Hacker News Reader

Comment by bomb199 | Hacker News Reader

A Job's Guarantee is a real movement, and a reasonable idea for this reason. Not having a job puts you in a lower social caste - might as well have them doing SOMETHING. Even if it's not especially productive, the small positive affect is better than nothing.

View on HN

No. Eight hours of soul-crushing boredom every day keeps people in such jobs from doing... anything they want. Like learning stuff that might help them contribute to society in other ways (in a more useful job, maybe).

> Not having a job puts you in a lower social caste

This is a stupid societal expectation that should be fought rather than supported in the way you say.

Work should create value and in fact most of these make work jobs destroy it by slowing things down or requiring more meetings etc.

There is always valuable work that can be done. It can be improving the maintenance or cleanliness of places, etc.

Shout-out to the Civilian Conservation Corps. We should bring that program back.

We could bring back Workd War II and create even more jobs — assuming that’s what we are trying to do in an America with 3.9% unemployment.

It leaves people lots of time to think of better jobs to get. They are also less likely to go to crime.

And they can quit. I mean, a job guarantee isn't directly a requirement in the same sense.

> It leaves people lots of time to think of better jobs to get.

Thinking is a useful skill if and only if the job they aspire to is philosopher. For everything else (and for philosophers as well, really) you need training, and for that you need time.

> And they can quit.

Sure. Anyone can choose to starve.

Why not just give people a UBI and be done with it?

Basic job might have a better cost/benefit tradeoff.

For example, https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basi...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com