David F. Ruccio — “We need people to go to work”

Emily Badger is right:

 "The new White House budget proposal is built on a deep-rooted conservative belief: The government should help those who are willing to work, and cull from benefit rolls those who aren’t."

But it’s also a deep-rooted liberal belief. Lest we forget, it was Bill Clinton who signed the original let-them-work-or-starve welfare reform in 1996 (two years after signing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the largest crime bill in history).*

There is not much difference between conservatism and bourgeois liberalism. Two sides of the same coin, as Clinton, Blair, and Obama proved.

The fallacy of substituting workfare for welfare is several fold. First, there have to be enough jobs which there likely won't be without a job guarantee. Secondly, as Ruccio points out, many of the job will pay below the subsistence level so that government has to subsidize employers that don't pay a living wage and whose business plan includes this as a policy. Sam Walton, I am thinking of you.*

* "I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment."
— Attributed in Adam L. Penenberg, "Why Google Is Like Wal-Mart", Wired, 21 April 2005 (Wikiquote)

Occasional Links & Commentary
“We need people to go to work”
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

See also

Zuckerberg said that, because he knew he had a safety net if projects like Facebook had failed, he was confident enough to continue on without fear of failing. Others, he said, such as children who need to support households instead of poking away on computers learning how to code, don't have the foundation Zuckerberg had. Universal basic income would provide that sort of cushion, Zuckerberg argued.

Altman's view is similar. A year ago, Altman said he thinks "everyone should have enough money to meet their basic needs—no matter what, especially if there are enough resources to make it possible. We don't yet know how it should look or how to pay for it, but basic income seems a promising way to do this." Altman believes basic income will be possible as technological advancements "generate an abundance of resources" that help decrease the cost of living.

CNBC
Mark Zuckerberg joins Silicon Valley bigwigs in calling for government to give everybody free money

Todd Haselton