Neil Wilson-en The Job Guarantee: What Will People Do?1
The answer to the perennial question
(i) Zer ote da lan bermea? Prozesu bat da2
(ii) Merkatu balioa daukaten lanpostuak sortzeko da sektore pribatua3
(iii) Balio soziala daukaten lanpostuak sortzeko sortzeko mekanismoa da lan bermea4
(iv) Bi merkatu leku desberdin5
(v) Balioa soziala versus merkatu balioa: ondorioa enplegu osoa6
(The Job Markets Visualised )
(vi) Nola funtzionatzen duen balio sozialeko merkatu batek7
(vii) Behar diren zerbitzu publikoez, lan bermea eta sektore pribatua8
(viii) Lan bermea eta baliabide publikoak9
(ix) Zergapetzea eta lan bermea10
Ondorioak:
(1) Lan bermea eta balioa soziala: lanpostua jendearentzat, ez jendea lanposturako11
(2) Lan berme eta sektore pribatuaren arteko ‘lehiakortasuna’12
(3) Lan bermea enplegu merkatuaren egonkortasunerako mekanismoa da, enplegu osoa eta prezio egonkorrak edukiz13
Iruzkinak14:
Neil Wilson said…
” They’ll also make a plea to the public that they’re trying to make a living, and that the public works component is unfair competition.”
I didn’t mention that bit because the article was getting too long and I didn’t want to get bogged down in detail.
The Social Value part of the Job Guarantee avoids competition with the private sector. There has to be a mechanism where a market value firm can request the Job Guarantee backs out of an area.
I’d see that as working along the lines of a manifesto. If a local government has been elected saying they want pot hole filling to be a social activity, then the Job Guarantee can enter that area and eliminate any market value firm. Which it will do since the labour is subsidised on the Job Guarantee, but not in the private sector.
It’s all down to what the society believes is the best way to get things done. Social value does everything in Cuba and next to nothing in the United States.
May 22, 2017
Neil Wilson said…
“They’ll also make a plea to the public that they’re trying to make a living”
Social entrepreneurs are paid. They are paid a wage, usually in a non-profit organisation. We have a form of incorporation in the UK called a ‘Community Interest Company’ – which exists to benefit the community rather than enrich private shareholders.
May 22, 2017
2 Ingelesez: “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.”
3 Ingelesez: “The private sector is a mechanism for creating jobs of market value. It is a dynamic system that enables and supports job creation. Hopefully the right sort of jobs in the right locations, if your policy settings are good.
Nobody has any idea what jobs the private sector will create or not create because that is left to the market entrepreneurs to decide based upon the forces they respond to. Nobody asks for a list of what jobs the private sector is doing this week, and you couldn’t provide an exhaustive list anyway. All you can provide are examples, but nobody expects those examples to fit every individual worker’s circumstances. Not everybody wants to be a scaffolder.”
4 Ingelesez: “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. Nobody should ask for a list of what jobs the Job Guarantee is doing this week, and you couldn’t provide an exhaustive list anyway. All you can provide are examples, but nobody should expect those examples to fit every individual worker’s circumstances. Not everybody wants to be a pot hole repairer.”
5 Ingelesez: “So now we have two market places. One where market value is primarily what matters and one where social value is primarily what matters.
The private sector is excluded from the social value marketplace because we want it to operate and optimise the market value marketplace via innovation, automation and investment. Similarly those utilising the social value marketplace are excluded from the market value marketplace by virtue of the fixed living wage paid by the Job Guarantee and because they have to place everybody that turns up.”
6 Ingelesez: “Workers move between the two different marketplaces based entirely upon competitive force between them. If the private sector is offering a great deal and people are persuaded by that offering they will move to the market value marketplace. If the Job Guarantee is providing great social opportunities that others consider of huge value or, more likely, the private sector is having a sulk or doesn’t want people like you, then you will work under the Job Guarantee.
In this way the two systems are held in eternal tension across the nation — social-value vs. market-value vying for labour resources. In every location the balance is different. The result is full employment — everybody doing something of value and earning a living income, wherever they choose to live and whatever the differing views of social-value are at the time — anchored at stable prices due to that competitive tension between the markets.”
7 Ingelesez: “How a social value market works
Whereas market-value markets are determined by price and quality, social value markets are determined by public opinion. The Social Entrepreneurs creating the work for people have to be sensitive to changes in public opinion. A scheme to help people look after their own children in their own home may not be acceptable to the wider working population. Or it may be embraced with gusto because the culture of the country venerates children. Things may change over time. Assisted manufacturing employment for people with disabilities is a great idea in one decade and a patronising anachronism in another. Schemes to help immigrants to improve their local language skills may be frowned upon and then suddenly become very important due to social changes. Social Entrepreneurs are flexible enough to catch those changes and start delivering new social value as soon as the opportunity arises. They will sell the benefits of what they are doing to retain the public opinion they need to continue.”
8 Ingelesez: “But what about needed public services?
But surely anything that is worth doing is worth doing permanently in the public sector?
It’s a viewpoint, but it misses the operational reality of what ‘permanently’ means in a free society. (I’m presuming here that readers are not in favour of indenture and slavery).
There is no material difference between a ‘permanent’ public sector job at the living wage and a Job Guarantee public sector job at the living wage. Whether either gets filled, or stays filled, depends upon the current alternative offers available in the private sector.
The issue has nothing to do with the Job Guarantee, but a private sector that is running at a level that is taking resources away from public service.”
9 Ingelesez: “Once you have a Job Guarantee in place you are operating at full employment. If the resources you want for the public good aren’t in the Social Value market you have to redistribute them away from the Market Value market by government action.
If you want to pay public sector workers higher than the Job Guarantee wage you have to set up the redistribution mechanisms to make that happen. And that means getting the democratic votes necessary to allow you to take stuff from one person so you can give it to another.
For example, public opinion in the UK supports paying NHS nurses at a rate above minimum wage. There is strong public support for the social value of the work they do. This comes from a combination of first hand experience by the public, campaigning by their union and professional bodies, and political activity. There is therefore tacit permission for government to redistribute resources in favour of higher wages for NHS nurses.”
10 Ingelesez: “The usual approach is to implement some form of taxation (other methods are available). The true function of taxation is to release resources for the public use. However, taxation is a messy weapon. It carpet bombs the economy by creating an artificial depression in activity, which means it almost certainly won’t release just the people you are after exactly where you need them. If you want pull nurses from private sector activity and use tax to release them, you’ll likely release other people from the private sector as a form of collateral damage. Not everybody from the release will be reabsorbed serving the new public purpose. (I’m presuming readers don’t believe in the fiction of 100% human fungibility)
With a Job Guarantee, that isn’t as much of an issue, because anybody inadvertently released alongside the people you want for ‘permanent’ public sector work will be able to get work in the Social Value sector via the Job Guarantee — easily and without having to change location.
Another added benefit: The Job Guarantee makes taxation work more effectively.”
11 Ingelesez: “The confusion over the Job Guarantee comes from people failing to see it as just another mechanism for providing jobs to people. One that is based around Social Value — the needs of others and the views of others as to what is appropriate activity. One that matches Jobs to People, rather than people to jobs, with a fully elastic supply over time and location. One that fulfills the social contract of fairness inherent in primate societies, especially ours.”
12 Ingelesez: “Take an imaginary default position where everybody would work for the Job Guarantee on the living wage and everything would be done within it. Then visualise pulling people away from that default position using the private sector market-value mechanism and the traditional public sector ‘tax and spend’ mechanism to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the economy according to the shared values of the society it serves. You can see the other sectors as in competition with the Job Guarantee to deliver more overall value to its citizens, and if they fail returning workers to the Job Guarantee.”
13 Ingelesez: “The Job Guarantee default employment mechanism is as central and vital to the stability of the job market as the Central Bank default lending mechanism is to the stability of the lending market. If you want full employment and stable prices, there is no alternative.”
joseba says:
Iruzkinak:
(in https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2761684730989137546&postID=4740612884025356963&bpli=1)
Ralph Musgrave said…
“Social entrepreneurs” would in effect be bosses of small firms: they’d need administration skills, marketing skills and so on. The idea that those sort of people are thick on the ground among the ranks of the unemployed – particularly when unemployment is low – is plain unrealistic.
And those sort of people cannot be nicked from the “regular jobs” economy because that would reduce output in that sector of the economy. I.e. if JG to any significant extent destroys regular jobs, then JG is a farce.
May 22, 2017
Neil Wilson said…
““Social entrepreneurs” would in effect be bosses of small firms”
They already exist. They are called ‘Community Interest Companies” – that are required to distribute their profit to the community rather than for private gain.
Would you like them closed down?
May 22, 2017
Neil Wilson said…
“You really have to tell us what JG people will do.”
Just as soon as you tell me what the new businesses next year are going to do – precisely, not with ‘wooly’ examples. You first.
And then move onto charities and answer all your questions for them as well.
Then you’ll have your answers. You just do what is current being done already. Just do more of it.
If you want to know what Social Entrepreneurship is, why didn’t you just Google it?
Social entrepreneurs run Community Interest Companies (and other corporate forms in the same vein). Those sort of companies can file a zero-wage timesheet with the national payroll tax collection system, which will then pay the individual the living wage instead of the Company for the hours worked.
CICs then, effectively, get the subsidised labour from the state that is available to work on community projects. This is no different from applying for public grants. You just get paid in people rather than money.
Similarly there is no reason why the CIC can’t be a subsidiary of a local council or other traditional public sector entity. Or even just a department of the council. The key is the social innovator interested in solving community problems.
Social entrapreneurs then lobby to have less market value provision and more social value provision. They would want the private sector shrunk to free up resources for their use. That counters the lobbying from the market value sector in the opposite direction. The competitive tension between the two then delivers even more social value and we’ll find out dynamically which approach delivers better outcomes in a world that is 90% or more service sector.
May 22, 2017
joseba says:
Ikus ondokoa:
Lan bermeko programaren atzean dagoen ikerketaz hitz bi