want the programme to be as small as possible, which means it's still going to be politically unfeasible to get much closer to open borders.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  True - abolishing the welfare state entirely would be better for the cause of immigration than a BJ. I'm contrasting a BJ to a BI or the current system.