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I find the article to be unfortunately meandering, but it contains an important question slightly more than half-way down: Why all the popular support for a Bas

I find the article to be unfortunately meandering, but it contains an important question slightly more than half-way down: Why all the popular support for a Basic Income Guarantee rather than the arguably superior Job Guarantee (though the two ideas are not mutually exclusive)? The author makes some frank points that BIG advocates should take to heart. This paragraph really hits home: Too many of the fantasies about a basic income guarantee seem to revolve around a tiny minority, like the individual who will write a great novel on his stipend. Let’s be real: the overwhelming majority of people who think they might like to write a book don’t have the self-displine to do so in the absence of external pressure. And that’s before you get to the question of whether it will turn out to be good enough for anyone but the author to want to read it.

gnaritas 12y ago
> Why all the popular support for a Basic Income Guarantee rather than the arguably superior Job Guarantee Why the obsession with a labor based economy when the whole point of a basic income is that we're moving away from labor being needed? You can't base the distribution of resources for a society on labor when the population exceeds the necessary labor force. This puritan work ethic where you judge people by how hard they work is becoming antiquated, time to try something else. In an automated world where labor isn't of great value, people still need to be able to live meaningful lives. A job guarantee is not superior, it in fact misses the entire point of basic income.
wmf 12y ago
If the guaranteed jobs are make-work or "bullshit" then it seems better to just give people money. But I agree with the article that there is plenty of work that could be done (like refreshing crumbling infrastructure) if there was political will to use deficit spending to pay for it.
- owen_griffiths 12y ago
  RE Deficit spending, not sure what country you're in, but the US Government has done $5 trillion dollars of deficit spending over the last 5 years (per year it is ranged from 500bn - 1.3 Tn). I guess you can always do more, but it hasn't exactly been austerity over here.
  - eru 12y ago
    More; or better.
dllthomas 12y ago
I object to a job guarantee because I think people's time has value and I don't want it squandered on makework. While I think people can find important dignity in work, I think paying people to do things that aren't needed destroys that dignity.
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  Especially when the "worker" figures it out.
- nhaehnle 12y ago
  The argument is that there are plenty of things that are obviously useful (or even needed) which aren't being done today because too many people incorrectly equate "useful" with "profitable" - and so only the profitable things end up being done, while many useful things remain undone. The fact that your strawman appears so frequently shows that knowledge about the details of a Job Guarantee are not spread widely enough yet.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    It's not a straw man. How do you tell apart a job guarantee from any old program doing things that need doing? The difference is that, with the job guarantee you may eventually have to start creating make-work; otherwise, it is not a guarantee. I oppose make-work, so I oppose the guarantee. I do not, on these grounds, oppose creation of jobs to do things that are not make-work.
Retra 12y ago
This is a gross oversimplification. People who are motivated by external pressure are motivated to do what, exactly? What external pressure dictates. And if you found yourself unmotivated due to lack of external pressure, _you could just get a job._ Basic income doesn't make working illegal, does it? If someone thought they could write a book, well, now they can try. So what if they fail? Then they will get another job. Or they will get better at writing. Or they will live in poverty. Do you really think external motivation will disappear because people have subsistence income? Do you think you'd like to sit around for years on end doing nothing and living in poverty while everybody else goes out there and makes their lives better? What's not 'external motivation' about that? --- Guaranteeing someone a McJob really only wastes people's time. Their employers know it; they could get better work cheaper from a machine. They know it; the job sucks and isn't useful. We all know it. It would be shit policy.
johnchristopher 12y ago
I have dabbled for a bit in social work associations (some sponsored by local authorities, some not) and if it's a myth that basic income would allow our strawman to become a (good) (and successful) (and well paid) writer it's also a myth that most people would chose to try that. Most would/could just go on being useful to their communities. Many jobless people are still doing things everyday, they just don't get paid for it.
btilly 12y ago
Why do you consider a job guarantee superior? A basic income system helps people who are mentally ill, sick, caring for family, or otherwise have difficulty holding down a job. Without demeaning them by forcing them to demonstrate that they can't hold down a job right now. Thereby leading to endless arguments about whether they are truly incapacitated or simply lazy. To me that's a pretty good social reason for preferring unconditional handouts.
aetherson 12y ago
I think that much of the support of GBI comes from people dubious of technocratic competence. That is, there is much MORE involved in a jobs guarantee: you have to actually come up with all those jobs. And you have to provide managers for them. And this whole system of employing people -- and you could pretty easily screw all that up. One kind of exciting thing that might happen in a GBI system is that maybe someone who right now can't get a job because, for example, he lacks skills or has a dubious past, could get a job paying something really, really low ($1 per hour, maybe), but it's all on top of his GBI, so he's marginally better off, and he could either prove that he was all along actually valuable, or learn things that make him a valuable worker, and then start up the income ladder. That seems much harder in a guaranteed job system. I mean, you could imagine how it might work in a guaranteed job system, where the guaranteed job does teach/prove generally useful skills, and where the guaranteed job is managed competently enough that private employers trust that people who have good performance ratings at the guaranteed job (or whatever) genuinely are good workers, but it's much less direct. The article is correct that it's a little insane to focus much on people living on GBI and writing a novel, and only marginally less insane to focus on people living on GBI and trying to, say, start a business that will genuinely prove to be economically expansionary, but I think it's less crazy to focus on people whose employability is currently below the floor of the minimum wage, but who might be worth taking a chance on at a very low wage.
- elihu 12y ago
  I think that guaranteed income shouldn't replace minimum wage. The reason is that when workers are willing to work for $1 an hour "for the experience", you're basically just subsidizing companies that don't pay a living wage to their employees. If you want to be a volunteer, or you want to be a startup founder and be compensated in equity, that's fine. I'm just not okay with the idea of shifting the cost of employing workers in dead-end, menial jobs onto the government.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    With a (sufficiently high) guaranteed income, there is no such thing as a "living wage." A "living wage" is $0. And it goes to everyone, so it's not as though the government is in fact "subsidizing" any business -- they pay the same amount of guaranteed income whether the minimum wage is $0 or $100, whether people are employed or unemployed. A guaranteed income should absolutely reduce the minimum wage. That's one of its major benefits: redistributing wealth without distorting the market. And I wouldn't worry about the idea that any rich people (the people who presumably you're ultimately worried about subsidizing when you use the shorthand "subsidizing companies") are going to be unfairly benefited by this scheme: it's pretty massive wealth redistribution from the wealthy to everyone else.

gnaritas 12y ago

> Why all the popular support for a Basic Income Guarantee rather than the arguably superior Job Guarantee Why the obsession with a labor based economy when the whole point of a basic income is that we're moving away from labor being needed? You can't base the distribution of resources for a society on labor when the population exceeds the necessary labor force. This puritan work ethic where you judge people by how hard they work is becoming antiquated, time to try something else. In an automated world where labor isn't of great value, people still need to be able to live meaningful lives. A job guarantee is not superior, it in fact misses the entire point of basic income.

wmf 12y ago

If the guaranteed jobs are make-work or "bullshit" then it seems better to just give people money. But I agree with the article that there is plenty of work that could be done (like refreshing crumbling infrastructure) if there was political will to use deficit spending to pay for it.

owen_griffiths 12y ago
RE Deficit spending, not sure what country you're in, but the US Government has done $5 trillion dollars of deficit spending over the last 5 years (per year it is ranged from 500bn - 1.3 Tn). I guess you can always do more, but it hasn't exactly been austerity over here.
- eru 12y ago
  More; or better.

dllthomas 12y ago

I object to a job guarantee because I think people's time has value and I don't want it squandered on makework. While I think people can find important dignity in work, I think paying people to do things that aren't needed destroys that dignity.

AnimalMuppet 12y ago
Especially when the "worker" figures it out.
nhaehnle 12y ago
The argument is that there are plenty of things that are obviously useful (or even needed) which aren't being done today because too many people incorrectly equate "useful" with "profitable" - and so only the profitable things end up being done, while many useful things remain undone. The fact that your strawman appears so frequently shows that knowledge about the details of a Job Guarantee are not spread widely enough yet.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  It's not a straw man. How do you tell apart a job guarantee from any old program doing things that need doing? The difference is that, with the job guarantee you may eventually have to start creating make-work; otherwise, it is not a guarantee. I oppose make-work, so I oppose the guarantee. I do not, on these grounds, oppose creation of jobs to do things that are not make-work.

Retra 12y ago

This is a gross oversimplification. People who are motivated by external pressure are motivated to do what, exactly? What external pressure dictates. And if you found yourself unmotivated due to lack of external pressure, _you could just get a job._ Basic income doesn't make working illegal, does it? If someone thought they could write a book, well, now they can try. So what if they fail? Then they will get another job. Or they will get better at writing. Or they will live in poverty. Do you really think external motivation will disappear because people have subsistence income? Do you think you'd like to sit around for years on end doing nothing and living in poverty while everybody else goes out there and makes their lives better? What's not 'external motivation' about that? --- Guaranteeing someone a McJob really only wastes people's time. Their employers know it; they could get better work cheaper from a machine. They know it; the job sucks and isn't useful. We all know it. It would be shit policy.

johnchristopher 12y ago

I have dabbled for a bit in social work associations (some sponsored by local authorities, some not) and if it's a myth that basic income would allow our strawman to become a (good) (and successful) (and well paid) writer it's also a myth that most people would chose to try that. Most would/could just go on being useful to their communities. Many jobless people are still doing things everyday, they just don't get paid for it.

btilly 12y ago

Why do you consider a job guarantee superior? A basic income system helps people who are mentally ill, sick, caring for family, or otherwise have difficulty holding down a job. Without demeaning them by forcing them to demonstrate that they can't hold down a job right now. Thereby leading to endless arguments about whether they are truly incapacitated or simply lazy. To me that's a pretty good social reason for preferring unconditional handouts.

aetherson 12y ago

I think that much of the support of GBI comes from people dubious of technocratic competence. That is, there is much MORE involved in a jobs guarantee: you have to actually come up with all those jobs. And you have to provide managers for them. And this whole system of employing people -- and you could pretty easily screw all that up. One kind of exciting thing that might happen in a GBI system is that maybe someone who right now can't get a job because, for example, he lacks skills or has a dubious past, could get a job paying something really, really low ($1 per hour, maybe), but it's all on top of his GBI, so he's marginally better off, and he could either prove that he was all along actually valuable, or learn things that make him a valuable worker, and then start up the income ladder. That seems much harder in a guaranteed job system. I mean, you could imagine how it might work in a guaranteed job system, where the guaranteed job does teach/prove generally useful skills, and where the guaranteed job is managed competently enough that private employers trust that people who have good performance ratings at the guaranteed job (or whatever) genuinely are good workers, but it's much less direct. The article is correct that it's a little insane to focus much on people living on GBI and writing a novel, and only marginally less insane to focus on people living on GBI and trying to, say, start a business that will genuinely prove to be economically expansionary, but I think it's less crazy to focus on people whose employability is currently below the floor of the minimum wage, but who might be worth taking a chance on at a very low wage.

elihu 12y ago
I think that guaranteed income shouldn't replace minimum wage. The reason is that when workers are willing to work for $1 an hour "for the experience", you're basically just subsidizing companies that don't pay a living wage to their employees. If you want to be a volunteer, or you want to be a startup founder and be compensated in equity, that's fine. I'm just not okay with the idea of shifting the cost of employing workers in dead-end, menial jobs onto the government.
- aetherson 12y ago
  With a (sufficiently high) guaranteed income, there is no such thing as a "living wage." A "living wage" is $0. And it goes to everyone, so it's not as though the government is in fact "subsidizing" any business -- they pay the same amount of guaranteed income whether the minimum wage is $0 or $100, whether people are employed or unemployed. A guaranteed income should absolutely reduce the minimum wage. That's one of its major benefits: redistributing wealth without distorting the market. And I wouldn't worry about the idea that any rich people (the people who presumably you're ultimately worried about subsidizing when you use the shorthand "subsidizing companies") are going to be unfairly benefited by this scheme: it's pretty massive wealth redistribution from the wealthy to everyone else.