I have previously written about why Universal Basic Income (UBI) may result in poor outcomes, even if we’re able and willing to implement it. 

Here, I invite you to think about what an alternative — one that still addresses the issues UBI hopes to solve — might look like.  If you have not read the previous article you may miss some context in this one, as the advantages of the alternate system listed here correspond to the UBI flaws listed there. 

I believe that instead of paying everyone unconditionally and hoping for positive results, society is probably better off with a Basic Jobs program that pays people to create positive value for their communities.  Paying people to produce, when for them it would otherwise not be economically feasible, is a more directed and intelligent approach to welfare than merely spreading the proverbial hay.  A Basic Jobs plan may be less ideal in who it helps, but it’s a less fragile system overall. 

Let your mind wander well beyond stock-photo visions of job-stimulus programs — a few guys with yellow vests and hard-hats building roads and bridges and “infrastructure.” 

Generally, when a system optimizes for a result, it invariably produces more of that result.  UBI’s blanket-of-money approach optimizes for a certain kind of poverty, but it may create more poverty of the same kind in the long run.  A Basic Jobs program introduces work and opportunity into communities, which may be a better welfare optimization strategy.  Moreover, it’s a program that could be implemented while keeping a targeted approach to aiding those most in need

What Are Basic Jobs? 

Basic Jobs programs, also called Job Guarantee or Workfare, are welfare programs in which the state promises to hire workers in order to enhance livelihood security.  The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India is a modern example.  Historically, the U.S. operated the Civilian Conservation Corps and Work Projects Administration with similar goals.  Basic Jobs are occasionally floated as an alternative to Basic Income. 

Let your mind wander well beyond stock-photo visions of job-stimulus programs (a few guys with yellow vests and hard-hats building roads and bridges and “infrastructure”).  To create Basic Jobs properly, we need to greatly expand our idea of what it is possible to fund.  Remember, we are not aiming for a perfect program, we are simply trying to envision something better than the UBI proposals out there today. 

Why Are Basic Jobs Better Than UBI? 

The 20th century is pock-marked with attempts to wholesale reshape societies — and with the subsequent disastrous aftermath.  The attraction of UBI may rest more in its directness and in its grand thinking than in its promise to robustly fulfill its goals.  Good welfare, like good governance, is probably not best solved by the plan that’s simply the easiest to explain.  Have you ever had a politically-minded teenager tell you, “We really just need one law: Don’t be a dick”?  We must be absolutely sure that UBI does not turn out to be welfare’s intellectual equivalent. 

1.  Gradualism and piloting

Studying a UBI pilot with an end date is not studying UBI at all; it is studying a misnamed, temporary cash payment.  By the very nature of pilot programs, a cohort’s behavior cannot reliably change over the long term.  No study has ever guaranteed money to a cohort forever, which impacts the validity of the study’s outcomes.  Even if a program were able to offer funds forever, it would be difficult for a pilot to show the long-term effects, some of which may not be seen for generations.  What pilot, for example, can tell us what it’s like for kids to grow up with parents who’ve never worked? 

Universal Basic Income pilots also tend to fail at the Universal part.  It’s hard to study how society would change if you are not piloting something that affects all of society.  For example, this study in Finland, is far from universal:

“During the experiment, a total of 2,000 unemployed persons between 25 and 58 years of age will receive a monthly payment of €560, unconditionally and without means testing.  The experiment will run for two years.” 

Basic Job programs, by contrast, are more amenable to piloting and gradual roll-out.  New clusters of jobs appear (and end) all the time.  Piloting Basic Jobs can be done in different communities with varying magnitudes, and the legislation to do so is already in place:

In the United States, the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978 allows the government to create a ‘reservoir of public employment’ in case private enterprise does not provide sufficient jobs.  These jobs are required to be in the lower ranges of skill and pay so as to not draw the workforce away from the private sector.  However, the act did not establish such a reservoir (it only authorized it), and no such program has been implemented in the United States, even though the unemployment rate has generally been above the rate (three percent) targeted by the act. —  via Wikipedia

And even a pilot may have lasting benefits.  What we learn from a Basic Jobs pilot will be more applicable than studying temporary cash transfers in a community and expecting that knowledge to translate into society-wide UBI.  If a pilot is successful, one can imagine a kind of National Civil Service, organized like existing federal programs such as the National Park Service, which can hire professionals to train and supervise projects. 

2.  The people who need more help can still get it

Unlike many UBI proposals, subsidizing a Basic Jobs program does not require defunding other welfare programs.  Because with Basic Jobs we can keep some amount of existing welfare programs, the people potentially forsaken in UBI schemes can still get the help they need.  A future with Basic Jobs still allows for costly medical assistance, case workers, special needs, extra care for the sick and the infirm, and so on.  Under a pure UBI safety net, a diabetic effectively gets less money than everyone else because they have additional life needs (insulin); such problems are ameliorated with Basic Jobs because we can keep and incrementally improve our current basket of welfare programs. 

Basic Jobs are not an exciting tear-down and rebuild.  Boring is better than spectacular, here, especially if the spectacular cannot help people at the margins, and cannot promise to be free of spectacular failures.  The problems society faces are complex and necessitate a hodgepodge of social programs.  This is not to say that UBI cannot work — it might — but it is wishful thinking to wager our whole society on its success. 

3.  Pro-social and existential factors

One of the biggest assumptions people make about UBI is that the problems of today and the near future are primarily ones of money.  I don’t think the data supports this.  Economist Noah Smith recently gave several examples. 

Click for stats on healthcare, housing, food, etc. 

The pervasive problem in society today is not that people don’t have enough money to survive, it’s that to survive and thrive people need things beyond food and rent: social responsibility, a sense of purpose, community, meaningful ways to spend their time, nutrition education, and so on.  If we fixate merely on the money aspect, we may be misdiagnosing what is making our 21st century so miserable for so many people. 

What if it doesn’t work?  What if we run out of jobs? 

There is a strong, proven correlation between disability income and drug abuse.  I ask, how does writing “UBI” on the top of the check instead of “disability” make a difference?  Disability claims are strongly correlated with the economy, yet recessions do not cause people to become paraplegics.  Disability in the U.S. is a very soft basic income already, with a socially-accepted (and very thin) disguise.  The at-risk population in the U.S. needs more than just a check.  They need purpose and responsibility. 

4.  Basic Jobs are more resilient

What if it doesn’t work?  What if we run out of jobs?  Suppose a Basic Jobs program fails 20 or 30 years into the future.  Maybe there’s too much corruption or not enough oversight, or the political will is no longer there, or the money itself is no longer there.  Contingency planning is good.  No matter how much you trust the pilot, you still want an airplane with emergency exits. 

If a Basic Jobs program crashes, the side effects seem less severe (or even mildly positive) when contrasted with a UBI failure.  So what if we accidentally fund farms, bakeries, furniture production, house construction, and all sorts of small scale crafts across the country?  Even in pessimistic scenarios, we can expect some of the businesses and functions built by the program to continue serving their communities after an official program is gone, in the same way that the Hoover dam is still there.  A Basic Jobs program can plan for contingencies and for the divvying up of what’s been created, democratically, by community.  Sheep farmers that are no longer supported by the government have at least got their flocks.  If things ever go south, Basic Jobs better position us to try something else. 

By contrast, with UBI, if the program fails after 20 or 30 years, we may end up with the opposite: a generation that never learned to work, or to do anything for that matter, suddenly finding itself without the means to even transport food into their communities.  For a community wholly dependent on UBI, a community that does not produce for others or for themselves, an abrupt end to that UBI is a doomsday. 

Implications for the future pose a question: Who is more likely to eventually go to work, the children of UBI recipients or the children of Basic Job recipients?  It is not possible to answer this question with a UBI pilot, but it can be answered by posing a more fundamental question: Are wealth and poverty intergenerational?  Of course they can be.  The goal is to alleviate poverty.  As a society, we should be careful not to put a system in place that inadvertently entrenches people within it.  A child growing up in a Basic Jobs household, witnessing working parents, almost certainly has a better shot at life than a child growing up in a UBI household, with parents who may have never worked. 

5.  Avoids issues of unfairness and resentment

“In front of virtue the immortal gods have put sweat.…And it is by working that a man becomes more philos than other men to the immortals and to mortals.  They all hate the idle.” —  Hesiod, Works and Days, 600 B.C.

Stone: “Every time I try to explain UBI I get nasty looks and laughed at.” 

Basic Jobs programs avoid the resentment issues of UBI schemes.  People have never liked the idea of paying other people to do nothing, which is why most current cash transfers in the U.S. that approximate a basic income are under the guise of disability.  Employing people with basic jobs is a more palatable option, and can be considered a way to invest in an entire community, instead of transferring cash to those who many will perceive as moochers. 

Someone employed in a basic job can easily change their station, may be learning or practicing skills, and has no resume gap.  Whereas those who work a basic job for 10 years have something to point to as a measure of success, those who collect UBI and do not work for a decade may become part of an un-employable underclass.  Such a difference is important if the funding dries up, and may be critical to generations down the line.  As I previously mentioned, the children of Basic Jobs recipients will probably be better equipped for any future. 

In sum, Basic Jobs programs are politically easier to swallow because society expects some kind of return on investment if it is paying people to work. 

6.  Paying people to do work has its own positive effects

Capitalism has a good share of critics, but while there are plenty of issues at the margins, the building blocks of capitalism have lead to some nice returns for all of humanity, even for the poorest among us. 

Capitalism is comprised of a series of transactions between parties.  The side effect of the median transaction in capitalism is the creation of value.  If you want something, you must create value for someone (sell something or work for someone) before you can get (buy) the thing you want.  The nature of this is not very complicated, but it’s fundamentally what makes markets, and nearly everything, work.  Over centuries, the cumulative effects of capitalism are large: