For most low IQ workers, showing up and doing anything, while getting money for it, will be a big improvement over a current existence of not even looking for a job but just doing low level crimes, video game playing, porn watching, nightly partying.
The employment rate, now still low, is more important than the quite low unemployment rate, with so many not even trying to find a job, tho they’re not working at a job &paying taxes.
I do not argue with you one iota, sir, that for almost everyone, showing up for and performing the basic services of a job is a big improvement over not working and subsisting on government handouts.
But that is very different from a “Jobs Guarantee” in law. If someone is guaranteed their job no matter what - and after all, that’s what a *guarantee* is - what would stop them from just just doing low level crimes, video game playing, porn watching, … partying” while nominally on the job.
You can insert the pejorative phrase “low IQ” as you wish, but it doesn’t change the fact that most people aren’t that stupid, and would quickly understand that such a “Job Guarantee” was just a facade for what exists now. Similarly, FDR style make-work jobs (one set of workers dig some holes, another set fill them in..) would be seen through as well.
Now if in fact you meant by a “Jobs Guarantee” that the state would subsidize for legit businesses taking in the unemployed, and those people would have jobs so long as they ACTUALLY executed the duties of the job - and there would be NO government transfers for the able bodied if they failed to perform on their job - then I might quibble with you about how to make this work in practice, but I would be in agreement that that would be a better thing for *most* than a UBI.
Recall, however, that for we libertarians/classical liberals, the main point of a UBI is to eliminate the even worse disincentives and economic waste (inefficiency) of the current system of government transfers, as AK notes in his piece.
A “Job Guarantee” is of course a massive disincentive to be productive in a job…
For most low IQ workers, showing up and doing anything, while getting money for it, will be a big improvement over a current existence of not even looking for a job but just doing low level crimes, video game playing, porn watching, nightly partying.
The employment rate, now still low, is more important than the quite low unemployment rate, with so many not even trying to find a job, tho they’re not working at a job &paying taxes.
I do not argue with you one iota, sir, that for almost everyone, showing up for and performing the basic services of a job is a big improvement over not working and subsisting on government handouts.
But that is very different from a “Jobs Guarantee” in law. If someone is guaranteed their job no matter what - and after all, that’s what a *guarantee* is - what would stop them from just just doing low level crimes, video game playing, porn watching, … partying” while nominally on the job.
You can insert the pejorative phrase “low IQ” as you wish, but it doesn’t change the fact that most people aren’t that stupid, and would quickly understand that such a “Job Guarantee” was just a facade for what exists now. Similarly, FDR style make-work jobs (one set of workers dig some holes, another set fill them in..) would be seen through as well.
Now if in fact you meant by a “Jobs Guarantee” that the state would subsidize for legit businesses taking in the unemployed, and those people would have jobs so long as they ACTUALLY executed the duties of the job - and there would be NO government transfers for the able bodied if they failed to perform on their job - then I might quibble with you about how to make this work in practice, but I would be in agreement that that would be a better thing for *most* than a UBI.
Recall, however, that for we libertarians/classical liberals, the main point of a UBI is to eliminate the even worse disincentives and economic waste (inefficiency) of the current system of government transfers, as AK notes in his piece.