What Happens When Jobs Are Guaranteed

[Latimer]

From today's New Yorker regarding an Austrian experiment:

What Happens When Jobs Are Guaranteed?

In a small Austrian village, an experimental program finds—or creates—work for the unemployed.

www.newyorker.com

"On my last day in Gramatneusiedl, I had coffee with Thomas Schwab, its mayor, at the Job Guarantee headquarters. An older man who speaks with a cautious, professorial air, Schwab wrote his master’s thesis on the original Marienthal study; he sees the current project against this historical background. 'Maybe you know about Adam Smith, and these guys who say that the market is always right,' he said. 'If you don’t find a job, then just work for less money. But that’s completely wrong! If I have no jobs in my company, there can be a thousand people outside, and they could say, like in the nineteen-thirties, ‘I will work just for something to eat.’ Did they find a job? They didn’t find a job, because nobody had a job to offer.'

"Sven Hergovich, the regional director of the Public Employment Service of Lower Austria, essentially agrees with this analysis. He thinks that rising demands for productivity and efficiency mean that, now and in the future, not everyone will be able to find a job without support. 'There are not sufficient jobs available for all of the long-term unemployed,' he told me. “In fact, we have only two options. Either we finance long-term unemployment, or we create a job guarantee."

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Dear sweet baby Jesus, please keep "long-term unemployment or job guarantee" away from the US. I know EXACTLY how that would turn out. In your holy name, gaymen.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I'm not Herbert Hoover, but I'm not sure those are our only two options.

We may have too many people. That may mean underemployed people are relegated to hard labor, which isn't conducive to having more mouths to feed. Hard labor is eventually its own cure. You either get better, or you and yours die out.

Most of my family died out in England in the 19th century, albeit more from weak genes and pollution if I have to venture a guess. I also notice a lot of them didn't marry or didn't have kids.

I'm not sure how much Austria represents a pattern that would apply to America. They are a small nation, in the mountains. Their population is less than nine million souls, of which more than 82% are Germanic. Their minority populations immigrated to fill the gap caused by their declining birth rate. Their poverty rate hovers around 1% while the US is over 11%.

The wealth of the average Austrian adult is around $250,000 USD. That can't be comparable to the U.S.

As interesting as the studies are, I don't believe what is true for them is representative of humanity in general. Their history has largely insulated them from meaningful pluralism, including the endemic poverty issues that more open societies have encountered.

Austria may be able to afford to subsidize the 1%. The US would face a much larger economic problem doing so for more than 11%. I'm not sure what we owe to individuals as a standard of living after being out of poverty. The work ethic should continue to have an incentive in order to afford comforts that are luxuries.

 

[belamyi]

The problem is considering that people are first (because a human life is more important than anything... well, maybe except for freedom, honour and all that), and then come the means to ensure their welfare, but the thing is that what is first is the given society and civilization, a given order, and then people are more or less dispensable according to that given social order of civilization.
So you are either born into it or you LICK up to it, but you can not expect either modern, faltering welfare society or old religious charity to come down to rain mana over you: the Western Anglo myth of holding one's own taken for granted what would allow it is one of the silliest, most dangerous lies ever, and most laughable in the best jokers like Ayn Rand and her Gail Wynand, who would die of hunger before accepting direct alms and pity alimony, but no problem in parasiting the given system to socially climb and overbear it all, under pretense that he "worked his way" to it.
In conclusion, we "The People" are totally dispensable, and when we as a whole, not as some spare annoying pockets, become a burden to heavy to be supported by balance sheets, some sort of "conflict" or "crisis" will be coming along to deal with that excess.