Respectfully, you either seem to not have read the piece, or you read it not carefully at all, looking for reasons to take offense and willfully misinterpreting. I do not attack JG. I support it, only not as a standalone policy and not as an alternative to UBI. I wish to align the two policies to make both stronger for the combination. They serve different purposes.
In answer to your statements:
An extremely misguided, economically illiterate response to an extremely well researched and logical position of the Federal Job Guarantee which is:
A voluntary program
Imagine you are living check to check, late on rent, and now your kids are hungry, because you just got laid off. This is not an edge case in America. 60% of people can’t afford a $500 expense without going into debt. It happens every day. In that scenario, how long do you have to wait for your local Job Guarantee program to kick in? What are the necessary steps? And what other options do you have if you can’t find a job in the labor market fast enough? Even when JG kicks in, if it’s not too slow to prevent major trauma to your family (eviction, say), and they find you a job, then what is your choice? Take that job or let your kids go hungry and homeless? That is not a real option. This is what many people currently go through with welfare, and it would be a similar dilemma with JG. JG does a lot of good things, but it needs a reliable and unconditional heartbeat of income security beneath it to ensure that people always have time to make a measured and undesperate decision, to ensure that it’s always a real choice we’re allowing people to make.
Empowers local communities to organize and revive Democracy
I agree, and so does UBI. We should do both.
Provides a PRICE ANCHOR by pegging the economy to the labor standard.
I agree. And UBI adds to that by giving every citizen a little unconditional bargaining power in every situation. We should do both.
Eliminates the stranglehold capital has on labor
I agree. At least that it greatly reduces it and defangs it. We should do both.
Eliminates the possibility of a UBI subsidizing shit wages.
This subsidization of bad jobs argument is a illogical, if you think it through from the perspective of individuals. If you have UBI, and someone offers to pay you $7/hr to do menial labor, you’re more likely to turn that offer down and keep looking for another job that is more rewarding either financially or spiritually. The Walmarts of the world take advantage of the desperation of the precarious class. UBI greatly reduces precariousness and empowers individuals. It would have an upward pressure on wages in general, especially the lower end wages for the least appealing jobs. Coupled with a Job Guarantee to enforce good-paying options, this effect would even be stronger. We should do both.
Eliminates INVOLUNTARY UNEMPLOYMENT FOREVER
JG aims to do this, but the unemployment problem is a growing one, and so the already daunting onus on a solo JG to fill gaps with good jobs (tens of millions are currently involuntarily unemployed) will grow further. Some estimates are that we will lose on the order of 50% of our jobs to automation in the next 20 years. Only 20% more would be the levels we saw at the height of the Great Depression. The high level of the involuntarily unemployed is despite the misleading “unemployment number”, which is designed to gloss over huge portions of the working age, discouraged population to make the situation seem far better than it is. It doesn’t account for the millions on disability who would like to part time, for the millions who gave up looking for work, for the millions who ran out of benefits, etc. A JG alone also fails to allow people to provide their own options, which many would if given the opportunity. Coupled with a UBI, a certain percentage of people would find creative and productive paths to employment that they would prefer to the JG jobs on offer, which would simultaneously: reduce the burden on JG to solve all problems; reduce the cost and size of the necessary JG; and allow people a greater range of choice, agency, and self-determination. On the other hand, a UBI alone wouldn’t provide as many options as a combination of the two proposals. We should do both.
Compensates work previously not “valued” by capital
UBI does this even more fundamentally and unconditionally, for all forms of work, at a baseline level. JG puts more investment behind certain chosen forms of work, which has the side benefit of investing in societal-value-creating markets that the private sector doesn’t see the profit margin for (green energy, infrastructure, etc). We should do both.
We have a Basic Income in the US called Social Security which is self funding regardless of the canard of FICA
Correct, it’s essentially a basic income, and it works fairly well and adds evidence to the merit of such cash programs, but it’s neither universal nor unconditional. It would be an improvement to expand it and universalize it. JG doesn’t address the specific type of needs that SS or UBI do. We should do both.
Social Security can be expanded to accommodate any scenarios we deem smart or acceptable as a society
Precisely. That’s exactly what many UBI proponents suggest doing: expanding SS into UBI. It’s a perfectly valid option. UBI is basically SS for all. It would greatly improve and replace the current hole-ridden and disincentivizing welfare net a JG alone (as commonly proposed) would leave underneath it. We should do both.
A UBI is merely status quo. Just like a school voucher, the rich still go to rich schools and the poor still go to poor schools.
It is no such thing. The poor would be less poor, and therefore so would their schools. However, UBI is not meant to be a catch-all policy. We would still need efforts to improve education equality for all. We would still benefit greatly from other policies like JG. Enough with this false choice. We should do both.
A Federal Job Guarantee is Federally Funded and Locally administered and provides a real automatic stabilizer to an economy to mitigate the shocks to the business cycle. A UBI does no such thing as it is eventually normalized and provides absolutely no sanctuary during a downturn as there is no price anchor thus no guarantee to services.
Prices are to a large degree anchored to competition in the marketplace. They are not infinitely elastic. They are tied to cost of procurement and marginal profits. UBI is not an end to markets. Neither is Job Guarantee. UBI and JG both provide real automatic stabilizers during economic downturns. Looking at a house, UBI is the foundation and floor, JG is the walls. We should do both.
Finally a UBI allows the reichwing to dismantle social safety nets that actually guarantee a service vs chits that gain and lose value depending on the business cycle.
That’s paranoid. Any policy can be made draconian. All policies must be steered and done correctly. A “reichwing” JG would look like indentured servitude. We should do both, and we should do them well.
A UBI is a neoliberal plot to fatten capital whilst making serfdom real.
Incorrect. In fact, how is unconditional cash closer to serfdom than state-run jobs? In truth, neither policy does these things, and we should do both.
Federal Job Guarantee solves involuntary unemployment
You made this exact point above, and I already addressed it (we should do both).
Expanded social security solves basic inc issues me needs for those who fall through the cracks and are either unable or unwilling to serve their local communities for whatever reason.
Yes. That’s what UBI is. Except those who work also get the benefit added on. They don’t lose it when they work, and so the disincentive to work is removed. Targeted welfare for those out of work places a ceiling on poverty. UBI for all places a floor below it. It allows JG to function much more smoothly. We should do both.
I wrote another piece — called The Case for Hierarchy — on a more holistic and functional model for governance. It calls for both JG and UBI, along with many other things, and it bases it all on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I’d be curious to know what you think of it if you really read it with an open mind.