, 10 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
I have yet to see any evidence that a job guarantee is better than an unconditional basic income, nor that a JG/UBI combo would be better than just providing a higher UBI. Experimental evidence will always sway me though, so I do welcome such evidence being created and published.
What I do know is that JG operates within the mindset we need to escape from, that being paid in exchange for work is the only way of contributing to society, that those who have less ability to work are somehow lesser people, & that automation should be avoided in favor of toil.
It is so weird to me that among JG advocates, the belief is so rampant that people must be paid on the condition of work, or else no work will be done, as if unpaid work doesn't exist, and as if the reason people do that work freely could never be the motivation for doing it.
Look, I get it. You see work not being done and want to see it get done. Ok, but shouldn't the very first thing we do, especially if all the science points in the same direction, is to simply make sure people have enough money to live free of both poverty & financial instability?
Lift everyone up Maslow's hierarchy of needs and watch people flourish. You don't need to coerce them into doing the work you want done. Just offer them the work and if the wage/salary is right and/or the work is meaningful enough, free people will happily do that work for you.
If markets aren't creating opportunities for that work to be done, ok, create those opportunities, but they must be seen as the potential to earn ADDITIONAL income, not to earn ANY income. You don't get to support the withholding of life-sustaining resources to get what you want.
And for the love of all the gods in history, let's automate the hell out of everything we can. Many jobs need to just die, not be guaranteed. If anyone should ever be guaranteed a job, it's the machine that can do it at a lower cost and higher quality than the rest of humankind.
Jobs have long been seen as the primary driver of economic growth because they represent both the supply & demand side. We need to shift to seeing automation as the primary driver of growth on the supply side and UBI on the demand side, with a goal of always doing more with less.
When I say more with less, I don't only mean productivity-wise doing more with fewer hours of human labor. I also mean accomplishing more of what we want to accomplish using fewer & fewer resources. We need to create a sustainable economy and tech needs to be put to that purpose.
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