Everywhere I read it seems, the ‘Green New Deal’ appears. I wrote a bit about it last week in my evaluation of the latest US job numbers – US labour market moderated in November and considerable slack remains (December 11, 2018). The point I made there was that a shift to a green economy would possibly generate around 21 million jobs (14 per cent of total US employment), which given reasonable estimates of excess capacity would require a huge shift in the employment structure and multiples of the available idle labour supply. Of course, that is the objective – to shift workers from fossil fuel, carbon intensive industries into sustainable activities. That is no easy task and would require a fundamental shift in the government-market balance in terms of resource allocation. The market alone will not accomplish that shift in a desirable manner. Cue – more regional and occupation planning. I have also been seeing an increasing number of Tweets talking about a ‘Just Transition’ framework, something I have written about in the past. And there are now Tweets out there equating that with a Job Guarantee. At that point, we get ahead of ourselves. We must see the Job Guarantee in perspective and not ask it to do too much. That is what this blog post is about.…Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The Job Guarantee is more than a Green New Deal job creation policy
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
5 comments:
If the US government tripled or quadrupled its deficit spending, it would simply create more money for creditors to suck up. Konrad
Well, it could, if justly (or at least equally) directed, pay off or pay down a lot of private debt but the government privileged usury cartel could again create about the same amount of purchasing power* as government to re-enslave the population.
As for MMT proposed banking reforms, they would still allow the population to be disemployed with what is, in essence, their own stolen purchasing power.
But not to worry since wage-slavery to government shall supplement/replace wage-slavery to the private sector via a JG.
*From 1973-2014 the government privileged usury cartel created about $.91 in deposits for every US dollar created by deficit spending.
"But not to worry, since wage-slavery to government shall supplement/replace wage-slavery to the private sector via a JG."
Nicely put.
The JG is an ode to wage slavery, with the government as an “enslaver of last resort.”
Even worse, the JG is a distraction from the moral and political supremacy of creditors; or what you call the "government-privileged usury cartel."
Most MMT people pretend that the cartel is negligible, or does not exist. They use the JG to direct attention away from the cartel. They falsely claim that to question their JG musings is to deny the objective facts of basic MMT.
"If the US government tripled or quadrupled its deficit spending, it would simply create more money for creditors to suck up." Agreed. This is the basic problem with the idea that all we need is more federal debt.
Konrad says "What good is a “job guarantee” or a “green new deal” as long as the world worships creditors and compounding debt?
So what is Konrad advocating? A world in which there are no debts at all? Vague criticisms are not much practical use.
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