Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Make Work or Basic Income?

"OK, Mister Porter, you got balls, man. So I'm going to let you decide. You wanna see it coming...or you wanna turn around?"
--Mercenary (Under Siege 2)

Dan Mitchell considers a question. Which is more harmful: make-work government jobs, or basic income schemes? Make-work jobs are unproductive, lest they would be funded by volition rather than by force. On the other hand, basic income schemes pay people not to work.

Stated differently, is it worse to have taxpayers fund people doing unproductive work, or no work at all?

The answer, of course, doesn't really matter because the question poses a false choice.

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