Posted on April
28, 2018 by Yves
Smith
FJG > UBI
No. That’s not right. The
Federal Job Guarantee is not just better than Universal Basic Income, it’s the
only good option. The UBI is a Trojan Horse for the reduction and
elimination of wages and safety net programs for the powerless. UBI is sinister.
Universal Basic Income:
UBI adds money to the economy
without increasing production or output. This is how you cause inflation: The
creation of money without consideration of the real resources available to you.
(Sure, everyone can have a pony, but not tomorrow!)
If the government is now
paying your salary, even if you are performing poorly, even if you are not
working:
This incentivizes private
industry to further reduce wages, which logically extends to the reduction – or
elimination – of minimum wage laws.
Then what’s the point of
social safety net programs such as welfare, food stamps, subsidized housing,
Medicaid, Social Security, etc.? These programs would necessarilybe
eliminated.
Then what’s the point of
fighting so hard for free healthcare and free tuition and lower prescription
drug costs and so on? Now people can, at least somewhat, at least temporarily,
afford the private industry alternatives. The fights for these progressive
programs would just…end.
Now, all of the sudden, everyone can
afford shit. All at the same time. Competing with everyone for the same stuff,
with no increase in productive capacity. UBI is therefore, by its very
definition, inflationary. This governmental salary, this “negative tax” for
those at the bottom, is instantly devalued. At best, income and wealth inequality is not reduced.
Would this increase or
decrease the incentive to get or keep a job? At least at first…
Here’s the true sinister plot
behind UBI: Picture a future and less-friendly Congress, after all these safety
nets have been reduced or eliminated. They come in and eliminate or
dramatically reduce the UBI program because “these deadbeats want everything
for free?!” Our nation is instantly plunged into a private corporation slave-wage
hellscape. No wage or workplace protections, no safety net programs at all.
UBI risks putting the United
States into a much much worse position than it already is today…. Well, that
is, if you care about the powerless.
The Federal Job
Guarantee:
FJG adds money to the
economy by increasing productivity and output. This is how you avoid,
or greatly reduce the severity of, inflation. It forces private industry and
the military to up their game, in order to be competitive with the FJG: better
than bare-minimum living wage, benefits, and working conditions. It takes away
the excuse of “I’m not hiring you… You’ve been unemployed. Ewww.”
If a future, less-friendly
Congress were to come in and eliminate or reduce the FJG program, then those
FJG job people would indeed once again be unemployed. But everyone else would
still have those better jobs with better wages, benefits, and working
conditions. Yes, without the “public option” FJG to compete with private
industry, these things will start to degrade. But we would revert back to a
position still substantially betterthan we are today.
Two Final Points: Busywork and
Robots
If the FJG creates “busywork”
pointless jobs, it is not a problem of the FJG itself, but rather a reflection of
poor implementation of the FJG at the local level. There are basically an
infinite number of genuinely useful things to be done at the local level,
throughout the country.
The fear of automation is
nonsense. We should embrace automation. Robots can cook our cheeseburgers, wash
our cars, and accept and dispense cash better and faster than humans. But
robots cannot take care of our children or seniors, they cannot entertain us,
create works of art, write our books, or be our primary care physicians or
psychologists. Leave the more physically taxing and repetitive drudgery work to the
robots. Leave the infinite number of more satisfying and productive jobs for us
humans.
I love this#JobGuarantee pic.twitter.com/oOs8GUvvbb
And this is really key. #UBI acts as a wage subsidy
so that employers can reduce wages, leading to further inequality. which is why
the right likes it.
A #JobGuarantee does the opposite. It forces employers to up their game.
A #JobGuarantee does the opposite. It forces employers to up their game.
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