I am generally not in favour of trade protection. I grew up in a country that had very extensive protection (tariffs, import quotas) on manufacturing goods, which was justified on a number of grounds – capacity to shift to defense industries; stable employment; and more abstractly, an expression of becoming a ‘modern’ nation, leaving our agrarian roots behind. The initial move to impose high tariffs was that a young industry would take time to develop – the so-called infant industry...
Read More »Mark Paul, William Darity, Jr., And Darrick Hamilton — The Federal Job Guarantee-A Policy to Achieve Permanent Full Employment
More MMT without mentioning it specifically. MMT economists are credited in a footnote: For other scholarly work exploring similar job guarantee proposals, see Harvey 1989, 2000; Wray and Forstater 2004; Wray 2008; and Tcherneva 2012, 2013. This is a fairly long and developed proposal.Center on Budget PrioritiesThe Federal Job Guarantee-A Policy to Achieve Permanent Full EmploymentMark Paul, William Darity, Jr., And Darrick Hamilton
Read More »Tom Streithorst — The Radical Left-Wing Theory That the Government Has Unlimited Money
Everyone knows governments need to tax before they can spend. What Modern Monetary Theory presupposes is, maybe they don't. Surprisingly decent article on MMT considering the dismissive headline. Covers most of the bases.ViceThe Radical Left-Wing Theory That the Government Has Unlimited Money Tom Streithorstht Ralph Musgrave
Read More »Columbus Underground — Opinion — Provide Jobs for All and End Poverty
Let’s go back to the future and create livable wage jobs again for every man or woman who needs one. There is a new economics (Modern Monetary Theory aka MMT) that has designed Job Guarantee (JG) proposals that are carefully crafted to complement the need for real, full employment when the private and public sectors fail to meet the needs of our workforce. MMT economists understand that our capitalist economy must be organized for the benefit of everyone (i.e., Main Street communities,...
Read More »Johnny Fulfer — It’s Time to Guarantee Jobs
The first half of the twentieth century was a challenging time for economics. The Great Depression wiped out incomes, investments, and most importantly, optimism. But when the traditional laissez-faire approach proved ineffective, the work of Keynes and FDR showed that there was another way. The New Deal employed American workers directly and restored confidence among business owners. Today, we could benefit from a similar program. It’s time for a new New Deal, or a Job Guarantee Program,...
Read More »Tyler Prochazka — Professor argues for job guarantee over basic income
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is gaining more traction in mainstream discourse, but the academic debate has been heating up for years. One scholar with a sympathetic but critical eye towards basic income still believes it is not the best priority for activists. Philip Harvey, a professor of law at Rutgers, wrote that a job guarantee could eliminate poverty for a fraction of the cost of UBI — $1.5 trillion less.Harvey argued in 2006 that the focus on UBI may be crowding out more realistic...
Read More »Basant Kumar Mohanty — Job scheme swells farm yields
JG at work. In 2015, [neoliberal] Prime Minister Narendra Modi had described the programme as a "testimony to the failures of previous governments". The Telegraph (India)Job scheme swells farm yieldsBasant Kumar Mohanty
Read More »Bruce Lesnick — The Unemployment Conspiracy
JG v. UBICounterpunchThe Unemployment ConspiracyBruce Lesnick
Read More »Neil Wilson — Thoughts about the Job Guarantee: A Reply
A response to the Nov 17 thoughts of Simon Wren-Lewis Simon Wren-Lewis has put up a very considered post on the Job Guarantee which deserves an appropriate response. I have been calling for Simon to write about the Job Guarantee for a very long time, and I’m grateful he has done so. It is a very good piece from an alternative point of view and I hope I can do it justice in this reply. Modern Money MattersThoughts about the Job Guarantee: A Reply Neil Wilson
Read More »Brian Romanchuk — On Using NAIRU To Analyse A Job Guarantee
Professor Simon Wren-Lewis wrote "Some thoughts about the Job Guarantee," in which he makes an attempt to analyse a Job Guarantee using the NAIRU concept. The analysis suffers from the well-known defects of NAIRU. In the article, he argues that a Job Guarantee implementation would cause a one-time upward shock to wages. He argues that this is not "acknowledged" by MMT authors, even though it appears this effect is common knowledge to anyone who has read the MMT literature. As a result,...
Read More »