Must-Read: Max Sawicky: Work Makes Fritos

…but Vox’s Dylan Matthews brings something news to the table, pointing to the contemporary Democrats’ default anti-poverty policy: get people into a job, any job. Translated that means work supports for jobs with very low pay and scant prospects for upward mobility. The genesis of this policy was the so-called Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, also known as “welfare reform.”… From 1996 to 2000, most of the evidence on TANF, with one important exception, showed up positive. Poverty decreased, employment and wages increased. The problem for evaluation is that this same period happened to be one of the best in U.S. history, in terms of labor market advance. In addition, the minimum wage (in 1996 and 1997) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (in 1993) increased. This makes it hard to isolate any beneficial effects of TANF. Unfortunately, the positive signs for those in the bottom income quintile (20%) of the population have crumbled since 2000. Truth is, they weren’t that positive to begin with. The impact on work in “leavers” studies (where TANF recipients were tracked after graduating from the program) tended to show work effects in the high teens. Think about that for a second. You’re working, say, one week a month. You increase work (assuming you have the option) by the top of the range, 20%. Instead of working five days a month, you work six days. Twelve extra days a year. Nor does work necessarily mean higher income, since increased earnings offset benefits, and work expenses reduce net income. The other ominous, early sign was income decline for the poorest single mothers’ families, documented by the saintly Wendell Primus and colleagues. (Primus actually resigned from his post with the Clinton Administration after the welfare was signed. How often do you see that.)…

At the time I hoped that the reform might cast a different light on welfare recipients. Instead of being bums, they would be workers. But enrollment in TANF has dropped off the table. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is slurred as “the Food Stamp president.” So the meanness has not dissipated, it has just been redirected…. All this is a lengthy prelude to Matthews’ post. His remedy for a future of lousy jobs is the UBI…. You’re not as much at the mercy of employers…. The chief benefit of the ‘exit’ option is the implied upward pressure on wages. So far, so good. But Matthews’ thrust is actually more radical than that. He is throwing shade on the moral obligation and axiomatic economic imperative of work itself, in particular employed work…. Let’s desacralize work. Dignity of work, my fanny. Work that is truly voluntary would be nice. Work that is compelled as an alternative to destitution does not comport with any reasonable concept of dignity. It’s like the dignity of kicking back to Tony Soprano…