"But with a jobs guarantee, who decides what the job is in service of? "
Doesn't matter (ultimately it is a political choice). The point of the job is to use up hours so you can't use them yourself. It forces the spending of time - which is the actual underlying exchange amount.
If you give up your time for others, then others will give up their time for you.
The purpose of jobs is to use up time. A job is a contract for employment - selling hours.
If I have to use up my time to get the things I need to live, then I'm going to want to see you doing the same.
At root we exchange time with each other. And that time has to be for the service of others.
Service to others is the rent we pay for our room here on earth.
It's a little more than just producing consumption goods - which hopefully can be mostly done by machinery.
If somebody is giving up their time and they are being directed to do something pointless, who are you going to be annoyed with: the person doing the work, or the person directing the work?
I don't know how to cordially express how much I disagree with this.
The time that a job consumes is a bug, not a feature. The reason a farmer hires a carpenter is to get the barn built, not to feel better about the hours the farmer spent growing the crops that the carpenter eats. If the carpenter could snap their fingers and get the barn built instantaneously, rather than over the course of a few days, they would, and the farmer would still give them food to pay for it.
Doesn't matter (ultimately it is a political choice). The point of the job is to use up hours so you can't use them yourself. It forces the spending of time - which is the actual underlying exchange amount.
If you give up your time for others, then others will give up their time for you.