Neil Wilson — The Job Guarantee: What Will People Do?

If you’ve come here looking for a list, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. The Job Guarantee isn’t a list of things to do, because, unsurprisingly, the people who designed it weren’t fans of central planning.

Instead we’ll go through the Job Guarantee in detail and explain that it is a process, not a destination. We’ll explain what it does and why it is there — using a slightly different viewpoint from normal....

The Job Guarantee is a mechanism for creating jobs of social value. It is a dynamic system that enables and supports the creation of jobs that provide public service to others and that others consider to be of public service.

Nobody has any idea what jobs the Job Guarantee will create or not create because that is left to the Social Entrepreneurs to decide based upon the forces they respond to.

In this view of a JG, the currency issuing government doesn't create the jobs directly by employing people, but rather indirectly by providing the  supporting institutional structure and funding for job creation by social value entrepreneurs operating on the basis of creating social value through innovation instead of market value like the private sector.

Modern Money Matters
The Job Guarantee: What Will People Do?
Neil Wilson

Neil Wilson — It’s not a matter of believing. It is a matter of fact and requirement in society.

Neil has been using the term "social value" lately in contrast to market value. In a market state, value is exclusively market value and if market value cannot be turned into sufficient profit to justify investment, then the project doesn't get done.

The three rolls of the modern state are provision of security, order and welfare. These have high social value but little market value in that the goods they involves are neither rivalrous nor excludable.

These are chiefly public goods that fall under public purpose. A state is chiefly concerned with social value rather than market value, so these matters fall under the purview of the state rather than the private sector.

Maintaining full employment is a social value rather than a market value where the private sector is either unwilling or unable to step up. A currency sovereign is always able to purchase idle resources including labor in excess of job offers.

Modern Money Matters
It’s not a matter of believing. It is a matter of fact and requirement in society.
Neil Wilson