We need a government-funded program to guarantee a job to anyone who wants one. The wage level of these "job guarantee" jobs should be set at a genuinely liveable wage. This would provide an effective minimum wage, but one enforced through workers themselves rejecting offers below the job guarantee level rather than through porous legal mechanisms.How could we possibly afford this?
If we drop misleading mainstream economics frames and use a modern monetary theory (MMT) lens, then it becomes clear. We can afford this in the same way that governments have always been able to afford to ramp up spending during wars and other crises.
National governments with their own currency are currency issuers, not currency users. The rest of us are the latter and must earn before we spend. However, currency-issuing federal governments can literally never run out of Australian dollars. They can run out of things to spend them on, but not while unemployment and underemployment remain high....The MMT meme again!
Independent Australia
Job guarantee would ensure Uber Eats and Deliveroo workers eat too
David Joy | adjunct lecturer at the University of Adelaide and academic head at Kaplan Business School
2 comments:
Re the above first para, JG is not needed to give us a minimum wage: that can be provided by properly enforced minimum wage laws.
Re the idea in the 2nd para, that govt can always print money to fund any increase in spending, that's not true where unemployment is as low as it can go before inflation kicks in in a serious way.
We cannot give a properly enforced minimum wage to the unemployed so we do need the JG
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