Tuesday, September 04, 2018

job guarantee and MMT links

Job Guarantee Programs: Careful What You Wish For by Thomas Palley

SWF+UBD by Steve Randy Waldman

What if you could sue the government for a job? by Jeff Spross

Universal basic income vs jobs guarantees: which one will make us happier? by Cory Doctorow

Should Democrats play it safe with a job guarantee? by Jeff Spross

Reorienting Fiscal Policy: A Critical Assessment of Fiscal Fine-Tuning by Tcherneva

What if the Government Gave Everyone a Paycheck? by Robert Reich

Here’s the one book every millennial and Gen Z new graduate should read (and it’s not Dr. Seuss) by Erin Kaine (on David Graeber)

Do We Need a Federal Jobs Guarantee? A Debate. BY ROHAN GREY & RAÚL CARRILLO REBUTTAL BY MATT BRUENIG

Yes, a Jobs Guarantee Could Create “Boondoggles.” It Also Might Save the Planet. by Kate Aronoff

10 Principles for a Federal Job Guarantee By Angela Glover Blackwell, Sarah Treuhaft, Darrick Hamilton, and William Darity, Jr.

excellent podcast on JG-UBI by Current Affairs

Robert Reich video on JG

Democrats’ Next Big Thing: Government-Guaranteed Jobs by Jim Tankersley

Three Ways to Design a Democratic Job Guarantee by Alexander Kolokotronis

Stephanie Kelton Has The Biggest Idea In Washington by Zach Carter

PUBLIC SERVICE: EMPLOYMENT:A PATH TO FULLEMPLOYMENT by L. Randall Wray, Flavia Dantas, Scott Fullwiler, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, and Stephanie A. Kelton  (April 2018)

The Job Guarantee:Design, Jobs, and Implementation by Tcherneva (April 2018)

Why We Need a Federal Job Guarantee by Mark Paul, William Darity Jr and Darrick Hamilton

The Job Guarantee Controversy by Timothy Taylor

Baby bonds

JOB GUARANTEE: MARXIST OR KEYNESIAN? by Chris Dillow

Some thoughts about the Job Guarantee by Simon Wren-Lewis (2017)

The Long, Tortured History of the Job Guarantee By PETER-CHRISTIAN AIGNER and MICHAEL BRENES


Workfare Means New Mass Peonage by Frances Fox Piven and Barbara Ehrenreich (1987)


My impression of job guarantee advocates, which I am afraid you are not doing much to dispel, is that they are not willing to admit that their preferred approach ahas any drawbacks, or that any alternatives have any merits.


Bernie Gets Socialistic by Max Sawicky



Smile by Steve Randy Waldman

We Work by James K. Galbraith
















Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America (Center for American Progress)



The Call for Jobs for All by Matthew Klein




Israel Nash




Thursday, August 30, 2018

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

SWF free-for-all

Team Bruenig:
Peter Gowan, Carl Beijer, Ryan Cooper, (Steve Randy Waldman) David Dayen?, Mathew Lawrence, Josh Mound(retweeted)? Ben Spielberg

Team Konczal:
J.W. Mason, Henwood, Max Sawicky, Candian Mike Rozworski, (team MMT Raul, etc.)  Matt Stoller, Matthew Klein, Marshall Steinbaum retweeted?, Matt Yglesias


Sandbu on Nordic economies


Much of Scandinavia’s success is not rooted in direct state intervention

by Martin Sandbu 
8.28.18

The most predictable phenomena can also be the most surprising. Just look at the revival of “socialism” as a politically viable idea in the US and UK. 

Ten years ago, the global crisis laid bare the failures of financial capitalism. This gave the political left an opportunity to win support for its agenda. Yet almost every established centre-left party in the developed world bungled this shot at political dominance. 

Instead of a comeback, we seem to be getting a throwback. The only leftwing politicians to prosper have been those who reject the “third way” centre-leftism of the 1990s. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn has taken over the Labour party with the support of a hugely expanded membership. In the US, Bernie Sanders’ socialist primary campaign gave Hillary Clinton a run for her donor class money in 2016. In recent local results, like-minded politicians Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have won safe-seat Democratic party nominations to Congress. Polls show that about half of young Americans now favour “socialism” over “capitalism”. 

This has triggered a debate about what the new socialists mean by “socialism”. On one reading, it is just an aspirational label for Scandinavian social democracy, with policies such as universal healthcare or better conditions for workers. 

But some of its most thoughtful proponents argue in favour of socialism because it is opposed to capitalism. The political theorist Corey Robin, for example, advocates “socialism” because it makes workers free, while capitalism leaves them unfree. Such claims see socialism and capitalism as rival and incompatible systems. 

 This semantic difference matters politically. The either/or view may have made sense during the cold war. But even when the dichotomy was real, the Nordic countries were clearly arrayed on the capitalist side of the dividing line. To oppose “socialism” against “capitalism” is to refuse to learn from the experience of the societies that have probably come closest to the new socialists’ own ideals.

The Nordic countries have been called “mixed economies” precisely because they combine elements of socialism and capitalism: state and private ownership of the means of production; public regulation and market competition; redistributive taxes and wages determined by employers and employees. 

If the socialists of today ignore capitalism’s role in that mix, they fail to follow their own leading lights. Here are three lessons they should heed from the Nordic model, whether or not they call it “socialist”. 

First, it embraces globalisation. It was no coincidence that the Nordic mixed model emerged in countries with high exposure to international trade. Public understanding that trade brings prosperity, but that global fluctuations hit hard and unpredictably, increased support for the insurance elements of the Nordic welfare states. 

So if “socialism” it is going to be, it should be a socialism confident about economic openness. The US left’s opposition to trade deals weakens any affiliation it may try to claim with the Nordic model. So does British socialists’ seduction by “ Lexit” — the alleged leftwing case for escaping the rules that smooth trade between European countries. 

Second, while the Nordics’ economic egalitarianism is well known in broad terms, the detail is not. But the detail matters. The achievement of the Nordic model is something very specific: a highly compressed distribution of market wages (before taxes and transfers). In comparison, the distribution of wealth and capital income, and the degree of income equalisation through policy, is unexceptional. The Nordics succeeded not through maximal redistribution but by engineering an economy that did not need to overburden the state’s redistributive power. 

This leads to the third lesson. Much of the Nordic model’s success is rooted not in direct state intervention but in the finely balanced interplay between social organisations, especially in the labour market. Admirers appreciate the role of unions in the Nordic economies; they are less aware of the equal importance of coherent employers’ associations. 

A blinkered workers-against-bosses view of the world suggests anything that makes capital owners better organised must harm the interests of workers. The Nordic experience shows the opposite is true. Coherent organisation encourages employers to recognise how what may seem like a burden on an individual company benefits business as a whole. 

In Scandinavia, a compressed wage structure has been good for productivity. If it is expensive to use labour unproductively, and if high-skilled labour is relatively cheap, companies accelerate investment and quickly adopt new technology. Similarly, an organised employer sector helps workers, businesses and the government to adjust in the face of technological disruptions. If this is socialism, it is one that makes for a more flexible capitalism. 

The Nordics, then, give vindication to the insight of great liberal centrists of the interwar years: that wise government intervention is good for capitalism, and makes capitalism good for workers. Progressive centrism may have earned itself a bad name in the run-up to the crisis and its aftermath. But if socialists reject it out of purism, they will find their own goals frustrated as well.

Monday, August 27, 2018

DeLong and Anderson vs. socialism & Krugman on neolibralism

The New Socialists by Corey Robins

STEERING BY THE SOCIALIST IDOLS IN THE HEAVENS LEADS US TO SAIL NOT TOWARDS BUT AWAY FROM THE SHORES OF UTOPIA: (EARLY) MONDAY COREY ROBIN SMACKDOWN by Brad DeLong

A tenured six-figure government job must be sweet, professor, but this is utopian silliness: “Under capitalism, we’re forced to submit to the boss. Socialists want to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale.”
Capitalism, Socialism, and Unfreedom by Krugman

There is no alternative. The Democratic Party platform is as good as things can get.

Friday, August 17, 2018

Friday, August 10, 2018

Economics

One of the biggest falsehoods that the economics profession foists upon us is how supply meets demand or Say's Law which Keynes went after. You can have long periods of insufficient aggregate demand or high unemployment.

The government sets the amount of demand via interest rates and the cost of credit. If it's too high, people won't borrow and invest and demand won't be enough.

But if the government does this for too long you'll get deflation. The question is why don't we get deflation sooner.

Instead of deflation advanced economies seem to get stuck in a Japanese rut where they can't make inflation, especially when they don't try very hard.

If the government provides enough stimulus or adjusts rates so there's enough aggregate demand, then labor markets will tighten and workers will see wage increases.

Today though we have oligopolies and monopsony and a taboo about raising wages despite low unemployment.

Saturday, August 04, 2018

Monday, July 30, 2018

JG-UBI

need to separate out JG and SWF/UBI

A “SOCIAL WEALTH FUND” COULD BE THE NEXT BIG IDEA by Rachel M. Cohen

Stockton’s Awesome Public Experiment by Jeff Spross

Why reform conservatives should embrace a universal basic income by Jeff Spross

'I feel very betrayed': Basic-income recipients react to one of the world's largest experiments suddenly being canceled (BusinessInsider)
Could a Universal Basic Income Become a Political Reality? by Clio Chang

Why the world should adopt a basic income by Guy Standing

Labour set to include pilot of radical basic income policy in next manifesto, John McDonnell says

What if you could sue the government for a job? by Jeff Spross

Universal basic income vs jobs guarantees: which one will make us happier? by Cory Doctorow

Should Democrats play it safe with a job guarantee? by Jeff Spross

Reorienting Fiscal Policy: A Critical Assessment of Fiscal Fine-Tuning by Tcherneva

Universal Basic Income Is Not the Solution to Poverty by Felix Salmon

What if the Government Gave Everyone a Paycheck? by Robert Reich

Here’s the one book every millennial and Gen Z new graduate should read (and it’s not Dr. Seuss) by Erin Kaine (on David Graeber)

"My forthcoming book will be called "The Case For People's QE" and will be published by Polity, probably in Spring 2019." - Frances Coppola

Who Really Stands to Win from Universal Basic Income? By Nathan Heller

Do We Need a Universal Basic Income? A Debate. BY MATT BRUENIG REBUTTAL BY ROHAN GREY & RAÚL CARRILLO

Do We Need a Federal Jobs Guarantee? A Debate. BY ROHAN GREY & RAÚL CARRILLO REBUTTAL BY MATT BRUENIG

Yes, a Jobs Guarantee Could Create “Boondoggles.” It Also Might Save the Planet. by Kate Aronoff

10 Principles for a Federal Job Guarantee By Angela Glover Blackwell, Sarah Treuhaft, Darrick Hamilton, and William Darity, Jr.

excellent podcast on JG-UBI by Current Affairs

Robert Reich video on JG

Democrats’ Next Big Thing: Government-Guaranteed Jobs by Jim Tankersley

Three Ways to Design a Democratic Job Guarantee by Alexander Kolokotronis

Stephanie Kelton Has The Biggest Idea In Washington by Zach Carter

PUBLIC SERVICE: EMPLOYMENT:A PATH TO FULLEMPLOYMENT by L. Randall Wray, Flavia Dantas, Scott Fullwiler, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, and Stephanie A. Kelton  (April 2018)

The Job Guarantee:Design, Jobs, and Implementation by Tcherneva (April 2018)

Why We Need a Federal Job Guarantee by Mark Paul, William Darity Jr and Darrick Hamilton

BASIC INCOME, NOT BASIC JOBS: AGAINST HIJACKING UTOPIA by Scott Anderson

The Job Guarantee Controversy by Timothy Taylor

Baby bonds

JOB GUARANTEE: MARXIST OR KEYNESIAN? by Chris Dillow

Some thoughts about the Job Guarantee by Simon Wren-Lewis (2017)

The Long, Tortured History of the Job Guarantee By PETER-CHRISTIAN AIGNER and MICHAEL BRENES


Workfare Means New Mass Peonage by Frances Fox Piven and Barbara Ehrenreich (1987)


My impression of job guarantee advocates, which I am afraid you are not doing much to dispel, is that they are not willing to admit that their preferred approach ahas any drawbacks, or that any alternatives have any merits.


Bernie Gets Socialistic by Max Sawicky



Smile by Steve Randy Waldman


We Work by James K. Galbraith

























The Call for Jobs for All by Matthew Klein




Sunday, July 29, 2018

2016

Erik Loomis, Adam Serwer. There's starting to punch Left, attacking Chapo Trap House and Tom Frank as sexist and racist.

What prompted this?

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Gil Scott-Heron's America in Winter



saw him on a "Night Flight" rerun showed on IFC. He was also mentioned on Henwood's podcast interview with Alex Gourevitch. Never heard of him before.

serendipity and kizmet?