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LABOUR'S JOB GUARANTEE by Philip Pilkington 2013
This week we have seen two interventions from Labour that mirror the current government's taste for austerity: Ed Miliband's commitment to copying the coalition's benefits cap; and shadow chancellor Ed Balls's call for "iron discipline" with regard to the fiscal deficit. This seems like a far cry from January, when Balls advocated a jobs guarantee programme to help the long-term unemployed get back to work. Yet with interest rates on government debt still at record lows, a jobs guarantee programme is exactly what Britain needs. And it's hardly an idea without foundation either.
The Levy Institute at Bard College recently published a volume of the economist Hyman Minsky's writings on the idea of a job guarantee. Minsky, who is famous for his prescient theories about financial market fragility in capitalist economies, recognised long ago that the welfare state that grew up in many western countries after the second world war was completely incapable of tackling the problems it was supposed to address. The hidden assumption lying behind the conception of the welfare state was that full employment was a given – everyone who wanted work could find it.
Sadly the reality is quite different.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/labour-jobs-guarantee
MInKY AND THE JOB GUARANTEE by L. Randall Wray
Philip rightly connects Minsky’s better-known concerns about instability to his jobs program. Reaching full employment through the employer of last resort program would also enhance financial and economic stability.
http://archive.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/06/08/minsky-and-the-job-guarantee/
This week we have seen two interventions from Labour that mirror the current government's taste for austerity: Ed Miliband's commitment to copying the coalition's benefits cap; and shadow chancellor Ed Balls's call for "iron discipline" with regard to the fiscal deficit. This seems like a far cry from January, when Balls advocated a jobs guarantee programme to help the long-term unemployed get back to work. Yet with interest rates on government debt still at record lows, a jobs guarantee programme is exactly what Britain needs. And it's hardly an idea without foundation either.
The Levy Institute at Bard College recently published a volume of the economist Hyman Minsky's writings on the idea of a job guarantee. Minsky, who is famous for his prescient theories about financial market fragility in capitalist economies, recognised long ago that the welfare state that grew up in many western countries after the second world war was completely incapable of tackling the problems it was supposed to address. The hidden assumption lying behind the conception of the welfare state was that full employment was a given – everyone who wanted work could find it.
Sadly the reality is quite different.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/labour-jobs-guarantee
MInKY AND THE JOB GUARANTEE by L. Randall Wray
Philip rightly connects Minsky’s better-known concerns about instability to his jobs program. Reaching full employment through the employer of last resort program would also enhance financial and economic stability.
http://archive.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/06/08/minsky-and-the-job-guarantee/
