If it's a job that doesn't actually need to be done (i.e. it's only done to keep the person willing to do it occupied), is it still a job, or is it just a hobby?
You might say it depends on whether it pays or not... but if there's a paycheck in exchange for essentially useless work, it's just welfare in disguise.
During the Great Depression we had the CCC. They did a lot of good work that still benefits us today, building overpasses, flood control, trails and erosion protection in parks, fire lookout towers, roads, planted forests, and a ton of other useful stuff. Most of it wouldn't have gotten done otherwise, but we're better off for having it done.
Having said that, I'd start by simply funding as many small, <18 month road projects as I could. That'd suck up a lot of labor, tighten the labor market quickly and easily.
That's great and all, but that seems like a temporary solution that works because we've underinvested in infrastructure, not something that can absorb large numbers of people indefinitely.
> but if there's a paycheck in exchange for essentially useless work, it's just welfare in disguise
How many devs out there writing framework (or insert your idea of re-inventing the tech wheel again here) of the week at a job only because VCs are willing to burn up their capital for that lottery ticket?
"Useless" is highly subjective when you don't have enough information to render accurate judgment. But this is not the case that we're talking about.
Consider this simplified case. I hire you to sweep the floors in my apartment, and I pay you by the hour. I have a vacuum cleaner, but I don't offer it to you, because then you'd have done the job much sooner, and would be paid less - and I want to pay you more.
Do you see the absurdity in this arrangement? I hope it's fairly obvious. The moral choice in this case is, of course, to let you use the vacuum cleaner, but pay you the same amount as for manual sweeping (minus any amortization costs for the cleaner). I don't lose anything this way, since I've parted with the same amount of money. You have gained, because you've got the same money for less back-breaking work - and now you can either enjoy some extra rest, or perhaps go clean someone else's house and earn more money.
The difference in amount of work you performed in the first case vs the second case is the "useless work" here - and there's nothing subjective about it.
The difference in amount of money paid for a manual sweep and for vacuuming, if you were paid at the same rate for both, is the welfare, because I didn't have to pay you more than the market price of the hour of your work.
Note, I do not consider the term "welfare" to be in any way negative. I just wish we recognized it for what it is, and consciously designed our economic policies around it, instead of pretending that it's something else - in this case, by forcing people to do useless work for it just to satisfy our sense of "propriety" (that they shouldn't "get it for free").
> I have a vacuum cleaner, but I don't offer it to you, because then you'd have done the job much sooner
In a way, this applies to most software work. While each company is just trying to survive, the world is rewriting hundreds of thousands of ERP, CRM, databases, OSes, libraries...
Incidentally, what kind of vacuum do you have? I've gone through a few permutations, and nothing that sucks seems to really compare to a good sweeping. Roomba to Rainbow, it just doesn't pull up the dust the same way. To be fair, the broom leaves a lot of stuff behind, it seems like mopping phase is when stuff gets really clean.
The vacuums have to blow out air too, and this stirs the dust you didn't vacuum yet. As soon as you are done this starts settling again. If you sweep the floor instead, with moist or antistatic cloth, you get most of it and it does not just resettle.
Back on topic I think many people that goes to higher education does not valuate the work of people that clean or do other manual laybour. I have done quite a few different jobs like cleaning, transport and servicing machines and it differs a lot between workplaces how much you feel appreciated. A school for example would not be able to stay open if noone was sweeping the floors every day...
Actually, no. I've tried a couple bagless vacs, they're great on carpet. On a hard floor edges and wierd ridges and valleys seem to always get missed. Sweeping always seems faster when I have to screw around with special cases. Although I'm shooting for clean. Not pseudo clean.
If it's a job that doesn't actually need to be done (i.e. it's only done to keep the person willing to do it occupied), is it still a job, or is it just a hobby?
You might say it depends on whether it pays or not... but if there's a paycheck in exchange for essentially useless work, it's just welfare in disguise.
I think the difference between job and hobby more lies with enjoyment and something that one would consider doing regardless of paycheck. Housework doesn't often reap a paycheck, but few actually enjoy it. That qualifies as work. Arts and crafts is usually a hobby, but some folks make it into a job with a paycheck. Few adults would look at being a cashier or janitor as a hobby. A small subset can be truly both - programming, for example.
I think the much bigger distinction between job and hobby isn't so much that the job is useless (as most jobs aren't quite so), but the demands it places on your life and family. You can stop your hobby to go to your kid's play, but can't always take off work to do the same. Some jobs give much less control over your lifestyle - like trucking - yet refuses to give back enough benefits to compensate. Fast food, retail, and others have other methods of not giving back. I think these are the jobs that are basically welfare in disguise.
> Few adults would look at being a cashier or janitor as a hobby. A small subset can be truly both - programming, for example.
I don't think the distinction is inherent in the job but in the freedom and income that are generally associated with it.
I know a number of people who would be perfectly happy as cashiers if the cashier job had the same flexibility as my programming job. And to harp on UBI again: UBI by giving extra leverage to the employee might actually turn some jobs that are currently low status inflexible drone jobs into something that people will willingly do because they will have more control.
There are plenty of people who have a love hate relationship with their job because of the inflexibility imposed on them by the employer rather than anything that is fundamentally wrong with the core activity.
I don't mean that all employers are evil, they too are constrained by the current reality.
It's a sliding scale. There is a lot of work out there that has some value, but that value is lower than the value the people are willing to do the job for. Let's say there is a job that is 'worth' $5/hour but it costs $12/hour to hire someone to do it. A reasonable argument could be made that the additional value generated for the government/society to get one person off of actual welfare and into the job market could be worth $7/hour.
There's also work where the overall utility generated might be much higher than the cost of the labor, but the utility generated specifically for the business or local government considering the project is lower than the cost of the labor.
Planting trees might only be worth $5/hour for the local lumber company, but the existence value of a new forest to the population generally might be many times that.
I suspect that the amount of potential work that fits into this category is enormous.
This is an orthogonal issue, though - we're just not good at capturing the true benefits (and the true costs, including externalities) for many things.
Broadly speaking, though, I agree. This is one other case where we can do better - instead of constructing a "broken window" in the private sector and have the person repair it to keep them busy, directly utilize their labor for a socially productive task that may not be market-efficient.
But I'm not sure that there's enough of that kind of useful work (i.e. the kind that actually makes a difference) to keep everyone busy. It also feels like it's mostly easy to automate.
If we're retraining people to do it, we absolutely should, because we'd be spending significant resources for something that might prove a very short-sighted investment. It might be better to just invest that money into automation to do that same work instead.
I imagine that most jobs that have a 'value' of ~$5/hour don't require much training. Also we could implement this policy tomorrow if we wanted to while automation is still many years out (at best) for a lot of tasks, so the two policies could be run in parallel.
I seriously doubt there'd be much work around that has such low value, and that cannot be automated. And if it can be automated, what is the additional value to society to have human perform it instead?
There are endless jobs that should get done. No one would argue to do pointless jobs - maybe just jobs that are still useful but maybe not quite as useful to make it attractive to private industry?
You might say it depends on whether it pays or not... but if there's a paycheck in exchange for essentially useless work, it's just welfare in disguise.