1) Good point, but it's not clear to me demand for necessities would actually increase. Bear with me: virtually no one in the United States actually starves, and only a very small number lack a roof over their head or other "necessities." I might even be tempted to defined a necessity as something a person will consume regardless of income. What people do do instead is externalize the cost of their purchase, through shifting it onto their social networks, relying on public funds either implicitly (nonprofits, churches) or explicitly, or by debt. Debt acts funny, though, because it either shifts costs to their future selves (reducing future consumption of non-necessities) or to creditors (who'll eat some of the cost and pass the rest on to borrowers in general). We can theorize all day about what the actual effects would be--it seems a bit opaque to me, and I'd like a small sized country to play with a reasonably sized basic income to give us some real data.
2) I'm not too familiar with the Basic Job idea, and it's not very google-able. But I expect my general response would be two-pronged: firstly, I reject the idea that there's a huge disincentive to work with Basic Income. No one is materially satisfied at the basic income level, which my gut says should be $10k-$12k. Most working age Americans make more than that, and most are happy to take on more work when it means more money. (At some point most people do value time over money, but that's well above the minimum income level.)
But more fundamentally I reject the idea that a government has the capability to designate what're jobs that involve real, economically valuable work and what're not.
Should a person who dispenses psychoactive consumables be considered a worker? Yes, but try getting that through Congress. Should an NSA snoop? No, but same deal. What about an artist? An entrepreneur exploring a new market? An unpaid intern building up social and knowledge capital? A family caretaker?
Even if I trusted bureaucrats in DC not to be subject to special interests and regulatory capture, it's a matter of capability. They just don't have the knowledge to make these judgments, and investing enough money into providing that knowledge would be a huge waste if not impossible. On-the-ground individuals have far more knowledge about their particular circumstances and the needs of their communities than anyone else. Building the ability for dispersed economic activity to leverage dispersed knowledge has to be a cornerstone of policymaking, because those knowledge costs are increasingly the costs that define our modern economy.
Bear with me: virtually no one in the United States actually starves, and only a very small number lack a roof over their head or other "necessities."
Your definition of necessities is, I believe, narrower than the BLS. Consumer goods is probably a better term in retrospect. When you redistribute wealth from savers to spenders (as a BI is purported to do), you are increasing demand for consumer goods.
No one is materially satisfied at the basic income level, which my gut says should be $10k-$12k...No one is materially satisfied at the basic income level...(At some point most people do value time over money, but that's well above the minimum income level.)
This is simply incorrect. Most Americans below the poverty line already choose time over money.
I don't propose that basic jobs necessarily involve real, economically valuable work. I expect basic jobs to cost the government money.
The point is that it's cheaper than a BI, for two reasons. First, only a small subset of the population will even take the basic job - perhaps 10-50 million people. The rest will find jobs in the market economy paying more than $7.25/hour. Second, you gain some economic output from them - a low skill worker might be worth only $3/hour, and you pay him $7.25, so the loss is $4.25/hour rather than $7.25/hour. This would actually save the government money in some cases if the basic job worker replaces a unionized government worker making $20/hour.
Incidentally, the Basic Job program has been tried. FDR did it. We got a national park system out of it, among other benefits.
2) I'm not too familiar with the Basic Job idea, and it's not very google-able. But I expect my general response would be two-pronged: firstly, I reject the idea that there's a huge disincentive to work with Basic Income. No one is materially satisfied at the basic income level, which my gut says should be $10k-$12k. Most working age Americans make more than that, and most are happy to take on more work when it means more money. (At some point most people do value time over money, but that's well above the minimum income level.)
But more fundamentally I reject the idea that a government has the capability to designate what're jobs that involve real, economically valuable work and what're not.
Should a person who dispenses psychoactive consumables be considered a worker? Yes, but try getting that through Congress. Should an NSA snoop? No, but same deal. What about an artist? An entrepreneur exploring a new market? An unpaid intern building up social and knowledge capital? A family caretaker?
Even if I trusted bureaucrats in DC not to be subject to special interests and regulatory capture, it's a matter of capability. They just don't have the knowledge to make these judgments, and investing enough money into providing that knowledge would be a huge waste if not impossible. On-the-ground individuals have far more knowledge about their particular circumstances and the needs of their communities than anyone else. Building the ability for dispersed economic activity to leverage dispersed knowledge has to be a cornerstone of policymaking, because those knowledge costs are increasingly the costs that define our modern economy.