In my last post, I explained the best way to end unemployment is an Ebay / Paypal style solution to auction off the “Man Weeks” of our unemployed:

  1. All registered workers are guaranteed an income of $10,400 per year, at least $6 per hour. The minimum bid is $1, and the government uses current Unemployment Insurance I monies to add up to $5.

  2. Current UI ends after 90 days. To receive any extra aid of any kind (food stamps, Section 8, energy assistance, etc.) able bodied workers must register in this system. They receive a Debit Card where their pay is deposited every Friday. They can choose to earn less, but they cannot decline to work and get GI.

  3. We are all allowed to bid on any worker’s Man Week, as long as we have first deposited the money to cover the bid in the system; no credit will be extended. This bid covers employer taxes, workers compensation, everything soup-to-nuts.

Below you will find the pay schedule I’m suggesting, but first I want to talk about a gorgeous side effect of this plan: it ends illegal immigration. In fact, it actually causes current illegals to deport themselves.

The reason is simple: When farmers can bid $4.00 per hour to have unemployed American citizens pick the grape crop, they will no longer hire illegals. You get the drift? Immediately, there will be no jobs open to illegal immigrants. Since (in this $4 case) the government is adding $3.50 per hour, the US citizen is earning $7.50 ($15,600 per year).

We’ll leverage the extra pay provided by the government (money we spend anyway) to end demand for non-citizen workers.

Notice that we don’t need to staff up the Immigration Department to chase down coyotes; we don’t need to raid companies looking for illegal immigrants; we don’t need to build a wall across Mexico; we don’t need to waste time passing harsh laws.

To solve illegal immigration we just need to do two things:

  1. Admit that many of our own fellow citizens have skill sets worth only a couple of bucks per hour.

  2. Accept that these fellow citizens are due a level of income beyond what they are able to earn in the free market, and we will help those who help themselves.

When I wrote the last post, I was gladdened to see that many of those who commented were comfortable with the political reality of #2. And yet there were some who still screamed, “No!”

I understand your indignation that people would be given something they did not earn. But you are not recognizing how far we are from your utopia. This is far better than half a loaf. If you just relent and accept a Guaranteed Income replacement for Minimum Wage and Unemployment Insurance (now past 99 weeks), in return we receive:

  1. 100% employment for our citizens overnight.

  2. Less overall spending by the government; this saves money compared to current programs in real dollars.

  3. Lower costs of services to make you more productive – cleaning, lawn care, child care, etc.

  4. A far smaller trade deficit – we keep the cheap jobs here, instead of losing them to India and China.

  5. An end to illegal immigration.

  6. The Fed no longer has any reason to print money, as we have solved completely for one side of their dual mandate (Unemployment).

One of the heroes of modern conservatism, Milton Friedman (perhaps my favorite economist after Robert Mundell), once proposed a Negative Income Tax. In order to end all other forms of aid, we just guarantee a level of income and send them an IRS check if they made less than the minimum.

I’m sure that in the modern age of the Internet, Friedman would prefer my solution.

Bidding on Man Weeks of the unemployed means that all of us are constantly combing through the database looking at resumes, reading feedback from past employers, looking for a good deal; workers who we bid a bit more on because we think we’ll gain more from them than the next employer will. The more we bid, the less the government spends.

In an Ebay model, both sides give feedback, so both employers and employees gain reputations that each side can use when bidding / accepting work.

Employees who shine in multiple jobs will find more employers bidding on them, so they earn more while the government gives them less money.

We can investigate those who keep getting fired and threaten to end all types of aid they receive if they do not start to perform suitably. Employers who are abusive or break the basic rules of the system can be barred from participating.

Keeping the incentives lined up on a pay schedule was easy. Here’s what I came up with: