Post by Iain Dooley on Jul 31, 2016 7:35:57 GMT
This is somewhat of a centrepiece of the Australian Employment Party's policy platform.
Since we have one of the foremost MMT economists in the world right at home in Newcastle University, Bill Mitchell, and since he and his team at CofFEE have done so much work on developing a Job Guarantee proposal that's where we'll start:
drive.google.com/open?id=0B34PuXMY6744TWdGc2cwOW9NVU0
Fundamentally a Job Guarantee means 0% involuntary unemployment.
I have not gone through that document in detail.
I will, and it will take me a while and I'll make notes here as I go.
Based on discussions we have already had about a Job Guarantee and information I have already found from other published sources here are some attributes of a Job Guarantee:
1) It's federally funded and locally administrated
2) It fits jobs to people and not the other way around
3) It pays a socially inclusive minimum wage, along with benefits, conditions and protections you would expect from a "real job"
4) It needs to be able to expand and contract counter cyclically
5) It is not work for the dole, which is a private sector wage subsidy that has people work at a poverty wage
6) It can incorporate any type of skilled or unskilled labour relevant to the communities in which it operates
I think the federal government role in addition to providing funding would be in providing the administrative structures and frameworks within which community self-determination occurs.
Tim and I have discussed our approach to the Job Guarantee in several episodes of our podcast which is available on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/channel/UCt3B5PX86GE_IXgZtar8xXw
You an also subscribe to the podcasts here or by searching Australian Employment Part on iTunes:
www.australianemploymentparty.org/podcast.xml
The only major point of difference we are facing with respect to a Job Guarantee is how it interacts with existing welfare and social security payments.
This is discussed in detail in Bill's paper, linked above, so I will reserve (final) judgement until I have had time to properly read and comment on it, however I know that Randall Wray and Warren Mosler both agree that we could happily have both a job guarantee and normal unemployment benefits for those that don't want to work.
Bill Mitchell feels differently but when I discussed this with him his opinion was based on real world experience of having conducted Job Guarantee-like programmes and his radically redefined notion of work.
That is, you become less concerned about whether or not you will be able to opt-out of a Job Guarantee once you see that a Job Guarantee is not punishment, not pointless work, not stupid mechanical, automatable jobs, does not create jobs needlessly in order to offset technological unemployment and those kinds of things.
One of Bill's examples he discussed when we last met with him was that fact that a lot of the surfers he knows in Newcastle (he surfs) are on the dole and don't work in the private sector.
He said that it would be perfectly acceptable for expert surfers to be paid by the government to take care of the ocean, to teach people how to surf and how to swim, to be responsible for ocean safety etc.
After all, we have private sector sponsorship of sports people, why couldn't we have government sponsorship of sports people?
He talked about working with people suffering from severe schizophrenia who could not normally hold a private sector job.
However when provided with clinical support in a government workplace, those individuals can benefit from good jobs and the community benefits from their involvement.
When they're not having a specific mental health episode, they are productive and engaged, and enjoy the work. These people will probably never be able to transition to "normal" private sector work, but certain private sector work placements would be possible with the government providing the required clinical support.
Bill's take on all this is that if you design it correctly you don't really need unemployment benefits as well as a Job Guarantee. In fact his opinion is that, over time (in my opinion millenia but even if it were 2-300 years) that a Job Guarantee starts to look like what UBI and BI advocates envision anyway.
Some specific considerations:
1) Under a Job Guarantee that fits jobs to individuals (and thus their capabilities) the definition of being "fit for work" becomes much less threatening. It is incumbent upon the government to provide you with a job that suits your needs and capabilities so if that's not possible you are by definition entitled to a disability support payment. This may include something like dramatically reducing work hours so as to allow for medical treatment for example, but still making work available.
2) A Job Guarantee hires you on the spot with no waiting period.
3) A Job Guarantee can incorporate a wide range of vocational training programmes such as technical and non-technical apprenticeships, diplomas or degrees, with people being paid to study. This is already done in the military, there is absolutely no reason we can't do it in a Job Guarantee.
4) The community can decide what it's own needs are and propose projects. The people participating in the programme can also take part in this process. I would say one feature would be that if there were no work available (for example in some super technologically automated future) then the programme participants would be involved in deciding what that work should be.
5) The JG coexists with generous welfare entitlements for students, the disabled, the elderly as well as those that care for them -- in fact, home care for family members would just be another JG job really.
6) The AEP couples a JG with increased spending on health and education, prison reform and increased spending on mental health issues. No-one will be "left out in the cold".
7) There are sections of society where unemployment is intergenerational, and some people are very long term unemployed. These people may need extra assistance transitioning from welfare payments into a JG programme. In these cases it would be fair to say that we wouldn't just be advocating a discontinuation of existing dole payments. In fact, you could even say that difficulty participating in the economy is kind of a disability caused by years of neoliberal neglect. Bill Mitchell's experience of working with the unemployed and in programmes such as this is that you don't need dole payments in addition to the JG because everyone wants to take part and everyone can do something, but we need to ensure that, especially during early transition, that we aren't just cutting people off without helping them fully engage with the programme and it's potential. People need to rebuild trust.
8) I think that one thing we should be looking at is dramatically lowering the pension age in conjunction with a JG that replaces unemployment benefits. For example, to the age of 50. If someone wants to stop working at that age (50 or 55 or whatever it may be) then really, we shouldn't be forcing them to work anymore. Especially as the spoils of automation and increases in productivity are shared more equitably we can look not only at reducing the overall working hours (eg. to a 30 hour work week) but to reducing the pension age (and increasing the pension).
Really, the only limit to how this can work is our imagination, but fundamentally I think that the reason people are opposed to a JG in favour of a UBI, or want the additional safety net of unemployment benefits in addition to the JG, is because of negative experiences we have all already had with Centrelink, with unemployment, with work for the dole etc.
We need to help people realise that the government can be an inclusive and positive employer and that we can structure these programmes in such a way as to help people transition to full economic participation after decades of neglect at the hands of global neoliberalism.
Since we have one of the foremost MMT economists in the world right at home in Newcastle University, Bill Mitchell, and since he and his team at CofFEE have done so much work on developing a Job Guarantee proposal that's where we'll start:
drive.google.com/open?id=0B34PuXMY6744TWdGc2cwOW9NVU0
Fundamentally a Job Guarantee means 0% involuntary unemployment.
I have not gone through that document in detail.
I will, and it will take me a while and I'll make notes here as I go.
Based on discussions we have already had about a Job Guarantee and information I have already found from other published sources here are some attributes of a Job Guarantee:
1) It's federally funded and locally administrated
2) It fits jobs to people and not the other way around
3) It pays a socially inclusive minimum wage, along with benefits, conditions and protections you would expect from a "real job"
4) It needs to be able to expand and contract counter cyclically
5) It is not work for the dole, which is a private sector wage subsidy that has people work at a poverty wage
6) It can incorporate any type of skilled or unskilled labour relevant to the communities in which it operates
I think the federal government role in addition to providing funding would be in providing the administrative structures and frameworks within which community self-determination occurs.
Tim and I have discussed our approach to the Job Guarantee in several episodes of our podcast which is available on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/channel/UCt3B5PX86GE_IXgZtar8xXw
You an also subscribe to the podcasts here or by searching Australian Employment Part on iTunes:
www.australianemploymentparty.org/podcast.xml
The only major point of difference we are facing with respect to a Job Guarantee is how it interacts with existing welfare and social security payments.
This is discussed in detail in Bill's paper, linked above, so I will reserve (final) judgement until I have had time to properly read and comment on it, however I know that Randall Wray and Warren Mosler both agree that we could happily have both a job guarantee and normal unemployment benefits for those that don't want to work.
Bill Mitchell feels differently but when I discussed this with him his opinion was based on real world experience of having conducted Job Guarantee-like programmes and his radically redefined notion of work.
That is, you become less concerned about whether or not you will be able to opt-out of a Job Guarantee once you see that a Job Guarantee is not punishment, not pointless work, not stupid mechanical, automatable jobs, does not create jobs needlessly in order to offset technological unemployment and those kinds of things.
One of Bill's examples he discussed when we last met with him was that fact that a lot of the surfers he knows in Newcastle (he surfs) are on the dole and don't work in the private sector.
He said that it would be perfectly acceptable for expert surfers to be paid by the government to take care of the ocean, to teach people how to surf and how to swim, to be responsible for ocean safety etc.
After all, we have private sector sponsorship of sports people, why couldn't we have government sponsorship of sports people?
He talked about working with people suffering from severe schizophrenia who could not normally hold a private sector job.
However when provided with clinical support in a government workplace, those individuals can benefit from good jobs and the community benefits from their involvement.
When they're not having a specific mental health episode, they are productive and engaged, and enjoy the work. These people will probably never be able to transition to "normal" private sector work, but certain private sector work placements would be possible with the government providing the required clinical support.
Bill's take on all this is that if you design it correctly you don't really need unemployment benefits as well as a Job Guarantee. In fact his opinion is that, over time (in my opinion millenia but even if it were 2-300 years) that a Job Guarantee starts to look like what UBI and BI advocates envision anyway.
Some specific considerations:
1) Under a Job Guarantee that fits jobs to individuals (and thus their capabilities) the definition of being "fit for work" becomes much less threatening. It is incumbent upon the government to provide you with a job that suits your needs and capabilities so if that's not possible you are by definition entitled to a disability support payment. This may include something like dramatically reducing work hours so as to allow for medical treatment for example, but still making work available.
2) A Job Guarantee hires you on the spot with no waiting period.
3) A Job Guarantee can incorporate a wide range of vocational training programmes such as technical and non-technical apprenticeships, diplomas or degrees, with people being paid to study. This is already done in the military, there is absolutely no reason we can't do it in a Job Guarantee.
4) The community can decide what it's own needs are and propose projects. The people participating in the programme can also take part in this process. I would say one feature would be that if there were no work available (for example in some super technologically automated future) then the programme participants would be involved in deciding what that work should be.
5) The JG coexists with generous welfare entitlements for students, the disabled, the elderly as well as those that care for them -- in fact, home care for family members would just be another JG job really.
6) The AEP couples a JG with increased spending on health and education, prison reform and increased spending on mental health issues. No-one will be "left out in the cold".
7) There are sections of society where unemployment is intergenerational, and some people are very long term unemployed. These people may need extra assistance transitioning from welfare payments into a JG programme. In these cases it would be fair to say that we wouldn't just be advocating a discontinuation of existing dole payments. In fact, you could even say that difficulty participating in the economy is kind of a disability caused by years of neoliberal neglect. Bill Mitchell's experience of working with the unemployed and in programmes such as this is that you don't need dole payments in addition to the JG because everyone wants to take part and everyone can do something, but we need to ensure that, especially during early transition, that we aren't just cutting people off without helping them fully engage with the programme and it's potential. People need to rebuild trust.
8) I think that one thing we should be looking at is dramatically lowering the pension age in conjunction with a JG that replaces unemployment benefits. For example, to the age of 50. If someone wants to stop working at that age (50 or 55 or whatever it may be) then really, we shouldn't be forcing them to work anymore. Especially as the spoils of automation and increases in productivity are shared more equitably we can look not only at reducing the overall working hours (eg. to a 30 hour work week) but to reducing the pension age (and increasing the pension).
Really, the only limit to how this can work is our imagination, but fundamentally I think that the reason people are opposed to a JG in favour of a UBI, or want the additional safety net of unemployment benefits in addition to the JG, is because of negative experiences we have all already had with Centrelink, with unemployment, with work for the dole etc.
We need to help people realise that the government can be an inclusive and positive employer and that we can structure these programmes in such a way as to help people transition to full economic participation after decades of neglect at the hands of global neoliberalism.
