[fluoridation]

Job guarantees and higher minimum wages are just UBI with extra steps, while lowering retirement age is just conditional UBI by another name. If you're giving people more money in exchange for nothing (or nothing of any value to anyone, as in the case of a job guarantee), it's effectively indistinguishable from UBI.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Job guarantees and higher minimum wages are just UBI with extra steps, while lowering retirement age is just conditional UBI by another name

The extra steps reduce costs and encourage offsetting production. Those are important steps!

[pydry]

"When our grandparents built the hoover dam, the lincoln tunnel and the triborough bridge with a job guarantee that was just money for nothing - UBI with extra steps."

^ this would be an accurate representation of your opinion then?

[fluoridation]

That job guarantees exceptionally produce useful things doesn't mean that they don't overwhelmingly produce useless things, or things that are more expensive than they're worth.

[JumpCrisscross]

> doesn't mean that they don't overwhelmingly produce useless things, or things that are more expensive than they're worth

One could say the same thing about all the little art projects a hypothetical society on UBI might busy itself making. The pertinent difference seems to be one about scale and co-ordination. Job guarantees say we work together–through a centralised power–to build big things. Handing everyone cash leans more towards arts and crafts and consumption.

[fluoridation]

>Job guarantees say we work together–through a centralised power–to build big things. Handing everyone cash leans more towards arts and crafts and consumption.

Creating busywork doesn't strike me as a particularly worthwhile endeavor, compared to idleness.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Creating busywork doesn't strike me as a particularly worthwhile endeavor

Make work isn’t the same as busywork. As another comment mentioned, the Hoover Dam isn’t useless busywork.

[fluoridation]

And as I mentioned, the Hoover dam is also not the typical example of the kinds of projects guaranteed job programs generate.