
Job Guarantee vs. Basic Income - seoguru
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/16-reasons-matt-yglesias-wrong-job-guarantee-vs-basic-income.html
======
viraptor
I'm a bit confused about JG idea. Maybe it's different times now, but it
reminds me of the old system in Poland where everyone doing something in their
assigned work got paid. As a result, there were many people simply showing up
for work and expecting to be paid. People on higher positions in common jobs
often took the "I rule over customers" mentality. (think shop managers) Even
worse for services, any public/government work, etc. The quality of work
simply did not matter.

There's even a saying people will still recognise, which means something close
to: whether you stand or lay down, you're entitled to the wage.

Sure, the political system was completely different, what you could spend your
money on was limited, but... This image is in the back of my mind when people
talk about JG - and I'm not sure why it wouldn't happen again.

~~~
kephra
But when capitalist talk about Job Guarantee, they do not want to reinstall
the stable jobs of communist times. Regardless if there was work or profit,
you had a job in DDR or Poland.

But they think about 1 Euro Jobs like those installed in Germany by the
aSocial unDemocratic Party.

The result of the 1 Euro jobs here is that that those 1 Euro workers do the
work of former employed people. Not as a worker, but as a state owned slave,
for the benefit of capitalist who exploits them.

So its driving wages down to the bottom, because everybody fears losing his
job, and accepts any shitty job, just to avoid becoming an 1 Euro slave
worker. And those areas where 1 Euro slave workers are "employed" no longer
pay living wages, because they can get workers for free.

PS: One of the most evil examples what this "Job Guarantee" might look like
happened in the city of Oldenburg: The city just forced 1 Euro slaves to
collect the waste, when waste collectors went on strike. Great Job Guarantee
is a union killer. Thats exactly what the capitalist want.

~~~
avz
This is a misrepresentation.

The purpose of the program is definitely not to create an army of slave
workers for the German state.

The so called "Ein-Euro-Jobs" are intended to help people on long-term
unemployment benefits to become active and grow accustomed to regular work.

Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_opportunities_with_addi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_opportunities_with_additional_expenses_compensation)

~~~
kephra
Thats how they sell it, but the real goal was very different. To cite our
former Chancellor Schröder:

" Wir müssen und wir haben unseren Arbeitsmarkt liberalisiert. Wir haben einen
der besten Niedriglohnsektoren aufgebaut, den es in Europa gibt. Ich rate
allen, die sich damit beschäftigen, sich mit den Gegebenheiten auseinander zu
setzen, und nicht nur mit den Berichten über die Gegebenheiten. Deutschland
neigt dazu, sein Licht unter den Scheffel zu stellen, obwohl es das Falscheste
ist, was man eigentlich tun kann. Wir haben einen funktionierenden
Niedriglohnsektor aufgebaut, und wir haben bei der Unterstützungszahlung
Anreize dafür, Arbeit aufzunehmen, sehr stark in den Vordergrund gestellt. "

Translation by Google:

" We must and we have liberalized our labor market. We have built one of the
best low-wage sectors, which is available in Europe. I advise all who deal
with it, to deal with the realities apart, and not only with the reports on
the circumstances. Germany tends to put his light under a bushel, even though
it is the worst thing you can actually do. We have built a working low-wage
sector, and we have in supporting payment incentives to take up work, provided
very strong in the foreground. "

s/supporting payment incentives/if you do not accept the 1 Euro job, we cut
your social security payment/

The result of this wage dumping can be seen in the Euro crisis. People around
Europe become unemployed, and those states collect dept, as they can no longer
escape German wage dumping, by lowering their currency.

~~~
avz
If Ein-Euro-Jobs were used by Germany as a wage-dumping tactic then the euro
crisis and consequential unemployment rise in the south of the continent would
lead to increase in the number of people in Ein-Euro-Jobs in Germany. Now,
since these people are counted as unemployed for statistical purposes this
would mean unemployment figures in Germany would be soaring, too. However, the
reverse is happening.

~~~
kephra
People who have an 1 Euro job, or are "educated" to write job applications are
no longer counted as unemployed. This is a nice statistical trick to lower the
high numbers.

And even then the long term unemployment is extreme, with a large north south
and east west imbalance, e.g. Berlin 16,8%, Bremen (my home town) 14,3%, till
Bayern with only 3,4%.

You also need to consider that export oriented wage dumping means to export
unemployment. So those people who have an underpayed job here, cause
unemployment in southern Europe.

~~~
moe
I often hear this sentiment (preferably harshly phrased) and agree with most
of your observations, but what is your proposed solution?

Should Germany act against its own interest and _not_ export its unemployment?

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motters
If there were a basic income guarantee, which I'm in favour of, and if it were
sufficient to fulfil my basic needs (food, clothing, housing, electricity)
then I'd use second hand hardware and become a free software developer full
time. I would be working, but what kind of work I was doing wouldn't be
decided by anyone other than myself. I suspect that the JG schemes (one is
proposed by the Labour party in the UK) would indeed be make-work schemes
producing nothing much of value.

If I had a BIG the kinds of software I'd work on would be:

\- Making self-hosting easy

\- Making encrypted communications easy for anyone to use

\- Mesh networking systems to diminish ISP dependency

\- Simulations of ecosystems, including climate modelling

In other words I'd be able to work on things of real value rather than having
to work on things of little value just to have basic needs met.

~~~
yummyfajitas
And those without your skillset will certainly collect garbage from public
spaces, repave roads and fill in potholes, and all the other boring and
unpleasant tasks that our civilization needs.

This is something I don't understand. All the potholes are filled, all
government buildings are perfectly clean, no new infrastructure projects can
be productively performed? Productively working women already have free child
care provided? The government is already doing everything we want it to do,
and there is no use whatsoever for low skill labor?

~~~
motters
I don't know where you're living, but here in the UK the government only does
a fraction of what ideally people would want and as time goes by it does less
and less. There is indeed plenty of work to be done as you say, but typically
you can't fulfil basic needs while doing those jobs which would enhance the
neighbourhood. This is evidenced by the current phenomenon of the "working
poor" (i.e. people who are working in the private sector but who still
critically depend upon income from the state).

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marvin
Job guarantees kill one of the key advantages of basic income: Basic income
allows us to dramatically reduce the overhead in social services and other
administrative programs that choose who should get paid benefits and weed out
those who abuse the system.

In a world of guaranteed jobs, you would either have to maintain the
administration or force sick people to work. Not to mention that basic income
could have the huge economic advantage of allowing people to productively use
their time to develop products and services they couldn't afford to before.
Some of the earners of basic income will certainly do great things with their
freedom, which will benefit everyone.

~~~
sjtrny
I don't think Job Guarantee proponents are suggesting that the sick and
disabled also have to work. They continue to receive welfare without any work
requirements. I'm not a JG proponent, I just thought your comment was
miscontrueing their position.

~~~
dasmoth
But to implement that, you still need some administration to work out who's
eligible for welfare and who needs to work. Basic Income schemes potentially
eliminate this requirement.

~~~
sjtrny
There will still be a need for admin/bureaucracy with BI. Some people will
need extra benefits because of their circumstances and people will have issues
(e.g. suddenly their payments stop). I'm not convinced BI will decrease the
number of support people since more people will actually be using the service.

------
mhaymo
The writer doesn't justify his insistence that a Job Guarantee "IS NOT ‘MAKE-
WORK’". It seems to me that if the primary purpose of a job is to provide
work, then it is by definition make-work.

~~~
tomp
S/he says that government jobs would be those that benefit the community. It's
not hard to come up with examples of those kinds of jobs - care for the
elderly, cheap & healthy kitchens (like kitchens for the homeless, but for
everyone instead), more repair and maintenance of infrastructure or new
infrastructure (e.g. before WW2, German's increased employment by building
highways throughout the country), culture and art events, recycling, running
non-for-profit stores (for many basic items, the margin of the store is much
greater than production costs) ...

IMO, that's much less make-work than advertising, sales and similar
(basically, jobs that exist because your product is not good enough to sell
itself).

~~~
JetSpiegel
No, says the entrepreneur, having the government fix the roads stifles
innovation and impedes the god-given right of some megacorp profiting.They
should hire a company that in turn will hire the same people who would do the
job, except with lower job security and cheaper wages.

And people wonder why the public always gets the short end of the stick.

~~~
dllthomas
There is a difference between, on the one hand, needing something done and
hiring people to do it; and on the other needing to employ people and finding
things for them to do.

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jiggy2011
If you have a guaranteed job, can you be fired from it? If so are you cut off
from all income for some period of time? If not, what stops somebody from
turning up and having very low or no productivity and demotivating others?

~~~
dm2
I think Japan has something close to guaranteed job, their culture is somewhat
different from American culture, it would be very interesting to study.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-
il...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-illegal-
japan-workers-are-sent-to-the-boredom-room.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

~~~
dllthomas
What that's talking about is quite different. That's inability to fire from a
private position, this is (approximate) inability to refrain from hiring for a
public position. It's still, certainly, an interesting thing.

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k__
What about stuff that doesn't get paid but need people to work on it?

There is much work to do in community work, free software or fine arts.

The JG will probably only create jobs in the first category. With BIG all
people can choose where they want to work and don't have to base their
decision on the wage the job pays.

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shadowmint
Interesting read, certainly some good points in there.

...but it doesnt address the fundamental issue: You cannot just invent jobs
and be done with it.

A colossal level of bureaucracy would be involved in:

\- picking what job was assigned to whom

\- ensuring jobs did not adversely affect or compete with commercial
enterprise offering similar services*

\- managing training for jobs

\- managing quality of work in jobs

\- managing transport and infrastructure for the labor pool^

\- disputes over 'fairness', 'quality of work', etc.

Its not just messy; it would be a logistical nightmare.

I cant take the suggestion seriously with addressing how you plan to
administer such a system.

(* if you think that wont be an issue, you're fooling yourself; ^obviously
different area will have different labour requirements; its utterly naive to
assume people would not have continually shift to new local areas where labour
was seasonally required)

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qwerta
Employing someone is very expensive. You need to provide equipment, insurance,
safety, management and work. It is much cheaper (less overhead) to just
provide "existential minimum", lets say $7000 a year.

I think root problem is in Americans mentality. Hard work is more valued than
its outcome. Also some demographic groups are always treated as disposable
garbage, they do not deserve support "just for being humans". Help is only for
protected groups.

Also corrupted political system prefers expensive solutions, since it
increases its power and various kickbacks. You can not "extract" much money
from an agency which just forwards social welfare payments (overhead around
2%).

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tiatia
It is a question of time, until a robot, let's say priced about 10.000 US$
with the intelligence of a 12 year old child can replace the majority of
labor, while working 24/7\. IBM did not build Watson to win in Jeopardy I
guess. Then what?

I am more than pessimistic for the future. I take this as an opportunity to
post some of my favorite blog posts. Enjoy!

"There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)"

[http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-
stat...](http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-state-
economy-except-at-a-very-basic-level/)

Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized
[http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-
growt...](http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growth-at-
our-doorstep-but-not-recognized)

Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable
[http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-
energy-...](http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-
consumption-are-inseparable.html)

Galactic-Scale Energy [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-
scale-e...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-
energy/)

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a-saleh
Is there some generic framework for these ideas?

For example, if I simplify my country "social net", it basically is, that
either you have job and pay taxes, or you don't have a job, and you can apply
for government help.

Then we have minimal wage requirement in our law.

I know that a faction in our government argues, that this system has two main
problems:

1) for low income people it might not be worth to search job, because often
they would be paid just a little extra for large amount of work, than they
alredy receive from welfare

2) employers complain, that because of high income taxes and other expeditures
on employees it is not worth for them to employ people that recieve low
salary.

The party proposed to add a fixed sum of money negative income tax to the
income tax rate as a quite elegant solution, resulting basicaly in BIG in the
country.

I wonder how well would that work, because at least it solves these two
problems they stated.

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a-saleh
"Under BIG, production drops, consumption rises, and so do prices. Suddenly,
the value of the BIG grant has been eroded. Great success: the poor are still
poor."

I was under impression, that BIG works on assumption, that production doesn't
drop, because the people that would consider not working are often the people
that wouldn't produce as much.

On the other hand, the rise in compsumption would be fueled by newly found
buying power of the low income population, and that means bussinesses would
care about them more.

For employers BIG would basically mean a flat discount on all of the
employees.

And for government and people with low income it would mean a large reduction
in byrocracy. \-------- Unfortunately lots of these assumptions on BIG are
somewhat culture dependent.

~~~
tomp
> the people that would consider not working are often the people that
> wouldn't produce as much.

What do you mean? The jobs that suck the most and are paid the least are often
the ones that absolutely have to be done (by a human), at least in the today's
societies: garbage collector, construction worker, cleaners, store/fast-food
workers, ...

~~~
warcode
All of the jobs you mention can be done by robots. Some of them can be done by
robots TODAY.

~~~
tomp
Personally, I haven't seen any of the done by robots (except for Roomba, but
that's not even cleaning - I'm talking about things like bathroom, trash, ...
i.e. cleaning of corporate offices). Also, even if it's possible in the next
decade, it will probably be much more expensive and capital intensive than
human labor for quite some time.

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joepie91_
I feel like this article (and many like it) ignore the distinction between
"wanting a job with a salary" and "wanting to have something to do".

The reality is that you don't need to attach a 'salary' to a 'job' to get
people to do something useful. Given the time and resources, they will do so
of their own accord.

Relatedly, a post I wrote on the topic of unemployment a while ago:
[http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2013/03/18/unemployment-
is-i...](http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2013/03/18/unemployment-is-
inevitable-and-thats-not-a-bad-thing/)

~~~
rahimnathwani
In that post, you wrote: "Unemployment is effectively an excess of manpower."

If there is excess manpower, how can we explain the existence of unkempt lawns
and trash on the streets?

~~~
joepie91_
Quite simply; people on an individual basis can still think "meh, I don't feel
like doing it". On the other hand you have people who enjoy doing such work -
yes, they exist - and they are likely to either go "well I'm not getting paid
for it", or they _are_ getting paid for it but are assigned to doing it
elsewhere.

The general perception of "work" in a society greatly influences how
productive people are. I can't even count the amount of times I've been told
that I "don't do work" because I don't have a job with an employer, even
though my working week is significantly longer than a regular one. Until that
perception changes, people will keep being stuck with treating work this way.

------
firstOrder
Unemployment is one of the pillars that capitalism is built on, it is a
structural necessity for profits to exist, so any efforts to relieve it via
reform are doomed to failure. Structural unemployment did not exist in Europe
prior to Europe moving from feudalism to capitalism several centuries ago -
structural unemployment is a creation of capitalism. One need only pick up the
Wall Street Journal or Businessweek during times of low unemployment - there
is great fear that unemployment is getting "too low", meaning everyone who
wants a job can get a job. Since the purpose of capitalism is to generate
profits for rentiers, this makes sense.

The schemes mentioned here and being floated about in Slate and the like are
done in anticipation of how to respond to a sudden, massive increase in
unemployment for low-skilled workers in response to advances in things like
AI. These schemes wouldn't contradict what I said before, because they would
be due to an economic shift where the lever of unemployment for low skilled
workers would mean less, since the increased quantity of unemployed would
change the quality of what unemployment is. The threat of sudden mass
unemployment would mean less to increasing profits, and could potentially
cause social unrest. Like Larry Page's grandfather wandering around a GM plant
with a weapon in his hand during the Flint sit-down strike.

It's obvious that structural unemployment is a creation of capitalism, as it
did not exist in centuries past. From reading the business press's fears of
unemployment getting too low, it should be obvious that big business feels
unemployment is an essential pillar of what they need to keep the system
running as they wish. Despite this history and current expression of views,
people seem to be blind to the reality that not only is the government not
interested in helping unemployed people, but that it is actively promoting
unemployment, and will fight and do anything to keep structural unemployment
in place. It's not an accident trying to be fixed, the existence of ~0%
unemployment is what would be seen as the accident, and any levers to throw
some of those people out of work would (and have been) utilized. While this is
the reality, the standard corporated owned and sponsored hegemonic press is of
course oblivious to all of this. Unemployment isn't an accident government is
trying to fix, when unemployment gets "too low" business and government
actively work to increase unemployment among happily employed people.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour)

------
aidenn0
"10\. The poor and the unemployed want to work (here, here). And as my work on
Argentina showed (9m14s), receiving income is the fifth reason why the poor
wanted to work! Why do BIG advocates presume to know what’s better for the
poor than the poor themselves? BIG does little for those who want to work."

Earlier in the article, he claims that BIG will cause fewer people to work; if
BIG reduces demand for jobs then surely those who want jobs will have an
easier time finding them?

------
namlem
This does raise some interesting points, though I am skeptical that the
government could efficiently create guaranteed jobs. Though I suppose we have
learned a lot since the days of communism, maybe with advanced computing and
data analysis we could actually give everyone a useful job without too much
administrative overhead. I mean, the US government could never pull something
like that off, but perhaps a better-run government could.

------
perfunctory
> 10\. The poor and the unemployed want to work (here, here). And as my work
> on Argentina showed (9m14s), receiving income is the _fifth_ reason why the
> poor wanted to work!

> 13\. The JG does precisely that: recognizes many people want _paid_ work

It looks as if the article confuses work and PAID work. Sure, BIG may lead to
more people quitting their paid jobs. But it might actually increase the
amount of unpaid, yet socially valuable, work.

------
dllthomas
_" Yglesias may not realize it, but all serious academic support for BIG is
based on the idea that many people will quit working"_

 _" BIG does little for those who want to work."_

These seem contradictory. Presumably those who want to work can fill positions
vacated by the many people who quit working (but are still able to express
their needs directly through the market).

------
tn13
You can no guarantee anything that requires resources without compromising
interests/freedom/rights of some other class.

------
shadowmint
Idly either JG and BIG implemented with a custom bitcoin fork and matched with
government backed commodity stores (food, clothing, housing for govcoins)
would be an interesting system.

Particularly it would solve a number of inflation issues around BIG I
imagine... (and motivate people to get off big on to a real job if they wanted
luxury goods).

~~~
dllthomas
Particularly for BIG, you would need some mechanism of determining uniqueness
of users, ending payments to the deceased, &c. That does away with much of the
benefit of a system like bitcoin, without some technologies that (as of yet)
no one has figured out. If you can solve the relevant problems, then I agree
it would be interesting!

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seizethecheese
May unemployed people are so because the jobs available are not pallatable.
Almost everyone I know that doesn't have a job could easily find work washing
dishes or similar. How is this different from a job guarantee, at least for a
large chunk of the population?

~~~
rjbwork
With basic income even the people filling those jobs now won't do them,
forcing businesses to automate that workload and, as the article says, de-
commoditizing the human labor force, and emphasizing a focus on technological
solutions to previously "too cheap to automate" tasks.

~~~
hvidgaard
Not only that. People need income, and thus the employer have an major
advantage. With BIG people do not need the money to the same extend and thus
evaluate the cost/benefit much more fairly. I'm not going to bust my ass off
for 10$ an hour with zero benefits. On the other hand if the same job gave me
30$ I might not mind it.

~~~
dllthomas
_" I'm not going to bust my ass off for 10$ an hour with zero benefits."_

Unless it's to an end I feel passionate about. Then I might do it for $5 or
for free.

------
ThomPete
All I can say is that Job Guarantee is not working in Denmark and that the
administrative overhead alone is insane.

~~~
pinkyand
Can you expand on that please ?

