The Path to Full Employment

[Crewleader]

December 2, 2009

An Interview with Marshall Auerback

The Path to Full Employment

By MIKE WHITNEY

Marshall Auerback is a Fellow at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. He has some 28 years experience in the investment management business, serving as a global portfolio strategist. Mr Auerback graduated magna cum laude in English & Philosophy from Queen’s University in 1981 and received a law degree from Corpus Christi College, Oxford University in 1983. He has contributed several articles to CounterPunch.

Mike Whitney: In a recent article on New Deal 2.0, you offered an practical solution to growing unemployment: Make government the "Employer of Last Resort". How would this work and who would be included? What effect would this have on the economy?

Marshall Auerback: What I am advocating would create something close to a full employment: a universal job guarantee available through the thick and thin of the business cycle. The federal government would ensure a job offer to anyone ready and willing to work, at the established program compensation level (including wages and a healthy benefits package). To keep it simple, the program wage could be set at the current federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour) to minimize wage disruption, and then adjusted periodically as that is raised. The key is to get it entrenched as a permanent feature of government.

It would not be introducing another element of intrusive bureaucracy into our economy, but simply better utilizing the existing stock of unemployed...Social spending on the unemployed prevents aggregate demand from collapsing into a depression-like state, but little is done to enhance future growth and demand, which can be done by providing them with employment, greater education and higher skill levels.

The usual benefits would be provided, including vacation and sick leave, and contributions to Social Security. Although Hyman Minsky called this a "Government as Employer of Last Resort" idea, the phrase might be too emotive for some (many in this country have a visceral hatred of government), so let's call it Job Guarantee (JG) program or an Employment Guarantee Act.

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney12022009.html

[midnight]

1. Employment like health care vital to national security..... Good ideas...

But why minimum wage?

[valerief]

2. Cheaper than jailing everyone and selling their services to industry, I guess.

Soon all jobs will be via govt guarantee.

Well, unless those govt guarantee jobs provided a LIVING WAGE. Minimum wage is a joke.

[proudohioan]

3. Minimum wage?????

Been there, done that! What a joke! If that's the best that they can do, thanx, but no thanx!