# Job Guarantee **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 12, 2015, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473 "2015-04-12T04:38:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/41 "2015-04-13T19:09:48Z")
(missed the edit window) To make a more rational point, I think this has to do with the corporate focus on profits over good corporate citizenship in the last few decades. I’m not going full bore socialist, but I don’t see why a company can’t value both profit AND citizenship. I agree that you don’t want make-work jobs just to keep people off the streets, but there are a lot of valuable jobs going un-staffed in the interest of squeezing every penny out. People loaded down with the responsibilities of what used to be three full time jobs, for example. When I was job-hunting a few years ago, there were many ads for Business Analyst with requirements of software development, analysis and also project management. Even administrative assistants that used to support whole departments have been cut and now everybody has to handle their own calls, letters to customers and vendors, meeting planning, and other organizational tasks. If you’re paying good money for a highly skilled software engineer, why do you want him scheduling meetings and writing letters? That’s just an example. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/42 "2015-04-13T19:16:38Z")
> [@JcWoman](#): > > Speaking only for myself, I wasn’t advocating that government do the hiring for businesses. But I would like for someone to slap them upside the head, shake them until their eyeballs roll and convince them that they do NOT need to hold out for the fifteenth rightmost standard deviation expertise in the whole U.S. population before making a job offer. All I’m saying is that when companies do this, and then whinge about lack of qualified candidates, and it’s really hard to respect them in the morning. They are making their own beds, so they should lay in them. Except it’s not that easy because it has huge societal and economic impact. You could be right, but I look at it this way-- the more companies make mistakes, the more business opportunities there are for me if I ever want to compete with them. ---
**Author:** ![Stormcrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/0ea827/32.png) [@Stormcrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stormcrow)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/43 "2015-04-13T19:20:25Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > And if people are guaranteed a job, how o you get rid of folks who are doing a crappy job? Seems like you’re just better off guaranteeing a stipend to everyone and then let the market sort out the employment needs. You’re guaranteed A job, just not _this_ job. ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/44 "2015-04-13T20:10:36Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > You could be right, but I look at it this way-- the more companies make mistakes, the more business opportunities there are for me if I ever want to compete with them. That’s a fair point. So then we also need to eliminate obstacles to entrepreneurialism. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/45 "2015-04-13T20:12:10Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > Huh. For some reason I thought you’d be against the job guarantee. And you’re right. During the Great Depression government jobs programs did some great work. The Hoover Damn is one that comes to mind. Okay, but the Hoover Dam wasn’t just a case of giving a bunch of people a salary and saying “Go build something.” The Hoover Dam (called the Boulder Dam when it was built) was built because they really needed a big dam built there; it was planned long before the Depression hit. As it happens it was a fortunate thing that it provided jobs for men who needed it (though it managed to kill a lot of them) but the impetus of the project was that it was something that needed to be built. Starting with “let’s employ people” is starting at the wrong end of the question. If you set out to merely employ people, you will end up paying them to do nothing of value, as in fact can be seen in some countries. If you begin your question with “what do we need to get done?” you might end up actually employing people in a way that gets something useful done. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/46 "2015-04-13T20:28:33Z")
As an unofficial addendum to **RickJay** ’s post, the other problem is that even if you have a project that definitely needs to get built, the bulk of jobs often take a long time to arrive. Let’s say everyone agrees that a new bridge is needed somewhere. You can’t just send out a bunch of men and build it–you need to wait months or years for a relatively small group of highly paid engineers, managers, architects, and other officials to design, organize, and approve your project (and this often can’t be sped up–a “nine women can’t make a baby in one month” type of problem). So if you fund these types of infrastructure projects, the construction jobs don’t actually arrive until the economy is already on an upwswing. This was a big problem in the late 2000’s, wherein the government simply couldn’t find enough “shovel-ready” projects to fund. Now, if you don’t give a crap about the environment, you have a depression that goes on for years, and you are building things that are less engineered than what we have today, your fiscal stimulus will probably be successful (at least from a Keynesian viewpoint). But if not, you’re liable to just waste your money by any metric. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/47 "2015-04-13T21:09:35Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Okay, but the Hoover Dam wasn’t just a case of giving a bunch of people a salary and saying “Go build something.” The Hoover Dam (called the Boulder Dam when it was built) was built because they really needed a big dam built there; it was planned long before the Depression hit. As it happens it was a fortunate thing that it provided jobs for men who needed it (though it managed to kill a lot of them) but the impetus of the project was that it was something that needed to be built. > > Starting with “let’s employ people” is starting at the wrong end of the question. If you set out to merely employ people, you will end up paying them to do nothing of value, as in fact can be seen in some countries. If you begin your question with “what do we need to get done?” you might end up actually employing people in a way that gets something useful done. And every time someone brings up The Hoover Dam, I want to ask them how long the Environmental Impact Report took to get approved. And then I want to ask them where they plan to set up the tent city to house the workers that will be shipped to the big, new job site. You simply couldn’t do something like that today, and looking back at what might have worked 80 years ago during a Depression as an example of what we should be doing today is laughable on the face of it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/48 "2015-04-13T21:16:34Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Just to be clear, you are recommending that government bureaucrats do the hiring for private companies? Because if you’re not, I’m not sure why you are seemingly objecting to my post. I’m not asking which will do a perfect job, I’m asking which will do a better job. I wasn’t aware that anyone was advocating that government hire for private companies. So I’m not sure what the point of your post was. Government jobs might take up the slack left by private companies who are not hiring now (or during the recession) not because there are unqualified applicants, but because they are hoping for an unemployed applicant who can bend steel with her bare hands and leap over might buildings in a single bound. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/49 "2015-04-13T21:22:57Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > You could be right, but I look at it this way-- the more companies make mistakes, the more business opportunities there are for me if I ever want to compete with them. In the long run they will screw up and implode. In the short run they will undercut you and your company will be dead. Participants in a race to the bottom feel they have little recourse. They’re not necessarily evil. Or stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/50 "2015-04-13T21:26:09Z")
I may be misremembering, but wasn’t there, at one time, a program to do this through the private sector, with the government giving companies money they were to use to hire people? And the same questionable memory tells me it fell victim to a _de facto_ lack of an effective enforcement mechanism, though I can think of a rather simple one. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/51 "2015-04-13T21:29:18Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I wasn’t aware that anyone was advocating that government hire for private companies. So I’m not sure what the point of your post was. This thread is about the government guaranteeing everyone a job. One poster says that companies don’t know how to hire the right people. I ask if that poster thinks the government should do the hiring instead. You come back with this post: > [@](#): > > If you think that business doesn’t hire like JcWoman describes, you haven’t seen enough hiring. I have a friend who is a headhunter in the pharma industry, and she complains about exactly this. Especially during the recession companies had employee fantasies and would leave good candidates hanging for months out of fear that someone better was out there. We have some equally stupid behavior internally. That seems to be a very strange thing to post if I was supposed to interpret it as meaning: “I think private companies are better at hiring than the government would be”. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/52 "2015-04-14T00:01:38Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > This thread is about the government guaranteeing everyone a job. One poster says that companies don’t know how to hire the right people. I ask if that poster thinks the government should do the hiring instead. You come back with this post: > That seems to be a very strange thing to post if I was supposed to interpret it as meaning: “I think private companies are better at hiring than the government would be”. Okay. I took her comment as a frustrated aside, perhaps because my friend is equally frustrated. I could try to make it relevant by using it as an argument that companies don’t do a good job hiring, but the guaranteed job proposal is just as valid if companies hired perfectly. It doesn’t matter how good a job government does in hiring since the proposal is for them to hire (initially) everyone, so they are going to do a worse job in terms of qualified applicants by definition. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/53 "2015-04-14T00:04:04Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > I may be misremembering, but wasn’t there, at one time, a program to do this through the private sector, with the government giving companies money they were to use to hire people? And the same questionable memory tells me it fell victim to a _de facto_ lack of an effective enforcement mechanism, though I can think of a rather simple one. There have definitely been tax incentives. I think I may remember a program like what you mention. I remember reading about the great hopes for such programs - I don’t remember reading any stories about how they worked well. ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/54 "2015-04-14T00:21:07Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Who do you think is best qualified to make that decision-- private sector hiring managers or government bureaucrats? > > It seems that whenever we have these discussions, many people make the assumption that there is some objective agency that is able to make the “right” decisions that private industry can’t. You’re absolutely right that the companies have the right to make that decision. But it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily correct. As a hiring manager, I have had educational requirements put on me (because we can get them, with so many grads these days) only to have those people complaining that the job isn’t meeting their college-degree expectations/aspirations. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/55 "2015-04-14T00:56:31Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > None of those things argue for a make-work program. If they need to be done, they need to be done. If they don’t, they don’t. > > Also, can you answer my question about productivity? That was the point I was trying to make: there’s plenty of real work that needs to be done, which would create real assets, increase the real wealth of the country, and improve the productivity and quality of life for future generations. Meanwhile millions are idle because they don’t have jobs. It’s a solution that would solve two problems: unemployment, and creating a better, more productive USA for the future. The productivity of someone who is doing nothing (is unemployed) is 0. If you employ him doing something useful, you increase overall productivity. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/56 "2015-04-14T01:08:57Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > OK, so what problem is that solving? Is our economy plagued with too few goods being produced? What happens when you produce more goods than the market needs? I’m not aware that’s a problem in this country. Most people want more: better homes, safer cleaner streets, better education for their children, newer, better cars, travel opportunities, etc. Except for the tiny percentage who have more money than they could possibly spend, virtually everyone wants something they can’t afford. In most cases, many things. I wouldn’t mind having a private jet, for example. But to answer your question directly: if the economy actually produced more goods and services than people wanted, that would cause deflationary effect on the price of goods and services. I just don’t think it’s a likely scenario. If we do reach a place where everyone has everything they want, I’d argue that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/57 "2015-04-14T01:14:12Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > The productivity of someone who is doing nothing (is unemployed) is 0. If you employ him doing something useful, you increase overall productivity. The part that you are missing is that you can’t just round up a herd of unemployed men and women and yell ‘March, go forth, and make this great nation a better place!’. It is not that simple at all. It costs very significant amounts of money to put the bureaucracies in place before you can even put a single pair of boots on the ground. Even superficial and non-skilled labor like roadside trash cleanup would require lots of expensive support on the administrative side. Trash and graffiti cleanup makes the targeted areas look nicer but it can’t support itself so it actually cost money overall well beyond the cost of simply paying people to stay home. Beyond simple aesthetics, those types of initiatives can introduce _negative_ productivity because of their high overhead costs with few tangible economic gains. There are plenty of infrastructure projects that need to be done but this isn’t 1850 or even 1940 anymore. Man-power isn’t the limiting factor. Those projects mainly require a relative few really skilled engineers and project managers plus skilled heavy equipment operators to get done. I know more about operating heavy equipment than the vast majority of people and I still wouldn’t be qualified to work on the simplest bridge project. The average long-term unemployed person would simply be a dangerous menace attempting such a thing at all. Again, what types of jobs do you think you could give to literally millions of unemployed people that would A) be meaningfully productive and B) not cost much more than they are worth by using ‘free’ labor that is anything but that when you calculate all of the associated costs of administering the program. I am not saying that there aren’t any. There has to be a few within a problem of this size but I don’t think it as straightforward to develop and administer as some people believe. The U.S. moved well beyond the simple muscle power phase of development a long time ago so that greatly limits most jobs, even basic ones, to people that have some skills. Brainstorm some real ideas for jobs that large numbers of these people could do interchangeably and we can discuss them. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/58 "2015-04-14T01:34:49Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > I’m not aware that’s a problem in this country. Most people want more: better homes, safer cleaner streets, better education for their children, newer, better cars, travel opportunities, etc. Except for the tiny percentage who have more money than they could possibly spend, virtually everyone wants something they can’t afford. In most cases, many things. I wouldn’t mind having a private jet, for example. > > But to answer your question directly: if the economy actually produced more goods and services than people wanted, that would cause deflationary effect on the price of goods and services. I just don’t think it’s a likely scenario. > > If we do reach a place where everyone has everything they want, I’d argue that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. It’s not a question about what people want, but what they can afford. I want a mansion in Beverly Hills. That doesn’t mean I’m planning to buy one anytime soon. And when there are more goods than can be sold, what happens is that companies idle the factories and lay people off. That sorta works against the whole guaranteed job thingy. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/59 "2015-04-14T01:42:40Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > What about the people who claim they want a job but don’t want to actually _work_? Plenty of those people exist right now in all types of work environments. What happens when someone just doesn’t show up to _work_ for three days straight and finally pops in about noon on Friday afternoon really hung over but claiming they are back for their _guaranteed job_? What if they do show up but spend the whole day surfing porn and talking with their friends? You can impose rules for that but then it is mostly just a regular job (presumably with less pay) but not truly guaranteed. > > It seems to me that a truly guaranteed system of jobs would just recreate the worst parts of the old Soviet job model while strict rules for eligibility would undermine the proposed intentions and create economic conflicts with private enterprise. I think that’s a good argument against a guaranteed job program. The only solution I know would be not paying those who don’t work. Presumably the jobs would only be for people who actually want to work. If they don’t want to work and can get by without working, then they wouldn’t be part of the program. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473/60 "2015-04-14T01:45:25Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > In a sense though, if you include the currently unemployed in the denominator of the productivity calculation, having them produce something instead of nothing will increase productivity. Especially if they have good skills and training, which some did, especially during the depths of the recession. I think this isn’t the technical definition of productivity, but it is true in a sense. Thats a good point. I suppose the unemployed are not included in denominator. If they were, productivity per person would go up, as well as overall productivity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-guarantee/717473.md?page=4)