Business Insider
- Pavlina Tcherneva, a Bard professor and one of the economists pioneering research into Modern Monetary Theory, said federally guaranteed jobs may address poverty and help communities better than universal basic incomes.
- The coronavirus pandemic wiped out millions of jobs, and one report estimated that 17.6 million unemployed Americans may not return to their pre-pandemic jobs.
- Tcherneva said guaranteeing a public service job could lead to improvements on community-wide issues like public health and access to food — while eradicating unemployment completely.
Universal basic income isn't enough — the US needs to start giving every citizen a job, argues a star left-wing economist
Allana Akhtar
33 comments:
What UBI?
That would be news to Congress.
Bootstraps... isn't that enough?
The basic income is essentially legislated time theft. The talented who operate the machines must be forced to use up all their time operating the machines and give most of it to the talentless who can use their time for themselves. It's the mystical machines that create the surplus, not the skills of the people currently operating them.
It relies on fungibility arguments that are straight out of the communist handbook (5.5 hours a day of socially necessary labour - all of which is interchangeable) and the guilt arguments (the talented will continue to create a surplus because they feel sorry for the talentless) that prop up the reductio in Anarchism.
It's the sort of idea that redistributes land in Zimbabwe and then is surprised when the farming surplus vanishes. Turns out you need a bit more than accumulated dead labour to be a farmer.
None of the so called justice arguments backing Basic Income address the key point. Nobody has the right to the time of any other person - whether they have a special skill or not.
The Job Guarantee does address it. At a minimum if you want other people to give up they hours for you, you must be prepared to give up your hours for them.
But Neil the people working would be making MORE than those not working... perhaps a lot more....
They would still get the UBI and then their pay for working....
I agree that if the people working made the same as those not working it would fail...
People working would have to make a lot more money than those not... I don’t think that would be a problem...
Nobody has the right to the time of any other person - whether they have a special skill or not. NeilW
Similarly then, no one has a right to the PUBLIC'S credit but for private gain?
Why then does the MMT School support government privileges for banks and would even increase those*?
Also, your pious statement assumes that people have their own land and other assets necessary for survival to provide for themselves. However, those assets have been effectively stolen by what is, in essence, a government-enable counterfeiting cartel for the sake of the richer at the expense of the poorer.
* e.g. unlimited deposit guarantees FOR FREE.
* e.g. unlimited, unsecured loans from the Central Bank at ZERO percent interest.
UBI vs JG - battle of 'muh values'.
'None of the so called justice arguments backing Basic Income address the key point. Nobody has the right to the time of any other person - whether they have a special skill or not.
The Job Guarantee does address it. At a minimum if you want other people to give up they hours for you, you must be prepared to give up your hours for them.'
NeilW, have followed your work in many comments threads over the years (if it is you )So let me say thank you for your work.
However, I find that I agree with Matt Franco and A Anderson (I think) above. In the UK, UBI will be set very low. Moreover, and in case your interested, those New Georgists who support UBI agree with your view of Labour as a property right (obviously). But notice, they think each citizen is entitled to the Rents. Rent therefore is not an individaul property right for the Georgist. Thus they answer you and Bill Mitchell very well. UBI can in principle, can equal the total value of a states rent collection (mostly in private hands at the moment). Nevertheless, as a student of MMT I also follow Randall Wray's model dealing JG of the 'bottom of the pack' at a local level. Actaully then, at the lowest level, is their a huge difference between the two systems? At the macro level they can do the same job, and over time, at the micro level, local city FE can train the youngsters to be more and more labour market relevent. We start where we are after all?
"But Neil the people working would be making MORE than those not working"
They won't will they. The people working make all the stuff, so there is nothing extra for them to buy with the money in aggregate.
That's the bit that is revealed when you use the correct denomination - labour hours.
The whole of UBI is a money illusion.
"In the UK, UBI will be set very low. "
That's not a UBI. That's just tax credits with a sillier recovery system. We know how that works. It means there are insufficient jobs to go around and people starve. The problem is still there.
Again nobody answer's the point. You have people who want to be paid for doing nothing. Why do you want to give the output gap to the middle class trust fund layabouts rather than entirely to those at the bottom end without work?
Ultimately the whole idea is a pension. Why has the retirement pension persisted? Because amusingly that is when everybody currently working pays "rent" to those who maintained the capital they are currently using. So the distribution is already spoken for with the Retirement Pension. Unless that is to be reallocated to the middle class as well.
Sharing around the unemployment doesn't work - because it requires fungibility. What you can do is reduce the retirement age and require people work before then.
You have people who want to be paid for doing nothing. NeilW
Whose fault is it that way too many people don't have the land and other resources to provide for themselves?
Also, an equal Citizen's Dividend is an ethical necessity since:
1) SOME net fiat creation is necessary to prevent risk-free gains from deflation via fiat hoarding.
2) That fiat (beyond that created by deficit spending for the general welfare) should be distributed equally to all citizens to avoid violating equal protection under the law.
So a CD would not be something for nothing but a means to PREVENT something for nothing in an ethical manner.
So return assets so people can work for themselves or quit carping about injustice - especially since I doubt very much you'll require the rich to be wage slaves.
“ The whole of UBI is a money illusion.”
Well, we work for munnie... maybe some BS jobs would have to disappear... I can make my own sandwich if I had to... I can open my own beer can.... pump my own gasoline...
wouldn’t be the end of the world...
... maybe some BS jobs would have to disappear... Matt Franko
The point of a JG is to provide "jobs", not accomplish work.
And people who are paid to waste their time will quickly come to the conclusion that they could do more good just receiving a pay check and skipping the BS.
So, in view of increasing automation, with more and more capable people rendered redundant, the JG hair-shirt pushers had better learn that a whole lot of wealth inequality is unjust and they either find a means to redistribute it or face worse consequences.
AA correct what they say is “well... we may have to redefine what ‘work’ is”
I kid you not!
Like right now these commies probably want to redefine rioting and looting as “work”...
“Hey! I just lost my job in the hospitality industry due to covid I’m going to go down to the JG!”
“Hey! We’ve got some JG positions throwing rocks at law enforcement personnel right now! Does that interest you?”
The proposals of the MMT School are NOT communist. Otherwise they would:
1) Not support increased privileges for the banks but rather to nationalize them.
2) Require EVERYONE (except the old or disabled) to work and not just the poor.
3) Not keep reassuring the rich that taxes on them are not needed.
4) Have an endgame other than perpetual wage slavery to the State except for the rich.
So the proposals of the MMT School are much closer to fascism than communism.
Not that communism is any solution either since it is contrary to Scripture too. Not to mention its historic failures...
“ Not to mention its historic failures...”
Platonists never make an adjustment in the face of falsification or failure... like you don’t btw...
“ but were made vain in their dialogues” Romans 1:21
It’s about vanity... you people don’t want to be seen as being wrong so you never make any adjustments to your Theories...
You double down on your moronhood...
We science people are wrong ALL THE TIME and we just make a corrective adjustment without giving it a second thought...
That’s why what we do works and what you guys do is all fucked up all the time...
AA:The point of a JG is to provide "jobs", not accomplish work.
No, it isn't. That is not what MMTers like me ever say. You are putting words in other people's mouths. The point of the JG is to accomplish useful work and pay people for this. That is called "a job". You've often enough been told this.
Probably because of mainstream brainwashing, you believe there is some magical reason that such jobs cannot be productive for everyone, for the individual and society as a whole. That there is some magic that makes people building houses to live in themselves "wasting their time". Even if you believe this and believe that we MMTers are wrong because we do not understand the magic, it is not honest arguing to say that we do. We say the JG is about "accomplishing work" directly - and about many other things - entirely beneficial (side-)effects. We are not for wasting people's time.
How is it NOT a lie, how is it not malicious and dishonest to continue saying such things?
For we are in the same position in reverse. The MMT view is that some of your policies are destructive and stupid. E.g. the UBI. We have sound reasoning (not magical thinking) that shows the UBI is a scam. It either enslaves working people even more and/or causes massive inflation. Does little good, much bad, for enormous monetary expenditure.
Yet when has anybody said that that is your intent? - That the point of AA's ideas is to enrich the rich, impoverish the poor, cause chaos and inflation?
How can you trumpet justice when you act so unjustly, when you are treated better than you treat others?
NeilW: The whole of UBI is a money illusion.
Of course, Neil is right. That's why Wray says that UBIers - the suckers who don't see through the scam - are really, really bad at economics. Even worse than the worst mainstream/neoclassicals/Chicago types. For the mainstream does see through money illusion - though not much else.
Peter Pan:UBI vs JG - battle of 'muh values'.
Not in the least. Nothing to do with values. That is not and never was the MMT argument, which is that the UBI cannot work as promised, but is a scam. For some reason, those three letters turn many people's brains off. Surely if most heard a proposal about a lottery where everyone wins and how that will magically make everything better for everyone, is the solution to all economic problems, they would laugh at it, see through it in a second. But market the exact same thing under the name "UBI" - and millions fall for the dopey scam.
If you believe that UBIs work as the UBI hucksters say - you should believe me that you can fly off tall buildings if you just flap your arms hard enough. Oh yeah, gotta sell you this cape too. You'ld look silly flying around without one.
“ That there is some magic that makes people building houses”
Yo! They don’t have the skills to do that... if they did they could go get a job with a construction firm tomorrow...
These people have NO... MATERIAL ... SKILLS....
They have NO.... TRAINING....
They couldn’t check the oil in their own cars...
Just give them the munnie and keep them out of the way of the people who are competent...
I can make my own sandwich thanks!
Youre going to have housing structures collapsing and burning down all over the place...
I can just make a thermos of coffee to bring to work every day thanks!
I've heard of a lottery where if you win big, you don't have to work for the rest of your life. You should see how many hypocritical little shits play those lotteries. Includes the same people who are outraged by poor people receiving welfare.
That is not and never was the MMT argument, which is that the UBI cannot work as promised, but is a scam.
You would cash those monthly checks like everyone else would.
UBI + price controls would work better than welfare currently does.
JG + corrupt administrators would most certainly be a doomed program.
Would we be scammed by a UBI or a JG implemented under the current crop of politicians?
Absolutely.
The whole thing is a scam...
Peter Pan:UBI + price controls would work better than welfare currently does.
No, it wouldn't. There is no way to make the idiocy called "UBI" work, except by destroying the UBI.
That's the plan. Get people to believe that sentence. So we destroy all general "welfare" programs- which do work, do a lot of good. Replace them with the UBI, which cannot work. As the billionaires who love the UBI know.
After it wrecks the economy, the rich pick up the pieces and are now in a world with no UBI, no welfare programs - a far harsher and more brutal version of 19th century laissez-faire, dog eat dog struggle for existence.
The difference is immense. The UBI is so stupid, God couldn't make it work. At best it would be a game, making sure everyone got a basic income in monopoly money that can't be used for anything.
The JG is extremely robust, hard to do wrong. Anything like the New Deal's programs, and it eradicates most poverty and social problems.
Matt:
Yo! They don’t have the skills to do that... if they did they could go get a job with a construction firm tomorrow...
No. Construction jobs are notoriously cyclical. Skills have little to do with it, demand everything.
These people have NO... MATERIAL ... SKILLS....
They have NO.... TRAINING....
As I said, this is proverbially false. Training is baloney. The same garbage served for decades. Training people for jobs which don't exist or to make them compete to lower wagers.
It doesn't take a genius to work construction.
I used that example because it happened in the real world. In the US New Deal programs. And Bill Mitchell has mentioned that he grew up in an area where many people were employed in state building projects, for instance in building the very houses where he and they lived in.
So perhaps an "adjustment" of your beliefs is called for. Otherwise you are arguing in a way that fits your (quite inaccurate) description of "platonism" or "dialectic".
“ your (quite inaccurate) description of "platonism" or "dialectic".
Oh right! ... I rather have you mfers NAILED here...NAILED... you might as well be nailed right to the f-ing cross...
“ The UBI is so stupid, God couldn't make it work. ”
Yo we throw out HALF of our food... 4% feed the other 96% and we throw out HALF...
We have people “working” making $4 cups of shitty burnt coffee at Starbucks...
We have MLB players making $20M per year to hit .200...
$100M for qty 1 F-35...
$200 to see any big name artist...
Motion pictures grossing $1T....
Epstein putting $Ms into pedo island....
We don’t need to be doing AT LEAST half of what we are doing...
No thanks to you Platonist douchebags thank you very much all you unqualified people do is FUCK THINGS UP...
“ It doesn't take a genius to work construction.”
You’re a fucking elitist mfer...
Oh, come on. I know some very smart workers in the construction trades. But also some who aren't. It takes some training especially for specialties. But nobody says that is the main reason for unemployment in construction. The reason is lack of demand. Enough demand and enough people will work at it or many other useful fields. You're the one saying that there are all these people who are incapable of working and don't want to work or train. No, job training for decades has been a sadistic scam. And I'm the elitist. :-)
“ your (quite inaccurate) description of "platonism" or "dialectic".
No, Matt. You have very little idea of what you are talking about and get it about 100% backwards. You're nailing someone maybe, but it's yourself.
Especially when you DON'T adjust your beliefs to the real world- and show yourself to be a "Platonist" according to your own [very odd] textbook definition.
As I have said many times, I'm a science/math guy. Like many others, I've been driven to reading philosophy etc in order to understand science/math. All serious intellectual disciplines are intricately and intimately connected. Dividing them into the goodies and baddies is silly, a true waste of time.
Here, gratis is some wisdom I just read from Charles Sumner Slichter, father of the labor economist Sumner Slichter of the 30s- 70s. "It's all mathematics. Physics is noisy mathematics. Chemistry is smelly mathematics. Biology is messy mathematics." Better than many volumes of philosophy of science. :-)
Sure, we waste an enormous amount. But what has that to do with UBI? UBI is an idiotic idea that has never worked anywhere and never will work anywhere. The closest approximations to UBI are oil statelets, where the citizens get a basic income and the imported laborers are basically slaves. Not a pretty picture. And that is for a reason. A UBI presumes or imposes slavery on the poor saps who work for the UBI recipient-lords. A UBI cannot work as something integral to society's work. At best it just sows pointless confusion. Anything good it does can be done much better and cheaper by other means, including the JG.
In the presence of other such good policies, a UBI is by definition nothing but a way to force common working people to slave to provide luxuries to lazy, selfish assholes who prefer to lie in their own excrement to lifting a finger for themselves or anyone else.
A UBI will wreck any "material system", because it is systematic stupidity. Anybody who doesn't understand that is a really bad material systems engineer and should keep to flapping his arms while jumping off tall buildings with his cape. That's entirely safe, because if UBI-level material systems intelligence is used, he won't be able to build anything tall enough to hurt anyone.
"Well, we work for munnie"
Workers work for stuff, Capitalists work for money. For UBI to work everybody has to be a capitalist and keep a pot of money they don't, and can't spend. Aka voluntary taxation.
That's the only way that the real transfer of goods can work. And one of the reasons it is a neoliberal idea - based on this silly notion that everybody is a business.
No, it wouldn't. There is no way to make the idiocy called "UBI" work, except by destroying the UBI.
Don't get hung up on a name. The concept applies if its called a negative income tax, a citizens dividend, an old age pension, or a child benefit. Or even welfare, once the useless "means testing" bureaucracies are eliminated.
That's the plan. Get people to believe that sentence. So we destroy all general "welfare" programs- which do work, do a lot of good. Replace them with the UBI, which cannot work. As the billionaires who love the UBI know.
After it wrecks the economy, the rich pick up the pieces and are now in a world with no UBI, no welfare programs - a far harsher and more brutal version of 19th century laissez-faire, dog eat dog struggle for existence.
No argument that a plan to abolish the social safety net is not in society's interest. I could say the same about a phony JG program that gets yanked soon after welfare/workfare programs are dismantled.
The difference is immense. The UBI is so stupid, God couldn't make it work. At best it would be a game, making sure everyone got a basic income in monopoly money that can't be used for anything.
Company script in a company town works for the company; universal script in every town works for the economy. The concept of 'basic income' is based on rationing. Unlike ration coupons, that 'monopoly money' can be captured by rentiers. Hence the need for price controls. (There already exists a need for price controls to help fixed income recipients.)
The economics aren't the problem - societal attitude is.
This is similar to libertarians opposed to welfare. They say we can't afford it, but their real objection is moral. The existence of welfare violates their values.
The JG is extremely robust, hard to do wrong. Anything like the New Deal's programs, and it eradicates most poverty and social problems.
A JG is open to corruption as with most human endeavours. You would be implementing this in a population that doesn't understand the underlying macro. The politicians we have now, have every incentive to see this program fail.
In summary, there's no reason for me to oppose a UBI or a JG.
There is reason to believe that either program would be temporary and destined for failure. A lot of work needs to be done before we have better citizens, willing to envision a better society.
The concept applies if its called a negative income tax, a citizens dividend, ... PeterPan
No. A citizen's dividend is simply the replacement of fiat creation for private interests (egs: Interest on Reserves, positive yields on other sovereign debt, asset purchases by the Central Bank from the private sector, CB loans to the private sector, CB currency swaps, etc.) with equal fiat distributions to all citizens. It might vary depending on economic circumstances and is not necessarily a living income without land reform, large asset redistribution and de-privileging the banks.
A Citizen's Dividend is thus an essential part of an ethical money system and is NOT welfare, charity, the dole, etc.
CDs would be a right of citizenship.
Just like UBI, but with a different narrative.
Charity on the other hand, is not a right. It's situational.
Is it enough to live on?
For some people, it would be. They'll find a way to make ends meet.
Most of these schemes are intended as supplements.
Yang's 1000 USD per month falls in that category.
Peter Pan: The concept applies if its called a negative income tax, a citizens dividend, an old age pension, or a child benefit.
These are not different names for the same thing, they're different names for very, very different things. Wray calls this the UBI bait-and-switch. UBIers change the rules and definitions as they go along, as each mole is decisively whacked.
You do that again when you mention the need for price controls. The JG doesn't need anything else. The JG proposal is the JG and nothing else. And it works. In debates, the UBI always becomes UBI plus this plus that plus another thing - usually contradictory - and if the UBIer is honest and logical - at the end he sees there is nothing left of the original UBI - and he isn't a UBIer any more.
The economics aren't the problem - societal attitude is.
Completely wrong. Nothing to do with societal attitudes. UBI economics is nonsense. It is 100% money illusion. JG economics is airtight logic. The attitude that is necessary is willingness to follow logical arguments and look at real world experience, rather than moon over childish daydreams like the UBI, the lottery that everyone wins.
A JG is open to corruption as with most human endeavours. You would be implementing this in a population that doesn't understand the underlying macro.
Most people can see the difference between the UBI and the JG. In addition to the billionaires who want to make a killing with a UBI smash-and-grab, as Neil says the main supporters seem to be middle class airheads. They and any others who don't see that a UBI is intrinsically a scam are the ones who don't understand the underlying macro, not the general population.
So I think you, AA etc here have some work to do, some books to hit, to achieve even the median general population level of macro understanding. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If you understood what you were saying, you wouldn't say these things.
Hey, for the first month or so that I learnt MMT I vaguely thought as y'all do. It was the middle-class airhead in me - but I had the nagging doubt that I didn't really understand things well enough to be sure. The nagging doubt was right.
There is reason to believe that either program would be temporary and destined for failure. A lot of work needs to be done before we have better citizens, willing to envision a better society.
Yup, the problem is always with the people who don't understand the Wonderful Daydreams of the Superior Planners, UBIers like PP & AA or even me-for-one-month. How UBI Good Intentions will magically make impossible things happen, perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes, because they Really Believe and don't ever need to Think and Reflect.
If there's a problem with the really existing UBI [funny, there ain't never a problem with the really existing JGs]. Why "the people have forfeited the confidence of the government!"
Then "the government needs to dissolve the people and elect another" if they don't delight in the "increased work quotas" that the UBI demands of those dirty rotten ungrateful working people.
These are not different names for the same thing, they're different names for very, very different things. Wray calls this the UBI bait-and-switch. UBIers change the rules and definitions as they go along, as each mole is decisively whacked.
The same concept applies to these schemes. Yang's UBI fits the mold.
A UBI of $1000 per month would not need price controls to fight inflation, but to make it easier for people on a fixed income to make ends meet. We should be thinking about price controls now. No need to wait for a UBI.
UBI economics is present in the functioning of the welfare system. It is present in third world countries where there is no social safety net. It's basic premise is that no one needs to starve to death, or be rendered homeless because there isn't enough to go around. "Enough" as in jobs, money or resources.
If there were a JG, there would be fewer calls for a UBI.
If markets worked perfectly, there would be no need for rationing, which is a non-market solution.
How is UBI different from rationing? It lacks an important feature of ration coupons, but that can be addressed.
UBI economics is nonsense
Scarcity economics is nonsense. It happens to be based on a money illusion.
No one here is arguing for that, I hope.
Yup, the problem is always with the people who don't understand the Wonderful Daydreams of the Superior Planners,
Spoken like a true Maoist. The people don't understand our glorious communist vision, so they must be dragged into it.
People don't understand the JG. They believe its a social program.
People don't understand government finance. They believe the government is like a household and must live within its budget.
This is a problem. You can spin narratives with this.
The posters on this blog seem to believe that technocratic solutions can be imposed from top down without a cultural shift. No need for political movements, just some schmoozing up to the correct officials in a backroom. Et voila, munificence will be forthcoming from the owners of this economic system.
Now that is magical thinking.
I definitely think the economics / logic favors the JG. As Cal says the UBI is the same as everyone winning the lottery..... obviously a ruse.
Neils comment about us working for stuff is spot on, and his comment about UBI emerging from the neoliberal framing of each person being a firm is quite insightful. That framing is toxic. It informs the govt as household notion and all other hyper individualist BS we see today
Like it or not though, the JG will necessarily have to change our conception of work and that is a good thing. One of the reasons we all think everyone else has a bullshit job, not ours of course, is that most of what we truly need can be produced with an average of 3-4 hrs a day of “work”. A lot of people spend their whole day watching to see what other people are doing. That IS their fucking job. And in many instances they are people who cannot do the job as well as the people they are watching over!! Overwhelming majority of capitalist run firms have gobs of jobs like this.
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