Finally, I have stressed for many years that the JG does not replace conventional use of fiscal policy to achieve appropriate social and economic outcomes. In general, the JG would be accompanied by higher levels of public sector spending on public goods and infrastructure. I have written several times, in various outlets (academic, Op Ed, blog), that I see the JG as part of a fundamental transformative agenda to broaden the concept of work and to allow all people to receive a dignified and appropriate access to the distribution system. That message doesn’t seem to get through. So from now on the JG wage will be referred to as the living wage. Further, recent discussions of the JG reveal that commentators who criticise it do so from a standpoint of ignorance – a problem that is engendered by the blogosphere, which should be a liberating force, but in my view seems to unfortunately spawn narrow-mindedness and an anti-intellectual approach to policy debates.
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The Job Guarantee is a progressive vehicle for change
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia
21 comments:
Lipstick on a pig.
Framing is important, but substance is important, too. Bill's "coercive" grunt job vision is uninspiring no matter how you frame it.
That's really not Bill's vision. But it is the vision that some other defenders of the job guarantee sometimes defend.
I see the JG as part of a fundamental transformative agenda to broaden the concept of work and to allow all people to receive a dignified and appropriate access to the distribution system. Bill Mitchell
A JG would not be necessary if we had justice. Example: Many family farms were stolen by the government-enabled counterfeiting cartel, the banks. Example: The jobs of many were automated away via financing by that same cartel.
So then where are the calls for the return of family farms via Leviticus 25? Where are the calls for the redistribution of the common stock of all large corporations? Where are the calls for eliminating all government privileges for the banks? Not with the JG proponents, not to my knowledge.
Price inflation, you say? Then why should a central bank be allowed to create fiat for the sake of the banks? Why does the government enable the credit cartel to blow bubbles in fiat-denominated credit?
Work you say? Nearly everyone LOVES to work IF they have the resources to do the work they wish to - in their own time and in their own way. That's what retirees do if they can and what most of us would do if we had not been victims of subtle theft.
Look, the MMT folks have SOME of the answers but you don't have all of them because you ignore justice.
and to allow all people to receive a dignified and appropriate access to the distribution system Bill Mitchell
Dignity?! Family owned farms and businesses were dignified but the banks stole those. Justice is dignified but being made to work for restitution is an insult to the victims.
Appropriate access? How many have been disemployed by rich bankers who can't hold a candle to them in terms of contribution to society since, if for no other reasons, the contribution of bankers to society is NEGATIVE AND LARGE?
Tom,
I've recently begun discussing the Jobs Guarantee "establishing a wage floor" as an alternative to minimum wage laws. Framing it in terms of rising wages via competitive tight full employment, rather than by government decree seems to gain a little more traction with conservatives and moderates. At the very least they seem willing to consider it as superior to government "ordering" businesses to pay more.
reductio ad absurdum:
When robots can do nearly all needful labor shall nearly everyone need to be hired by government or should we at long last be able to RETIRE to a life of leisure, creativity and voluntary service to others?
But if you Progressives can NEVER, not even in principle, EVER liberate mankind from slavery then just what good are you?
seems to gain a little more traction with conservatives Ben J
Conservatives should respond to calls for justice. Then why aren't you making any instead of implicitly blaming the victims of injustice with a JG?
And for those who wish to conserve a wicked status quo, who should care about their approval?
"But if you Progressives can NEVER, not even in principle, EVER liberate mankind from slavery then just what good are you?"
I think you nailed it there perfectly. The left is pretty much just like the right when it comes to the so called need to be working (for someone else, for the most part) to be useful. You are what you do (your job defines you) to both of these camps, and what you do for the better part of all your alert and non fatigued moments should be done laboring. To many of these anointed souls it would be better to dig a ditch and fill it right back up all day (for pay of course)than to be idling away on the beach, even if one could live comfortably in that beach bum lifestyle with productivity advances paving the way. Work keeps people out of trouble, or so it goes.. The religious right has nothing on these guys.
We are tribal creatures and our psychology gives us a need to feel productive, that we are contributing toward society by our toil. We can see this in the rise of social dysfunction during periods of growing/long term unemployment and I, for one, see the need the need to do something now to alleviate suffering. I agree the idea of selling one's labor is exploitative but am unwilling to sit around coffee houses moaning on about the need for Marxist purity in the waging of class struggle.
I have no patience for the foolishness of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
It's not necessarily the lack of a job that causes social dysfunction, rather it's the lack of money. Not eating, having a home to live in, and decent medical care are all relative to lack of dollars. Hell, even if one has a job, say a shitty job, paying shit wages (tens of millions of jobs are like this) people still acquire a myriad of social pathologies. You think drug/alcohol abuse, mass depression, divorce, angry disaffected children they spawn only come from the unemployed? That's just blaming the victim any way you slice it. Also the notion that our tribal roots possess us to work like dogs to fill some mythical need to be productive is nonsense.
Like I said the religious right has nothing on the moralizing, guilt inflicting, blame the victim left.
Here are the numbers.
Working and Poor in the USA.
Big difference between minimum wage and living wage, too.
and I, for one, see the need the need to do something now to alleviate suffering. Ben J
Then send out restitution checks of new fiat to the entire population. At the same time ban further credit creation* by the banks and the Fed and meter the restitution to just replace existing credit as it is repaid until all deposits are 100% backed by reserves less borrowed reserves.
*But just temporarily till banks are 100% private. Then let the banks leverage as much as they dare with only themselves and their now 100% voluntary depositors and creditors taking all risks.
As for the Religious Right, I am reminded of England where factory workers worked 6 days a week AND 1/2 a day on Sunday! That's entirely contrary to Scripture since NO work was to be done on the Sabbath (changed by Christians to Sunday). Moses would have had those factory owners stoned to death.
Btw, Jesus Christ said the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.
F.
Dont forget about the sodomites and the adulteresses, and probably others...
Boy, good thing I'm under Paul and all of that old Israelite BS is garbage for me or else I dont know I guess I might have to be advocating stoning people or something... whew! glad i'm not disgraced like that!
rsp,
Franko,
Some people even throw rocks at dogs for public* copulation.
As for Paul, he would denounce you, is my bet, and might yet at the Last Judgement.
*“A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed. Deuteronomy 19:15
wrt to dogs, Paul warned about'curs' .... imo who would be going all around advocating for picking over the pile of Israel's refuse...
F, It may be interesting to look over all of that old stuff for some ideas about outcomes, but to take those old failed rules and think they are supposed to still apply somehow is missing the mark to say the least IMO.... Rsp
The problem is, Franko, that your ideas don't even MATCH the Old Testament wrt justice. Where is YOUR call for restitution for the victims of the banks?
Instead, you defend the right to sodomize in public as if that's some crowning achievement.
F,
I am not an Israelite/disciple in any way shape or form... your exhortations here ("eye for an eye") are literally falling on deaf ears.
Our problem is NOT 'lack of restitution' of stock measures, that alleged 'justice' will last 6 months tops by my estimation...
We have MORONS in control... we need to get rid of the morons and re-establish just and righteous continuous, guaranteed FLOWS...
rsp,
There needs to be a debate on the definition of work, and what constitutes "a contribution to society". Until then, we will continue to suffer the modernized version of survival of the fittest.
It is futile to propose a JG or a BIG under the current societal mindset.
Economies consist in the production and exchanges of real goods and services. Money is just a mechanism for distributing and storing claims on all of that real output. If a society is struggling, it is not because of "lack of money".
Forget job guarantee. Basic income guarantee, like Switzerland is doing.
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