Friday, January 13, 2012

Joe Firestone — The Job Guarantee and the MMT Core: Part Eight, The JG Rate


Read it at Daily Kos — Money and Public Purpose
The Job Guarantee and the MMT Core: Part Eight, The JG Rate
by Joe (Letsgetitdone) Firestone

3 comments:

Mario said...

you know a JG could also pay for people to do "care services." This is a concept that I don't think many people have considered....like paying for people to spend time with elderly people, with the sick, with the poor. What do I mean by "spend time with them"? Well just hang out and play and talk and be friendly. Couldn't we profit on friendship and community and fun? Private sector views that as "unprofitable" and of course it is expensive since the rate of return is quite low....however that doesn't mean it's not a (very) valuable service to our race, community, culture, etc. What better "employer" to do that an ELR!?!?!

Just a thought for you....you could also pay people to educate others (over-qualified UE people for example).

Truly the bounds are limitless when it comes to an ELR and what they can "do." Not everything boils down to infrastructure and manufacturing....there is more to life than just monetary rates of returns (not to discredit them just to say as a fact of life).

WillORNG said...

As housing costs are a major cost of living, I've seen suggestions that they should be set at 30% of the gross wage, so a 600 a month housing cost would mean a monthly gross income of 2000...mind you, that's based on the US.

Mario, there used to be a tier of Auxiliary Nursing that did the human/labour side that's been stripped out of modern health care, it's not particularly about high training but more about "common sense" humanity/caring

Letsgetitdone said...

I agree with both of you and with those who say that there will be no problem defining jobs for applicants to the JG program. Our abilities to think of things to do that are worthwhile and produce real human value are vastly in excess of the jobs that have been created by the profit-seeking private market.