Bernie Sanders proposes Job Guarantee

Wanderer78

markodaly wrote: »

Is sitting at home or the pub everyday being productive? People can take a Utopian view on things but often they are wrong in their theory and conclusions.

the question is, why do people chose to sit at home or in the pub all day? are ideas such as 'productive members of society' and 'full employment' etc utopian?

KyussB

PeadarCo wrote: »

Why are you so focused on public debt? It's a side note. You have admitted already there is a limit to how much a country can borrow, which was my point on debt. You can't borrow limitless amounts of money. If you can't do that what's the fundamental difference between your idea and current government programmes and alternatives to such as investment in housing that don't require the government to borrow unlimitlessly

Venezuela is very relevant because its shows borrowing isn't a panacea. It did rely on high oil prices. But Irelands economy is also very volatile. Look at the swings in GDP movements over the last decade. The country is a small open economy that is heavily reliant on international trade.

We know there will be an economic shock coming down the line in the form of Brexit, how big will largely be decided by UK politics. We also have a Trump administration in the US which is the most protectionist in decades. Neither of which we have any real control over.

The limits allow for a full Job Guarantee (JG), is my main point though - the JG doesn't require limitless spending, I've tried to explain how my view of where the limits lay, inherently include a full JG program.

For the reasons I explained - overreliance on oil (a commodity with a highly volatile value) - Venezuela really is a red herring.

The JG would inherently stabilize Irelands GDP, keeping it at its maximum potential, permanently - what it would do is let the GDP output of the Private Sector reduce, and increase the GDP output from the JG, when an economic crisis hits.

I really don't view funding as a problem for a JG. It does not require limitless funding, and the macroeconomic effects of the JG (keeping GDP at maximum output, and reflating the private sector after an economic crisis hits - which takes workers back out of the JG over time) stabilize the whole economy and inherently supports the stability of the JG's own funding.

KyussB

PeadarCo wrote: »

So how does it work in practice? If you were to implement it tomorrow how would you go about it?

Well, the way that Bernie Sanders plan aims to go about it, is to split the US into roughly 12 administrative regions, with public bodies for drawing up plans for work and training projects - which would then offer paid positions on these projects, for anyone who wants it (employed or unemployed) - but paid at a minimum living wage.


There isn't really any limit to the variety of projects that can be offered - the main focus would likely be on infrastructural development and redevelopment, at the moment housing, overhauling the entire energy infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions etc..

It would also include more socially oriented projects like care for the elderly, community redevelopment, social work and such - with the advantage that administrative bodies already exist for many of these areas, allowing an easy scale up of work there - plus any other variety of socially beneficial, yet unprofitable for the Private Sector, work that can be done.

One huge area of advantage which isn't discussed much, is that it can be used for promoting raw research and training in this area - there is pretty much an infinite amount of work that can be done, in the area of scientific research and such, and industries such as the pharmaceuticals and such have become stagnant, as the Private Sector economics of this industry, actually makes finding cures (as opposed to perpetual repeat treatments) unprofitable - so ya, raw research often is much better advanced through public funding.


The main challenges are just political, in my view. Get the administrative bodies set up and the plans for the work projects drawn up, with research bodies and think tanks for monitoring and improving the program - and just get people working and/or in training, right now.

markodaly

Wanderer78 wrote: »

the question is, why do people chose to sit at home or in the pub all day?

Because they like it and/or are lazy?

KyussB

markodaly wrote: »

The people left on the dole at this stage are not trained trades people, bricklayers, carpenters and the like.

They are people who are either between jobs or plain work shy. So good luck in using them to try and build houses and roads.

What if someone refuses to co-operate, do you advocate cutting off their dole if they don't show up for work on the building site at 8 in the morning?

Train them. Keep unemployment payments for the idle (they will be less than the JG payments). When the Job Guarantee program has ramped up fully, you will easily be able to identify all of the 'Genuine Scroungers' out there (as they wont have the excuse of no work being available) - as opposed to unfairly generalizing all dole recipients, as scroungers.

Then you can decide what to do with them. You can have a program set up to engage with them, and find out what kind of work they would actually want/like to do - work that would be personally fulfilling to them - and could directly aim to eliminate remaining unemployment, in this way.

I don't personally believe that there are many people out there, who do not want to work. The financial burden of them, will be pretty tiny - so you could just leave those people idle.

KyussB

markodaly wrote: »

Also, we have not touched the elephant in the room. There is an almost unlimited amount of labour in Eastern and Southern Europe that would lick their lips at the thought of a Job Guarantee, paid to do **** all in reality and because of Ireland's membership of the EU, very little could be done to stop hundreds and thousands arriving on shore to avail of it.

Would this be an 'Irish only' Job Guarantee ?

The Job Guarantee would not pay anyone to do fuck all. Every single person that arrives on our shores and does useful work, boosts our GDP - Ireland still hasn't recovered its population levels from before the Famine more than 170 years ago - if we attract workers from throughout Europe, and develop them into useful talent, doing work for our country, then we make our country a better place and more economically powerful.

Sounds good to me.

KyussB

markodaly wrote: »

That is all well and good (I do not agree with your claim but that is for another thread), but will these people ever be able to productive members of society and contribute under a Job Guarantee scheme or whatever they will call it?

Are we going to 'mend' these people and make them into brick-layers?

People suffering illnesses and such, mental and physical, are exactly the types of people that can benefit the most from a Job Guarantee - because those workers who do not fit into a Private Sector which requires profitability - can fit into a Job Guarantee which offers work that does not have to be profitable, which instead can prioritize social benefit instead.

s7ryf3925pivug

They did it in the USSR. Nice sentiment but bad idea.

KyussB

An economy which prioritizes Private Sector employment - only offering guaranteed temporary publicly-funded jobs, to those who are not privately employed - is pretty different to an entire economy where the only option is permanent public employment.

The USSR never prioritized Private Sector employment - which is one of the core aspects of the JG, a big part of its entire aim is to reflate the Private Sector.

Ronaldinho

KyussB wrote: »

The Job Guarantee would not pay anyone to do fuck all.

But you're guaranteeing me a job - ergo I can't be fired.
Why would I bother busting my balls??

This from a Washington Post article on the topic:

It's not clear what would happen to a worker who violated the terms of employment. The plan suggests creating a Division of Progress Investigation to “take disciplinary action if needed,” leaving authority to the head of the Labor Department.

I guess that will create plenty of jobs in itself. Pay people to opine on the performance or lack therefor from other punters in the programme.

Aides to Sanders stress that the policy details remain in their initial stages.

No sh1t

KyussB

That's not how it works, no. It's a guaranteed opportunity for a job - not a guarantee against losing the job, if you mess around.

markodaly

KyussB wrote: »

The Job Guarantee would not pay anyone to do fuck all. Every single person that arrives on our shores and does useful work, boosts our GDP - Ireland still hasn't recovered its population levels from before the Famine more than 170 years ago - if we attract workers from throughout Europe, and develop them into useful talent, doing work for our country, then we make our country a better place and more economically powerful.

Sounds good to me.

Good luck selling that to the public though as they will flat out reject such massive increases in population in such a short period of time. We can barely provide adequate public transport, housing and health. So it may sound good to you but it would never see the light of day.

More people and a Job Guarantee is not a panacea to all the problems we have as they are not related to labour shortages, they are related to bad decision making, planning, inertia and NIMBYism.

s7ryf3925pivug

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey–Hawkins_Full_Employment_Act

The US government is authorized to give jobs to all unemployed people right now, as unemployment is greater than 3%. The existing legislation requires pay to be low compared with private sector equivalents, and restricts the jobs created to low skill jobs.

KyussB

markodaly wrote: »

Good luck selling that to the public though as they will flat out reject such massive increases in population in such a short period of time. We can barely provide adequate public transport, housing and health. So it may sound good to you but it would never see the light of day.

More people and a Job Guarantee is not a panacea to all the problems we have as they are not related to labour shortages, they are related to bad decision making, planning, inertia and NIMBYism.

So put the JG workers onto those problems...could expand our public transport infrastructure massively, expand our health infrastructure (a lot of it needs administrative reform, mind), and build a fuckload of houses, including in co-operative models that never go into full private ownership.

The JG is precisely what is needed there. We were happy to see our country expand and diversify nationally, in the 2000's.

The majority of the people in our country already support a massive increase in our population, in their support for a United Ireland as well.

KyussB

Chaim Cuddly Wuss wrote: »

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey–Hawkins_Full_Employment_Act

The US government is authorized to give jobs to all unemployed people right now, as unemployment is greater than 3%. The existing legislation requires pay to be low compared with private sector equivalents, and restricts the jobs created to low skill jobs.

There is another interesting act which provides guaranteed work to the disabled, but I was not able to find the wiki page for it last night.

That's true - and central banks also have a mandate to provide for Full Employment, which they are (actively, not just passively) failing to do - in fact, they go the opposite direction in times of economic crisis, thus completely failing their mandate.

What we need, is not just acts to enable governments to do this - but which mandates that they do this - and which expands on plans like the above, to transform the Job Guarantee into a bigger macroeconomic policy, for stabilizing the whole economy (and not just limiting it to low skill work - as we want to be building peoples skillsets) - rather than simply providing guaranteed employment.

markodaly

KyussB wrote: »

So put the JG workers onto those problems...could expand our public transport infrastructure massively, expand our health infrastructure (a lot of it needs administrative reform, mind), and build a fuckload of houses, including in co-operative models that never go into full private ownership.

The JG is precisely what is needed there. We were happy to see our country expand and diversify nationally, in the 2000's.

The majority of the people in our country already support a massive increase in our population, in their support for a United Ireland as well.

Again the problems we have are not due to labour shortage, nor will we solve these problems by just putting more bodies to the wheel. Sure, its sounds like a wet dream to those who believe in a centralised planned economy but its not as easy as your back of the envelope theory.

Our problems are due to lack of planning, bad decision making, red tape, inertia, NIMBYism and many more things, such as our culture to try and please everyone. A €1 Billion Data centre is being held up and is awaiting judgement by the Supreme Court because of 3 people, yes 3 people, one of whom lives in Wicklow.

Your plan does nothing to solve these underlying issues, in fact it would make them worse as the more people we have living here, the more exposed our decision and planning making process is.

KyussB

Even the person who first drew the comparison to a centralized planned economy, acknowledged my explanation that the Job Guarantee actually prioritises the Private Sector over the Public Sector.

Employing the people that the Private Sector does not want, into a temporary public jobs program (where we want them hired out of the program, back into the Private Sector) - which indirectly helps boost the Private Sector again, through wages + consumer spending - that is not a centrally planned economy.

Nobody stated that there is a problem of a labour shortage - part of what was stated is that there's a problem of labour abundance, that is not being utilized - that people are deliberately left unemployed for an extremely long time.

The problem is that people need jobs in order to live a decent life, and we deliberately have an economic system built to leave a significant number of people unemployed - i.e. without the means to live a decent life.

There are a lot of ways that it is inefficient economically, and unjust socially, to have an economy built upon maintaining a persistent level of unemployment - and the JG provides an answer to that.

markodaly

KyussB wrote: »

Even the person who first drew the comparison to a centralized planned economy, acknowledged my explanation that the Job Guarantee actually prioritises the Private Sector over the Public Sector.

Employing the people that the Private Sector does not want, into a temporary public jobs program (where we want them hired out of the program, back into the Private Sector) - which indirectly helps boost the Private Sector again, through wages + consumer spending - that is not a centrally planned economy.

Nobody stated that there is a problem of a labour shortage - part of what was stated is that there's a problem of labour abundance, that is not being utilized - that people are deliberately left unemployed for an extremely long time.

The problem is that people need jobs in order to live a decent life, and we deliberately have an economic system built to leave a significant number of people unemployed - i.e. without the means to live a decent life.

There are a lot of ways that it is inefficient economically, and unjust socially, to have an economy built upon maintaining a persistent level of unemployment - and the JG provides an answer to that.

You never answered my questions above, so care to explain how a JG will help with actual problems we have in terms of planning for one thing.

It is not surprising you ignored them, seeing as today, 3 people managed to scupper a plan for a €1 Billion data centre.

Yet, the panacea, a Job Guarantee that will do **** all to change anything really but make elites feel better about themselves.

"The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites."

KyussB

You didn't ask questions though, you made statements? (ones that I disagree with, and explained why)

What relation does the data center have with the Job Guarantee? What has welfare got to do with the JG? (the JG reduces Welfare enormously, by providing jobs)

The JG is primarily meant to solve unemployment, and make the economy more efficient macroeconomically during times of economic crisis, so we recover faster and more comfortably (among other things) - those are the problems it's aimed at fixing - I never presented it as fixing problems with the planning system.

I believe unemployment, and how we deal with economic crises, are actual problems. We don't have to fix the planning problems and the thousands of other problems we have with our country, first, before we fix the problems the JG is aimed at - we're capable of fixing more than one thing at a time.

markodaly

KyussB wrote: »

You didn't ask questions though, you made statements? (ones that I disagree with, and explained why)

What relation does the data center have with the Job Guarantee? What has welfare got to do with the JG? (the JG reduces Welfare enormously, by providing jobs)

The JG is primarily meant to solve unemployment, and make the economy more efficient macroeconomically during times of economic crisis, so we recover faster and more comfortably (among other things) - those are the problems it's aimed at fixing - I never presented it as fixing problems with the planning system.

I believe unemployment, and how we deal with economic crises, are actual problems. We don't have to fix the planning problems and the thousands of other problems we have with our country, first, before we fix the problems the JG is aimed at - we're capable of fixing more than one thing at a time.

Unemployment is not our biggest problem, in fact if you poll people in Ireland it would not even be in the top 10 of problems to fix.

So you want to fix a problem that does not really exist.

KyussB

I think most people would regard unemployment as a problem that does exist. Nobody ever claimed it's the biggest problem. I've explained how the Job Guarantee is aimed at resolving more than just unemployment. I've also pointed out that you don't need to fix the top 10 other problems first, before implementing a JG - you can do more than one thing at a time...

Chips Lovell

The Economist has a big piece on it this week that goes into the pros/cons. Their take is that the timing is a bit odd, since America is near full employment already and further stimulus could result in inflation. Any unemployment there is more down to lack of skills, unrealistic wage demands and unwillingness of some workers to move to where the jobs are.

Then of course, there's the thorny issue of how much it will cost:

It goes without saying that Congress is unlikely ever to authorise such an intervention, not least because it would be expensive. The CBPP’s conservative calculation puts the bill at $543bn (2.7% of GDP)—about one-and-a-half times what the federal government spent on Medicaid in 2017. Mr Sanders has not yet set out where he will find the money. Raising that much cash with only new taxes on the rich will be difficult (although a jobs guarantee could cause other welfare spending to fall).

s7ryf3925pivug

$15 seems unnecessarily high. A living wage is closer to $10, from what I've read.

Doubling the minimum wage would be pretty disruptive to existing businesses. Increasing it to match a living wage only seems fair but even that change would be problematic to implement because of the impact on businesses.

Ronaldinho

Chaim Cuddly Wuss wrote: »

$15 seems unnecessarily high. A living wage is closer to $10, from what I've read.

Doubling the minimum wage would be pretty disruptive to existing businesses. Increasing it to match a living wage only seems fair but even that change would be problematic to implement because of the impact on businesses.

Yeah - there's some good reading in this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-study-casts-doubt-on-whether-a-15-minimum-wage-really-helps-workers/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6bec52add006

Didn't really work as hoped in Seattle. Funny, coming through Newark Airport a few months back a lot of the restaurants had ipads on the table that you had to order through, rather than staff. Makes sense to rethink labour arrangements given the state has plans on raising minimum wage there to $15 from $8.60!

markodaly

KyussB wrote: »

I think most people would regard unemployment as a problem that does exist. Nobody ever claimed it's the biggest problem. I've explained how the Job Guarantee is aimed at resolving more than just unemployment. I've also pointed out that you don't need to fix the top 10 other problems first, before implementing a JG - you can do more than one thing at a time...

It seems we are repeating things again.

If Ireland were to have a Job Guarantee, how would we deal with the extra tens if not hundreds of thousands of people from all across Europe arriving on this shore to avail of it?

You say just put them building more houses, but as has been repeated time and time again, labour shortages is not the issue facing the housing market, planning and costs are. Average rents in Dublin is €2,000 per month, and you want to increase demand for rentals. How would you deal with that in the now! Not next year, not 5 years time, now?

It seems to me that this scheme would cause more problems than it proposes to fix. Its all bank of the envelope stuff and as we have seen from other centralised planned schemes and economies they always end in failure.

KyussB

Baron de Charlus wrote: »

The Economist has a big piece on it this week that goes into the pros/cons. Their take is that the timing is a bit odd, since America is near full employment already and further stimulus could result in inflation. Any unemployment there is more down to lack of skills, unrealistic wage demands and unwillingness of some workers to move to where the jobs are.

Then of course, there's the thorny issue of how much it will cost:

The article starts off with the flaw in it's title, of describing the JG as 'make work' - which assumes that there is no useful work that people can do - which I've argued against here much, in pointing out the massive infrastructural changes, among many other things, that need to be done.

Since this policy is in part aimed at future economic crises, it makes perfect sense to push for it now, long before unemployment rises again in a crisis. The dominant economic ideology of the past 40 years, hostile to all government stimulus style policies (which don't subsidize business), has only abated now since the crisis, making room for a policy like the JG.


The article states that those in the Federal Reserve view unemployment as being 'unnaturally low' - this refers to the NAIRU theory and policy, for managing unemployment.
Basically, economists today and the Federal Reserve, use unemployment to manage inflation - when inflation rises, push people out of work to reduce wage pressures in the economy.

JG advocates are opposed to NAIRU and this method of managing unemployment - JG advocates instead, want inflaton to be managed by pushing people out of the Private Sector, and into lower paid JG work, in order to reduce wage pressures, without the inefficiency of leaving people idle.

The author even goes as far as to promote business subsidies as an alternative to the JG - disguised as a worker subsidy, when instead he promotes government paying a portion of low skilled workers wages.

JG advocates would prefer to see businesses that can't sustainably pay their workers a minimum acceptable living wage, disappear - and be replaced by other businesses, as the JG reflates the private sector.

KyussB

markodaly wrote: »

It seems we are repeating things again.

If Ireland were to have a Job Guarantee, how would we deal with the extra tens if not hundreds of thousands of people from all across Europe arriving on this shore to avail of it?

You say just put them building more houses, but as has been repeated time and time again, labour shortages is not the issue facing the housing market, planning and costs are. Average rents in Dublin is €2,000 per month, and you want to increase demand for rentals. How would you deal with that in the now! Not next year, not 5 years time, now?

It seems to me that this scheme would cause more problems than it proposes to fix. Its all bank of the envelope stuff and as we have seen from other centralised planned schemes and economies they always end in failure.

You're posting as if you're replying to my previous post - but you aren't, you're just jumping to another random set of questions.

I've also answered many of those questions earlier - I don't view increasing our population as a problem, I view it as an economic benefit, so long as they are all doing useful work.

The problem with housing, is that we are relying almost exclusively on the Private Sector to provide housing, and (in my view) the private market is being deliberately manipulated to create a rent-extraction style economy in Ireland - you need direct government intervention to reverse this (in many ways beyond a JG) - including e.g. transport infrastructure improvements, to support expanded residential areas, as well as high density in the city (we need subways to support scores of high rise in the city centre, as current transport infrastructure will not be adequate).