Wednesday, December 11, 2013

John Carney — A Modest Job Guarantee Proposal: Domestic Servant Subsidies


Oldie but goodie. Satirical post from John Carney — the title refers to Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal — about the MMT JG. After explaining what a good idea it is, John then gives the (bogus) reasons why it would be unworkable as offered. He then offers the modest proposal of using the JG to provide domestic servants to the well-off. Pretty funny way to introduce the idea. I think, too, that a lot of CNBC readers may get punked by the satire and take it for real.

CNBC NetNet
A Modest Job Guarantee Proposal: Domestic Servant Subsidies
John Carney | Senior Editor

See also Philip Pilkington,  John Carney’s Jobs Proposal: Cutting Satire or Accidental Self-Parody?

10 comments:

The Just Gatekeeper said...

This article is from May 2012....

Tom Hickey said...

Thanks for point thing that out. I altered the post to reflect it. It came up on an email exchange this AM and I assumed it was recent. No matter, it is still relevant now that the BIG (e.g., Friedman's "permanent income") and JG are being discussed more seriously.

The BIG is trending and has pretty good bipartisan support. It's fairly simple to understand, while the JG is more nuanced and needs deeper explanation to head off objections. The issues with the BIG are less obvious but potentially serious (inflation).

Tom Hickey said...

I just added a link to Phil Pilkington's post of today on it, too.

Unknown said...

The issues with the BIG are less obvious but potentially serious (inflation). Tom Hickey

You guys kill me. If inflation is such a concern then why do you tolerate the Fed creating fiat for the banks? Why do you tolerate government backing for a banking cartel thereby enabling them to blow fiat-denominated bubbles?

Hypocrites much?

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

while the JG is more nuanced and needs deeper explanation to head off objections. Tom Hickey

Nothing about a BIG precludes work; indeed, if generous* enough, a BIG would enable people to do the work they found meaningful though land reform may be needed too.

Slavery-lite is what a JG is and fascist too since the private sector should train and discipline its own workers - should it be able to attract many - and not have government do it for them.

Justice would have precluded this mess so you guys had better include justice in your solutions too.

*Actually, theft requires generous restitution and the population has surely been looted.

Matt Franko said...

" If inflation is such a concern then why do you tolerate the Fed creating fiat for the banks? "

Because its about PRICE NOT QUANTITY F...

Your quote above is quantity theory nonsense.

rsp,

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Because its about PRICE NOT QUANTIT Franko

Baloney. Asset price inflation counts too. The consumer price index is just a means of measuring how close social unrest is, that and the unemployment rate which together constitute the "misery index."

Moreover, a speculator makes his profit on the spread between what he can borrow at and what he can sell at, not the absolute interest rate. Speculators can make money even if interest rates are 15% if prices are rising 20% a year. And it's credit creation itself that drives those price increases so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So it will be no surprise if we wind up with high interest rates AND high price inflation (stagflation) as the Fed attempts to reign in lending by raising interest rates.

After all, it's not the price of stolen purchasing power that is relevant but that it is stolen at all!

Unknown said...

Lest one think government-enabled theft of purchasing power is a trifle:

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts. Revelation 9:20-21
New American Standard Bible (NASB) [bold added]

And now the mystery of banker hypocrisy is revealed? The bankers want the rest of the world to repent of their sins so they need not repent of their thefts? Well, the problem is that the systematic theft of the banks is implicated in those other sins too.