Randy Wray — How to Eliminate the Scourge of Unemployment: Jobs Now at a Living Wage

As Hyman Minsky put it a half-century ago, providing welfare rather than jobs is “a conservative rebuttal to an ancient challenge of the radicals, that capitalism necessarily generates ‘poverty in the midst of plenty’”. 

Rather than paying people not to work, Minsky proclaimed we must pursue an alternative: ““We have to reverse the thrust of policy of the past 40 years and move towards a system in which labor force attachment is encouraged. But to do that we must make jobs available; any policy strategy which does not take job creation as its first and primary objective is but a continuation of the impoverishing strategy of the past decade.” 

Here’s an idea: why not create jobs with decent pay? Now, why didn’t anyone ever think of that before? 

Put people to work doing socially useful things. Take workers as they are, design jobs that they are able to do. Offer a high enough wage with good, supportive working conditions so that no one would take the demeaning and low paying jobs that the private sector creates. If the private sector wants to compete, it will have to pay more and provide more interesting and fulfilling work. 

Here are three links to recent posts.…

Economonitor — Great Leap Forward
How to Eliminate the Scourge of Unemployment: Jobs Now at a Living Wage

L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, University of Missouri at Kansas City