Welfare for the 21st century: Basic income and job guarantee policies
0 views
Skip to first unread message
Aaditeshwar Seth
Mar 12, 2026, 11:30:05 PMMar 12
to learning, ac...@googlegroups.com, CoRE stack: NRM
Conclusion:
Taken together, these findings suggest a complementarity of benefits, rather than a contest between basic income and job guarantees: Basic income primarily expands autonomy and financial security, with limited labor supply reductions (Bernhard et al., 2025; Bohmann et al, 2025). Job guarantees, by contrast, directly provide the latent benefits of work that cash alone does not reliably produce, especially for disadvantaged groups and long-term unemployed (Kasy and Lehner, 2026). If the policy objective is welfare in the broad sense emphasized in our conceptual discussion, the evidence points to complementarity: basic income as a general floor that strengthens outside options and reduces surveillance and stigma, and job guarantees as a targeted instrument that restores social inclusion, time structure, and recognition where these are missing.
Makes me think that when arguing for NREGA, we should not harp upon the wage lift it facilitated because a reduction in labour supply seems to be the main concern for those in power! It might probably be more productive to argue on the relevance of NREGA for climate resilience assets, and that the way to do it is bottom-up with the community rather than top-down through technology!
Adi
Co-founder, Gram Vaani; Co-founder, CoRE Stack
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages