Tag Archives: JG

India has for more than a decade had a rural jobs guarantee program in place, for unskilled workers. If India can succeed in designing and implementing such a policy, why can’t the US? Economist Jayati Ghosh wrote this assessment of The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (MGNREGA) in The Guardian in 2015: Naked CapitalismWhat India Can Teach the US About a Federal Job GuaranteeJerri-Lynn Scofield

Ministers need to adopt measures that secure a basic human right to engage in productive employment The GuardianThe Guardian view on a job guarantee: a policy whose time has comeEditorial

Stephanie Kelton is a leading American economist and a professor of public policy and Economics at Stony Brook University. Kelton was chief economist on the US Senate Budget Committee and economic adviser to the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign. She's most known for being a pioneer of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). In this episode, Professor Kelton debunks budget deficit and government spending myths, and explains why understanding how our monetary system works is crucial to making...

Jamie Galbraith recounts his transition from JG sceptic to JG advocate and the reasons for his change of mind.The BafflerWe WorkJames K. Galbraith | Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin

Now that progressive leaders (Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand and Corey Booker) have placed a proposed “Job Guarantee” program onto the mainstream political stage, it is essential they begin explaining the proposal’s underpinning macro-economic logic. Otherwise they lay themselves, and the proposal itself, wide open to scathing public ridicule—as exemplified by a recent Megan McArdle op-ed in the Washington Post (“A federal job for everyone?” April 25, 2018). But what should they be...

How it worked, why it failed and how MMT Job Guarantee proposals avoid those problems Modern Money MattersThe UK’s Unofficial Job GuaranteeNeil Wilson

Disappointing. David Dayen surely knows that as currency issuer the federal government faces no limitation on the amount of currency it can issue, but he doesn't mention it.The InterceptWhether America Can Afford a Job Guarantee Program Is Not Up for Debate David DayenSee also With Senator Bernie Sanders in the forefront, some Democratic members of Congress are planning a bill to guarantee jobs that pay $15 per hour, not including mandatory benefits packages, for all Americans. Legislative...

There has been a bit of commotion recently about the Job Guarantee idea (AKA employer of last resort). I don't consider myself an opponent of the strategy but I do have several reservations about its political feasibility, the marketing rhetoric of its advocates, and its economic and administrative transparency. Some of these concerns I share with an analysis presented by Robert LaJeunesse in his 2009 book, Work Time Regulation as Sustainable Full Employment Strategy. For that reason, it...

Yves here. Another way to think about the warning of this post is: Beware of Silicon Valley libertarian billionaires bearing gifts. Naked CapitalismThe Federal Job Guarantee Is Not Just “Better” Than a Universal Basic Income. It’s the Only Reasonable Option. Universal Basic Income Is Sinister. Jeff Epstein, an independent and progressive journalist with Citizens’ Media TV Originally published on Citizens’ Media TV

John Carney makes interesting points pro and con. Most of the cons are about politicization of the program since the JG as it is being presented and supported is clearly a Democratic program and "leftist" idea. He points out that this needn't be so. A value-neutral JG program can also be designed to appeal cross the political spectrum. JG supporters should listen to this. A JG is really a populist program that favors people, and firms will oppose it. For, as Carney points out, employers...