The aff fundamentally alters capitalist conceptions of work and is in line with the alternative---broad rejections of ‘work’ are reductionist.

Centrally funded permanent job guarantee programs at a living wage, where anybody can obtain a job with benefits, is a very different approach to full employment than a goal of full employment based on demand-management (Tcherneva 2012). Guaranteed jobs based on community driven non-profit-oriented activities that improve people's lives and the environment, provide a way to improve conditions for people, communities, and workers across sectors, and can help stabilize prices (Forstater 2004;Mitchell 2017, 65-68; Tcherneva 2020). Democratic locally driven participation, as opposed to "privatized community" (Champlin 1998) are central (Kolokotronis 2018; Zalewski 2018; Democratizing Work Manifesto 2021).

To better understand how Job Guarantee is not an extension to the logic of the capitalist wage system based on investment, highly relevant are Veblen's theory of human development and insights regarding workmanship [work] (1898, [1904] 2005, [1914] 1964, and 1923). Work is a different concept than commodified labor - a central institution of capitalism. Veblen's "irksomeness of labor" has to do with the conditions and control over work, and not with innate human preference to leisure. Veblen's workmanship [working] is important for human development and psychological well-being. Although, capitalism permeates the whole life process and employs creativity and workmanship for salesmanship and various forms of sabotage. Those important elements of Veblen's theory help to understand better the potential and meaning of Job Guarantee - just one of many desired public undertakings (e.g., around housing and food systems).