20.2 Employment opportunities without formal qualifications

People differ greatly in education, experience, ability, and circumstance. A successful economic system should allow people without formal qualifications to find useful work, develop experience, and improve their position. VoTa does not constitutionally mandate a job guarantee, although it permits public services to operate as employment-guarantee programmes. Employment is not itself evidence that valuable work is being performed, so such services remain responsible for producing outcomes which taxpayers value. Tax choice can support a diverse range of useful work with low barriers to entry.

Labour-intensive local services

Many services valued by taxpayers require human effort but little formal education. Examples include cleaning, maintenance, waste collection, environmental restoration, food preparation and distribution, transport, community-centre operations, and support roles in child care, aged care, and emergency services. Such work is often local, visible, and difficult to relocate overseas. Taxpayers can readily observe whether it is being done well and direct funding towards providers that produce useful results.

Low barriers to small providers

Tax choice allows narrowly defined services and small providers to compete for funding. An unmet local need does not have to become part of a large government department before someone can propose to address it. Maintaining a public space, delivering meals, assisting people with transport, removing litter, or operating a community kitchen can be organised at a scale accessible to people and groups without substantial capital or complex administration. This reduces the institutional barrier between recognising useful work and funding someone to perform it.

Support does not require consensus

A subcommunity may favour useful services consisting of work which requires only a modest minimum level of skill and therefore does not command high pay. Its members do not need to persuade a majority or establish a universal State programme. They can direct their own tax allocations towards such services, and the services can operate if that support is sufficient. Other taxpayers remain free to choose different priorities.

The service may not prefer applicants merely because they are unskilled, inexperienced, unemployed, poor, or otherwise disadvantaged. The separate NDP exception for services and facilities for those with illnesses, injuries, infirmities, or disabilities permits relevant special treatment on those grounds. Subject to that exception, a service may select by task-relevant merit, whether by choosing the best applicant, the best number of applicants, or everyone who meets a minimum standard. It may separately use order of application to allocate positions. Because the work requires little skill and pays accordingly, it will tend to be attractive to people with fewer alternatives without discriminating in their favour.

Such a service may either offer a limited number of positions or make a standing offer to everyone who meets its published conditions. The latter can operate as an employment guarantee. The response is decentralised, financed from existing tax revenue rather than newly created currency, and limited to work which a subcommunity considers worth purchasing. Different communities can support different employment guarantees or other forms of useful low-skill work instead of having one political authority prescribe a national programme and wage.

Competing approaches to social support

VoTa does not prescribe a single policy for unemployment or dependence on taxpayer-funded support. Subject to the constitutional UBI and the NDP, different taxpayer subcommunities may support different approaches, including universal food and shelter, health care, training, rehabilitation, and useful public services containing low-skill work. These approaches can coexist because each taxpayer controls the allocation of their own tax. None requires majority agreement before it can operate with sufficient support.

This creates competition between ideas as well as competition between service providers. Taxpayers can compare the cost and observed results of different approaches: whether they reduce homelessness, improve health, develop useful skills, provide valued services, or reduce long-term dependence. An approach with better practical results may attract more tax allocations and become dominant because taxpayers increasingly choose it, not because the State imposes it as the official policy.

Such dominance remains contestable. Other approaches may continue alongside it, and taxpayers may redirect their allocations when results deteriorate or a better proposal appears. The NDP constrains every approach regardless of its popularity: taxpayer support cannot authorise discriminatory eligibility, employment, or treatment beyond the Constitution's express exceptions.

Employment is a consequence, not the product

Taxpayers may value the fact that a service creates accessible work, but a service should not be funded merely to make employment statistics look better. Its workers must produce an outcome people consider worth its cost, and providers remain accountable through continuing competition for tax allocations. Employment is a beneficial consequence of providing a valued service, not a substitute for providing one.

UBI and bargaining power

The UBI allows a person to accept entry-level, part-time, or irregular work without making survival depend upon a particular employer. It gives people room to acquire experience, combine work with education or caring responsibilities, attempt self-employment, and leave abusive conditions. Employers cannot rely on destitution to make unattractive jobs acceptable; they must offer suitable pay and conditions, redesign the work, provide training, or automate it.

Tax choice redirects employment

Tax-funded services do not add net purchasing power to the economy. They redirect demand from private purchases towards publicly funded services. Employment may therefore increase among service providers while falling in private activities from which spending was redirected. Tax choice can change the kinds of jobs available and make many low-barrier services viable, but it cannot create unlimited real demand for labour or guarantee that every allocation is wise. A particular service may nevertheless guarantee employment under its published terms by scaling its provision with the number of people who accept its offer.

Taxpayers may also prefer automation, capital-intensive projects, or services requiring specialists. The Constitution therefore does not itself guarantee employment for every person without qualifications. It permits taxpayers to fund services which do so, while decentralised funding, small-provider competition, demand for local labour-intensive services, and the security provided by UBI create favourable conditions for other varied and accessible opportunities to emerge.