Not everybody on the left agrees:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nakedcapitalism.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;the-failure-of-a-past-basic-income-guarantee-the-speenhamland-system.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nakedcapitalism.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;the-failure-of-a-past...</a><p>&quot;The idea of a basic income guarantee is very popular with readers, more so that the notion of a job guarantee. Yet as we have mentioned in passing, this very sort of program was put in place on a large-scale basis in the past. Initially, it was very popular. However, in the long run it proved to be destructive to the recipients while tremendously beneficial to employers, who used the income support to further lower wages, thus increasing costs to the state and further reducing incentives to work. And when the system was dismantled, it was arguably the working poor, as opposed to the ones who had quit working altogether, who were hurt the most.&quot;<p>I&#x27;ve yet to hear a good explanation for why basic income <i>is</i> superior to a job guarantee. We do <i>not</i> live a techno-futurist utopia where robots do all of our work. We do not want to be welfare queens; work gives us dignity. We do not <i>even</i> have world class infrastructure, we have infrastructure that is falling to pieces and direly needs work.<p>The last time we were in this situation, FDR created jobs. Jobs that built stuff like schools, hospitals... the lincoln tunnel.