I have a neighbor who is quite happy with what the government pays him while he's not working. I'm sure he could be motivated to work by offering larger salaries, but they'd have to be raised by at least 100% to convince him to go from 0 hours/week to 40 hours/week.
I'm not sure there are 3.277 million people without work who want it.
I'm in Germany, but it's a similar amount (+ rent, internet, utilities, health insurance etc). He has the basics like a cell phone, flat screen and playstation and seems to be content with it.
There will always be people willing to accept the bare minimum. That doesn't have anything to do with the fact that those who do work are still in poverty, with no way out.
Also many have never had a single vacation in their lives. Some just needed the break.
Oh definitely, you can be working and still be poor, but that's a separate issue. I was pointing out that the number of people on unemployment benefits isn't the number of those seeking work, so there's no problem having 3m people vs 1m open jobs that don't get filled. It's an inconvenient truth to many, but it's still the truth.
Getting them back to work would be a great improvement. But I don't think we can make low-skill jobs magically double in value, so there's probably no way, and we'll keep an underclass who are effectively getting UBI and don't contribute.
Yea it's a mess to be sure. Our society is so dirty even if we have UBI rents will magically jump to whatever it is, I'm sure.
It feels like we are all on the Titanic, we see the iceberg coming, but half of us want to steer to avoid it, and half of us want to pretend it isn't there.
But if someone doesn't do something we are all going to sink.
I'm not sure there are 3.277 million people without work who want it.