Three Interesting References On Why A Job Guarantee Is Common Sense: 1892, 1943 & 1987.
The Unemployed, By John Burns, 1892, UKThis text is worth reading, despite the wordy style & dense text formatting of the day. You can see the beginnings of many things that later became regulated policy, like the 8 hour work day. Guaranteed use of available labor is also discussed, even though that hasn't yet come to pass.(free google ebook)
Burns suggests that a public "Ministry of Labor & Fine Arts" provide a minimal part time job guarantee, to keep citizens engaged in work useful for communities. Sounding a bit like Herbert Hoover later on, he suggests
"... dealing in an organized manner, with the industrial, technical and artistic sides of the production of wealth that are now forgotten in the vulgar scramble for personal gain."
p13: "The fact is, custom, caprice and fashion have imposed upon all communities many cruel and absurd practices which entail overwork for short periods and lack of work at others."and regarding work itself:
"... there is no fear of the owners doing it themselves" :)
You have to wonder what our tribal ancestors would have thought, upon hearing these words. They'd likely wonder how on earth we got so disorganized? We have idle people available, willing to work, so just put them to work, by using our imagination? Individual Unemployment = Aggregate UnImagination?
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Book #2: also called The Unemployed (1943) Eli Ginzberg
unemployment = "shortfall in demand for labor, not ... [individual] inadequacies of [citizens]"
That's an improvement over current discussions, but again, why isn't this seen as a shortfall in imagination? Individual Unemployment = Aggregate UnImagination = Cultural Inadequacy?
The date of this book helps show that a job guarantee has been discussed steadily by diverse people, for over 100 years.
For most of human history, a job guarantee was implicit. The only reason it isn't implicit now is because of a lack of aggregate imagination?
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Book #3: A job guarantee for long-term unemployed people[No ebook; only US copy is in the Cornell U Library in Ithaca, NY?]Richard Jackman, John Cahill, 1987Cornell University Employment Institute
The date of this book helps show that a job guarantee has been discussed steadily by diverse people, for over 100 years.
For most of human history, a job guarantee was implicit. The only reason it isn't implicit now is because of a lack of aggregate imagination?
5 comments:
Nice post, Roger! Eli Ginzberg was an important advocate of JG. My most recent post discusses his views on the JG.
Roger I look at it as a lack of knowledge rather than a lack of imagination...
WE have the knowledge THEY do not. So (to me) none of this has been "imagined" for us ... its a 'knowledge problem' we're up against... the morons lack 'knowledge', and manifestly have plenty of 'imagination' they make false stuff up all the time ... rsp,
Nice discussion, Circuit.
Reading your post, it's astounding how such a simple premise got mired in such stupidity ... for so long.
Ignoring fiat currency operations are beginning to look like a symptom of a systematically ill-informed electorate, not the primary cause of our fiscal gridlock.
Without some orienting challenge, every aggregate reverts to dis-aggregation.
See the life cycle of dichtyostelia.
What does it take to motivate ourselves to motivate our net aggregate?
We need challenges, to unleash our imagination. Instead, we're mindlessly trying to hoard fiat.
Isn't that like pissing into the wind?
Matt,
On 1st pass, yes. Yet Einstein's admonition was that imagination is far more important than knowledge.
He even said, "Never memorize something you can look up."
It's imagination that allows us to trip over new knowledge. Knowledge is the result of observation/analysis/test/assess ... which never gets started if we don't express enough imagination to go out & trip over something new.
How does an aggregate "look up" aggregate knowledge and the results of distributed imagination?
By LOOKING at one another. Yet our ratio of feedback/population SELECTION is actually declining, despite our new technologies.
We're still using radio/tv/internet mostly to distract ourselves, rather than to coordinate distributed imagination.
ps Matt:
Yes, a lot of imagination goes on, and you're right that all results from imagination have to be selected, to filter knowledge-signal from noise.
Nevertheless, knowledge follows assessment & selection of imagination, always.
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