Tag Archives: Job Guarantee

The U.S. government could commit to full employment by offering any willing and able person a job in public service. But should it? Known as a job guarantee, the once heterodox idea went mainstream last year with the endorsement of the Center for American Progress. While the specifics of any particular plan vary, CAP proposes “a large-scale, permanent program of public employment and infrastructure investment—similar to the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression but...

Amid a recent upsurge in support for a national job guarantee program, L. Randall Wray, Stephanie A. Kelton, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Scott Fullwiler, and Flavia Dantas outline a new proposal for a federally funded program with decentralized administration. Their Public Service Employment (PSE) program would offer a job—paying a uniform living wage with a basic benefits package—to all who are ready and willing to work. In advance of an upcoming report detailing the economic impact of the PSE,...

Going mainstream. Some prominent Democrats are already embracing a JG.The NationWhy Democrats Should Embrace a Federal Jobs GuaranteeSean McElwee, Colin McAuliffe and Jon Green

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...

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

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 sector​s​ 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,...

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,...

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...

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

JG v. UBICounterpunchThe Unemployment ConspiracyBruce Lesnick