(https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1275071404560355329)
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
It’s hard to imagine a more timely moment for the publication of @ptcherneva‘s “The Case for a Job Guarantee,” a slim and sprightly book that makes the plainest, most straightforward case yet for ending involuntary employment.
The Jobs Guarantee is not a new idea – it came within a whisker being part of FDR’s New Deal – but with unemployment at levels to rival (or exceed) the Great Depression, and with countries minting trillions to cushion the pandemic, it’s an idea whose time has come. 2/
Tcherneva’s argument has several strands: * Unemployment is really terrible, and exacts a huge toll on unemployed people, their families and society. This is both a human tragedy and a massive economic drain. 3/
* The private sector’s job-creation is “pro-cyclical”: it creates jobs when the economy is good, and shed jobs when the economy is bad (that is, when we most need new jobs) 4/
* The private sector is really bad at valuing caring and sustaining work – education, health care, climate remediation, eldercare, daycare 5/
* No amount of money for private sector job-creation would end unemployment: giving every unemployed person a $15/h job with good benefits is MUCH cheaper than handing out subsidies or contracts to private firms, and even if we did that, millions would still be unemployed 6/
* Minting money to buy the labor of unemployed people isn’t inflationary. Inflation isn’t about the monetary supply, it’s about bidding wars – buying the labor of people who lack jobs won’t bid up their wages, because no one else wants their labor 7/
* A Jobs Guarantee scheme would provide training, continuing education, certification and rehabilitation and be especially good for formerly incarcerated people, young people, people with disabilities, parents re-entering the job market, etc 8/
2020 eka. 22
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* Governments guarantee lots of things: price supports for agribusiness, loans for mortgage lenders, education for every child. Guaranteeing jobs is both a bargain (less than 1% of GDP, factoring in savings from ending unemployment pathologies) and humane 9/
Today, we protect against inflation by keeping people unemployed – unemployed people are a “buffer stock” of workers who might be hired when the economy grows. 10/
Tcherneva proposes that we replace unemployment with a buffer-stock of jobs: federally funded, locally determined, jobs that the private sector won’t do, jobs that pay well (and eliminate sub-subsistence private sector work better than any minimum wage would). 11/
These are the jobs that need doing, but not necessarily NOW: remediating public spaces, doing after-school programs at the local library or care home, weatherizing houses. When the economy sheds jobs, laid off people know they can get good work the next day doing these. 12/
When the economy grows, workers with newly acquired skills – and no gaps in their employment history – can walk straight into the new jobs the private sector is creating. When deflation is a risk, a Jobs Guarantee heats up; when inflation is a risk, it cools off. 13/
It’s an “automatic stabilizer.” https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#jobs-guarantee
Tcherneva clearly wrote most of this before the crisis (the introduction does take note of it though), but despite that, it’s eerily applicable to this moment. 14/
40 years of deficit hawkery has hollowed out our institutions, emptied our stockpiles and replaced the social safety net with punitive workfare. As the pandemic emergency surges, with the climate emergency right behind it, we need capacity building. 15/
We need care work. We need the Jobs Guarantee.
eof/
joseba says:
(https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1275860834523049985)
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
This week marks publication of The Case for a Job Guarantee, @ptcherneva’s brilliant, lucid pamphlet laying out the case for a radical rethinking of work and the creation of a true minimum wage: the wage you’ll earn if you want a job but no one will give one to you. 1/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
I published my review of Tcherneva’s book yesterday: https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/22/jobs-guarantee/#job-guarantee
2/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
Today, the @latimesbooks published my interview with Tcherneva, in which she explains and expands upon her argument: https://latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-06-24/forget-ubi-says-an-economist-its-time-for-universal-basic-jobs
3/
Forget UBI, says an economist: It’s time for universal basic jobs
Pavlina Tcherneva talks about “The Case for a Job Guarantee,” and how public-sector work can pull us out of crises both immediate and long-term.
latimes.com
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
As she points out, governments guarantee all kinds of things: contracts, loans, even the price of cheese. But the one area of uncertainty that each of us has to face on our own, without any kind of price-floor, is our own ability to find meaningful, well-compensated work. 4/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
Such a program would be federally funded – the feds alone have the power to spend money into existence – but it would be locally administered by states and localities, who would solicit proposals for work from community groups and bank them against future downturns. 5/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
When you need a job, the employment office would just…employ you. Give you a choice of jobs, with training if necessary, from among things your own community has decided needs doing, especially environmental rehabilitation and care work. 6/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
Today, we are facing down years – maybe decades – of structural unemployment at unmanageably high levels, 25% or more, far higher even than the absurd “natural rate of unemployment” that economists insist we must maintain. 7/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
Unemployment is supposed to fight inflation, and perhaps it does, but so too can employment. Rather than maintaining a buffer stock of immiserated, traumatized, job-seeking workers, we can maintain a stock of good jobs with socially inclusive wages and good benefits. 8/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
We already fund unemployment – the huge costs that structural unemployment exacts on our society and our productive economy – so why not switch to funding EMPLOYMENT instead? 9/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
As we head into this period of long term, high unemployment, SOMETHING will give. Possibly we’ll do nothing, and our society will be so destabilized by poverty and unemployment that it will face collapse. 10/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
Or if the right gets its way, we’ll create workfare – that is, forced labor: “Don’t want to starve? Fine – build the border wall and we’ll feed you.” 11/
Cory Doctorow #BLM@doctorow
The alternative is a Job Guarantee: an add-on beyond benefits for people who can’t work, that buys the labor of people whom the private sector refuses to employ and puts it to work doing things their own communities need.
eof/
joseba says:
(https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/22/jobs-guarantee/#job-guarantee)
The Case for a Job Guarantee (permalink)
It’s hard to imagine a more timely moment for the publication of Pavlina Tcherneva’s “The Case for a Job Guarantee,” a slim and sprightly book that makes the plainest, most straightforward case yet for ending involuntary employment.
https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509542093
The Jobs Guarantee is not a new idea – it came within a whisker being part of FDR’s New Deal – but with unemployment at levels to rival (or exceed) the Great Depression, and with countries minting trillions to cushion the pandemic, it’s an idea whose time has come.
Tcherneva’s argument has several strands:
Unemployment is really terrible, and exacts a huge toll on unemployed people, their families and society. This is both a human tragedy and a massive economic drain.
The private sector’s job-creation is “pro-cyclical”: it creates jobs when the economy is good, and shed jobs when the economy is bad (that is, when we most need new jobs)
The private sector is really bad at valuing caring and sustaining work – education, health care, climate remediation, eldercare, daycare
No amount of money for private sector job-creation would end unemployment: giving every unemployed person a $15/h job with good benefits is MUCH cheaper than handing out subsidies or contracts to private firms, and even if we did that, millions would still be unemployed
Minting money to buy the labor of unemployed people isn’t inflationary. Inflation isn’t about the monetary supply, it’s about bidding wars – buying the labor of people who lack jobs won’t bid up their wages, because no one else wants their labor
A Jobs Guarantee scheme would provide training, continuing education, certification and rehabilitation and be especially good for formerly incarcerated people, young people, people with disabilities, parents re-entering the job market, etc
Governments guarantee lots of things: price supports for agribusiness, loans for mortgage lenders, education for every child. Guaranteeing jobs is both a bargain (less than 1% of GDP, factoring in savings from ending unemployment pathologies) and humane
Today, we protect against inflation by keeping people unemployed – unemployed people are a “buffer stock” of workers who might be hired when the economy grows.
Tcherneva proposes that we replace unemployment with a buffer-stock of jobs: federally funded, locally determined, jobs that the private sector won’t do, jobs that pay well (and eliminate sub-subsistence private sector work better than any minimum wage would).
These are the jobs that need doing, but not necessarily now: remediating public spaces, doing after-school programs at the local library or care home, weatherizing houses. When the economy sheds jobs, laid off people know they can get good work the next day doing these.
When the economy grows, workers with newly acquired skills – and no gaps in their employment history – can walk straight into the new jobs the private sector is creating. When deflation is a risk, a Jobs Guarantee heats up; when inflation is a risk, it cools off.
It’s an “automatic stabilizer.”
https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#jobs-guarantee
Tcherneva clearly wrote most of this before the crisis (the introduction does take note of it though), but despite that, it’s eerily applicable to this moment.
40 years of deficit hawkery has hollowed out our institutions, emptied our stockpiles and replaced the social safety net with punitive workfare. As the pandemic emergency surges, with the climate emergency right behind it, we need capacity building.
We need care work. We need the Jobs Guarantee.