Tag Archives: Job Guarantee

Decades before it caught on with other economists, Sadie Alexander was the first economist to recommend a government jobs guarantee in the US.… Many contemporary economists have endorsed this idea, which is often credited to Hyman Minsky in the 1960’s[1]. But, its genesis actually begins two decades earlier, with Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, America’s first black economist. Good to know. Like the fact that Aristotle wrote that money/currency (nomisma) is a creature of law (nomos)....

Of the various criticisms leveled at a combined ‘job or income guarantee‘, ones appealing to fairness usually go along the lines that it would be unfair for healthy individuals outside the workforce to receive an income while others are occupied in jobs. In considering this objection, a number of points come to mind: heteconomistFairness and a ‘Job or Income Guarantee’Peter Cooper

Everywhere I read it seems, the ‘Green New Deal’ appears. I wrote a bit about it last week in my evaluation of the latest US job numbers – US labour market moderated in November and considerable slack remains (December 11, 2018). The point I made there was that a shift to a green economy would possibly generate around 21 million jobs (14 per cent of total US employment), which given reasonable estimates of excess capacity would require a huge shift in the employment structure and multiples...

I am doing some work on the way technology can be chosen to maximise employment in the pursuit of advancing general well-being. This is in the context of some work I am doing on advancing what is known as ‘relative pro-poor growth’ strategies in Africa via employment creation programs and draws on my earlier work in South Africa on the Expanded Public Works Program. In the current work, I have been assessing ways in which the Labour Intensive Public Works program in Ghana has been deployed...

In some recent posts, a job guarantee has been considered within the income-expenditure framework. One post in particular suggested a possible conceptualization of the dynamics of the model. It was shown that these dynamics are consistent with the model’s steady state requirements. Demonstrating this took a fair bit of algebra, which may have obscured for some readers the simplicity of the actual model. Much of the algebra was only needed for the specific purpose of verifying that the...

The first section of the previous post outlined basic steady state relationships in a simplified economy with a job guarantee. There are various ways of expressing the same relationships that shed light on what is going on in the model. Here, a few ways of thinking about the levels of total income and job guarantee spending are noted.... heteconomistSome Aspects of a Steady State with a Job GuaranteePeter Cooper

US economist Stephanie Kelton, who served as Bernie Sanders' economic adviser during the 2016 presidential campaign, is currently touring Australia to promote the concept she says isn't too good to be true. "There is nothing to prevent the Australian government, if it chose to do so, from funding a large-scale government job program that would offer employment to anybody who wanted work and couldn't find it anywhere else in the Australian economy," she said.  "Let the private sector...

A job guarantee would be a standing offer of a publicly funded job. Spending on the program would adjust automatically and countercyclically in response to take-up of positions. The likely feedback between spending on the program and activity in general is interesting and can be considered within the income-expenditure framework. In what follows, the standard model is modified to find the steady state levels and compositions of income and employment and other key variables. Attention then...

The unconventional plan would eliminate unemployment in Australia, says US economist Stephanie Kelton…. Stephanie Kelton will be one of three keynote speakers at Future to Fight For: Rethinking Our Economy in Sydney (17 November), Melbourne (20 November) and Brisbane (21 November). SBS News A radical plan to give every Australian a job who wants one is gaining momentum Rosemary Bolger

I’ve been thinking about the job guarantee as it is envisaged by proponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). My focus has been on various quantity effects of the policy that can be considered using the standard income-expenditure model as a base (for preliminary posts along these lines, see here and here.) Since the income-expenditure model takes the general price level as given, it does not directly shed light on the aspects of a job guarantee that would pertain to price stability. To...