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Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, from family members in the medical industry who work with low income patients, people on welfare (who could otherwise work) don't seem to have very fulfilling lives. I think it's pretty clear that people need something to work for or towards in order to find some sort of meaning in their life.

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People with welfare are in a very different situation than UBI due to the fact that the welfare will be lost if they do go work.

You bringing this up at this point in time as if it's relevant almost seems trollish.

The post I was responding to talked about welfare, not UBI. I'm aware that you can't work and collect welfare.

something to work for or towards does not imply work as in employment.

It's definitely a relevant point. If a large group of people who are not working seem to be predominantly unhappy, that's legitimate information that may be useful for discussion about universal basic income. You can make a compelling argument that the reason for that unhappiness is not innate to a lack of work, but rather due to the particular idiosyncrasies of the implementation of welfare, but that's not obviously true a priori.

The commenter seems to have made this observation in good faith. It seems rude to me that you would insinuate the point is irrelevant and "almost seems trollish" just because you disagree with it, particularly when you did the bare minimum to mount a substantive rebuttal. It's true that we shouldn't conflate the unhappiness associated with welfare with some sort of ennui induced by a lack of productivity; but that doesn't preclude the point you're disagreeing with, which could still be true.

Anecdotally, from poor people, people would rather be physically healthy and have a place to live, even if they are unfulfilled, than be malnourished or suffer from untreated chronic illness and likely be unfulfilled anyway.

People on welfare in the US are by defacto struggling, I don't think it's a meaningful data point to say that they don't seem very happy.

That's why instead of UBI I think we should make the government an employer of last resort for anyone who has exhausted their unemployment benefits and can't find a regular job. We essentially did that during the Great Depression through the WPA and other agencies. It functioned pretty well. There's no reason we couldn't do it again.

I agree. Taxpayers should see a return for their welfare investment. The problem is, like in prisons, we now view manual labor as a cruel and unusual punishment yet this is the type of work we need the most in the US (rebuilding infrastructure)

UBI seeks to avoid a permanent underclass by enhancing labor force mobility.

A long term policy of government as a mandatory employer of last resort with make-work jobs doing work for which there is no real demand is a route to creating a permanent underclass. (A short-term policy of government as mandatory employer of last resort in response to an unusual economic disruption where this serves to maintain skills in jobs for which market demand is expected to rebound, to provide bridging income support, and to leverage temporary labor surplus for public infrastructure is a different story. As is a permanent policy of government offering non-universal last-resort employment in regions or industries experiencing short-term downturn without an economy-wide collapse, though that obviously can't replace general universal safety-net programs.)

A UBI would certainly create a permanent underclass of unemployable people. Make-work jobs are better than no jobs at all because they effectively act as training. Some people need training in basic job skills like showing up on time and properly dressed for work, and following a supervisor's directions without mouthing off. And there are actually many simple jobs that would add value to our communities and will never be automated in our lifetime. Things like painting over graffiti or maintaining trails in public parks. It's a lot better to do that then pay people to sit around and stagnate.

I agree. Which is exactly why you don't see tens of millions of Australians sitting around living on welfare (which they easily could).

And it's also why you won't see it when UBI comes in.

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