Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijacking Utopia

Basic jobs don’t help the disabled. (...) First, the disability application process is a mess. Imagine the worst DMV appointment you’ve ever had to obtain the registration to a sketchy old car you got from a friend, then multiply it by a thousand – then imagine you have to do it all while being too disabled to work. (...) Second, disability is beco... See more

But basic jobs are going to be selecting primarily from the very poor demographic and they’re going to get hit with the same problem as the poorest public schools – a need for people to behave, combined with inability to credibly disincentivize misbehavior.Basic income avoids this problem. It provides money to everyone, good employees and bad emplo... See more

Basic jobs don’t help caretakers. (...) Basic jobs once again drops the ball on this problem. If your mother is dying, you can’t be there to help her, because the government is going to make you dig ditches and fill them in again all day to satisfy people’s worry that somebody somewhere might be getting money without doing enough make-work to “dese... See more

Poor people’s two largest expenses are housing and transportation.Guaranteed jobs have to be somewhere. Most of them will be in big cities, because that’s where everybody is. The ones in the country will be few and far between.That means to get to your government-mandated job, you’ll either need to live in the big city or have a car. Living in the ... See more