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[Guaranteed Jobs vs Basic Income]: Socialist Cage Match
Astaereth
In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about a Universal Basic Income, which is where the government gives everybody enough money for the basic necessities of life and if you want more you can go find a job.
There’s also been a lot of talk this year about a proposed Jobs Guarantee, which is where the government will hire you at a liveable wage to do hopefully useful things.
The former is already being tested in some places, while the latter is somewhat vague on the details as of yet.
Pros of Basic Income: understands that in a future increasingly automated, there simply may not be jobs for everyone, while also acknowledging that all humans deserve basic necessities of food, shelter, etc. Individuals are better at fulfilling those needs than government programs, so straight up giving them money may be the most effective way to do that.
Cons: May be politically unfeasible since some of that money would go to minorities. Some argue that without basic pressure to work many people would stop working and the economy would collapse.
Pros of a Jobs Guarantee: People feel more dignified being of use than cashing a check for doing nothing. The work they do could be used to shore up infrastructure, care for those who need it, improve their local community, or achieve grand projects. Increasing the job market as needed to fit demand might give all workers more power when dealing with private employers. Politically might be a powerful Big Idea that could capture voters’ imaginations.
Cons: Make work would be a waste of time for people who, under UBI, could be creating art or inventions rather than digging and filling in holes. Maybe the benefits could be achieved without the guarantee simply by doing more government spending. Administration might be difficult.
I’m not actually sure if these ideas are mutually exclusive, but which do y’all think is better for society? Is either a smart political issue for the left to push, in these midterms or later? Would you personally rather have a guaranteed job or a basic income?
There’s also been a lot of talk this year about a proposed Jobs Guarantee, which is where the government will hire you at a liveable wage to do hopefully useful things.
The former is already being tested in some places, while the latter is somewhat vague on the details as of yet.
Pros of Basic Income: understands that in a future increasingly automated, there simply may not be jobs for everyone, while also acknowledging that all humans deserve basic necessities of food, shelter, etc. Individuals are better at fulfilling those needs than government programs, so straight up giving them money may be the most effective way to do that.
Cons: May be politically unfeasible since some of that money would go to minorities. Some argue that without basic pressure to work many people would stop working and the economy would collapse.
Pros of a Jobs Guarantee: People feel more dignified being of use than cashing a check for doing nothing. The work they do could be used to shore up infrastructure, care for those who need it, improve their local community, or achieve grand projects. Increasing the job market as needed to fit demand might give all workers more power when dealing with private employers. Politically might be a powerful Big Idea that could capture voters’ imaginations.
Cons: Make work would be a waste of time for people who, under UBI, could be creating art or inventions rather than digging and filling in holes. Maybe the benefits could be achieved without the guarantee simply by doing more government spending. Administration might be difficult.
I’m not actually sure if these ideas are mutually exclusive, but which do y’all think is better for society? Is either a smart political issue for the left to push, in these midterms or later? Would you personally rather have a guaranteed job or a basic income?
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Heck!
"Making Inventions": specifically the sciences could use an infinite number of people to help replicate an infinite number of experiments at every level of education/experience.
"Creating Art": paint every fusebox, mural every wall, create public artworks in every square.
Just giving cash to people has a better history of not turning into working garbage jobs or jobs of extremely low value that don't teach skills in order to get welfare.
And people need to be taught that there is no shame in just taking cash from the government when you can use it.
Be it infrastructure, care for less fortunate, clean up, etc. I am sure there is always something to do. The problem always has been getting over the hurdle of paying someone a living wage to do it.
I think basic incomes advantage is that no matter what you do not everyone wants to work or to have a set schedule for their lives so UBI allows freedom.
I'm a sucker for massive government projects so my vote would be everyone works on Space Port One in some way and the associated "get off earth asap" program.
Trotsky versus Stalin. I am betting on Stalin.
For example, give every citizen an index fund account (privately managed or government managed) that returns enough to survive on. The people can own the means of production through stocks.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I would assume that that wouldn't be reliable enough to serve as a replacement for guaranteed income.
In short, there's nothing about a federal jobs guarantee that conflicts with UBI. Moreover, the former better lines up with American cultural mores than the latter, which is a significant political problem that its proponents need to solve.
Like if your choice was between cleaning toilets all day or just riding it out on your UBI until something better came along, who would ever clean the toilets?
UBI is a good idea, and might end up being necessary with how fast automation is moving, but is considerably less politically feasible than the thing we already did once.
Highly-paid professionals, perhaps.
I think a job guarantee is a politically vulnerable plan in that its easy to fail to meet and requires careful stewardship, even assuming good intentions.
Yeah ideally we'd wind up in a situation where you can look around and think "huh, look at that, everyone is getting money coming in no matter what" without ever having the UBI Bill of 20XX
If you guarantee people jobs, but you pay them more than the job is actually worth, then you have literally created a negative income tax with a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit attached.
If you incentivize businesses to hire people and pay them more than the job is actually worth, say with subsidies or income tax breaks, then you have literally created a negative payroll tax with a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit attached.
Fine, let's do a negative income tax! I'm all for that. But stapling NIT to ditch-digging or whatever other nonproductive/semiproductive labor we dream up just to satisfy our Protestant work ethic is dumb.
This is different from a civil service program, where we identify actual needs and then hire people at a decent wage to fill those needs. In that scenario, we're paying people to do productive work - but that doesn't necessarily mean we have enough openings for every unemployed person, or that we have openings that literally anybody can fill regardless of skill, physical fitness, or intelligence. Some people might not be cut out to work for the civil service program, and that should be okay.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
UBI has the stigma of it failing when implemented on a large scale in the past. It may simply be untenable because of that past failure.
I’m really a fan of garunteed jobs though. I think the biggest failure of the recession bailout wasn’t putting a million people to work for 2 years.
What would the guaranteed jobs even be? The dream of having people improve infrastructure is just that, a dream. It isn't happening now and wouldn't with a bunch of unskilled ditch-diggers. Also, this is the US, you aren't about to start up a bunch of crown corporations either
Please explain how a job guarantee gives me "power on the job" or "power over my own life."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I think the goal is to give everyone a way to always be employed. It’s not about paying for itself or some other nonsense.
The Govt is the employment of last resort in this case not the best jobs ever.
I find it no more likely the US will do a 2 trillion investment in infrastructure (which has to be ongoing really since this isn't limited in duration or scope and you will run out of money) in addition to the concept of everybody getting a job from the government (cries of socialism and/or communism will ring high) than just giving people money
UBI can technically be snuck in as a tax cut (everybody loves tax cuts) by just increasing your standard deduction and making it refundable, and then just pay it out in installments, so if you have no income hey a whole bunch of money gets refunded each month
the thesis that people won't go for UBI because they just love working so damn much strikes me as total garbage. this guy isn't really making an argument, he's just dismissing the idea out of a vague sense that it would be impractical
I think that assumes a lot about the quality, location, and pay of the jobs offered; as well as the physical ability and mental well-being of the applicants.
But sure, I will concede that for unskilled workers towards the bottom of the pay scale, a job guarantee might provide them marginally more power (depending on how it's implemented).
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Americans, for better or for worse, love the idea of working to build something vs. just getting something from the government. The latter would 100% be attacked as "reparations." Successfully, given who we just elected.
A lot of comparisons here have been made against the WPA (which wasn't a jobs guarantee, BTW) and I think it bears mentioning that the WPA was also opposed by conservatives at the time and some even tried to portray it as communism.
In general, I'm pretty tired of the progressive attitude that we shouldn't even bother trying to get what we want and we should shoot for some mediocre compromise instead. I'm all for compromise, but you don't start negotiations by low-balling yourself.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
What's the competing quality of UBI? What if you're on UBI for several years and want to get back to work? It feels like a jobs guarantee does a lot of what UBI would do without the extra baggage of being "on the dole" instead of "a productive person".
And like I may not give a shit about that, but I've met several dozen people who are convinced that slackers are around every corner.
I don’t see how your math works. Y can be equal to X. And work product can make up the difference if there is a shortfall.
Like: I think UBI is a better system and I think that simple infrastructure spending is also better (but not as good as UBI) but the math on a jobs guarantee doesn’t automatically fail
It's not strictly a jobs guarantee, but it was explicitly about employment more than it was about public works. That was just the obvious thing for the government to do with all of these people it had on the relief rolls.
It's not that Americans "love working so damn much", but that we are a society built on a founding myth of work (hence the phrase "Puritan work ethic", for example.) In a very fundamental way, UBI runs counter to a core mythos of the American psyche, and as such is a harder sell than you think.
That is a really good idea.
They would, but it would require better pay for such a shitty, demeaning job. You know, like how it was when unions existed.
I legitimately don't think it's low-balling to advocate for a jobs guarantee vs UBI.
I think it's not a good idea to entirely cede the concept of work to capitalism, because it's not really good at getting useful work done.
It doesn't really need to be "Government Jobs"
A lot of places are entirely reliant on federal/state grant funding, but aren't viewed as "government work".
Exactly. Both situations have their advantages, but whichever method is tried, we have to fucking go for it