Of the various criticisms leveled at a combined ‘job or income guarantee‘, ones appealing to fairness usually go along the lines that it would be unfair for healthy individuals outside the workforce to receive an income while others are occupied in jobs. In considering this objection, a number of points come to mind:heteconomist
Given yesterday’s theme (unemployment etc), this First Dog on the Moon analysis which appeared in the UK Guardian last week (December 12, 2018) – Unemployment: individual character flaw or mere feature of capitalism? – is worth reflecting upon.Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Some Republican policymakers continue to propose basing eligibility for assistance programs on participants’ ability to meet strict work requirements — most recently with House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway’s proposal to reauthorize SNAP (formerly food stamps)[1] — despite a lack of credible evidence that the requirements would work as intended.[2]
To build support for work requirements that take away assistance from adults who cannot work a set number of hours per month, conservative policymakers are pointing to three methodologically flawed studies touting the policy’s alleged success in Kansas’s and Maine’s cash and food assistance programs. The three studies misrepresent or omit key findings, and in many instances, make inappropriate claims about the impact of work requirements on work and earnings that the facts do not support.
Our analysis of the same data sharply contradicts the studies’ findings. We found that many adults in these programs already worked or would likely work soon anyway, but many of them found it difficult to find steady work and had earnings far below the poverty line or would have otherwise still qualified for assistance after their exits from the program....
The studies have at least four key flaws....Center on Budget And Plicy Priorities
Trump calls on his Cabinet to propose stronger work requirements for welfare across the board.
When is a Basic Income, not a Basic Income? When it’s a Basic Income Experiment.Modern Money Matters
For a couple of years Ralph Musgrave has been arguing that the Job Guarantee provides jobs that are essentially the same as those in the private sector with the same kinds of inflationary effects. For this reason, he has been treating the JG a simple job subsidy with a training component, similar to various active labor market policies (ALMP) around the world.
By contrast, much of the JG literature has focused on the differences between the JG and conventional public or private sector employment and on the program’s countercyclical effects (here is the latest model that compares the inflationary and distributional effects of different fiscal policies, including the JG/ELR). All of these arguments are familiar to readers of this blog and will not be rehashed here. We have also described various types of JG to deal with a number of implementation issues. Most recently, I proposed a model that utilizes the social entrepreneurial and non-profit sectors.
