Monday, January 16, 2012

Joe Firestone — The Job Guarantee and the MMT Core: Part Ten – A 180 Mic Check?


Read it Daily Kos — Money and Public Purpose
The Job Guarantee and the MMT Core: Part Ten – A 180 Mic Check?
by
Joe (Letsgetitdone) Firestone


5 comments:

Morgan Warstler said...

So many words, all to confuse the issue.

You want to give every American citizen who wants to work a $12K job?

Fine. If you do it my way.

Since we now have 30M people who want to work AND we want to reduce costs of this program...

We will auction the 30M in weekly auctions on Ebay, they will keep:

1. Their $12K PLUS
2. 50% of the bid over $1 per hour.

The REASON you have to give in to the capitalists on this:

1. to get political agreement.
2. to get the real BENEFITS for the folks at the bottom.

Look, the real effect of this, is that we're making lots of shit, not currently possible for the lower middle class POSSIBLE.

1. Ghetto neighborhoods, fallow housing gets fixed up quick.
2. Daycare costs in poor neighborhoods drops A BUNCH, letting more mommies work.
3. It beats out the drug trade (pays more for The Wire's corner boys), and gives smarter drug players real economic fodder (cheap labor) to do legal stuff.
4. It teaches / signals the difference between skills that pay $3 per hour, and skills that pay $6 - there is a DIFFERENCE. And you need to process what has happened after a couple years of this kind of signalling. Folks who are not working, or all all getting just minimum wage, do not actually LEARN what pays more and why - they are unsavvy labor providers.

There's more, but this is a dead board - I'm not welcome at DailyKos

Tom Hickey said...

Hi Morgan,

We already know about your proposal here. See this post of Jan 5, Morgan Warstler on Guaranteed Income.

Beowulf liked the auction idea. Others, not so much.

Morgan Warstler said...

Tom, it isn't about "like"

It's the ONLY way.

Whats great about it is, you don't need MMT to do it, it just ALSO works with MMT.

It works anywhere you have to have a social benefit for breathing, and still want to achieve the greatest value from their less than able labor.

Look, it HAS to happen. We are only seeing more people who cannot cover their own nut faced with global competition and comparably high local prices.

If the only thing you learn from MMT is the simple genius of GI with an auction on the labor... your time shall not have been wasted.

Make it your own, you'll win arguments.

Tom Hickey said...

Morgan, as I said, beowulf is for such an approach, and he is a very sharp guy who like market approaches like Lerner/Colander's MAP and Vickery auctions. So it is getting consideration from at least one quarter here.

You are welcome to present your ideas here and to try to persuade as many as you can. We welcome all ideas.

And this blog is people mostly by folks who are already pretty committed to an approach laid out by MMT economists, so you aren't addressing people who are not already committed to something they have thought through.

If you want to convince MMT advocates, you'll have to show them how your solution is superior to the one set forth by the MMT economists as a foundation of their macro that shows how to achieve full employment along with price stability by a guaranteeing a job to anyone willing and able to work at a floor compensation package that also serves as price anchor in controlling inflation.

Matt Franko said...

Morgan,

for instance here is where we differ:

"AND we want to reduce costs of this program..."

I have no concern of the "cost" of the program...I have no concern about "reducing the cost"... it's not like the govt has to "get the money from somewhere"... that's not how it works... focus should be on results only...

Resp,