Monday, December 9, 2013

Randy Wray — Time for a New Approach for Unemployment? [video interview with Marshall Auerback]

More than five years after the fall of Lehman Brothers we are still dealing with the problem of high unemployment, the worst kind of “waste” in economic theory.
Is there a better approach? A number of scholars, notably Professor Randy Wray of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, have long proposed a Job Guarantee program or the government as an “employer of last resort,” or ELR.

As Wray notes in the interview below, the U.S. government can proceed directly to zero unemployment by hiring all of the labor that cannot find private sector employment. Furthermore, by fixing the wage paid under this ELR program at a level that does not disrupt existing labor markets, i.e., a wage level close to the existing minimum wage, substantive price stability can be expected. A sizable benefits package should be provided, including vacation and sick leave, contributions to Social Security, and, most importantly, health care benefits, providing scope for a bottom-up reform of the current patchwork health care system.
Using the government as an ELR would not be introducing another element of intrusive bureaucracy into our economy. It would simply offer a better utilization of the existing stock of unemployed who are now dependent on the public purse — especially the chronically long-term unemployed.
The current system we have relies on unemployed labor and excess capacity to try to dampen wage and price increases. However, it pays unemployed labor for not working and allows that labor to depreciate and develop behaviors that act as barriers to future private-sector employment.
INET
L. Randall Wray: Time for a New Approach for Unemployment?
Marshall Auerback interviews Randy Wray on the MMT JG

10 comments:

Unknown said...

However, it pays unemployed labor for not working and allows that labor to depreciate and develop behaviors that act as barriers to future private-sector employment.

Yep, gotta keep the wage-slaves in tip-top condition and busy lest they think too much about, say, the government-enabled credit cartel that has stolen their means of self-employment.

Btw, in ancient Israel, the agricultural land was to rest every seventh year:

The Lord then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. Your harvest’s aftergrowth you shall not reap, and your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year. All of you shall have the sabbath products of the land for food; yourself, and your male and female slaves, and your hired man and your foreign resident, those who live as aliens with you. Even your cattle and the animals that are in your land shall have all its crops to eat. Leviticus 25:1-7

Leviticus 25:18-22
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
‘You shall thus observe My statutes and keep My judgments, so as to carry them out, that you may live securely on the land. Then the land will yield its produce, so that you can eat your fill and live securely on it. But if you say, “What are we going to eat on the seventh year if we do not sow or gather in our crops?” then I will so order My blessing for you in the sixth year that it will bring forth the crop for three years. When you are sowing the eighth year, you can still eat old things from the crop, eating the old until the ninth year when its crop comes in.
Leviticus 25:18-22

It appears Hebrew agricultural workers had every 7th YEAR off; hence the word Sabbatical which academics like Wray enjoy but would in his mind degrade the skills of agricultural workers?

Btw, the Hebrews never obeyed Leviticus 25:1-7 which is why they were exiled (those who survived the Babylonians) for 70 years to give the land a rest for the 490 years it had gone without (70 x 7).

It appears God is not the slave-driver He is purported to be.

Unknown said...

Here's the problem with Progressives playing God: they are NO improvement! (Well, unless one thinks the alleged right to sodomize in public* trumps all else, including justice.)

*“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

Unknown said...

F.

What does copying and pasting biblical passages have to do with anything?

Anything other than a conversation piece for the local church basement.

Matt Franko said...

F,

Where are we going to get the money to be able to take every 7th year off?????

How can we afford this?

Also, sounds like it would be a boring year.....

Rsp

Unknown said...

What does copying and pasting biblical passages have to do with anything? seve141

For one thing it sets a standard that Progressives should at least MATCH, if not exceed.

For another, the Bible, including the Old Testament is authoritative for the Religious Right, your supposed enemies.

Unknown said...

Hey Franko,

Have you ever noticed that the Jews are more liberal having only the Old Testament than the Religious Right is having been taught to ignore it?

James said...

F. Beard has a point, people may not like the way he puts it over, which is fair enough. I'm not a religious person myself and can understand how the referencing of the bible can actual distract from what's being said.

However the problems he points out are valid, and bring to mind the likes of Bakunin, who made similar arguments, like these quotes.

'When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."

'I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under which intelligence, dignity and human happiness can develop and grow; not the purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the State, an eternal lie which in reality represents nothing more than the privilege of some founded on the slavery of the rest; not the individualistic, egoistic, shabby, and fictitious liberty extolled by the School of J.-J. Rousseau and other schools of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the would-be rights of all men, represented by the State which limits the rights of each — an idea that leads inevitably to the reduction of the rights of each to zero. No, I mean the only kind of liberty that is worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and moral powers that are latent in each person; liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the laws of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator beside or above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material, intellectual and moral being — they do not limit us but are the real and immediate conditions of our freedom.'

'Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie'




Matt Franko said...

F,

"10 For whoever are of works of law are under a curse, for it is written that, Accursed is everyone who is not remaining in all things written in the scroll of the law to do them.
11 Now that in law no one is being justified with God is evident, for the just one by faith shall be living." Gal 3

You are either an Israelite disciple still learning 'the hard way', one of the faithful remnant, or you are a Christian who has not been taught very well.

Matt Franko said...

James,

a lot of people out these LIKE TO WORK (FD: I am one...) ... they just want to get PAID well/adequately for their work... there is NOTHING wrong with these people... they do not look at it as "demeaning" or "slavery" or something... they like to toil and look back on their accomplishments with pride... again they just want to get PAID... they are NOT morons....

Who was this Bakunin? Dont tell me one of those old moron CLASS OBSESSED Marxists from the gold standard era that people still read today like they are still relevant when we have been off gold/silver for decades...

rsp,

Unknown said...

Franko,

Unlike you, I've read and believe the ENTIRE Bible so you need not lecture me on the purpose of the Law.

Your ideas fail because they cannot MATCH much less exceed the requirements for justice in the Old Testament.