Down with jobs!

A little while ago Wendy linked me to a great piece on the debate between universal basic income and guaranteed jobs.  The first is the plan of simply giving every adult money regardless of their situation, the second is the plan of giving everyone a job, no matter their qualifications.  I have been long sold on the idea of UBI but this concept of guaranteed jobs is new to me, and the article does a great job of demolishing the idea that guaranteed jobs are of any use.

(The site I linked to often has stuff I disagree with, but I think this particular article was bang on.)

There are all kinds of reasons why guaranteed jobs are a disaster.  You can't give the guy living under a bridge who yells GRUNNNGH at everyone who passes by a job.  That guy will destroy more value that he could ever generate.  Also guaranteed jobs are a gigantic problem in areas with low population density - a guaranteed job may work in a big city where there is probably something you can bus to, but it is worthless out in the country where you might have to travel hours just to get to your government supplied job.

Guaranteed jobs don't help people who are trying to care for ill relatives, or parents staying home with children, or entrepreneurs, or the disabled.  They do one thing really well though - they give the rich the satisfaction of punishing the poor.  As we all know, there is a lot of desire out there to punish the poor, particularly if you are going to give them enough money to stay alive.

UBI is a gigantic break from that mindset.  Instead of begrudgingly giving poor people money and making them suffer to earn it, you just give everyone enough to have a basic subsistence.  Disabled people don't have to go through the circus of qualifying for aid, and if they can work a part time job or something then they can just add that on to their UBI, which helps them contribute while also having more control over their lives.

On UBI people doing useful but non monetized work like raising kids or caring for elders get to live.  They can work some, if possible, but their efforts towards supporting society aren't expected to be strictly supported by other family members.

I remember years ago when such a thing was being talked about here - making welfare recipients work for their money.  At the time it seemed like a reasonable plan to me, because when I thought of people on welfare I thought of perfectly able bodied, average people who were just lazy and wanting to watch TV all day instead of working.  I was young, admittedly, and foolish.  I wasn't aware yet just how few welfare recipients actually fit that profile. 

Wanting people to contribute to some extent to society is a perfectly reasonable desire.  But guaranteed jobs only ensure that people are clocking in, not that they do anything useful.  Digging holes and filling them back in again is worthless, and certainly not better than taking care of other people or even just creating something new, whether it be a business or an idea or art.  We need to get away from the idea that everyone has to clock in to some damn thing or other to warrant being alive, and set up our world so that we all get enough to get along, and that clocking in is one way to get all the other fancy stuff you want.