I think the crux of the issue is, entrepreneurs (us!) just don't want to build companies that rely on "unscalable" low-cost human labor any more. We want to build our empires on the backs of machines. There are no new jobs being created at the margin. All the jobs we want people to do are hard, and all the unemployed people we have are unqualified to do them.
My wild-and-crazy suggestion: a Basic Training Guarantee--a law requiring companies to hire capable-but-unskilled laborers, and convert them into skilled labor. No more "15 years' Node.js experience required", or its equivalent in any industry. Work with what we've got!
There are plenty of job openings being created at the margin. I want my house cleaned for less than $80 (note: 2 hour job). Farmers want their crops harvested for minimum wage.
There are no jobs being created because the unemployed are unwilling to do these jobs.
To identify all the job openings that go unfilled, go live in India or China. Most upper class families have a maid, a cook and a driver (if they are wealthy enough to own a car). This is quite uncommon in the US - instead, we have people who are paid not to work.
Some of those jobs will be probably transitory and some are not worth doing in the u.s. even at minimum wage.
There's a lot of automation going on in agriculture[1].
Regarding maids: Roomba's and alike might be starting to become popular in india[2].
Regarding a driver: The average wage for a taxi driver in the u.s. is $12. Not that far from minimum wage[3].
Regarding a cook: I suspect that , a least at current wages cooks make(and even at minimum wages), it's more economically and varied to order food than to have a cook.
A consideration: can someone who earns less than $80 for a day's work afford to live within driving distance of your house? In India, definitely; in a US metropolitan center, definitely not. (This reduces the problem to the much-better-studied, "people really don't like relocating thousands of miles away for a job, even if their life currently sucks.")
It's $80 for 2 hours. You can survive within commuting distance of Manhattan on $15/hour. You might need to commute from NJ and suffer the indignity of having roommates and black neighbors, but it's quite doable.
I lived within commuting distance of Manhattan during grad school on a stipend roughly equivalent to a $10/hour x 40 hours/week. Prices have gone up a bit since then, but only enough to push me 15-20 minutes further out.
You realize that most of the time, when you're hiring someone to clean houses, that most of the money is going to an agency that has overhead, right? Who is answering the calls to set up the appointments? Who is paying for the cleaning materials?
That cleaner is likely making close to 15-20 an hour.
Okay, admittedly, earning $40/hr at any job is well above "marginally-employed", so we're both being a bit silly here. It's more those who expect people earning minimum wage to somehow survive in a city that I was aiming for.
Just because you're billing $40/hr doesn't mean you're well above marginally employed.
We're talking about a 2 hour gig here. There's likely to be at least 2 unbillable hours involved in a 2 hour gig gig, so your rate is already cut in half to $20/hr.
Once you start taking into account all of the unbillable hours (including time spent finding gigs) and all of the downtime between gigs, a $40/hr rate could very well mean you are below the poverty line.
> I want my house cleaned for less than $80 (note: 2 hour job).
First of all, I doubt there's anywhere in the USA you couldn't get responses to a craigslist ad offering $40/hr for house cleaning.
Second, a 2hr/month gig is not going to pull in anywhere near the responses that a 40hr/week would at the same rate. It's just not the same thing. Try living off freelancing for a while; then you'll know what "2 hour gig" really means.
In a society that runs out of physical labor to do, you might just as well call them "disabled", and pay them a cheque out of that pool. But Basic Income (or a negative income tax) is cleaner in its economic predictability than special-casing things like that.
My wild-and-crazy suggestion: a Basic Training Guarantee--a law requiring companies to hire capable-but-unskilled laborers, and convert them into skilled labor. No more "15 years' Node.js experience required", or its equivalent in any industry. Work with what we've got!