Re:Four Reasons a Guaranteed Income Won't Work
by jordanb on Friday December 06, 2013 @10:24PM
(#6865329)
Requiring people have a job to receive the benefit turns the system into a subsidy for low-wage job providers who get to act as gatekeepers to the program.
The whole point of guaranteed minimum income is to make participation in the job market optional: workers are free to sit out the market if employers try to give them a raw deal.
For instance, Milton Friedman noted that it could be rational for a worker to voluntarily work in a dangerous environment and trade his long-term health for short term money, because his health in five years doesn't mean whole lot if he starves today.
The government's response to this is OSHA, a bureaucracy designed to publish and enforce minimum standards for workplace safety.
But with guaranteed minimum income, nobody's going to starve, so employers will have to offer a safe work environment to entice workers into employment. No bureaucracy is needed to protect workers in desperate situations because there aren't any, everybody can make their own decision about how much risk they're willing to accept to work a given job knowing that their basic needs are provided for.
The whole point of guaranteed minimum income is to make participation in the job market optional: workers are free to sit out the market if employers try to give them a raw deal.
For instance, Milton Friedman noted that it could be rational for a worker to voluntarily work in a dangerous environment and trade his long-term health for short term money, because his health in five years doesn't mean whole lot if he starves today.
The government's response to this is OSHA, a bureaucracy designed to publish and enforce minimum standards for workplace safety.
But with guaranteed minimum income, nobody's going to starve, so employers will have to offer a safe work environment to entice workers into employment. No bureaucracy is needed to protect workers in desperate situations because there aren't any, everybody can make their own decision about how much risk they're willing to accept to work a given job knowing that their basic needs are provided for.