This seminar focuses on the social, political and economic justifications for securing a legal right to meaningful work and basic material wellbeing, as well as historical examples of direct public employment programs from various nations including the United States, Argentina and India. Questions to be addressed include:
Should individuals have a legal right to work and/or basic material wellbeing?
Can we afford a job or income guarantee?
What would a job or income guarantee look like?
What can we learn from direct employment programs from the past and abroad?
The Modern Money Network
8. GUARANTEED INCOME OR EMPLOYMENT: ECONOMIC RIGHTS
Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Assistant Professor of Economics at Bard College and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute; Philip T. Harvey, Professor of Law and Economics at Rutgers School of Law-Camden and Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg (moderator), Professor of Social Policy, Adelphi University of Social Work
4 comments:
FRA Section 2A: "The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy's long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates."
Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act (Ed: key word here being "FULL") 15 USC 3101: "(d) The Congress further finds that full employment and production, increased real income, balanced growth, a balanced Federal budget, adequate productivity growth, proper attention to national priorities, achievement of an improved trade balance through increased exports and improvement in the international competitiveness of agriculture, business, and industry, and reasonable price stability are important national requirements and will promote the economic security and well-being of all citizens of the Nation."
The lawyers work has already been done...
and we dont have to go back to John Locke or any other dead human to figure out how we should define our contemporary objectives, we already have them defined imo pretty well or at least what should be well enough right here above and they are ALREADY established LAW.
This is not a legal problem... its implementation.
rsp,
Apparently it's a human rights problem - for which there is no mass social movement.
I take issue with Harvey's claim that progressives have been pursuing a failed strategy. The difference between NAIRU and full employment is politically insignificant. A NAIRU of 5% equals an employment rate of 95%. When the glass is that full, it is business as usual for policymakers.
But Bob, last I checked NAIRU isnt the law...
The law doesnt say "NAIRU" it says 'full employment'.
NAIRU is a characteristic of an implementation method... where those who subscribe to NAIRU think we need a certain amount of unemployment to achieve the other objective of stable prices... MMT shows this not to be technically correct...
So again this is a technocratic problem (in writing)...
rsp,
NAIRU uses employment as tool to target price level. It involves a permanent buffers stock of unemployed and over time the wasteful idling of resources adds up to trillions and trillions of dollars of lost opportunity that can never be recovered. Please explain to me how that is a sane policy if there is a viable alternative that eliminates waste and also manages price level. That's a challenge. You can't.
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