Yves Smith — Job Guarantee Versus Basic Income Guarantee

Yves here. I’ve been remiss in not putting this video from November on a discussion of the merits of proposals for a job guarantee versus an income guarantee. The talk was hosted by Dissent Magazine, Jacobin, and the New Economy Coalition, and is explicitly anticapitalist, so you may need to filter out the occasional ideological leap.

The participants were Alyssa Battisoni from Jacobin, activist Jesse Myerson, Darrick Hamilton of the New School, and Pavlina Tcherneva of University of Missouri, Kansas City.…. [Pavlina is now assistant professor of Economics at Bard College.]

Naked Capitalism
Job Guarantee Versus Basic Income Guarantee
Yves Smith

Josh Barro — Some Of These 'Communist' Economic Ideas Are Actually Pretty Good

Josh Barro weighs in on Jesse Meyerson, who is MMT-friendly, btw.

Business Insider
Some Of These 'Communist' Economic Ideas Are Actually Pretty Good
Josh Barro

Joe Weisenthal— People Are Freaking Out About This 'Rolling Stone' Plan To Fix The Economy

A story by Jesse A. Myerson in Rolling Stone titled Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For has conservatives on Twitter flipping out.

Nick Gillespie at Reason.com has a breakdown of the conservative backlash, but if you actually read the article it's really baffling trying to figure out why the piece is generating such controversy.

Myerson identifies five things that should be done, and admittedly, his titles for each idea sound provocative. They are:

1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody
2. Social Security for All
3. Take Back The Land
4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody
5. A Public Bank in Every State

Business Insider
People Are Freaking Out About This 'Rolling Stone' Plan To Fix The Economy
Joe Weisenthal

Randy Wray — Push for Job Guarantee Gains Momentum

I just returned from the big annual meeting of economists (this time in Philly), at which we had a panel on the Job Guarantee. One of the papers on our panel was by William (Sandy) Darity and Darrick Hamilton, which demonstrated how imperative it is to implement the JG to reduce hiring discrimination in the labor market. Darrick (who presented the paper) pointed out that official unemployment rates for black Americans is chronically twice as high as that for whites; by conventional views of what constitutes Great Depression levels of unemployment, black Americans are in a Great Depression and are always suffering from at least recession levels of unemployment…

Here are three recent, interesting, pieces on the JG proposal, two by Sandy Darity and one by Jesse Myerson at Rolling Stone.

Economonitor — Great Leap Forward

Push for Job Guarantee Gains Momentum

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