Job guarantees make more sense to me than UBI; the government only has to pay for those who aren't employed elsewhere while it still sets a floor for the entire economy about how bad a job can be, squeezing out jobs that are worse than the JG jobs. But I'm still collecting facts and quite open to being wrong. On my list to read: 'The case for a job guarantee', Tcherneva.
It seems like a no-brainer to me for Social Security to include Guaranteed Employment of a full-time federal minimum-wage income position.
Just add a debit card to the social security card citizens receive. They can use the debit card to withdraw up to a full-time minimum-wage amt of money per month. If they take the income, it's assumed they did some kind of proportional work. I don't think there's even any need to police it.
Simply characterizing it as employment and establishing the expectation that consumers of the program perform work for their country/community commensurate for what they withdraw is miles better than UBI in my opinion. Most people are honest, and frankly a lot of the people I know would work more hours than full-time, it'd just be volunteer-like work helping people and cleaning up around the neighborhood, and probably creating a lot of public art. Positive things to facilitate, and largely not things for-profit businesses would pay for.
It's also nice to couple it to the already established federal minimum-wage, which already has an (admittedly lacking) process for adjusting to keep up with inflation. We should ensure the minimum-wage reflects a minimum livable wage by modern standards, and guaranteed employment would always provide a worst-case income of a minimum livable wage.
I don't think we're lacking of good options for these style solutions. We're just lacking support in the general public for such a socialist-looking program. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and all that.
What you are suggesting would not be guaranteed employment, it would be UBI wrapped in a lie. Ignoring problems with the system (i.e., fraud) would not address any of the reasons why there is not already UBI in the United States. Your idea is crazy beyond the Overton window.
Full employment never works. Famous example is the soviets. Neither can UBI be penciled into an actual economy. UBI would bankrupt the nation, so would a large scale job guarantee program as described.
I am never surprised. When asked to put a dollar value on a program the overeducated go on bleeting about higher order non-sense. It's hard to take any of these academic exercises seriously. Especially when they spawn from fields as fraudulent as economics and social science.
Please stay where you are. Officers have been dispatched to your location to assist you.
In all seriousness it’s because employers hold nearly all of the bargaining power and mindshare. The recent focus on central banks raising interest rates to decrease economic activity with inflation as a primary target and restraining wage growth as a secondary target shows that decreasing workers’ average bargaining position is official government policy. In the US they sugarcoat it by saying they’re trying to control inflation and only have unemployment go up marginally. In New Zealand they’re more explicit and say tens of thousands of people need to become unemployed to stabilize inflation.
We don't, but we do consider prolonged unemployment as a personal failure.
Having Short-term unemployment is fine and a sign of a working economy where people move between companies. Long-term unemployment is something else entirely: it's a sign of people quitting the labor market and deciding not to contribute to society.
People here love Marx, yet they keep forgetting what he had to say on that issue: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Long-term unemployment means you're not giving according to your ability (and thus shouldn't receive according to your needs).
> Long-term unemployment means you're not giving according to your ability (and thus shouldn't receive according to your needs).
Or there are literally not enough jobs because of failed economic policy. We have this situation in Germany right now. There are about 2 million job openings, and official statistics report about 2 million unemployed. That makes it sound like it's only a matching problem (i.e. if we just enticed the unemployed to retrain or relocate, everything would sort itself out). But the statistics are "optimized" to look nicer than they actually are: Unemployed over the age of 58 are just taken out entirely, as is everyone currently undergoing retraining. (It's a meme in Germany that the unemployment office will send people to Microsoft Word courses for the 10th time because being in the course means they don't show up in the statistic.)
And then there's also the issue of people working part-time who actually want a full-time job. When you add all that up, we have around 4 million unused FTEs in Germany competing for 2 million open positions. That cannot possibly add up. If the politicians were serious about getting everyone into a job (which they sure say a lot into microphones), economic policy would need to be changed to incentivize job creation a whole lot more (e.g. by cutting down on NIMBYism in the construction and renewable energy sectors).
> UBI would bankrupt the nation, so would a large scale job guarantee program as described.
> When asked to put a dollar value on a program the overeducated go on bleeting about higher order non-sense.
Being overeducated, I'll take a shot: 6 million US unemployed x $15/hour x 2000 hours/year x 2 to cover benefits, SSI, Medicare, etc works out to 360 Billion. Which is about 1/4 of the defense department budget. A lot of money but not disproportionate to what we spend on other things.
Just an aside here, that if that UBI was in exchange for ten or twelve hours a week of mostly-unskilled work from the unemployed on whatever the city or town decides is valuable, it might make a very visible improvement to community life.
You appear to think I meant to take 1/4 of the defense budget. That was only to illustrate the magnitude. You could cherry-pick your favorite US budgetary item instead and spare history.
I think there's room for distinguishing between full employment and job guarantees: providing a job for anyone who wants one doesn't have to be the same as requiring everyone to work.
[0] 'http://pavlina-tcherneva.net/the-case-for-a-job-guarantee/'