The Case for a Job Guarantee E-Book

Pavlina R. Tcherneva

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: The Case for
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 157

Beschreibung

One of the most enduring ideas in economics is that unemployment is both unavoidable and necessary for the smooth functioning of the economy. This assumption has provided cover for the devastating social and economic costs of job insecurity. It is also false. In this book, leading expert Pavlina R. Tcherneva challenges us to imagine a world where the phantom of unemployment is banished and anyone who seeks decent, living-wage work can find it - guaranteed. This is the aim of the Job Guarantee proposal: to provide a voluntary employment opportunity in public service to anyone who needs it. Tcherneva enumerates the many advantages of the Job Guarantee over the status quo and proposes a blueprint for its implementation within the wider context of the need for a Green New Deal. This compact primer is the ultimate guide to the benefits of one of the most transformative public policies being discussed today. It is essential reading for all citizens and activists who are passionate about social justice and building a fairer economy.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Front Matter

Preface

Introduction

Notes

1 A Public Option for Good Jobs

Notes

2 A Steep Price for a Broken Status Quo

How “Natural” is Unemployment?

The Labor Market: A Catch-22 for Many

The Human Yo-Yo Effect

Unemployment is Expensive

A Broken Status Quo: Policy Responses

Notes

3 The Job Guarantee: A New Socia Contract and Macroeconomic Model

Guarantees All Around: Public Options and Price Supports

Price Supports, Buffer Stocks, and Living Wages

Setting the Most Important Price

Better Control of Inflation and Government Spending

Automatic Stabilizers: Guaranteed Employment or Guaranteed Unemployment?

Prevention, Not Just Cure

The Labor Standard and the New Social Contract

Boon to the Service Sector

Other Benefits: Transition, Pre-distribution, and the Safety Net

Notes

4 But How Will You Pay for It?

Monetary Systems and the Power of the Public Purse

Real versus Financial Costs and Benefits

The Job Guarantee Budget

Notes

5 What, Where, and How: Jobs, Design, and Implementation

Program Features

Administration and Participatory Democracy

Differences from Other Proposals

Types of Jobs: A “National Care Act”

Real World Programs

Concerns and Frequently Asked Questions

Notes

6 The Job Guarantee, the Green New Deal, and Beyond

Situating the Job Guarantee within the Green Agenda

Industrial Mobilization and the Job Guarantee

Conclusion: The Missing Global Employment Policy

Notes

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 1

Table 1

Runaway Inequality

Chapter 4

Table 2

Simulating the Job Guarantee

Chapter 6

Table 3

Support for Government Job Creation and Employer of Last Resort Policies

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1

Distribution of Average Income Growth During Expansions

Chapter 2

Figure 2

Chronic Job Shortages

Figure 3

Unemployment: The Human Yo-Yo

Figure 4

Unemployment During the Great Recession and Beyond

Chapter 6

Figure 5

Popular Support for the Job Guarantee

Figure 6

Regional Support for Government Employment Programs

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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“More than any other piece of public policy, the Job Guarantee can help us build a more equitable economy and just society. Pavlina Tcherneva has written the perfect primer for anyone interested in understanding why and how the Job Guarantee can do so much good.”

Ady Barkan, activist, organizer and author ofEyes to the Wind

“Many are coming to understand that the socioeconomic system in which we live – or endure – is broken, badly. There are solutions. The ideas in this valuable work point the way to a more civilized, indeed survivable, social order.”

Noam Chomsky

“The Job Guarantee is the next big, common-sense idea for economic reform. Over years of dedicated work, Pavlina Tcherneva has developed and advanced the plan, and today it stands poised to complement the Green New Deal and Medicare for All as a fundamental pillar of the progressive agenda. Read about it here … and go out to help make it happen.”

James K. Galbraith, The University of Texas at Austin

“Tcherneva lays out the case for how we can raise the roof by lifting the floor, as we transition away from a failed and cruel economy based on an assumed percentage of unemployment. She demonstrates how a jobs guarantee can help address some of our biggest challenges, including bridging the gap to a Green New Deal and the critical conversion from a fossil-fuel economy to a sustainable future. Through her book we can see a world where everyone who wants to claim the dignity of work as their own has that right.”

Sara Nelson, International President, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO

“Pavlina Tcherneva offers an eloquent and convincing argument for a public sector job guarantee as an economic shock absorber. Particularly valuable is her demonstration of how such a program can revitalise local communities. Beyond this, her book is an indispensable primer for advocates of a Green New Deal.”

Lord Robert Skidelsky, author ofKeynes: The Return of the Master

Dedication

For my daughter Yvette –May you live in a world that is green and just.

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Pavlina R. Tcherneva, The Case for a Job Guarantee

The Case for a Job Guarantee

Pavlina R. Tcherneva

polity

Copyright © Pavlina R. Tcherneva 2020

The right of Pavlina R. Tcherneva to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2020 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4211-6

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

Acknowledgments

When I first began working on the Job Guarantee in the late 1990s, the consensus was that the US had reached full employment and the Goldilocks economy was here to stay. The argument made little sense but it convinced me that researching unemployment would be a solitary experience. Happily, I was wrong.

My journey began with the friendship and support of Mathew Forstater, Warren Mosler, and L. Randall Wray, and connected me to collaborators and friends, including William Mitchell, Stephanie Kelton, Fadhel Kaboub, Scott Fullwiler, among many others. The fellowship of the Job Guarantee grew. I met people from the US and abroad who enriched my work. They hailed from all corners of academia – from history and law, to public policy and the humanities. I worked with policy makers who were designing and implementing similar programs. Environmental and social justice activists, youth organizations, journalists, and engaged citizens embraced the proposal. They have all contributed to where we are today, namely a place where the Job Guarantee is once again part of the national conversation and policy agenda.

While writing this book, I benefited greatly from conversations with Angela Glover Blackwell, Raúl Carrillo, Grégor Chapelle, William “Sandy” Darity, Isabelle Ferreras, Trudy Goldberg, Rohan Gray, Darrick Hamilton, Philip Harvey, Sarah Treuhaft, and many others. My thanks to three anonymous referees and my editor George Owers, whose comments greatly improved this volume, and to my student Kirsten Ostbirk who helped with figures and references. Special thanks to John Henry for his generous feedback, often wrapped in some much needed humor. Needless to say, all opinions herein and any remaining errors are my own. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family for their support, and especially to Douglas Johnson, who makes everything possible.

Preface

In the blink of an eye, millions lost their jobs. Like an inferno barreling across the globe, the coronavirus pandemic shutters one economy after another. Labor markets are cratering and the wave of layoffs has already turned into a tsunami. The Federal Reserve forecasts that US unemployment will surpass its 1930s Great Depression levels. And on the heels of this pandemic will come another – the suffering and devastation that result from mass unemployment.

This book was written before the hemorrhage in the labor market began. Yet it enumerates the many ways in which unemployment behaves like a silent epidemic – even while the economy is humming near full employment – from the way it spreads, to its virulent nature, to the enormous social costs it inflicts on people, communities, and the economy. In just a few short months, these costs would be immeasurable.

The pandemic has exposed as farcical many of the conversations from yesterday. Raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, we were told, would cost jobs (as if workers in poverty were ever good for the economy). Today, it’s obvious that the people on whose labor we vitally depend are the very same people who cannot secure living wages and basic job protections. Store clerks, dispatchers, warehouse workers, delivery drivers, and sanitation staff are now lauded as “essential workers,” but when the economy recovers, will the experts once again call them low-productivity employees whose jobs are in need of automation?

Yesterday, most presidential hopefuls shunned the idea that the government could provide universal healthcare. Today, we see not only that it can, but that it absolutely must, as millions lose their health insurance along with their jobs.

Yesterday, economists begrudgingly admitted that, despite historically low unemployment rates, the economy was nowhere near full employment and millions of people still wanted good jobs. Today, we face the daunting task of returning to those low rates after reaching double-digit unemployment. It took more than ten years to do so after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. How long will it take now?

This book critiques the conventional stabilization approaches that produce prolonged and painful jobless recoveries. And if we have to face another one, would economists insist tomorrow that we have reached a permanently high “natural rate of unemployment?” Will they rekindle the old “structural unemployment” excuses for the abject failure of public policy to do what it can and what is right, namely to employ the unemployed?

We need a Job Guarantee now more than ever. The following pages present the case for its overwhelming benefits and a blueprint for its implementation. Its design is inspired precisely by the way policy is supposed to respond to pandemics, by prioritizing preparedness and prevention. Decades of austerity have led to the erosion of essential public sector programs, services, and institutional capacities, leaving us woefully unprepared to respond to this pandemic and the social crisis that will follow. The public was baited into accepting austerity with the myth that the federal government could run out of funding. And yet, almost overnight, the US government passed an unprecedented $2.2 trillion package to tackle the pandemic, with additional spending on the way according to bipartisan consensus. Many countries around the world are doing the same. Finding the money was never the problem. Finding the political will to rally behind key policies always was.

Tomorrow, when politicians ask “but how will the government pay for this program?,” the answer should always be “the way we paid for the pandemic.” If we can pay for all the interventions necessary to stem this crisis, we surely can afford to guarantee jobs, homes, healthcare, and a green economy. What we cannot afford is to emerge out of this moment with the same economic problems and inequalities that created so much suffering and devastation even before the current pandemic.

Introduction

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

– Seneca

“There are no guarantees in life” is a familiar refrain, as is “if you really want something, you have to work for it.” But what if what you really want is paid work – a decent, well-paid job? And what if you cannot find it because, well, there are no guarantees in life?

This is the paradox the Job Guarantee proposal aims to solve. It is a public policy that provides an employment opportunity on standby to anyone looking for work, no matter their personal circumstances or the state of the economy. It converts the unemployment offices into employment offices to provide voluntary public service work opportunities in a wide range of care, environmental, rehabilitation, and small infrastructure projects. The Job Guarantee is a public option for jobs.

The guarantee part of the proposal is the promise, the assurance, that a basic job offer will always be available to those who seek it. The job part deals with another paradox, namely that while paid work in the modern world is life-defining and indispensable, it has, for many, become elusive, onerous, and punitive. The job component in the Job Guarantee aims to change all that by establishing a decent, living-wage job as a standard for all jobs in the economy, while paving the way for the transformation of public policy, the nature of the work experience, and the meaning of work itself.

The Job Guarantee deals with two very specific aspects of economic insecurity: unemployment (intermittent or long-term), and poorly paid employment (precarious and unequal). There are other labor market problems such as wage theft, discrimination, poverty, and stagnant income growth. And there are other forms of economic insecurity too, such as the lack of affordable and high quality food, care, housing, and education, or a lack of protection from the ravages of climate change. While, in a certain sense, the Job Guarantee has a narrow and clear mission – to provide a decent job at decent pay to all jobseekers who come a-knocking – by its very nature and design it addresses a wide range of social and economic problems and helps deliver a fairer economy.

At bottom, the Job Guarantee is a policy of care, one that fundamentally rejects the notion that people in economic distress, communities in disrepair, and an environment in peril are the unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage of a market economy.

The idea of using public policy to guarantee the right to employment is not new. Its long life and resilience stem from its deep moral content. It was affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights, it was a signature issue in the struggle for civil rights, and it is etched into many nations’ constitutions (inspired by the Universal Declaration). But its mandate remains unmet. In the US, the architects of the 1946 Employment Act and the 1978 Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act tried, but ultimately failed, to implement appropriate legislation to secure it. In the absence of a universal right to work, intermittent direct employment programs around the world have attempted, however imperfectly, to fill the void, many with perceptible success.

Today, the Job Guarantee has been hailed as “the single most crucial aspect of the Green New Deal,”1 conveying that environmental justice cannot be delivered without economic and social justice. The Green New Deal and the Job Guarantee aim to resolve two seemingly distinct, but in fact organically inseparable, existential problems – those of climate change and economic insecurity. What good is a green future in which the dangers of global warming have abated, but families and whole communities continue to experience deaths of despair due to poverty, unemployment, and economic distress? And what kind of an economy would it be which made well-paid jobs available to all, but continued to exploit and devastate the natural environment on which we vitally depended?

Although the Job Guarantee predates the Green New Deal, it has always been green – from the days of Roosevelt’s Tree Army to modern proposals like the one outlined in this book – prioritizing environmental conservation and community renewal. The Green New Deal is an ambitious policy agenda designed to transform the economy and deliver a habitable planet to future generations. The Job Guarantee embeds economic and social justice into the scientific response to climate change; it is an indispensable part of the green agenda that would ensure that no one would be left behind in the transition. But it is also a transformative macroeconomic policy and safety net that would tackle decades-long labor market problems along with the dislocations that would emerge from the greening process. Put simply, the Job Guarantee ensures that, while we work to protect the environment and transform the economy, we have a policy that protects working people and transforms the work experience itself.