Slashdot Asks: Which is Better, a Basic Income or a Guaranteed Job? (timharford.com)

Barack Obama said this month that AI research is accelerating, making it harder to find jobs for everybody, and concluding "we're going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems, like a universal income."

But a Financial Times columnist adds that "an intriguing debate has broken out over how to look after disadvantaged workers both now and in this robot future. Should everyone be given free money? Or should everyone receive the guarantee of a decently-paid job?" An anonymous reader quotes some of the highlights: Psychologists have found that we like and benefit from feeling in control. That is a mark in favour of a universal basic income: being unconditional, it is likely to enhance our feelings of control. The money would be ours, by right, to do with as we wish. A job guarantee might work the other way: it makes money conditional on punching the clock. On the other hand (again!), we like to keep busy. Harvard researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert (UK) (US) have found that "a wandering mind is an unhappy mind". And social contact is generally good for our wellbeing. Maybe guaranteed jobs would help keep us active and socially connected.

The truth is, we don't really know... It is good to see that the more thoughtful advocates of either policy -- or both policies simultaneously -- are asking for large-scale trials to learn more.
He titled the column "The secret to happiness after the robot takeover." But what say Slashdot readers?

Is it better to be given a basic income -- or a guaranteed job?

Comments

Distopian future..

[thesupraman]

Yes, a 'guaranteed job' pretty much means 'YOU better find a job you like, or we will find one you DONT'
Its just renamed 'work for your unemployment benefit', which it most definitely a stick, not a carrot.

Of course the powers that be LIKE people to be at their behest, and LIKE to have to control, so why am I not surprised they will try and sell that as a solution.

A real UBI system (and nearly every time we see those in power talking one it is NOT, it is just another benefit for people who 'need' it) is very different from that.
It is a reward for being part of a system, that is not dependent on your position in the system.
And, almost as importantly, it REPLACES most of the other parts.
It replaces benefit for unemployment, sickness (but not necessarily medical), old age, education, and many many more, thus removing the HUGE beuraucracy that is wrapped around operating and policing those.
Why do those in power hate it? because it reduces their control, and their ability to sell themselves as 'helping us' by endlessly making slight changes for how they give our own money back to us when they decide we need it.

But no, they must sell UBI as being a form of benefit for people who failed, because they think that will help keep it from ever happening, because they are sure the silent majority hate such things. That is why pretty much every proposed UBI 'trial' is not UNIVERSAL.

It will take a big change in the political systems before we ever see anything like UBI (and no, i don't mean to some kind of socialist nirvana, such people generally hate anything equal and universal with a great passion).

Re:Distopian future..

[Opportunist]

Yes, a 'guaranteed job' pretty much means 'YOU better find a job you like, or we will find one you DONT'

This is staggeringly a lot like it was in the former Soviet Union. Find a job, or we find one for you. Somewhere in some godforsaken backwater town in the middle of Sibiria, there is always a shortage of ... everything. So no matter what you can do, they need you there.

Re: Distopian future..

[Applehu Akbar]

I would rather see UBI than make-work, because so long as the salaries for real jobs are significantly higher than UBI, people will be motivated to take them. Just characterize UBI as 'unemployment comp for life."

Re: Distopian future..

[west]

You shouldn't be rewarded for being part of the system.

Why not?

I'll happily declare that my fellow Canadians deserve many rewards simply for being Canadian - free education, health-care, various welfare systems if they are in need, free roads and other infrastructure, free defense at the expense of the lives of my fellow citizen, and a myriad of other services. None of those are dependent on their contribution to the system.

And yes, as a Canadian who's doing reasonably well, I pay a fairly substantial tax for the privilege of sustaining those services that benefit me and every other Canadian.

And this is not selflessness. The benefits that I gain from having these services available to my fellow Canadians far exceeds my contribution.to the tax pool. (If I was selfless, I'd be trying to extend those benefits to the world. I'm not as the benefits aren't great enough.)

Anyway, I'll just say that a society that doesn't place a strong inherent positive value on its members is one that's falling apart.

Re: Distopian future..

[phantomfive]

The crucial question really is, how many people can go onto UBI without society collapsing? That is, how many people can choose to be supported only by UBI without the system being overloaded?

Obviously if everyone decided to only be supported by UBI, it wouldn't work. The question is, how many people can be, what percentage? If you can't answer that question with some level of accuracy, you have no business implementing a UBI.

Why not both guarenteed income and jobs?

[goombah99]

One could offer a small guaranteed income and if you want more then a guaranteed job as well. It doesn't have to be either-or.

As for meaning full work the Depression era found many meaningful jobs. Every time I visit an older park I'm so grateful for the lasting staircases and bridges that were hewn into the walls of canyons for me to walk through. We don't have that scale of free labor these days. I'm sure it was hard work but it was meaningful and lasting. Many people were employed as artists and not only made epic frescos and such that we still have today but also produced temporary art like theater for the desperately poor folks of the depression. It was morale boosting and reminded people we are a society that can come together. It had great value to defining US culture. It was also a time when a lot of new ideas got explored too.
Even mathematical functions were enumerated and tabulated (before computers) so that people could knwo the zeros of the hypergeometric series functions for my gaussian quadrature integrals needed to compute the amount of concrete needed for hoover damn or the stress on an airplane wing.

Lots of meaningful work from blue-collar to academian occured in the depression era jobs programs.

Paying one person to dig a hole and another for fill it back in is unlikely to be what people mean by gaurenteed jobs.

In fact I would argue that compulsory public service is really a good thing for citizens. I certainly volunteer lots of time to causes because I can see the impact it has on my community. That impact makes me feel good inside. But it also binds me to my community too which is a good thing.

Finally, if you study the Gini index and consider which countries have the largest economic mobility (Do you earn a different wage than your father did?) then you see that countries with good safety nets actually have more economic mobility than those without. I would guess this is because people willing to take risks can achieve more, but they won't take them if there's a chance of losing everything. Thus just knowing there's a net helps even if you never need it.