Wouldn't the idea of Basic Jobs be more feasible than Basic Income?
HN is populated by people who love their work and would do it for free, given the luxury... but speaking from a legal background, other careers SUCK. Most lawyers I know would happily embrace Basic Income in exchange for sleep, family, and lifetime security. If the alternative to attorney life were picking up trash or scrubbing toilets as part of the Basic Jobs program, the workers who pay for Basic Income/Jobs might be less likely to stop producing wealth in the name of leisure.
I say this as a liberal who very much supports the idea of reduced work hours, mandatory vacations, and so on in a European vein... but there has to be middle ground between indolence and workaholism. Particularly when faced with the possible creation of a dependent underclass with little else to do but knock out kids they can't support.
I don't think it would be better. At the risk of excessive snark...
In exchange for your feeling of superiority making the underclasses earn their bread, you're getting political wrangling over what the jobs should be and tremendous misallocation of labor as the jobs aren't the best thing those people can be doing with their time, we take up the time they could be putting into making themselves more fit for more interesting (and more useful and better paying) jobs, and we do nothing to free people to work on projects they're passionate about which may have a harder time capturing value produced (unless a bureaucrat has specifically blessed them).
My idea of an alternative would be Basic Land: everyone who is poor/starving can get some free fertile land to work (enough to sustain a family). That way, they can become self-sufficient and live off their own work.
There are some extra issues with this, but I think they can be fixed. One would be housing: the land would also have to come with a house, and maybe transportation.
HN is populated by people who love their work and would do it for free, given the luxury... but speaking from a legal background, other careers SUCK. Most lawyers I know would happily embrace Basic Income in exchange for sleep, family, and lifetime security. If the alternative to attorney life were picking up trash or scrubbing toilets as part of the Basic Jobs program, the workers who pay for Basic Income/Jobs might be less likely to stop producing wealth in the name of leisure.
I say this as a liberal who very much supports the idea of reduced work hours, mandatory vacations, and so on in a European vein... but there has to be middle ground between indolence and workaholism. Particularly when faced with the possible creation of a dependent underclass with little else to do but knock out kids they can't support.