That's even more backwards in my opinion. The fact that it takes a human to fuel the car was my point.
As a different example, in GCC countries immigrants also tank your car, but there it's just cheap means of comfort.
BTW most people 'standing there doing nothing but X' in Japan are actually very valuable and can help you in a lot of matters, even completely unrelated to X. Unefficient but priceless if you have a special need or just don't know how things work.
>specially in cultures where there is a social stigma attached to joblessness and living off benefits
That's part of the point of a basic income as opposed to other means tested programs, there is no social stigma attached because everyone gets the basic income.
> prevents side-effects like detachment from the job market, petty crimes, mental illnesses and addictions.
How does low wage menial labor prevent mental illness or addictions. Sure people who are mentally ill or are addicted to hard drugs are are less likely to hold jobs, but the causality is in the opposite direction.
>do you prefer an unemployed who's got cash for booze and nothing to do, or would you prefer him to be at work like all his peers and family?
I'd prefer people do meaningful work that benefits the economy, instead of useless menial labor. Gas station attendants are almost completely nonexistent in other states, so clearly they aren't needed or wanted by the market.
Here's a proposal that should mesh with that ideology. Enact regulation that says that grass must be cut by hand with scissors. Watch companies spring up overnight to employ tens of thousands of low wage laborers.
Economists on all sides from Milton Friedman to Keynesians, to die hard socialists support some kind of basic income over our current welfare system. These are people who are diametrically opposed on almost every other issue yet they agree on this.
For 95% of newish cars this problem is fairly trivial because the gas cap/fuel doors are so similar (there are exceptions, I'm specifically thinking of cars that require you to press a button inside the car to open the refueling port), and any college robotics lab could design a system to handle it that was much less likely to scratch your car/spill gas than a human operator.
The problem is that in Oregon/New Jersey it's a jobs program, so regulators are unlikely to allow something like that.
In every other state, gas stations have no incentive to pay for such a system because they have no labor costs to save.