[dandermotj]

I suppose from an individual standpoint examples like yours are very relevant - a big fear for myself is working a job we're I am unfulfilled - but from a broad view we must agree increasing employment is a good goal. The more people working, the greater the output and the cheaper it costs, from which everyone benefits whether we are employed ourselves or not. A highly employed nation is a bountiful one.

[cortesoft]

Shouldn't our measure be productivity, then, instead of employment? At least as far as what a society should care about?

In terms of social benefits, not all employment is equal. We could hire all un-employed people to move rocks back and forth, but that won't contribute to society anything that simply giving those people cash for nothing wouldn't solve just as well.

There are two separate goals we are trying to accomplish, and traditionally they have both been solved through employment - the need for productivity and the need for resource allocation. If you want to keep trying to meet both goals through employment (instead of meeting the second one through something like basic income), then we need to make sure we continue to address both needs.

[dandermotj]

You're right, that's why we use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as our primary measure of an economy's performance; which employment is the fundamental driver of. I wasn't arguing against basic income, I was just contending that individual circumstance of employment like unhappiness are not good reasons for disregarding the benefits of increasing employment.

I absolutely want to see basic income tried and tested in all its various forms and iterations. I think it could be the solution to the convoluted social benefit policies which are too complicated to be navigated and too specific to generalise well.

And of course I agree that unproductive employment is worthless to society in the long.

[Absentinsomniac]

Unless you're just hiring people for the sake of employment to do things that don't need done. I've read China's housing market is in a bit of a pickle due to this. Course they also apparently have really clean streets.