Implement a full Job Guarantee - create enough jobs and pay a living wage.….
Of course with open borders that would mean you would likely end up with an awful lot of unemployed on your doorstep …
So as part of implementing the Job Guarantee you restrict the open borders to other parts of the world that have an equivalent Job Guarantee programme and social infrastructure. If you don't come from such country then you have to apply for a visa and be assessed.
3Spoken
How Labour can solve the immigration conundrum
Neil Wilson
9 comments:
Dunno about popular opinion in Britain, but in the US it would never be "politically viable" (as MMT likes to phrase it) to give make-work jobs to immigrants. I for one would certainly oppose it.
Neil's proposal does not address the real reasons the public opposes immigration -- wage suppression, cultural clashes, and increased competition for finite resources.
It's true that some people complain about immigrants on the dole, but that's a side issue. If the dole were the only issue, you could simply restrict welfare programs to citizens.
Nor does this proposal address the problem of immigrants on H-1B visas competing with Americans for tech jobs (and suppressing wages, and making workers insecure, which is the whole idea). If you want to address that problem, then you have to offer an occupation-specific JG AT THE PREVAILING WAGE for each occupation.
It's important to understand that the reason the powers-that-be allow immigration (which is largely opposed by the American public) is because the 1% crave cheap labor. The 1% will never support offering a living wage make-work job to immigrants (or citizens), because that would defeat their whole goal of maintaining a large pool of cheap, desperate labor. See Kalecki.
If by some miracle we rise up against the oligarchs and institute a populist direct democracy, you can be sure that immigration and free trade will be curtailed. There's no public support for those things, never has been.
Partly OT, this character gives us some insight into what a JG program would be like under conservative management:
Young unemployed people should be forced to pick weeds, former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Tebbit has suggested.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/22/lord-tebbit-weeds-unemployment_n_6028114.html?ir=UK+Politics
I dealt with the visa assessment process previously
The issue is, as ever, avoiding regulatory capture by making crystal clear what the visa system is there for.
"Partly OT,"
Very OT to quote a decrepit Lord from the 80s. Only UKIP people take him seriously any more.
Still doesn't change the reality of the situation. You have to be seen to be doing something useful *as defined by others* if you want to earn a wage.
That's what a society is - a group of others. There are no natural laws and no natural rights. Just what are granted by other people.
If the citizens elect a gun-toting right wing nut job into power then you will be required to break rocks for a living if you're surplus to requirements (assuming they don't go as far as the gas chamber). If the citizens are more enlightened and elect a Social Libertarian then you will be able to create music and art for living, or simply look after your own children.
But the key point is that it is defined by others as a group decision, not by you on your own - as the liberal individualism fantasy likes to portray.
Perhaps a punitive JG is OT in Britain, I don't know -- it doesn't seem OT considering the recent British experiments with workfare -- but your "decrepit lord" is representative of the red state mentality in the US. Since I live in a deeply red state, and since MMT largely proposes delegating its JG to state and local governments (not to mention private entities !), the possibility of a punitive JG seems highly relevant to me.
Not sure about the rules of a society but pretty sure about the rules of an oligarchy. Both the US and the UK are oligarchies, voting rarely changes anything, and in any event most voters are easily manipulated by the oligarch-controlled media. Studies show that ALL of the politicians in the US kowtow to the 1% and ignore the working class.
During WWII America had a JG of sorts for Japanese immigrants. We called them "work camps," some might call it slavery. The fact that the Japanese immigrants were "doing something useful as defined by others" did not change the fact that they were unwelcome in the US at that time. Just pointing out that there are many issues with immigration besides whether or not the immigrants are doing something useful.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/27/kooskia-internment-camp_n_3663446.html
I largely agree with your Visa blog as far as it goes, Neil.
A punitive JG or unemployment... let the unemployed decide.
"… defined by others as a group decision" [NeilW]
I think in human society the creative sequence is vision (purpose) >> plan (ideas) icon (manifestation of the ideal). Visionaries, intelligentsia, masses. Neither shepherds, lions or wolves follow sheep.
The sheep are told what to believe. The unemployed lack the political influence required to get their concerns addressed. Obtaining approval from an apathetic society should be the least of their priorities.
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