Monday, May 7, 2012
John Carney — A Modest Job Guarantee Proposal: Domestic Servant Subsidies
More on the MMT JG.
Read it at CNBC NetNet
A Modest Job Guarantee Proposal: Domestic Servant Subsidies
by John Carney | Senior Editor
Like me John got caught by the confusing title to the post he cites and misattributes the quote to Paul Davidson, as I did until Ramanan kindly informed me of the mistake. I just tweeted John letting him know the quote is Warren's. UPDATE: Fixed now.
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18 comments:
I read the post as satire. JC is attempting to ridicule and undermine the JG by presenting it's ugliest possible version in the least attractive light: subsidized class-based serfdom and servitude.
My personal view is that on the fiscal front we need to be focusing more on going big with government spending on long-term public investment. The jobs generated by such an effort would not be minimum wage jobs primarily, but provide some of the most exciting and innovative work available for people anxious to serve their country and the world for a generation
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/05/developing-nations.html
Right Dan I interpret as a joke also...
There was an old 'Seinfeld' episode where someone hit Jerry's car and the Judge assigned the plaintiff to be Jerry's butler...
Tom,
Perhaps re-tweet his first name is "Warren" not "Walter"...
JG can be terrible or exceptionally good depending on check & balances and how the programs are designed.
Obviously if you think that everything governments do is bad and the private sector is always better, that you would rather eliminate the government, that "greed is good", that wealth "trickles down", that only market pricing mechanisms are good at valuing things or other market fundamentalism crapp. That there does not exist the "tragedy of the commons", that always is about efficiency or competitiveness and resilience and effectiveness don't matter... etc. etc. etc. Well, you will never agree with JG programs.
Personally I'm quite feed up about neoliberalism age, market fundamentalism and other empirically wrong ideologies so I don't even bother. I don't favour JG programs, or I have a different approach about it, I think things can be discussed, I think that a lot of things can be done until we get there etc. But I think is a waste of time dicussing about things that are not even remotely plausible right now, and wasting time discussing about fantasy "because is dangerous" when every word should be an attack on the status quo and the desperate state of affairs is deceitful, dishonest or naive. It's not like there is a shortage of REAL crap to denounce or opinionate about in media platforms, but that's too much to expect, that's why we have to come to blogs like this to rant.
But hey, keep beating the unborn horse (not even dead!), you surely don't want the dangers of socialism to come any close to lemon socialist/crony capitalist USA.
Carney hits one out of the park.
The title is borrowed from Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal:
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
Although the older I get I just dont have as much energy.... and in the summer cutting my grass can be unpleasant at times...
Services in my area charge $35-$40 using their equipment, but I already have a mower... so if I could hire an unemployed Industrial Engineer out of the auto industry to cut my grass for $8/hr (it only takes about an hour even with sweeping up) that would be quite a deal!
although just thought of it this may throw many present employed landscaping workers out of their jobs... and bankrupt the small businesses they work for...
There are several roles that the government can play in providing full employment and a decent income for all citizens, and also in marshaling the county's resources to accomplish important national and international goals the private sector can't or won't pursue.
Sending everyone who is unemployed a weekly check and a certificate of employment that says "Congratulations, you now have a job, but don't have to do anything" is the least inspiring of the options. But even that option would at least have the benefit of establishing a high wage floor and restoring worker bargaining power. Minimum wage employment in more modest public works would also be useful. There is no need at all to subsidize private employment in lowly fields. The best way to make sure that people in those fields are decently paid is to make sure they always have the option to walk.
Matt" Perhaps re-tweet his first name is "Warren" not "Walter"..."
Oh, well.
@ marris
Right. It's a tip-off it's satire.
"But I think is a waste of time dicussing about things that are not even remotely plausible right now, and wasting time discussing about fantasy "because is dangerous" when every word should be an attack on the status quo and the desperate state of affairs is deceitful, dishonest or naive."
Right. This is why Occupy is not offering proposals but tearing into what's wrong. We need to be doing that, too. The immediate threat is deficit terrorist, and that's what is it. People are dying and extremism is rising. This is an emergency situation, artificially created from ignorance and disingenuousness.
Maybe ELR stands for Easy L. Rawlins.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mosley#_
I think John, was dead serious with this post. He's proposing Government subsidies to allow the 1% to begin to create aristocratic estates run by retainers making the minimum wage. What a clever trick to get the 1% to benefit even more than they do now from fiat.
Btw, I've all of John's list of problems w/ the JG have already been refuted in the literature on it, including in my recent series: http://www.correntewire.com/the_job_guarantee_and_the_mmt_core_series
I don't think so Joe. I think he really hates the job guarantee, and this was his best shot at pulverizing it.
Dan Kervick wants “public investment” rather than JG. The two are not alternatives. JG is a system that offers an alternative to unemployment. And the level of unemployment is no affected by the proportion of GDP allocated to public spending: witness the VAST expansion in public spending over the last century combined with zero reduction in unemployment in consequence.
Matt Franko says JG might put existing firms out of business. John Carney raises that point. That criticism was common in relation to the WPA in the 1930s. The problem does not arise if JG people are allocated to EXISTING EMPLOYERS rather than to what might be called “specially set up” schemes (as was the case with the WPA). And personally I favour allocation to existing employers.
Beowulf says “ELR stands for Easy L. Rawlins.” In the 1930s, WPA was said to stand for “We Piddle Around”:-)
So here's the thing. Obviously a tax subsidy for the top 5 percent to hire butlers is absurd. Hence the "modest proposal" part of my title.
But I am serious that once you screen out the defects of most other JG proposals, this is what you have left. If you are an advocate of the JG, you are objectively an advocate of the Domestic Servant plan.
What's more, the objections to the Domestic Servant do not emerge from MMT itself but from other moral intuitions. Which is fine but you must acknowledge that you are letting other moral intuitions support continued unemployment over employment as household servants.
It's also weird that being a servant for the government is somehow supposed to be less obnoxious than being a servant for a family.
Criminals get sentenced to "community service." It's a punishment, not a job.
@ John Carney
Essentially my objection, too, but from another angle.
However, something is better than nothing if the system can't be changed in the direction of recognizing labor as at least equal to capital as a factor of production if not superior, instead of merely at input with capital as the only significant factor and therefore to be served by policy.
The JG is far less than ideal, but the alternative as Minsky observed, is a minimum wage of zero for those who are unemployed and don't quality for other assistance — like the many people now dropping off the roles.
John Carney's proposal is no different from various wage subsidy schemes for employers, particularly small businesses. The problem is that his proposal promotes unproductive service labour at the expense of productive service labour, the crux of Minsky post-"industrial" ELR policy proposal.
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