A good job provides you with an income and a purpose. UBI only provides you with an income. So surely, a job guarantee must be better than UBI? In this article, we outline why UBI is better than a job guarantee.
A good job provides you with more than just an income. It provides you with:
- A purpose and an identity.
- A way to contribute something meaningful.
- Social interaction and a community to connect with.
- Challenges and opportunities to learn.
- Goals: both personal and professional.
Unfortunately, many, if not most jobs are not good jobs. Many jobs are bullshit jobs. These are jobs that exist to:
- Make other people feel important.
- Provide temporary solutions; especially when permanent solutions exist.
- Destroy, deceive or harm others; or prevent others from doing so.
- Create the illusion that something is being done.
If you looked at the first list and thought, “my job doesn’t provide me with that”, then you probably looked at the second list and thought, “yes, that’s my job!” You probably hate Monday mornings. When you’re not working, you probably feel too exhausted to do anything meaningful. You probably watch a lot of TV or gaming, spend a lot of the time complaining, or quietly wishing things were different. Have you ever thought about what you could do if your job did not drain you of your energy?
It’s important to have a purpose, an identity, a way to contribute something meaningful, a community to interact with, goals, challenges and opportunities to learn. It’s important for our mental health. It’s also a necessity for being productive, innovative and effective. A good job may provide it, but a job does not guarantee it.
A job guarantee won’t guarantee you a “good” job. What happens when you don’t want to do the only job available? A job guarantee becomes a way of forcing you to work. If you don’t take the job, you won’t get paid. A job guarantee becomes a way of ensuring there will always be desperate people to do the jobs that nobody wants to do for minimal pay. UBI, on the other hand, ensures that you will never be forced to work. UBI ensures that you will never have to do a job you don’t want to do. UBI ensures your dignity.
UBI doesn’t provide you with a purpose, an identity, a way to contribute something meaningful, a community to interact with, goals, challenges or opportunities to learn, but it does enable you to find a job that does; and, perhaps more importantly, quit a job that doesn’t. UBI also allows you to do things that don’t earn an income, but that do provide you with a purpose, an identity, a way to contribute something meaningful, a community to interact with, goals, challenges and opportunities to learn.
UBI allows you to have a career that many of us would love, but that are generally only available to the few that are super successful, have a wealthy family or are prepared to recklessly risk everything. Are you one of those who wants to write a book, be an artist, play a sport, be a politician, contribute time, skills or knowledge to a worthy project, but are unable to do so, because you’re too busy spending all your time and energy doing a job you don’t like?
A job guarantee also assumes that your contribution can be financially justified. What happens when automation, AI and robotics makes it cheaper and cheaper to do things without humans? What happens when it no longer makes financial sense for a human to do a job? What happens when you want to do something, because you enjoy it, but you can’t earn enough from it? What happens when your job can no longer be financially justified? UBI enables you to contribute to society without needing to financially justify it; especially when “how much someone is willing to pay for it” is a terrible way to financially justify your contribution.
Finding your purpose, identity, way to contribute something meaningful, community to interact with, goals, challenges and opportunities to learn is important. We shouldn’t and don’t need to link it with receiving an income. UBI enables you to find your purpose, identity, way to contribute something meaningful, community to interact with, goals, challenges and opportunities to learn with or without it being linked to a “good” job. A job guarantee doesn’t provide that.
What do you think? Would you rather have a guaranteed job or a guaranteed income?
Daniela Ortner