To circle back to BI, I think the discussion about disability really is more widely applicable. Let’s suppose that Marxist theory has something to it, and opportunities for “productive work” by live human beings really are diminishing as capitalism ages. The theory certainly seems to fit many of the available facts. Something we could do in order to deal with the situation is to supplement capitalism-as-we-know it with BI for everyone, so that the result would look something like 1/2 capitalism, cut-throat competition, people who happen to be good at that sort of thing and/or well-connected making and losing fortunes at an exciting clip, and a certain amount of “creative class” jobs available for other people who happen to be good at that sort of thing and/or well connected; the other 1/2 consisting of massive society-wide expansion of the welfare state, with continuing consumption supported by state redistribution of taxes on the first 1/2 in the form of BI to everyone (but this universal BI being only vital to the survival of the latter 1/2).

I think under those conditions many people would prefer “make-work” to collecting BI and sitting at home by themselves all day. Witt is rather contemptuous of it when it involves people with disabilities, but what if it involved all kinds of folks and were called the Civilian Conservation Corps? I mean, it’s what got trotted out in the Great Depression—loads of make-work, some of which produced nice lasting stuff like park shelters and some of which did not. I don’t think the workers involved much cared either way—they wanted to work, not just in order to earn income, but also to feel like full participating citizens with co-workers and a place to go every day etc. etc. (this is what stay-at-home moms miss, too, btw)

It’s not The Revolution, in which all social forms are dissolved and reformed in entirely novel configurations. But I wouldn’t knock it; and I think that the contemporary work-life situation of people with disabilities is a bit of a canary in a coal mine.

Let’s just leave it at the fact that I support fully-funded safe, clean, interesting and engaging day programs for people with disabilities who have few if any other alternatives.

He spends his days at a program he seems to enjoy

and if we call that enrichment, or school, or even (somewhat condescendingly) an adult day program, it’s still not a sheltered workshop where people are pretending that he’s doing productive work. It’s the hypocrisy that I really don’t like.

*N.b. Not referring here to all of the hardworking and well-intentioned human beings who designed and operate within the system, but definitely critiquing how it has come to function.

This is quibbling, of course—while you said ‘absolutely everyone’, I doubt that’s what you really meant.

I believe very strongly that real-world work experience is good for absolutely everyone, and I have a very low opinion of the sheltered-workshop type programs I have seen in action

and I stand by that, and I wouldn’t exactly call it an airy dismissal. Obviously I haven’t been on a tour of every possible sheltered workshop.

I suspect that the misunderstanding occurred because of my use of “real-world.” I didn’t mean that every person with severe motor-skills issues should be trying to unload plywood at Home Depot. That’s a recipe for misery and frustration for both employer and employee/volunteer alike.

I meant that in my experience, it’s far better for a woman with Down Syndrome to reshelve color-coded videos at her local library, interacting with the public and with library staff, than it is to sit in a room with other people with disabilities doing some kind of make-work of cutting up rags. It’s better to be packing toilet kits for the Red Cross, or holding babies in a neonatal nursery, or even doing tedious data-entry work. Over the last 20 years I’ve worked alongside people with serious mental illness, with several different types of autism, with physical limitations of one sort or another, and with developmental disabilities. I remain quite firm in my belief that some form of real-world work experience is better for ALL of them [and me, and us as a society], even if we have to think creatively about how to accomplish it.

The three colleagues with whom I worked the longest (several years in each case) each had a champion—mother, social worker, friend—who pushed and advocated and problem-solved and more or less bullied workplaces into creating a an opportunity. Oddly enough, once the person was on board, the steep part of the curve vanished (investment of staff time in training/supervising—as short as 6-8 hours in some cases) and the person was a terrific long-term, stable support for the department.

It’s administratively more efficient to sort people, but it isn’t particularly better for them, nor in my opinion for us as a whole.

Dave—you seem to be saying that any discussion of BI is a no-go cause lots of people are racist ungenerous meanspirited beanheads. Fair enough, but that line of argument works against any discussion of any potentially progressive measure. If we wanted to make sure we had the racist ungenerous meanspirited beanheads on board before we tried for any new policies, obviously our aspirations would diminish accordingly. No thanks.

Prison populations are a very different question. While I think a pretty good argument can be made that it would be better for all concerned if some fraction of the current prison population wasn’t imprisoned, this has no bearing on the argument for the existence of a justice system and the existence of prisons.

Meanwhile, you know that, when it costs well in excess of the median wage to keep someone in prison for a year, the argument that “overall everyone is better off not spending the money trying to chase them down and punish them” is dangerously elastic, don’t you? Economics vs. morality again…

If they’re paying attention they also know there really aren’t very many of them. This idea is preyed upon by politicians of various stripes, but any time you look into seriously it turns out to be pretty minimal effect (remember welfare cadillacs?). Sure, the `undeserving poor’ can be used as a whipping boy, and often are, but it really doesn’t need to be that way.

I suspect a very clear argument could be presented that even though a few losers are going to take advantage of a pretty marginal lifestyle here without actually producing anything useful—- overall everyone is better off not spending the money trying to chase them down and punish them. Just use real numbers, and drop the scare-mongering bullshit.

reason has it about right in 25. I don’t know that all the background work has been done, but if it were done carefully, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see that a fairly clear net win could be established.

More problematic is the large number of jobs that would be made redundant.