[neilwilson]

You have to work if you want to get paid. Otherwise you will get fired. The obligation of the state is to provide you with a guaranteed alternative job offer, not a guaranteed income.

It’s up to you if you take up the state’s offer or not.

The UBI removes the motivation to work and turns everything into volunteering. The result is a rise in the “reservation wage gap” - the amount the private sector has to pay to get people to work for them.

The reservation wage gap with a job guarantee is near zero - which is more economically efficient.

Additionally the job guarantee acts as a powerful spend side automatic stabiliser that is temporal and spatially efficient - which removes the need to manipulate the base interest rate allowing it to return to its natural rate of zero. This allows permanent cheaper mortgages and business loans.

[xyzzy123]

One issue is that there's X% (debatable) of people who can't work for reasons that are complex or hard to explain. For many, even if they are physically able, you kinda don't want them to.

I mean, people who will create negative utility in a workplace or cost more in supervision expense than you get from them as output.

They create hazards for others by being drunk or on drugs on the job, or by harassing or bullying others, injuring themselves or others, causing personality conflicts or dramas due to trauma or unresolved mental health issues etc. I don't mean this as a value judgment, it's just like some people really aren't in a place in life where they can function well in work settings.

I'm not sure how you "guarantee" something that is dependent on complex situational decisions.

[neilwilson]

That confuses two points. Employees sell labour hours. At the basic living wage those hours are interchangeable between all people offering them. Even to the extent of age or infirmity. That’s what “unskilled labour” means.

The conversion of those hours into labour services is why the private sector is allowed to profit. If they want “better quality hours” then they have to bid up the price of those hours.

That should be market determined, rather than being administratively set as the gap between unemployment benefit and the minimum wage. You’ll be surprised how well the private sector can use hours once they see people doing the basics of turning up on time and doing something.

When we sentence offenders to “community service” we give them a job as rehabilitation, along with all the support mechanisms to straighten out lives. If we can do that for offenders, we can do that for everybody.