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Communism for some, pay rises for others!

2

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  • #32
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    I'll cross-post this in another thread I made on this topic ages ago, since it fits political theory more than it does here:
    https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=80709362
    mariaalice wrote: »
    Explain how government guaranteed employment would not cause inflation eventually.

    (1) what rates of pay are you proposing to pay for the government guaranteed jobs.

    (2) How would it not interferer with the local jobs market, for example around Christmas retail takes on a lot of short term workers which are then let go in January they are mostly at minimum wage although some pay more. If all the supples labour is take up by a government guaranteed job retail employers will have to pay more than the government guarantee job/min wage to get employees thus causing wages to rise because of government interference which is wage inflation.

    (3) Stockpiling goods is a silly idea because if they are stored for any length of time they will problem be obsolete by the time they are released on to the market. ( phone 1 verses phone 4 or 5 ).

    I do think the social impact of unemployment is an important subject but I think it needs to be looked at in a completely different way. Have you ever read the right to useful unemployment Ivan Illich.
    I'll try and explain the inflation part of it well, but I don't think I do a great job of it here; you could check the article I post near the bottom as well, but that's pretty tough going.
    Here is also another article, which may be a bit more approachable, but is still quite long (starting at the bolded 'Aggregate demand, Employment and Inflation' header; the bolded 'Conclusion' section is worth a quick look even if you get tired of the rest):
    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=14208


    Right now we are undergoing debt-deflation, which is peoples wages being spent on paying down debt rather than buying, leading to a loss of demand in the economy which affects business and self-perpetuates, with more people losing jobs and getting in trouble paying debts, leading to even less demand etc..

    A lot of the job guarantee money will go straight into those debts for starters (through wages), then more will go into spurring consumer demand back to what it was, bringing private industry back to its previous levels of production over time (with the job guarantee slowing winding down as private industry recovers and reabsorbs workers); so that's already a significant amount of money going back into non-inflationary things.

    If people are spending too much money (rather than saving) in relation to what private industry can supply, then that would cause some demand-pull inflation, and that's when you need to step in to counteract inflation (this doesn't come immediately either, because a lot of business will have the extra capacity to soak up demand, before inflation happens, and industry will also grow to meet increased demand over time, reducing inflation).
    Remember though, that a significant amount/percentage of money will already be going into non-inflationary areas, so this will be a problem coming only after that (and once the size of the job guarantee goes below a certain level, it may not even be a problem at all); this means a significant proportion of stimulus is non-inflationary, and any inflation is only an incidental side-effect (and is manageable, can be counteracted).

    In our current system, inflation is counteracted by allowing unemployment to rise, causing significant social and economic harm that is compounded over time.
    In the job guarantee, when inflation is reached (only after a significant fraction goes into debt and reinflating aggregate demand, so we're already making progress with economic problems), one of the mechanisms than can be employed (mentioned more in the article below), is tightening of fiscal/monetary policy (raised taxes, decreased non-JG public spending for instance) to stabilize aggregate demand, and thus inflation.

    This may push people out of the private sector (that happens anyway, with our current policies, just people go unemployed instead), due to the cap on aggregate demand, and pushing them into the job guarantee like that, has a temporary downward effect on wage prices (for the lifetime of the job guarantee), also helping curb demand, acting as a counterbalance to inflation.

    It shares the burden more equally, rather than just massively lumping it onto unemployed workers, and it actually stabilizes and resolves the economic problems, rather than engaging in massive destruction like austerity does.
    So in the end, a job guarantee is a more efficient way to manage inflation, than unemployment is, and it's an automatic stabilizer for some economic problems too, whereas austerity just makes things worse.


    As to the other questions:
    1: Minimum wage most likely.

    2: It's a wage floor, not wage inflation; with the job guarantee set at minimum wage, retailers would just have to either offer that (which they'd need to anyway), or just a little bit higher.

    3: You're talking about consumer goods that depreciate over time; that's not what people would need to work on (and indeed, wouldn't be a good idea for stockpiling).

    There is an example here, a little bit under the bolded header 'The concept of a Job Gurantee':
    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=10554

    In the example there, it lists a past example of the US stockpiling wool to provide price stability; that's one random example of non-perishable goods that you can stockpile, you can do the same with any kind of surplus raw materials.

    The purpose for that is just to ameliorate the effect it will have on the price of that good in the market, while trying not to waste the productive effort of peoples labour in the job guarantee.
    Not wasting labour is a bonus by the way, not an inherent necessity; people can do work instead, which prioritizes social value rather than monetary value too, such as helping the elderly, homeless, and any other kinds of community or traditionally-volunteer services you can think of (but which may not have enough help to make enough of a difference), it really doesn't matter in the end.

    It is flexible though, you can aim primarily at regaining money from labour from the JG program (maybe through material stockpiling), to the exclusion of socially-oriented work, or you can mix in socially-oriented work too.


    I haven't read that book by Ivan Illich, no, and it seems to be a bit hard to figure out what it's about through Googling, though I gather it (appears to) argue for a lessening of labour, and more meaningful work.


  • #33
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    Scortho wrote: »
    This is the wrong way to go about creating employment.
    What we need is stuff that will last.
    What are we going to do, build ikea warehouses in every town in the country and stuff them full of raw materials so Johnny can think he is working.
    Raw materials that will cost us money to buy in the first place.
    Lets say we buy copper. And we stockpile some of these state built and run warehouses with copper. In five years time what happens if the price of copper falls through the floor. We've lost a fortune on the raw materials that we didnt need in the first place. Who picks up the bill?

    The way to create employment is by attracting large multinational firms to the country. The construction/fitout of their premises will provide much needed jobs for the construction industry.
    The new employees of these firms, will spend their money in the local economy which will create employment in shops, restaurants etc.
    According to the IDA "Over 1,000 IDA supported companies in Ireland employ over 146,000 people. These companies accounted for exports of over €115 billion and generate €19 billion of expenditure in the economy." see part 1.6
    http://www.idaireland.com/help/

    We can also create employment by further supporting jobs created by indigenous companies.
    Take for example the Kerry group jobs announcement for the new food research site. The construction of the facility will create a 400 construction jobs, while 900 people, many of whom will be high tech graduates will be employed once the site is fully operational.
    It has been estimated that this will help create another 1100 jobs in the greater kildare area.

    Surely providing grants to companies, both Irish and multinational is a better idea than providing meaningless temporary state jobs in the stockpiling of materials where they're not even needed.
    Ah, missed this post initially; if we take on surplus resources on the cheap its not a problem, and we also have our own natural resource we can use up.

    The jobs you mention are good, but they aren't going to get rid of unemployment; if we continue into austerity, we are looking at a significantly long time of unemployment for a lot of people, ongoing into the future, with the massive social and economic damage that entails, harming a huge number of people.
    With a job guarantee, we can have people reemployed in a very short amount of time.

    How would providing grants to companies achieve full employment again? It wouldn't solve any of the root economic problems.


  • #34
    maninasia
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,635 ✭✭✭maninasia


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    Try engaging in actual argument, rather than labeling anyone an 'idiot', thanks.

    You obviously have not even read my post at all, or are deliberately ignoring key parts of it for the sake of spewing ad-hominem; the EU is not living under a fixed money supply, and I've explained exactly how funding this is manageable, at an EU level, in my previous post.

    Funded at the 'EU' level. Sounds like a pipe dream to me. They can't even get a break on the bank debt, let alone expect the EU to provide makee-upee jobs for all the unemployed.


  • #35
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    maninasia wrote: »
    Funded at the 'EU' level. Sounds like a pipe dream to me. They can't even get a break on the bank debt, let alone expect the EU to provide makee-upee jobs for all the unemployed.
    This seems a bit of a throwaway/dismissive reply, considering the detail I went to with my previous post.

    The EU are the whole problem, and discussion should center around them, and pressuring our government, to pressure them to take proper action (such as undertaking a fully-constructed version of the policies I describe), rather than just accepting things as they are and discussing only what part of our budget/government/services to burn down (when that is totally avoidable).
    We've ceded an enormous amount of sovereignty to the EU, and we have no democratic control over what they do here, and they are causing our country to suffer massive economic and social damage, which is deplorable on an enormous level.

    We can't just accept the EU lumping us with this gratuitously destructive policy choice of austerity, and limit discourse to the usual TINA line of discussion, because there is an alternative, and discussion of it needs widespread promotion, for change to happen.

    It's not just the EU either, it's a significant portion of the financial industry trying to lobby for this and lump it on us, and who are still pumping up property bubbles in other countries, to perpetuate the crisis and extract enormous profits.
    They've captured the whole media/public/political discourse in the wake of the crisis, and convinced a significant number of people that being screwed by austerity is good for them, and are successfully muddying discussion for the rest, so it's important to recapture the discourse and to stop talking about living within the constraints of austerity, because we don't have to, there are far better alternatives, and austerity is a deliberately destructive choice.


  • #36
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 12,694 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Work

    What makes work meaningful?

    Published on June 9, 2009 by Michael F. Steger, Ph.D. in The Meaning in Life

    Three men are found smashing boulders with iron hammers. When asked what they are doing, the first man says, "Breaking big rocks into little rocks." The second man says, "Feeding my family." The third man says, "Building a cathedral."

    To many of us who study and consult in occupational and organizational contexts, we would call what this third man does meaningful.

    There are many perspectives on meaningful work, ranging from Marxist ideas about work that resists the dehumanizing influences of the Industrial Revolution to religious ideas about being called by a transcendent spirit to do Good Work in the world -- with everything in between. I have come to see meaningful work as consisting of three, central components. First, the work we do must make sense; we must know what's being asked of us and be able to identify the personal or organizational resources we need to do our job. Second, the work we do must have a point; we must be able to see how the little tasks we engage in build, brick-by-brick if you will, into an important part of the purpose of our company. Finally, the work that we do must benefit some greater good; we must be able to see how our toil helps others, whether that's saving the planet, saving a life, or making our co-workers' jobs easier so that they can go home and really be available for their families and friends. A growing body of evidence shows that meaningful workers are happy workers, more committed workers, and, in some tantalising ways, better workers.


    KyussoBishop I haver read the links in you post but when you get down to the nitty gritty of the personal of job guarantee theory.

    If you see full employment as way of counteracting some of the effects of long term unemployment such as family brake up, depression etc then the work has to be MEANINGFUL in the way the quote at the top of my post explains. There is Little to no point in providing a guaranteed job at min wage just to say someone has a job, there are so many holes in the theory, just of the top of my head..is it possible for a single person on the mini wage to provide shelter and food for themselves and to participate in a meaningful way in society( in an expensive city like Dublin)...The cost of child care for an unemployed loan parent....the lose of the shadow work provided by women who are not formally employed, which would then have to be paid for by the state, for example informal care of the elderly or disabled which is often provided by women.


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  • #37
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    mariaalice wrote: »
    KyussoBishop I haver read the links in you post but when you get down to the nitty gritty of the personal of job guarantee theory.

    If you see full employment as way of counteracting some of the effects of long term unemployment such as family brake up, depression etc then the work has to be MEANINGFUL in the way the quote at the top of my post explains. There is Little to no point in providing a guaranteed job at min wage just to say someone has a job, there are so many holes in the theory, just of the top of my head..is it possible for a single person on the mini wage to provide shelter and food for themselves and to participate in a meaningful way in society( in an expensive city like Dublin)...The cost of child care for an unemployed loan parent....the lose of the shadow work provided by women who are not formally employed, which would then have to be paid for by the state, for example informal care of the elderly or disabled which is often provided by women.
    A job guarantee can provide any kind of work you can think of, I've only given examples above, which minimize the economic impact.

    If people in the job guarantee want to build cathederals, you could pay them to do that, or helping the elderly, or to run a club supporting a hobby they like, to do any kind of adademic research into something they have an interest in etc., anything (though I'm not saying I advocate that, you'd probably have a lot of trouble justifying the expenditure on a lot of these things, in terms of profits, but that doesn't mean they don't contribute positively to society, in ways beyond monetary value).

    It all depends on what you view as optimal work really, whether you want to prioritize monetary gains, social gains, personal wellbeing, scientific development etc. etc.; really, you can choose anything when writing up the job guarantee policy (it would be up to government though, to set the possible jobs that could be done).

    All of private industry is focused on having to make a profit, which immediately rules out a lot of areas of work, so a job guarantee (or publicly funded work in general) where profit does not have to be one of the motives, is far more flexible in allowing the kind of meaningful work you describe.

    So it can actually be made to fit perfectly with what you're saying there, all depending on the range of jobs government include in the program.


    Also, those women who informally do shadow work: Do they not deserve some compensation anyway? There's no principal reason why they can't be paid, even through printed money, because it's such a small number of people it would have a negligible (if any, after you consider debt and normal everyday expenditures) impact on inflation.


  • #38
    cson
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,567 ✭✭✭✭cson


    Can't help thinking of this clip when I look at the thread title...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R7JmZ1q310


    What's going on in this country is more in line with socialisation of debt than communism. Ultimately whilst on the face of it, its pretty much across the board in terms of cuts/taxation certain socio-economic groups will suffer more than others - McWilliams is quite good on this from a wealth redistribution perspective.


  • #39
    SupaNova2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 515 ✭✭✭SupaNova2


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    If people in the job guarantee want to build cathederals, you could pay them to do that, or helping the elderly, or to run a club supporting a hobby they like, to do any kind of adademic research into something they have an interest in etc., anything (though I'm not saying I advocate that, you'd probably have a lot of trouble justifying the expenditure on a lot of these things, in terms of profits, but that doesn't mean they don't contribute positively to society, in ways beyond monetary value).

    Take a private company that makes smoothies. The cost of producing these smoothies is €2.50, and they can easily sell them at €4. In other words they are taking a limited supply of resources(fruit, ice cream, labor etc) and using those resources to satisfy demand. If they can't sell smoothies for more than their costs it means the resources the company used were demanded more elsewhere, and since they will be making a loss they will be forced to release those resources so they can be directed to more useful ends.

    Can you not see how leaving the government bid away resources by creating money with no care for monetary profits could lead to waste? Can you not see that this is exactly what happened during the housing bubble? Loans were created with little concern for their profitability, those loans then bid away more and more resources into fueling a wasteful housing bubble.


  • #40
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    SupaNova2 wrote: »
    Take a private company that makes smoothies. The cost of producing these smoothies is €2.50, and they can easily sell them at €4. In other words they are taking a limited supply of resources(fruit, ice cream, labor etc) and using those resources to satisfy demand. If they can't sell smoothies for more than their costs it means the resources the company used were demanded more elsewhere, and since they will be making a loss they will be forced to release those resources so they can be directed to more useful ends.

    Can you not see how leaving the government bid away resources by creating money with no care for monetary profits could lead to waste? Can you not see that this is exactly what happened during the housing bubble? Loans were created with little concern for their profitability, those loans then bid away more and more resources into fueling a wasteful housing bubble.
    The job guarantee takes a surplus resource (unemployed labour for instance; labour isn't limited right now), and (preferably) puts it to use on other surplus resources, such as raw materials nobody else is extracting, or that they can't sell off (so you can buy surplus on the cheap, limiting private losses there, but not stimulating demand) etc..

    I agree that it would be undesirable for a job guarantee to make too much use of non-surplus resources, due to the inflationary effects that would have on prices in private industry (with some exceptions, as resources used for infrastructure can benefit everyone in the long term); it doesn't need to though, as it can make use of surplus resources.


  • #41
    SupaNova2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 515 ✭✭✭SupaNova2


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    The job guarantee takes a surplus resource (unemployed labour for instance; labour isn't limited right now), and (preferably) puts it to use on other surplus resources, such as raw materials nobody else is extracting, or that they can't sell off (so you can buy surplus on the cheap, limiting private losses there, but not stimulating demand) etc..

    Back to reality, what surplus resources apart from labor are you talking about?

    We don't have oil, productive land, or steel lying around not being used, all would have to be bid away from somebody else, and there comes your price inflation.


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  • #42
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 12,694 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    The job guarantee takes a surplus resource (unemployed labour for instance; labour isn't limited right now), and (preferably) puts it to use on other surplus resources, such as raw materials nobody else is extracting, or that they can't sell off (so you can buy surplus on the cheap, limiting private losses there, but not stimulating demand) etc..

    I agree that it would be undesirable for a job guarantee to make too much use of non-surplus resources, due to the inflationary effects that would have on prices in private industry (with some exceptions, as resources used for infrastructure can benefit everyone in the long term); it doesn't need to though, as it can make use of surplus resources.

    But whats the point of " cureing "unemployment by having the current unemployed working at a guaranteed job that pays minimum wage, which is currently 8.65 an hour or approximately 17,500 a year, all that is going to do is create a huge army of working poor in Irish society. How would that benefit society, would people be forced to take up the offerer of a guaranteed job or lose their social welfare benefit or would it be voluntary? how would they pay for childcare while they work at their minimum wage job?

    We Would be far better off to enhance and promote ideas like the back to education allowance so anyone unemployed can get a third level education and thus increase th ire skills and productive.

    This is an interesting and explaines the hidden ageda of forcing people in to work.


    how privatization of welfare services has legitimized a shadow economy and work through mandated community service jobs, leading to the current cost/benefit legacy of welfare privatization utilized by the Wisconsin Works program (W-2). Wisconsin’s program requires women recipients to engage in volunteer work, creating a subsidized labor force for private agencies based on the presumption that work, even meaningless and menial tasks, establishes job-readiness for women on welfare. The Author suggests that we need to begin thinking about how to recreate the framework for providing public services. The community service component of W2 and its actual function powerfully demonstrates how W-2 mothers have become a reserve labor force. But at the same time the contours of W-2 make reserve labor status profitable, not for the mothers, but for the sub-contracted agencies. The relationship between W-2 mothers, the status of community service, and the position of sub-contracted agencies have generated a shadow market as a consequence of welfare privatization. The ways in which these women are held captive to a world without work, a world without skill building, and limited ways out become the grounds upon which sub-contracting agencies generate profit. Under the shroud of “cost effectiveness,” private agencies are reaping the financial windfall of “pimping” the state based on their ability to market their skills at converting welfare mothers into low-wage workers.


  • #43
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    SupaNova2 wrote: »
    Back to reality, what surplus resources apart from labor are you talking about?

    We don't have oil, productive land, or steel lying around not being used, all would have to be bid away from somebody else, and there comes your price inflation.
    You're starting to be a bit cynical about it now and seek for ways to bash it as a whole; I've already listed some areas where you don't need any resources other than labour, that a portion of the program can be built upon, such as community services and scientific research in general.

    You can also provide a job guarantee for agricultural use too, as many grains are good for stockpiling over a long period of time, or work to convert unproductive land into productive land (which would provide unending long-term benefits going into the future, since previously unusable land would then be usable).
    You could even start up an entire quarry if you like, to provide construction materials solely for job guarantee infrastructure projects (thus isolating effects from private industry prices); I'm sure there's plenty of opportunity to snap up idle construction resources, on the cheap, since our entire construction industry has tanked.

    It's possible to be cynical about it, and make up bad examples as straw-men, to bash down, but that's accelerating towards ridicule rather than actually considering the legitimate jobs it can create, and the idle resources that can be used.


  • #44
    SupaNova2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 515 ✭✭✭SupaNova2


    I'm asking for real world examples of surplus resources in Ireland that could be used.

    Where in Ireland can we take unused unproductive land make it productive, grow grain and stockpile it? As for research, do we have large pools of unemployed professors and research labs ready to go? And where are there underutilized or unused productive quarries that no-one else knows about?


  • #45
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    mariaalice wrote: »
    But whats the point of " curring "unemployment by having the current unemployed working at a guaranteed job that pays minimum wage, which is currently 8.65 an hour or approximately 17,500 a year, all that is going to do is create a huge army of working poor in Irish society. How would that benefit society, would people be forced to take up the offerer of a guaranteed job or lose there social welfare benefit or would it be voluntary? how would they pay for childcare while they work at their minimum wage job?

    We Would be far better off to enhance and promote ideas like the back to education allowance so anyone unemployed can get a third level education and thus increase th ire skills and productive.

    This is an interesting and explaines the hidden ageda of forcing people in to work.


    how privatization of welfare services has legitimized a shadow economy and work through mandated community service jobs, leading to the current cost/benefit legacy of welfare privatization utilized by the Wisconsin Works program (W-2). Wisconsin’s program requires women recipients to engage in volunteer work, creating a subsidized labor force for private agencies based on the presumption that work, even meaningless and menial tasks, establishes job-readiness for women on welfare. The Author suggests that we need to begin thinking about how to recreate the framework for providing public services. The community service component of W2 and its actual function powerfully demonstrates how W-2 mothers have become a reserve labor force. But at the same time the contours of W-2 make reserve labor status profitable, not for the mothers, but for the sub-contracted agencies. The relationship between W-2 mothers, the status of community service, and the position of sub-contracted agencies have generated a shadow market as a consequence of welfare privatization. The ways in which these women are held captive to a world without work, a world without skill building, and limited ways out become the grounds upon which sub-contracting agencies generate profit. Under the shroud of “cost effectiveness,” private agencies are reaping the financial windfall of “pimping” the state based on their ability to market their skills at converting welfare mothers into low-wage workers.
    The way that benefits Irish society, is that the money goes from the job guarantee, into peoples wages, who pay down their debts and gradually alleviate the debt-deflation that is holding our economy down.

    As people switch back away from paying down debts, money is freed up to be spent on consumer goods and other stuff, which pumps up private industry again, and as private industry recovers people will move out of the job guarantee program, and back into private industry.

    It puts us straight on the path to recovery, and prevents the enormous social and economic damage of unemployment, and the affects that has on peoples health, and also keeps people efficient, because their skills aren't being worn down over time through unemployment.


    You don't have to get rid of unemployment either, as it is completely compatible with running a job guarantee alongside it; you can pick and choose your policies here: you can have unemployment benefits that are guaranteed, or you can have unemployment that runs out after a period of time, or you can have no unemployment benefits.
    All policies choices there are compatible with the job guarantee, and can be considered as a discussion completely separate to the job guarantee.

    It's also completely compatible with Back To Education schemes as well, which can also be considered a completely separate discussion; people can even retrain through the Job Guarantee itself, depending on how it is setup.

    There isn't any hidden agenda here; the whole purpose of the Job Guarantee is to get rid of the massive social and economic harm unemployment imposes on people, and there is a huge variety in the number of ways you can configure how it is setup, such that (depending on how it is setup) it can fit almost anyones views on meaningful work, benefits, resource usage, etc..


    Also, worth repeating, is that the job guarantee doesn't involve privatization in any way; it would be government funded, and you can keep benefits programs too, without privatizing them, if you want; it's totally compatible with either keeping or getting rid of them.


  • #46
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    SupaNova2 wrote: »
    I'm asking for real world examples of surplus resources in Ireland that could be used.

    Where in Ireland can we take unused unproductive land make it productive, grow grain and stockpile it? As for research, do we have large pools of unemployed professors and research labs ready to go? And where are there underutilized or unused productive quarries that no-one else knows about?
    Look I've already given examples here, and you're now being demanding on details, for the sake of trying to bash the idea; that's very disingenuous, and it's looking to bring down the tone of the discussion which has (thus far) been good.
    Anywhere you look with land that is not being used for farmland (vast vast areas of land with mostly grass), can be used that way, all over the country.

    Straight off, in Wicklow, there are disused places where you can mine copper, granite, sulpher, lead and there are quarries all over the country, many disused.


  • #47
    hardCopy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,969 ✭✭✭hardCopy


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    Look I've already given examples here, and you're now being demanding on details, for the sake of trying to bash the idea; that's very disingenuous, and it's looking to bring down the tone of the discussion which has (thus far) been good.
    Anywhere you look with land that is not being used for farmland (vast vast areas of land with mostly grass), can be used that way, all over the country.

    Straight off, in Wicklow, there are disused places where you can mine copper, granite, sulpher, lead and there are quarries all over the country, many disused.

    And they could all cut the grass with scissors.

    It seems to be a rip-roaring success in North Korea. Everybody has a job and everybody starves.


  • #48
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    hardCopy wrote: »
    And they could all cut the grass with scissors.

    It seems to be a rip-roaring success in North Korea. Everybody has a job and everybody starves.
    You haven't even read any of my posts have you? You just read 'Communism' in the thread title, then applied that to everything within the thread?

    It's not much to ask, for you to post something constructive in the thread, rather than this throwaway type comment that adds nothing (and which doesn't even relate to anything posted in the thread).


  • #49
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 12,694 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Okay you have almost convinced me :)

    An idea I think might work and be compatible with what you propose.

    There are a lot of young men ( and some women ) who would like to do an apprenticeship in all sorts of areas but we will start with construction.

    The government guarantees that anyone who wants to do an apprenticeship will be provided with the work element so the person can do the apprenticeship.

    The government or it could be funded by a philanthropist, give the money to an organisation who set up a not for profit building company and the company keeps building and recycling ( knocking down ) the same set of building so as to provide the work element of the apprentiship... in the same way a model factory could be built for anyone who want to be an instrument tecl/tool maker, the producers would be recycled instead of being put on to the open make, thus meaningful work and training could be provided with out affecting the current markets for the products. Is the the sort of idea you have?


  • #50
    hardCopy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,969 ✭✭✭hardCopy


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    You haven't even read any of my posts have you? You just read 'Communism' in the thread title, then applied that to everything within the thread?

    It's not much to ask, for you to post something constructive in the thread, rather than this throwaway type comment that adds nothing (and which doesn't even relate to anything posted in the thread).

    Actually I read all of your comments about guaranteed work in token jobs, as practiced in North Korea.

    My comments have nothing to do with the thread title.

    Can you think of any other countries where job guarantees have been used?


  • #51
    GeorgeClooney
    Closed Accounts Posts: 17 ✭GeorgeClooney


    Deleted User wrote: »
    http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1117/teeu-portlaoise-conference.html





    Communism for some, pay rises for others! Now why didn`t I think of that! Economic crisis solved!!

    Is this the solution? :pac:


    You appear to confusing communism with socialism. In communism, there is no state and there is no currency.


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  • #52
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    mariaalice wrote: »
    Okay you have almost convinced me :)

    An idea I think might work and be compatible with what you propose.

    There are a lot of young men ( and some women ) who would like to do an apprenticeship in all sorts of areas but we will start with construction.

    The government guarantees that anyone who wants to do an apprenticeship will be provided with the work element so the person can finish the apprenticeship.

    The government or it could be funded by a philanthropist, give the money to an organisation who set up a not for profit building company and the company keeps building and recycling ( knocking down ) the same set of building so as to provide the work element of the apprentiship... in the same way a model factory could be built for anyone who want to be an instrument tecl/tool maker, the producers would be recycled instead of being put on to the open make, thus meaningful work and training could be provided with out affecting the current markets for the products. Is the the sort of idea you have?
    Kind of :) It would be funded by public money (probably through printing new money, which goes from wages into paying down debt and basic living expenditures first, getting rid of most of the inflationary potential of the new money), rather than by a philanthropist, and you could either buy the building resources as surplus from industry, or extract them from publicly-owned natural resources (such as from quarries, publicly owned forests which get replanted, etc.).

    You would not want to waste the productive effort put in (the actual work/effort the apprentices do), so you would not want them knocking down what they build (you still could do that, it would just be less efficient), meaning they'd work alongside professionals who make sure their work is usable.
    This would mean that the size of that set of jobs, would still be limited by available surplus resources, unless government decided they were willing to accept a small amount of inflation in a certain resource market.

    However, a point that is just re-occurring to me, that I mentioned earlier: There are a lot of excess private construction resources available right now, meaning private industry can scale up quite a large amount, providing these resources, before they hit supply limits, which cause demand-pull inflation.


    You still need useful construction projects though, and these can range from community service type things, such as public care homes (which I think is an in-demand market), daycare centers, community sports facilities, school renovation, town center renovation etc.; there's lot of useful stuff that can be built, and which can optionally be spun off to private industry later.

    This would help apprentices train, provide new jobs in the places built, and would allow existing construction (and other) workers to keep their skills sharp, and would increase the benefits that the public in general, including private companies, receive through infrastructure/community projects.

    The added benefit too, of keeping people working, feeling like they are contributing something to the community (which they are), and not going through the destructive/harmful social, health and economic effects of unemployment.


  • #53
    Idbatterim
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,447 ✭✭✭✭Idbatterim


    read this on rte.ie earlier. I reckon the government should fund (where to get these funds is debatable) an increase in capital spending BUT at renegotiated lower rates, not boom time madness. As well as skilled jobs, construction also creates so many direct and indirect low skilled jobs...

    http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1120/construction-workers-told-to-accept-2-5-pay-cut.html


  • #54
    SupaNova2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 515 ✭✭✭SupaNova2


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    Look I've already given examples here, and you're now being demanding on details, for the sake of trying to bash the idea; that's very disingenuous, and it's looking to bring down the tone of the discussion which has (thus far) been good.

    I asked because having idle resources that would not have to be bid away from someone else is central to your point that a job guarantee would not cause inflation. And this is not the Political Theory forum, it's the Irish Economy forum, hence why I asked for Irish examples.
    Anywhere you look with land that is not being used for farmland (vast vast areas of land with mostly grass), can be used that way, all over the country.

    Straight off, in Wicklow, there are disused places where you can mine copper, granite, sulpher, lead and there are quarries all over the country, many disused.

    Since your plan is to hire people at minimum wage+, can this supposed unused land be combined with labour and whatever else to produce something that sells at more than the costs? Or is that not important?


  • #55
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    SupaNova2 wrote: »
    I asked because having idle resources that would not have to bid away from someone else is central to your point that a job guarantee would not cause inflation. And this is not the Political Theory forum, it's the Irish Economy forum, hence why I asked for Irish examples.
    It's preferable to have the resources under public control, but it isn't central; right now the construction industry is in a very significant downturn, so there is a lot of excess capacity for production in the construction industry, such that even if you buy from private resources, they are going to be able to ramp up production a good bit before you get demand-pull inflation (when they hit capacity).
    SupaNova2 wrote: »
    Since your plan is to hire people at minimum wage+, can this supposed unused land be combined with labour and whatever else to produce something that sells at more than the costs? Or is that not important?
    It's just one potential area of the job program; if you use the land to produce grains that can be stored over a long period of time, and you farm them efficiently, there's no reason you wouldn't be able to recoup the costs, much as a farmer would need to do.
    Profit isn't necessarily the goal though (it can be, if you setup the program that way, but doesn't have to be), it is mostly a secondary benefit to keeping people employed and preventing deterioration of the workforce, and of society/the-economy.

    You could even use the stored grain as a buffer for food price-shocks, since variation in the price of oil is affecting the price of food now (so the buffer stocks could be used to fight inflation as well).


  • #56
    SupaNova2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 515 ✭✭✭SupaNova2


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    It's preferable to have the resources under public control, but it isn't central; right now the construction industry is in a very significant downturn, so there is a lot of excess capacity for production in the construction industry, such that even if you buy from private resources, they are going to be able to ramp up production a good bit before you get demand-pull inflation (when they hit capacity).

    There may be a lot of excess capacity in construction, but we don't need more housing. Ramping up production of housing may keep housing prices from rising, but all the materials used would suffer inflation. I doubt you would advocate this, but constructing infrastructure would cause the same price inflation in raw materials. And as soon as you stop such stimulus spending all those construction workers would be unemployed and forced to re-skill. Essentially you are propping up a mostly unneeded supply of construction capacity with such stimulus.
    It's just one potential area of the job program; if you use the land to produce grains that can be stored over a long period of time, and you farm them efficiently, there's no reason you wouldn't be able to recoup the costs, much as a farmer would need to do.
    Profit isn't necessarily the goal though (it can be, if you setup the program that way, but doesn't have to be), it is mostly a secondary benefit to keeping people employed and preventing deterioration of the workforce, and of society/the-economy.

    You could even use the stored grain as a buffer for food price-shocks, since variation in the price of oil is affecting the price of food now (so the buffer stocks could be used to fight inflation as well).

    Nobody can take this grain idea seriously without anything to back it up, where is the unused capacity? And if it is profitable to simply produce more grain, why are farmers not doing so?


  • #57
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    SupaNova2 wrote: »
    There may be a lot of excess capacity in construction, but we don't need more housing. Ramping up production of housing may keep housing prices from rising, but all the materials used would suffer inflation. I doubt you would advocate this, but constructing infrastructure would cause the same price inflation in raw materials. And as soon as you stop such stimulus spending all those construction workers would be unemployed and forced to re-skill. Essentially you are propping up a mostly unneeded supply of construction capacity with such stimulus.
    I didn't mention housing though, it wouldn't make sense to do that? Construction could go into infrastructure, or even on a smaller scale, community projects like care homes, sports centers, schools, renovations/expansions of existing buildings etc., also it could do more wide scale stuff like rural broadband and such; there's a lot of stuff you could pick, we're pretty much never going to be short of new ideas for infrastructural upgrades.

    Since construction is in a big downturn right now, that means there is a lot of excess supply in many areas, such that you can source a lot of material from parts of the construction industry before it reaches its previous capacity, and only then will you start getting demand-pull inflation.
    So, that gives a lot of leeway in raw materials, before you get any inflation, which actually makes this the best time to do such large-scale infrastructure projects, since we minimize the inflation cost of them (compared to when construction is closer to capacity, in boom times).

    I agree though, you don't want to just prop up construction; it would be extremely important, that any job guarantee program provides a lot of diversification of jobs.
    However, at the same time, the country really could do with a lot infrastructural upgrades, so now is the right time to undertake such kinds of large-scale projects, since the boost is so needed (and because it's the best time to minimize their inflationary impact, since construction is already down); just got to factor in a gradual diversification/reskilling of workers, as the job guarantee winds down.
    SupaNova2 wrote: »
    Nobody can take this grain idea seriously without anything to back it up, where is the unused capacity? And if it is profitable to simply produce more grain, why are farmers not doing so?
    It is just one example of a single potential set of jobs, out of likely a huge variety, which would make up a job guarantee program, and it doesn't even have to be profitable, just breaking even works as well, and you don't even need that either.
    There's no readily available source of data to grab figures from on unusable land that can be converted, or unproductive land in general, so I can't get figures for this.


    As I said earlier, the monetary profit from any job guarantee jobs is only a secondary benefit, because the primary purpose is getting workers out of unemployment, to give them an opportunity to earn, pay down debt, reskill, and to ameliorate the detrimental effects of unemployment.

    You could decide to 100% waste their productive effort too if you want, and you will still be getting the benefits of people paying down debt, thus freeing up money to spend in the private economy, bringing it back to speed and pushing people back to work in private industry.

    That in itself, paying people and wasting their productive effort, is less wasteful and damaging than what we have now, with massive unemployment (just as much a waste of productive effort), and the social, health and economic damage it causes; so straight away you are solving the social, health economic damage even if you 100% waste the productive effort people put in.

    Not that I advocate that at all, I'd of course want peoples effort to be useful and productive (and I've provided many examples thus far of how it can be), but it's beneficial even without that.


  • #58
    SupaNova2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 515 ✭✭✭SupaNova2


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    Since construction is in a big downturn right now, that means there is a lot of excess supply in many areas, such that you can source a lot of material from parts of the construction industry before it reaches its previous capacity, and only then will you start getting demand-pull inflation.

    So, that gives a lot of leeway in raw materials, before you get any inflation, which actually makes this the best time to do such large-scale infrastructure projects, since we minimize the inflation cost of them (compared to when construction is closer to capacity, in boom times).

    There are no stockpiles of fuel, wood, steel or other construction resources lying around. You would have to buy them on the market, and thus price inflation would be immediate. And in bidding away these resources, you prevent them being used elsewhere by someone else.


  • #59
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭KyussBishop


    SupaNova2 wrote: »
    There are no stockpiles of fuel, wood, steel or other construction resources lying around. You would have to buy them on the market, and thus price inflation would be immediate. And in bidding away these resources, you prevent them being used elsewhere by someone else.
    Price inflation is not immediate, it depends on capacity of industry to cope with demand, i.e. if there is excess capacity; when demand grows beyond industries capacity to supply, you get demand-pull inflation, until industry catches up (if it can), and we already have an underperforming construction industry with excess capacity.

    When a resource is in surplus, you are not preventing anyone else from using it; a lot of construction materials are readily available resources.
    Quarries, forests and unmined materials are all resources that are available in Ireland, many which were previously active during the boom, with excess capacity now (hell the state could even buy some of them that are out of business, and indeed the state owns some of them anyway).

    With our construction sector in a downturn and all these resources being utilized less, now is the perfect time for a large scale infrastructure project anyway (it is a far better time than when the economy has recovered), because you minimize any potential inflation.


    What materials would you expect to see inflation in, and how much inflation?


  • #60
    maninasia
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,635 ✭✭✭maninasia


    mariaalice wrote: »
    Okay you have almost convinced me :)

    An idea I think might work and be compatible with what you propose.

    There are a lot of young men ( and some women ) who would like to do an apprenticeship in all sorts of areas but we will start with construction.

    The government guarantees that anyone who wants to do an apprenticeship will be provided with the work element so the person can do the apprenticeship.

    The government or it could be funded by a philanthropist, give the money to an organisation who set up a not for profit building company and the company keeps building and recycling ( knocking down ) the same set of building so as to provide the work element of the apprentiship... in the same way a model factory could be built for anyone who want to be an instrument tecl/tool maker, the producers would be recycled instead of being put on to the open make, thus meaningful work and training could be provided with out affecting the current markets for the products. Is the the sort of idea you have?

    This is really communism at heart. It doesn't work, nor is it even neccessary to go down this route?

    What do you want to achieve here? Is it to give people a job to do? Is it for them to get skills so they can get a job? What is it?

    -Why should somebody do an apprencticeship for a trade in which there is no or very little demand? Are you training them so they can emigrate?

    -Who is going to pay for all of this?

    - Don't we have an already badly run scheme called the 'national internship scheme'?

    -Why not just reduce minimum wage, reduce employment benefits, and encourage investment and education in areas where people CAN get a job instead?

    - Finally, again, who is paying for this? The taxpayer? They are already paying for too much.


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  • #61
    maninasia
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,635 ✭✭✭maninasia


    KyussBishop wrote: »
    Price inflation is not immediate, it depends on capacity of industry to cope with demand, i.e. if there is excess capacity; when demand grows beyond industries capacity to supply, you get demand-pull inflation, until industry catches up (if it can), and we already have an underperforming construction industry with excess capacity.

    When a resource is in surplus, you are not preventing anyone else from using it; a lot of construction materials are readily available resources.
    Quarries, forests and unmined materials are all resources that are available in Ireland, many which were previously active during the boom, with excess capacity now (hell the state could even buy some of them that are out of business, and indeed the state owns some of them anyway).

    With our construction sector in a downturn and all these resources being utilized less, now is the perfect time for a large scale infrastructure project anyway (it is a far better time than when the economy has recovered), because you minimize any potential inflation.


    What materials would you expect to see inflation in, and how much inflation?

    I absolutely agree that now is the right time for large infrastructure projects. It would create employment and help boost the economy. But we get back to the question as to WHO pays for it and HOW they pay for it.

    The government chose to keep the public servants, social welfare class and the pensioners relatively happy. They basically cancelled all capital spending to do this. You've got to make hard choices, you can't have your cake and eat it.


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