UBI (and SWF-UBD)

The Case for Giving Every American a Share of a Public Wealth Fund by Jim Pugh

Common Wealth: workers' ownership in the history of socialism by Matt Bruenig

Will Your Universal Basic Income Check Soon Be in the Mail?: A Future Tense event recap. by ANTHONY NGUYEN

A radical idea for reducing inequality deserves more attention by Ryan Avent

UBI, the Unknown Ideal by Max Sawicky

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

SWF+UBD by Steve Randy Waldman

Tackling Inequality Through the Social Ownership of Capital by Matt Bruenig

Opinion: All Americans would get an income boost under this new plan to share the country’s riches by Peter Barnes

The case for an American social wealth fund by Ryan Cooper

A Simple Fix for Our Massive Inequality Problem by Matt Bruenig

Robot Takeover Matters Less If We're All Shareholders by Noah Smith

A Response to Mike Konczal on the Social Wealth Fund by Matt Bruenig

Alaska Gives Cash To Its Citizens Every Year. The Rest Of The U.S. Could Too. by David Dayen

The big idea that could make democratic socialism a reality by Matt Yglesias

Why We Need a Social Wealth Fund by Peter Gowan

I Do Not Understand Why the Left Should Want a Sovereign Wealth Fund by Mike Konczal

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

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

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

excellent podcast on JG-UBI by Current Affairs

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

JOB GUARANTEE: MARXIST OR KEYNESIAN? by Chris Dillow

The Job Guarantee Is Not a Human Capital Program by Max Sawicky

Posts in Three Lines (see comments too) by J.W. Mason

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.

A Promise So Big, Democrats Aren’t Sure How to Keep It: Progressives are lining up behind a jobs guarantee—but leaving the details for later. by Anne Lowrey

Smile by Steve Randy Waldman

A Plan To Win The Socialism Sweden Nearly Achieved by Peter Gowan

Only 1 in 3 Americans Work Full Time by Matt Bruenig

The whole world was watching – we could have done something special': What Finnish experts say about the country's controversial basic-income experiment by Karin Olli-Nilsson

basic income and public job offer: complimentary policies by Fitzroy and Jin

To fix the economy, let's print money and mail it to everyone by Dylan Matthews

FREE MONEY: THE SURPRISING EFFECTS OF A BASIC INCOME SUPPLIED BY GOVERNMENT (Wired, 2017)

The political economy of a universal basic income. by Steve Randy Waldman (2014)

A Universal Basic Income and Work Incentives. Part 1: Theory by Ed Dolan

Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America (Center for American Progress)

Guest Post: Max Sawicky on the Liberal Case Against a Universal Basic Income by Max Sawicky

Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen, by Guy Standing

Finland’s Basic Income Test Wasn’t Ambitious Enough By Leonid Bershidsky

GMI + JG = paid work as a choice for all by John Quiggin

IPPR report

Prosperity and justice: A plan for the new economy - The final report of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice

Chris Dillow

Simon Wren Lewis

thoughts on SWF + UBD

SWF + UBD by Steve Randy Waldman

"new contributions would be made from a variety of dedicated tax streams and from the compounding of undistributed earnings. Initially the dividend would be quite small, but over time, it would grow."

Bruenig noted on twitter that other commentators failed to note the compounding of undistriubted earnings.

"Bruenig proposes paying out roughly 4% of fund value annually, assuming total returns would generally be higher than that. To generate a $12K per year UBI for US adults in 2018 dollars, the fund would need to grow to about $75T."

[is this Bruenig also or just Waldman?]

"Basically, on these numbers, the fund would have to grow to hold something like 64% of all assets, or 80% of US “net worth”, to finance a “full” UBI at a 4% per annum payout rate."

"It takes the miracle of compound growth that capitalists are always on about and turns it into a miracle of compound taxation, effectively taxing wealthier cohorts (those who would otherwise own the SWF assets) an ever increasing share of income year after year without requiring any new legislation, and with minimal distortion of investment behavior."

Warren vs. Sanders

Thoughts on Bernie Sanders’s Democratic Socialism and the Primary by Mike Konczal

Warren emphasizing women candidates in taking back Congress.

Stop Bezos Act

Bernie Sanders is picking the wrong fight with Amazon by Ryan Cooper

The controversy over Bernie Sanders’s proposed Stop BEZOS Act, explained by Matt Yglesias

Jared Bernstein

CBPP report

Ben Spielberg

Bruenig blog from past

Josh Mound

Jonathan Chait

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

Hyman Minsky’s Views on the “Welfare Mess” by Matt Bruenig

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

The Job Guarantee Is Not a Human Capital Program by Max Sawicky

Posts in Three Lines (see comments too) by J.W. Mason

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.

A Promise So Big, Democrats Aren’t Sure How to Keep It: Progressives are lining up behind a jobs guarantee—but leaving the details for later. by Anne Lowrey

Everyone Can Have Their Own Job Guarantee by Matt Bruenig

Bernie Gets Socialistic by Max Sawicky

The Job Guarantee and the Wilted Liberal Imagination by Jack Meserve

Job Guarantees, Collective Bargaining and the Right to Strike by Sandwichman

Smile by Steve Randy Waldman

We Work by James K. Galbraith

Dems’ Job Guarantee Isn’t Nearly as Easy as It Sounds by Dean Baker

Larry Mishel disputes costs. 

How the Democrats' big jobs idea could upend the Fed by Jeff Spross

Only 1 in 3 Americans Work Full Time by Matt Bruenig

The whole world was watching – we could have done something special': What Finnish experts say about the country's controversial basic-income experiment by Karin Olli-Nilsson

How much would a job guarantee actually cost? by Jeff Spross

WHETHER AMERICA CAN AFFORD A JOB GUARANTEE PROGRAM IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE by David Dayen

basic income and public job offer: complimentary policies by Fitzroy and Jin

Debate: Is This the Time for a Federal Jobs Program? by Conor Sen and Noah Smith

Need Work? Maybe That's a Job for Government by Noah Smith

The Case for a Federal Jobs Guarantee by Erik Loomis

also see

Economists Don't Say That Automation Will Drive Unemployment Higher by Dean Baker

Two Big Questions About the Job Guarantee: God, Devil, and the Details by Steve Roth

4 big questions about job guarantees by Dylan Matthews

Why politicians should promise every American a job by Matt Yglesias

World Bank on Jefes de Hogar (Heads of Household)

Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America (Center for American Progress)

The jobs guarantee and human-capital “nationalisation” by Alexandra Scaggs

GMI + JG = paid work as a choice for all by John Quiggin

The Call for Jobs for All by Matthew Klein

How do our job creation recommendations stack up against a job guarantee? by Josh Bivens

Why the Cause of Full Employment Is Back from the Dead by Harold Meyerson

Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to guarantee every American a job by Jeff Stein

Cory Booker’s new big idea: guaranteeing jobs for everyone who wants one by Dylan Matthews

Historicizing GovernmentWork Programs: A Spectrumfrom Workfare to Fair Work by Nancy E. Rose (2000)

Why Democrats Should Embrace a Federal Jobs Guarantee by Sean McElwee

A GUARANTEED “JOBS FOR ALL” PROGRAM IS GAINING TRACTION AMONG 2020 DEMOCRATIC HOPEFULS by Kate Aronoff

Need a Job? Just Call Bernie. by Kevin Drum

Yes, The Jobs Guarantee Is Absurd by Adam Ozimek

Democrats Are Rushing Into a Job Guarantee. It Could Be a Huge Mistake. by Jonahthan Chait

Prior Models for Workable Workfare Work by Matt Bruenig

Why is MMT so popular? by Simon Wren-Lewis

A Response to Tom Palley by J.W. Mason

Modern Money Theory (MMT) vs. Structural Keynesianism by Thomas Palley

Israel Nash

Gillum and Mound

Andrew Gillum Pulled Off the Upset of a Lifetime. Now Comes the Hard Part.

(NYTimes no mention of Bernie Sanders even though he backed Gillum)

Andrew Gillum makes history in Florida (CNN)

Resolving the Democrats’ False Choice by Josh Mound

What Democrats Must Do by Josh Mound

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

What the Nordic mixed economy can teach today’s new left

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.

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

Kurt Andersen

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.

Factcheckergate

Fact checkers have a Medicare-for-all problem by Ryan Cooper

The revealing Medicare-for-all fact-check debate roiling the internet, explained by Dylan Scott

Krugman tweetstorm

Bernie’s “Medicare For All” Plan Would Cut Physician Payments About 10 Percent by Kevin Drum

Jake Tapper’s Faulty Medicare for All Fact-Check by Matt Bruenig

Rashida Tlaib

For Rashida Tlaib, Palestinian Heritage Infuses a Detroit Sense of Community

Annie Lowrey on JG and late capitalism

A Promise So Big, Democrats Aren’t Sure How to Keep It by Annie Lowrey

Why the Phrase 'Late Capitalism' Is Suddenly Everywhere by Annie Lowrey

fiscally conservative but supports single payer

Cory Booker

The Economy During Wartime by J.W. Mason

The Economy During Wartime by J.W. Mason

Mason, Hanauer & Levison. what to do and macro lessons

Democrats Must Reclaim the Center … by Moving Hard Left by Nick Hanauer

What Democrats Still Don’t Get About Winning Back the White Working Class by Andrew Levison

Macroeconomic Lessons from the Past Decade by J.W. Mason

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.

Take the Skinheads Bowling - Camper Van Beethoven

Punk Rock Girl - The Dead Milkmen

Tom Petty - Refugee - Sharp Objects

Nordic socialism

Are State Officials in Nordic Countries Unaccountable? by Matt Bruenig

Nordic State Ownership of Enterprise Is a Real Thing by Matt Bruenig

What’s So Special About Finland? The American Dream is alive and well—in Northern Europe. by Uri Friedman

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

Hyman Minsky’s Views on the “Welfare Mess” by Matt Bruenig

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

The Job Guarantee Is Not a Human Capital Program by Max Sawicky

Posts in Three Lines (see comments too) by J.W. Mason

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.

A Promise So Big, Democrats Aren’t Sure How to Keep It: Progressives are lining up behind a jobs guarantee—but leaving the details for later. by Anne Lowrey

Everyone Can Have Their Own Job Guarantee by Matt Bruenig

Bernie Gets Socialistic by Max Sawicky

The Job Guarantee and the Wilted Liberal Imagination by Jack Meserve

Job Guarantees, Collective Bargaining and the Right to Strike by Sandwichman

Smile by Steve Randy Waldman

A Plan To Win The Socialism Sweden Nearly Achieved by Peter Gowan

We Work by James K. Galbraith

Dems’ Job Guarantee Isn’t Nearly as Easy as It Sounds by Dean Baker

Larry Mishel disputes costs. 

Commenter says will get rid of welfare costs

How the Democrats' big jobs idea could upend the Fed by Jeff Spross

Only 1 in 3 Americans Work Full Time by Matt Bruenig

The whole world was watching – we could have done something special': What Finnish experts say about the country's controversial basic-income experiment by Karin Olli-Nilsson

How much would a job guarantee actually cost? by Jeff Spross

WHETHER AMERICA CAN AFFORD A JOB GUARANTEE PROGRAM IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE by David Dayen

basic income and public job offer: complimentary policies by Fitzroy and Jin

Debate: Is This the Time for a Federal Jobs Program? by Conor Sen and Noah Smith

Need Work? Maybe That's a Job for Government by Noah Smith

The Case for a Federal Jobs Guarantee by Erik Loomis

also see

Economists Don't Say That Automation Will Drive Unemployment Higher by Dean Baker

Two Big Questions About the Job Guarantee: God, Devil, and the Details by Steve Roth

To fix the economy, let's print money and mail it to everyone by Dylan Matthews

4 big questions about job guarantees by Dylan Matthews

Why politicians should promise every American a job by Matt Yglesias

World Bank on Jefes de Hogar (Heads of Household)

FREE MONEY: THE SURPRISING EFFECTS OF A BASIC INCOME SUPPLIED BY GOVERNMENT (Wired, 2017)

The political economy of a universal basic income. by Steve Randy Waldman (2014)

A Universal Basic Income and Work Incentives. Part 1: Theory by Ed Dolan

Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America (Center for American Progress)

Guest Post: Max Sawicky on the Liberal Case Against a Universal Basic Income by Max Sawicky

Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen, by Guy Standing

The jobs guarantee and human-capital “nationalisation” by Alexandra Scaggs

Finland’s Basic Income Test Wasn’t Ambitious Enough By Leonid Bershidsky

GMI + JG = paid work as a choice for all by John Quiggin

The Call for Jobs for All by Matthew Klein

How do our job creation recommendations stack up against a job guarantee? by Josh Bivens

Why the Cause of Full Employment Is Back from the Dead by Harold Meyerson

Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to guarantee every American a job by Jeff Stein

Cory Booker’s new big idea: guaranteeing jobs for everyone who wants one by Dylan Matthews

Historicizing GovernmentWork Programs: A Spectrumfrom Workfare to Fair Work by Nancy E. Rose (2000)

Why Democrats Should Embrace a Federal Jobs Guarantee by Sean McElwee

A GUARANTEED “JOBS FOR ALL” PROGRAM IS GAINING TRACTION AMONG 2020 DEMOCRATIC HOPEFULS by Kate Aronoff

Need a Job? Just Call Bernie. by Kevin Drum

Yes, The Jobs Guarantee Is Absurd by Adam Ozimek

Democrats Are Rushing Into a Job Guarantee. It Could Be a Huge Mistake. by Jonahthan Chait

Prior Models for Workable Workfare Work by Matt Bruenig

Why is MMT so popular? by Simon Wren-Lewis

A Response to Tom Palley by J.W. Mason

Modern Money Theory (MMT) vs. Structural Keynesianism by Thomas Palley

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?

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?

Khanna's job bill

REP. RO KHANNA TO INTRODUCE COMPROMISE “JOBS FOR ALL” BILL by Kate Aronoff

Ro Khanna Has an Ambitious Plan to Put the Unemployed to Work. Just Don’t Call It a Job Guarantee. By JORDAN WEISSMANN

Obama's 2011 job bills "American Jobs Act"

Joy Behar, hero

conservative media has been better on the rise of socialism than liberal MSNBC and CNN

only Fox has the video of Joy Behar vs Megan McCain

then Stephen Colbert last night said "God is socialist" after taking about the Fox news person who want to a Sander/Ocasio-Cortez rally in Kansas. The woman almost had a breakthrough about how enticing the socialist message was.

Obama's Mandela speech

Transcript: Obama's Speech At The 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture

I disagree with Zach Beauchamp

Chicago, Obama and universal basic income

Obama signals support for a universal basic income

CHICAGO MAY BECOME LARGEST CITY IN U.S. TO TRY UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME by Zaid Jilani

Chicago Could Soon Become the Largest American City to Give Universal Basic Income a Try  By NATASHA BACH

Angry Bear and Fair vote don't see Blue Wave

86% of the 2018 Congressional Election Already Determined

Renationalize Ally Financial by Matt Bruenig

Create a Public Bank by Renationalizing Ally Financial by Matt Bruenig

JW Mason on MMT

A Response to Tom Palley by JW Mason

socialist economy and a JG

A JG could be a small part of a successful socialist state.

Say a socialist movement was successful 20 years from now and somehow had a program which agreed with what I think would be successful.

Run the economy hot via monetary policy and Kalecki-Lerner-Vickrey fiscal macro. Wages are negotiated by sectors and unions are strong with strong labor protections.

A sovereign wealth fund would be heavily invested in the economy and provide a social dividend/UBI to everyone regardless of income.

Free healthcare, free housing, mass transit and large investment program in infrastructure and green conversion.

There would still be the hard cases who could apply to a JG where they could get trained and work on projects for their community as they wait for employers to hire them.

There would be a demand for workers given that the economy was run hot with the emphasis on full employment.

Bruenig's podcast and social mobility

Listened to the powercouple Elizabeth and Matt Bruenig's podcast on social mobility, and they made a good point about social mobility being alienating as the successful family member becomes alien to the ones she left behind.

I wonder if this is a dynamic with the red/blue divide in America, with upwardly mobile people becoming meritocratic Democrats and alienating themselves from their more red-state lower income families. Obviously many upwardly mobile low-income Republicans stay conservative even as they become successful. Maybe culturally they stay more attuned to lower-class uneducated red-staters.

The more educated upwardly mobile become liberal while the less educated or more mercenary, less empathetic upwardly mobile remain conservative.

The Socialist Network

The Socialist Network by Gilad Edelman

central bank and return on investments

Doesn't the central bank control the rate of return within limits? For instance Keynes wanted to euthanize the rentiers with zero percent returns. The CB could adjust the rate of return for UBI check investments so it was livable without runaway inflation.

Bruenig on 5% rate of return.

Richard Branson comes out for UBI; Sandwichman on Three-day workweek

Three-day Workweeks and Four-day Weekends by Sandwichman

Dred Scot

On July 4, a consideration of Dred Scot by New Deal Democrat

Noah Smith on Ocasio-Cortez and socialism

Worried about socialism coming to America? by Noah Smith

Krugman on the "radical left" then & now

Radical Democrats are Pretty Reasonable by Krugman (July 3, 2018)

Sanders Over the Edge by Krugman (April 8, 2016)

Kevin Drum: we're all social democrats now

I really don't like Drum.

We Are All Social Democrats Now by Kevin Drum

"It's like Republicans promise economic growth and job creation and so do Democrats. What's the difference? They both promise to be fiscally responsible and pro-business. What's the difference, really, when you think about it?"

Socialism, quesque ç'est?

This is a response to Mike The Mad Biologist on the nature of socialism and the Democratic Party. I pretty much agree with Matt Bruenig on socialism.

Mike:

But on a more serious note, I’m geniunely puzzled as to how this is any different from what used to be called liberal Democrats (before and during the 1990s–and who were mostly purged from power by the Clinton era New Democrats) would propose... So it’s really hard to see how what is currently referred to as socialism would differ from Hubert Humphrey’s economic proposals.

It would be nice to discuss this with a historian of post-war liberalism.

Kennedy did an income tax cut. What else? LBJ did the war on poverty but it was incomplete. They made improvements on Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid. Minimum wage increases. Incrementalism until the 1970s and Reagan. LBJ privatized Fannie and Freddie. FDR had the Second Bill of Rights but it was only minor incrementalism after he was gone. Taxes on the rich came down, yes Medicare and Medicaid were good but socialists were demanded single-payer Medicare-for-All. Better anti-poverty programs. Better housing programs. Better labor laws.

How did liberal Democrats collapse so easily into neoliberalism? From equal outcomes where everyone has a minimum level of dignity (see FDR's second bill of rights) to equal opportunity and education.

Socialism focuses on the necessity of government involvement in the economy and the centrality of the labor movement. It recognizes the hostility of corporations and the rich to economic democracy. Socialists push free public college.

What did Jimmy Carter do? Beef up the EPA? There wasn't a sense of fighting for working people after LBJ.

Bruenig on Medicare for All:

Medicare for All nationalizes the US health insurance industry, bringing it under social ownership and control. It also combines this nationalization with a universal public benefit program that should be very popular and appealing to socialists and non-socialists alike. Thus it is a fairly straightforward democratic socialist strategy as it moves the ball on social ownership through incremental reforms that could win popular democratic support.

Ocasio-Cortez sounds a lot like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders.

TEH SOCIALISMZ!!! AAAIIIEEE!!!! by Mike the Mad Biologist

TEH SOCIALISMZ!!! AAAIIIEEE!!!! by Mike the Mad Biologist

Ocasio-Cortez and dignity

How Will Alexandria Ocasio's Big Win Manifest Itself Inside And Outside The Democratic Party? by DownWithTyranny

America has long-championed individualism as the foundation of our democracy and the free market economy. Such values form not only the bedrock of conservativism, but also the pillars of the post-World War II global order, which is under assault from a backlash against globalization and the rise of populist nationalism, both here and abroad. 

By highlighting individual dignity and the dignity of our neighbors, Ocasio-Cortez is advancing a new social value-- one which sees the individual as both a solitary being with certain inalienable rights and as a citizen and member of society. This duality could de-polarize American politics by introducing 21st century social values into today’s political discourse while upholding long-held individualist values. 

The tension between individualist and communitarian values has fostered binary choices between American conservatives and liberals, the market and the state, right versus left, red versus blue, and “us” versus “them.” This dichotomy assumes a left to right continuum in which compromise in the middle is the modality for public choice. The idea of binary choices on the spectrum from left to right is threatening our democracy. 

...What is at issue and more starkly evident in the 21st century is that the individual is vividly embedded in the social fabric and is connected with neighbors, near and far. This web of engagements and entanglements in our globalized era invites a new outlook, one that embraces complexity, contradiction, and conflicting viewpoints. Those with such open mindsets can adopt blended mixes of contrarian perspectives to reach inclusive agreements about the way forward rather than simplistic middle ground compromises. 

The key is that Ocasio-Cortez founds her formulation on both the idea of the individual and social responsibility. 

The truth is that individualist values of liberty, property rights, freedom and sovereignty worked well in the 20th century as the foundations of competition, free markets, democracy and the nation-state. Yet today, well into the 21st century, globalization in the broadest sense has penetrated and transformed our individual lives in ways that make clear our inter-connectedness. 

Today, we need to add to these bedrock American principles new values that embody and honor this connectivity, including by upholding respect for others, fairness for all, trust in one another and a sense of personal (and mutual) responsibility. Adding these social values to the American political discourse would help prioritize actions that could achieve greater social mobility, public access, economic security, and systemic sustainability. 

These actions, which would seek blended, mixed economy, pluralistic approaches, could lead to better social outcomes from the market economy, greater social cohesion, more inclusive markets, less polarization, and greater effectiveness of policies, politics, and governance. These would restore confidence in markets, faith in institutions, and trust in government. 

Thank you, Ocasio-Cortez for bringing America face-to-face with the new understanding we need and the new narrative required to transform American politics for the 21st century.

Cortez the Killer

Matt Bruenig on democratic socialism

Musings on the Meaning of Democratic Socialism by Matt Bruenig

Briahna Gray on Ocasio-Cortez

There's an Easy Answer to Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Won: Socialism by Briahna Gray

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Jeff Stein on DSA:

DSA has certainly been a beneficiary of the Dirtbag Left and its iconoclastic rage; Chapo Trap House frequently directs its guests to support the socialist organization, and its founders are in Chicago for the DSA convention. Mother Jones called the podcast a “gateway drug” for democratic socialism, and DSA’s leaders recognize that’s correct. Even if DSA won’t adopt Chapo’s insult-humor shtick in its official platform, it’s hard to imagine that some of its beliefs won’t seep in some way into the organization through new membership. 

Chapo’s “dirtbag” politics have alarmed other left-leaning writers. In an essay for the New Republic, Jeet Heer warned against what he called its “dominance politics” as counterproductive to building a coalition with center-left Democrats.

But in an interview last year, Chapo Trap House co-host Matt Christman countered that Donald Trump had captured the “transgressive thrill of defying the cultural expectations of the elite,” and that the left would be wise to reclaim it. Incisive put-down humor, he suggested, isn’t just useful for amassing a podcast following; it could also be helpful to an ascendant left-wing politics. 

“The gonad element of politics is now totally owned by the right. All the left has now is charts and data. You cannot motivate people with charts and data and lecturing,” Christman said. “If we’re going to win, we cannot allow [right-wing provocateur] Milo Yiannopoulos and all of these carnival-barking Nazis to have all of the fucking fun.”

After Janus

Labor’s Choice After Janus by Chris Maisano

full employment and rising productivity

Robots? TraininRobots? Training? Factories Tackle the Productivity Puzzleg? Factories Tackle the Productivity Puzzle by Ben Casselman

destroy the right

Marshall Steinbaum

The first question I would ask any 2020 Dem primary candidate is “what is your plan for the destruction of the conservative movement?”

the Left,Trump and Republicans

George Will says to vote Democratic

Osita Nwanevu:

These folks are actually proud that they don't know how to do politics. "Mueller will save us." "Good Republicans will save us." "A recession (!) will save us." 

What will save you are a long-term electoral strategy and structural reforms aimed at politically dismantling the GOP. 

Another part of the package is passing policies that have significant, positive, & easily comprehensible impacts on people's lives when Dems are in power. Free stuff's great. People like free stuff. You "pay" for it by raising taxes on the wealthy & corps, which people also like

Listened to Chapo which was thought-provoking.

How do you sideline the 30 percent who are Trump supporters?

Clean house in the Democratic Party. We need a strong socialist movement which should include a resurgent labor movement and poor people's movement.

Make it so the white nationalists/anti-immigrants no longer have a veto.

flattening yield curve

Who’s Afraid of a Flattening Yield Curve? by David Glasner

Dillow on growth

THE INFINITE DESIRE FOR GROWTH: A REVIEW by Chris Dillow

productivity and anti-immigration/ anti-trade

You keep productivity up by maintaining real full employment.

Bob Allen's new "poverty machine" and its implications by Branko Milanovic

Per Martin Sandbu (paywalled) at the Financial Times, Italy has slow productivity growth. This has led to anti-immigration and xenophobic-populist parties succeeding. Sandbu points out the way to increase productivity is to maintain full employment and close the output gap, not by paying workers less. 

Germany has become more competitive by paying workers less. Krugman doesn't seem to emphasize this and doesn't seem to emphasize Sandu's story. Italy needs better fiscal policy since it can't do a devaluation. 

Better fiscal policy can be a substitute for a devaluation. 

Labour UK wants the central bank (Bank of England) to focus on productivity growth. This would entail a dialogue with fiscal policy makers since they would need to pull their weight.

Simon Wren-Lewis doesn't like this.

A new mandate for monetary policy by Simon Wren-Lewis.

flattening yield curve

The Treasury Yield Curve Blues by David Beckworth

TV

C.B. Strike is interesting with Tom Burke and his assistant Holliday Grainger. Sherlock: "conventional is the enemy of interesting." Stargate Atlantis's John Sheppard: "42, the ultimate answer to the great question of life, universe and everything." (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, and Jackie Robinson's number.)

Labour monetary policy reforms

Labour pledges to boost Bank of England role with productivity target by Jim Pickard and Chris Giles 

Labour has said it will set the Bank of England a new 3 per cent target for productivity growth but refused to specify when this should be achieved.

John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, will on Wednesday launch Labour’s final report on the UK’s financial system. 

Written by Graham Turner, an economist at GFC Economics, the report will make a series of recommendations, including that the BoE should move to Birmingham. 

But its most eye-catching proposal is that the central bank should target productivity “to better help drive economic growth”. The bank’s mandate would be expanded to include a 3 per cent productivity growth target. 

“The Bank of England and government should sign an accord at the start of the next government, detailing how each will work towards achieving this 3 per cent target,” the party said. “The Bank of England will be required to report, after each Budget, on the government’s plans in light of this 3 per cent target.” 

However, the party was unable to explain whether the target would cover a period of months or years or even decades. “It is open for consultation,” it said. 

 The report, called Financing Investment, highlights Britain’s poor rate of productivity growth and emphasises the low level of investment into manufacturing, ICT and other critical sectors. 

Its other recommendations, some of which have been previously announced, include setting up a Strategic Investment Board; using RBS, the publicly-owned bank, to deliver more lending to small companies; and establishing an applied sciences investment fund to deliver state funding to research and development.

Raising productivity growth is a key aim of all political parties because increasing each worker’s output would help raise the national growth rate, increase incomes and bring more tax revenues into the Treasury. 

Productivity growth has never exceeded 3 per cent a year in Britain. Over the past decade it has increased by just 0.2 per cent a year. 

Last November, the Office for Budget Responsibility calculated a “strong productivity” scenario in which Britain’s public finances would move into surplus by 2022 if annual productivity growth improved to 2 per cent a year by the early 2020s. 

In the same month, Philip Hammond, chancellor, admitted in the Budget that productivity growth had been “stubbornly flat” for years. 

However, one of the few aspects all the BoE’s policymakers agree on is that central banks only have the ability to smooth booms and busts in the economy, and have no power over the underlying productivity growth rate. The BoE estimates the likely growth of productivity and sets interest rates on that basis. 

Last autumn, Mark Carney, BoE governor, criticised those who wanted the central bank to solve problems such as productivity. The BoE “cannot deliver lasting prosperity and it cannot solve broader societal challenges,” he said, adding that calls for it to solve poor UK productivity “confuse independence with omnipotence”. 

The BoE refused to comment. 

Simon Clarke, a Tory MP, said: “Labour’s refusal to put a timeframe on their target shows their attempt to meddle with the Bank of England’s independence is already unravelling.”

Bernanke on QE at AEI

Lessons learned from 10 years of quantitative easing (video, June 7, 2018)

accomplices

Paul Krugman:

Sorry, Mr. Donohue, this IS who you are. People like you made a deal with racists so you could get deregulation and tax cuts. Every step you took was leading to this moment.

John Harwood:

new from US Chamber President Tom Donohue: “Thousands of children are being forcibly removed from their parents by our government. There is no other way to say it, this is not who we are and it must end now”

Big Business and old-timey conservatives famously made a deal with Nazis against the Communist and SocDem left in Germany. Didn't turn out well.

I agree with Krugman, but I sort of feel this way about liberals and neoliberals. Their incrementalism, minor-tinkering and focus on technocrats instead of mass mobilization are partly complicity in the situation we find ourselves in. They're attacks on the Left and socialists certainly don't help things.

They focus on a small number of 3rd party types who refuse to support Democrats, but to me those people are numerically insignificant compared to non-voters and to working class and middle class voters who are voting against their interests.

Center left parties have moved towards the right and have lost support b/c of it, not just in the US but in Europe.

By not delivering a robust, prosperous economy, certain elites have enabled Trumpism.

Milanovic: Bob Allen's new "poverty machine" and its implications

Bob Allen's new "poverty machine" and its implications by Branko Milanovic

But, intriguingly, Allen’s work in this area has also implications for his work in another area: the origins of the Industrial Revolution. As is well-known, Bob is the originator of the hypothesis of High Wage Economy (HWE), an argument that the Industrial Revolution was driven by high cost of labor in England (and low cost of energy) which made the substitution of labor by capital profitable. This was most famously seen in the evolution of the welfare ratios (nominal wages divided by the cost of the subsistence basket) for North-West Europe vs. Italy vs. China/India. While all three welfare ratios were about equal in the 15th century, they diverged afterwards with North European being much higher and China/India’s welfare rations plummeting. Allen saw in that divergence the origin (and not the effect) of the Industrial Revolution.

Now, with the poverty lines that are subscripted for place and time, what we see to be a welfare ratio from the worker’s perspective is no longer the same thing as the cost of that worker to a capitalist. The new methodology introduces a wedge between what is the worker's welfare and what is the cost of labor for the capitalist. This is most obviously seen in Allen’s former and new results for Russia. With the same basket across all countries (the earlier approach) Russian welfare ratio during most of the 19th century was 2; with a climate/country specific baskets, the welfare ratio is around 1 (that is, is much lower because of high requirements imposed by a cold climate).

But note that the cost of that worker to a Russian capitalist is still twice as high as the cost of an equivalent worker (at the same subsistence) in India. When we now draw the welfare ratios using Allen’s new methodology, we have to explicitly state that they reflect welfare ratios from the worker’s perspective, not the cost of labor. The implication of this wedge is that, following Allen’s own HWE hypothesis, introduction of machines is --everything else being the same—more profitable in the North than in the South.

If that’s the case, then a geographically-determined explanation for the Industrial Revolution suddenly looks more plausible than before. So, I thought, perhaps one (unintended) effect of Bob’s new and much improved methodology is to help the geographical explanations for the rise of the West.

The Mask It Wears by Pankaj Mishra - human rights, democracy, capitalism and socialism

The Mask It Wears by Pankaj Mishra

Chapo Trap House radicalized

How LinkedIn turned this “Failmom” into a socialist by Lori Barrett

Annie Lowrey has new UBI book

Give People Money Q & A

J.W. Mason on Neoliberalism

The Market Police by J.W. Mason

Obama — Just Too Good for Us - Dowd

Obama — Just Too Good for Us by Maureen Dowd

Populism

Democracy Without the People by THEA RIOFRANCOS

Stereolab - Mountain

central bank accounts for everyone

Central banks should consider offering accounts to everyone

h/t Steve Randy Waldman

Neil Irwin on the Marx ratio

Is Capital or Labor Winning at Your Favorite Company? Introducing the Marx Ratio by Neil Irwin

America’s Version of Capitalism Is Incompatible With Democracy

America’s Version of Capitalism Is Incompatible With Democracy by Eric Levitz

Stereolab - Les Yper Sound

Normcore

Normcore by Jedediah Purdy

Italy's new government

Italy’s Biggest Problem: The Euro by Matthew C. Klein