There is no economic policy more important than job creation. The private sector plays an invaluable and dynamic role in providing employment, but it cannot ensure enough jobs to keep up with population growth or speed economic recovery—much less achieve the social goal of full employment for all Americans. Thankfully, there is an alternative: a job guarantee through a government-provided “employer of last resort” program offering a job to anyone who is ready and willing to work at the federal minimum wage plus legislated benefits.
True economic recovery will require creative solutions to deeply rooted problems. Our first great task is to change the way we talk about what's possible.
Still trying to determine whether I find the fluffy theism on Born this Way culturally useful.
Fighting off the wistfulness that comes with reading @bonnaroo tweets -- it's such an unforgettable experience.
In recent decades full employment has been wrongly dismissed as not only impossible but economically counterproductive. Though the Employment Act of 1946 committed the government to the goal of high employment (it was amended by the 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act, which targeted a measured unemployment rate of 3 percent), we act as if full employment would ruin us, destroying the value of our currency through inflation and depreciation, and weakening the labor discipline that high unemployment maintains through enforced destitution. Through the thick and thin of the business cycle, we leave tens of millions of Americans idle in the belief that this makes political, economic and social sense.
It doesn’t. The benefits of full employment include production of goods, services and income; on-the-job training and skill development; poverty alleviation; community building and social networking; social, political and economic stability; and social multipliers (positive feedbacks and reinforcing dynamics that create a virtuous cycle of socioeconomic benefits). An “employer of last resort” program would restore the government’s lost commitment to full employment in recognition of the fact that the total impact would exceed the sum of the benefits.
The program has no time limits or restrictions based on income, gender, education or experience. It operates like a buffer stock: in a boom, employers will recruit workers out of the program; in a slump the safety net will allow those who lost their jobs to preserve good habits, keeping them work-ready. It will also help those unable to obtain work outside the program enhance their employability through training. Work records will be kept for all participants and made available to potential employers. Unemployment offices will be converted to employment offices, to match workers with jobs that suit them and to help employers recruit staff.
All state and local governments and registered nonprofit organizations can propose projects; proposals will be submitted to a newly created office within the Labor Department for final approval and funding. The office will maintain a website providing details on all pending, approved and ongoing projects, and final reports will be published after projects are complete.
Participants will be subject to all federal work rules, and violations will lead to dismissal. Anyone who is dismissed three times in a twelve-month period will be ineligible to participate in the program for a year. Workers will be allowed to organize through labor unions.
The program will meet workers where they are and take them as they are: jobs will be available in local communities and will be tailored to suit employees’ level of education and experience (though with the goal of improving skills). Proposals should include provisions for part-time work and other flexible arrangements for workers who need them, including but not restricted to flexible arrangements for parents of young children.
All participants will obtain a Social Security number and maintain a bank account in an FDIC-insured bank. Weekly wages will be paid by the federal government directly to participants’ accounts. The government will also provide funding for benefits as well as approved expenses up to a maximum of 
10 percent of wages paid for a project (to cover the cost of administrative materials and equipment).
Estimated spending will be 1–2 percent of GDP, with economic, social and political benefits several times larger. Net program costs will be much lower, since spending on unemployment compensation and other relief will be reduced—this program will pay people for working, rather than paying them not to work. The promise of increased national productivity and shared prosperity should far outweigh any fears about rising deficits. To fulfill this promise, we need to put Americans back to work.
Read the next proposal in the “Reimagining Capitalism” series, “Inclusive Capitalism: Improving Benefits and Performance With Smarter Incentive Pay Plans,” by Joseph Blasi, Richard Freeman & Douglas Kruse.
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Just another liberal lefty progressive who thinks government is the end all be all for all thats not right. yawn
Sorry I mneant to say " A program like this WOULD lend force to already occurring market upswings
Mr. Wray the more I think about your idea the more I like it. There is a matter of government owned entities competing directly with business that would have to be hashed on on new levels, but overall this is something we need now. A rpogram like this wouldn't lend force to already occurring market upswings, but would spawn a whole new wave of private entrepreneurship among people that lost their original jobs and have the time space and resources to collaborate on new projects. People easily take to starting their own successful businesses when they have the room to take a few risks, something we have lost with the 'benefits' offered by big business that people have no other choice but to remain indentured to. The key is having health care that doesn't cost $800/month (which is what people pay on their own).
So first and foremost that applies to private business owners, executives of corporations, and the corporations themselves that have managed to somehow become people and are also somehow managing to leech hundreds of billions of dollars out of our pockets every year through the government. Which by different accounts is many times the cost of the so-called "welfare" state and also roll zero benefit back into the prosperity of Americans. After that has been accomplished it would be the appropriate time to start kicking the little guy into the dirt as well. The government has all the authority in the world to guarantee employment. There is absolutely nothing to prohibit it, and if anything has been bereft in it's duties in doing so.
posted by: lvliberty1 at 06/12/2011 @ 5:04pm
the Federal govt has no authority to guarantee employment.
the Federal govt has no authority to guarantee employment. Only in totalitarian socialist or fascist countries can this occur. It does not and cannot happen in societies that value personal freedom.
The Federal Govt needs to also get out of the minimum wage business that it also lacks any authority to control.
Try living on minimum wage in this market. For Christ's sake, it wouldn't even pay for your gas to work! Get a clue.
posted by: Beethoven1 at 06/12/2011 @ 3:38pm
Only 1% of the nation's workers earn the minimum wage according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They represent 2.3% of hourly workers.
Half of the minimum wage workers are under age 25
About 3 percent of white, black, and Hispanic hourly-paid workers earned the Federal minimum wage or less. Among Asian hourly-paid workers, about 2 percent earned the minimum wage or less.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2008.htm
I have a better idea. Why not use a stick instead of a carrot on corporations wishing to do business in the United States. 1) Apply import tariffs to international corporations with offices, oh say in the Cayman Islands. 2) Force corporations wishing to sell good in OUR MARKET that they must employ American workers with fair pay and benefits. 3) Any raw goods leaving this country for sale or assembly in other countries should be taxed heavily before they leave thus forcing companies to use American workers instead of cheap overseas labor.
Try living on minimum wage in this market. For Christ's sake, it wouldn't even pay for your gas to work! Get a clue.
Say, Wray.....
How long do you think it'll take to set up the bureaucracy after how many thousand of pages of legislation (that members of Congress won't bother to read since they neither have the time or comprehension skills)?
Have you thought of what exactly, are 16 million people to do? How many ghetto gardens will be produced? How many trash pickup crews do the highways need? What about the jail inmates who are sometime used and (smally) paid to do this kinda work? What about the impact on employed labor if these 16 million begins to do real work like paving, painting, repairing.....?
Have you ever heard of Unintended Consequences? Do you know the history of BIG Liberal Ideas that created the Great Society we have today....best exemplified by that Shining City by a Lake called Detroit?
This is, by far, the best solution yet. It is doable and provides many benefits other than the ones listed, such as a lower crime rate. As the article states- there is no economic policy more important than job creation. We have so many infrastructure problems that it is hard to believe that anyone wouldn't get behind an incredibly effective solution like this.
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