
Why basic jobs are better than basic incomes - the_duck
https://medium.com/s/free-money/guaranteed-minimum-agriculture-f93a5aa38c97
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WorldMaker
While I applaud the call for more public works initiatives (it's easy to
forget how much of America's current infrastructure was the result of public
works job programs last century), and worryingly agree that "basic jobs" is at
face value in current America "more pragmatic", I still feel like it is
important to question the morality of the Protestant work ethic in modern
America here.

Despite centuries of cultural memetic RNA from that foundational insistence on
the Protestant work ethic, leisure is not a sin [1], and no attempt at UBI
could possibly work if we continue to denigrate it. "They need purpose and
responsibility," is an interesting moral judgment born from that. One can find
many purposes in leisure, and not all societal responsibilities are encode-
able as jobs (there are obvious ones such as housework/chores that capitalism
just about outright ignores in salary determination, for example).

The balancing act too between what constitutes leisure and what "job worthy"
creative expression/exploration is a fascinating gray zone. Previous works
programs did find interesting uses for artists, writers, photographers, etc.
But building such "jobs" is to some degree bureaucratic red tape to the
creative spirit, and calling it a "job" tends to require progress tracking and
discourage creative failures. Similar too, entrepreneurship as a works program
"job" would discourage certain types of creative risks. UBI at least has the
theoretical hope of allowing people to explore creativity and entrepreneurship
outside of the limited job scopes than a works planner might be able to
imagine to measure if someone is "working" their "basic job" "well".

[1] Pardon the overlapping secular connotation/religious denotation here, but
that intentional dissonance perhaps best illustrates the point. Admittedly,
there are still plenty of religious groups that feel that life without work is
indeed sinful in a religious sense (what remains of the Pennsylvania
Dutch/Amish/Quakers/Shakers/etc), but from a separation of church/state
perspective that is all the more reason not to legislate whether or not
leisure is a sin in a secular sense. (Leisure can be a great liberty; Thomas
Jefferson made sure to add "the pursuit of happiness" to the Declaration of
Independence for multiple reasons.)

