It’s Time for the Government to Give Everyone a Job

[Chris]

Before some of you protest give it a read. It's like  universal basic income, it's focused on non-college educated, what if it replaced welfare?

It’s Time for the Government to Give Everyone a Job

The Center for American Progress..., at its Ideas Conference this week, it embraced one idea that has been kicking around the left for a long time: guaranteed employment for anyone who wants a job.

In “Toward a Marshall Plan for America,” CAP frames this as an answer to growing despair and acute economic pain bred by stagnant wages and lack of opportunity....

The federal-job-guarantee concept goes back to Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth plan in the 1930s. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed “employment for everyone in need of a job” in the civil-rights era. Under this framework, the government would fund jobs with a living wage and benefits similar to public-sector workers’. The open-ended program would be funded as needed, expandable in recession, and contractable when the economy recovers. Government would become the employer of last resort.

It goes on to describe it in more detail, types of jobs, benefits, etc.

 The job guarantee is sometimes placed in opposition to a universal basic income for all Americans, but both address the same problem and can coexist. There are “participation income” proposals, for example, that tie a basic payment to making a contribution to society. But a job guarantee combines the baseline benefit to the dignity of work and self-reliance with tangible benefits to productivity and the economy. It also can set labor force benchmarks, on wages and benefits, that a UBI, normally pegged at a sub-poverty level of $10,000–$12,000 a year, just cannot provide. Companies will have to adapt if a federal-job guarantee offers health care, sick leave, and a pension, or else risk losing workers. “One of the purposes is to eliminate low-wage labor,” said Darity.

[Crepitus]

You finally posted something I can get behind. It was bound to happen sooner or later I guess, lol.

I like the idea, but I agree with the folks who think it doesn't go far enough. I think it would be a good thing for able-bodied unemployed.

[Chris]

You finally posted something I can get behind. It was bound to happen sooner or later I guess, lol.

I like the idea, but I agree with the folks who think it doesn't go far enough. I think it would be a good thing for able-bodied unemployed.

It would basically force those who are able to work.

It would then create incentives to find better work for greater rewards.

[decedent]

I prefer the government offering a job over a welfare check, but it should be a good job, an it should be a choice.

If a single mother has to take a $5/hr job to work at a fudge store across town, and pay a babysitter $5/hr to babysit, I just don't see the point. Sh's better of home, caring for her kid.

If it's a job that teaches skills or pays well, that's a different story. I'm all for that, but I doubt many such jobs are reserved.

There's a strong military analogy here, where you join an are guaranteed a job, often in the field of your choice. It seems to work for them.

[Chris]

Here's why I could consider it. If more people could become productive, or more productive, then the entire economy benefits, we all benefit. So there's return on investment. With welfare handouts, the money is just spent, and mainly on products produced by the richest corporations who produce the basics, and it offers no incentives to produce anything so people remain in poverty. There's no return on investment.

[Peter1469]

Work-fare.

I am for it. The one caveat is child care. The ones tasked with that would have to be vetted and qualified.

[Chris]

Work-fare.

I am for it. The one caveat is child care. The ones tasked with that would have to be vetted and qualified.

Child, elderly, etc care. Training would also enhance their opportunities to get ahead.

[Captain Obvious]

I'm not sure I want gubmint in the job business, for a number of reasons. Even as an alternative to the teet business.

[Peter1469]

I'm not sure I want gubmint in the job business, for a number of reasons. Even as an alternative to the teet business.

If can be as simple say saying if you are able to work, show us your pay slip. If it is low enough we will supplement it.

If you are able to work and you don't have a pay slip, after a short period of time you get zero from the taxpayers.

[DGUtley]

The government giving everyone a job? And... where does the government get these jobs, and the money to pay the salaries for these jobs, or the authority under our constitution to do this?