The Job Guarantee is the most natural implementation of the concept of having the central government act as a price setter. By making an open bid for labour at a fixed price, an effective minimum wage is created in the economy, and it will eliminate almost all involuntary unemployment. This discussion will not cover the tricky question of implementation details, but will instead discuss how this fits in with the Monetary Monopoly model....Bond Economics
Job Guarantee as a Policy Variable
Brian Romanchuk
I left a comment there as follows.
ReplyDeleteBrian says in relation to JG people, “…..it should be noted that they are not being hired to run a business that makes a profit. They are being paid to provide services, but those services are not meant to act as a direct competition to the private sector.”
Actually there have been JG type schemes where those concerned ARE TAKEN ON by the private sector. There was one such scheme in Switzerland. See:
https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/154/microeconometric-evaluation-of-the-active-labour-market-policy-in-switzerland
One advantage of private sector JG is that the private sector is better at employing the relatively unskilled than the public sector. Second, the evidence from Switzerland, is that private sector JG improves the employability of those concerned more than public sector JG.
Ralph
ReplyDeletehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1482371/If-you-dont-take-a-job-as-a-prostitute-we-can-stop-your-benefits.html
Matt, That's interesting stuff about prostitution, but when advocating private sector JG I had in mind a variety of more normal occupations...:-)
ReplyDeleteYour 'normal' might not be the same as somebody else's....
ReplyDeleteIf JG is under full govt control then easier to avoid something like this human trafficking issue in a libertarian human scum's "free market!" type of implementation...
Minimum wage laws can set a wage floor so the true purpose of a JG is to set a wage CEILING by providing a buffer stock of pre-disciplined, pre-broken wage slaves for the private sector to draw from.
ReplyDeleteNot that a buffer stock of wage slaves can set either a wage floor (because of automation) nor a wage ceiling (because of the unique skills some humans can provide).
“ Minimum wage laws can set a wage floor“
ReplyDeleteNo mechanism to create jobs there meaning that THAT makes it a wage CEALING.
A job guarantee has the component that private sector has to compete with the conditions set in job guarantee.
The job guarantee also gives those who chosen it the right to organize themselves as workers as the job guarantee is set to be a real job. That gives workers a power to claim/ detain deteriorating descent working conditions also in private sector, hence a floor of descent working conditions.
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