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BOONDOGGLING AND LEAF-RAKING...by Bill Mitchell
There was a story in The Australian newspaper today entitled RED schemes are good written by a former minister in the Whitlam government in the early 1970s. He was extolling the virtues of the old Regional Employment Development scheme, which was a public works direct job creation scheme. He was suggesting such schemes may again find favour as the recession deepens. The RED scheme was a less generous version of the Job Guarantee and suffered as a result of its modesty. It was never based on any fundamental understanding of a modern monetary economy as as such was always a “defensive” program. Defending itself continually from the conservative, soon-to-be, neo-liberal critics. That made me recall my favourite conservative “put down” term – boondoggling and raking – which is used whenever direct public job creation is mentioned as a possibility. Then I recalled a letter that was written by the previous Federal Employment Minister explaining in 2004 why my Job Guarantee proposal was a crock. One thing followed another …
Barry Cohen, the author of the RED scheme story makes a telling point in relation to public perceptions of direct job creation.
The media finds billion-dollar national infrastructure projects – roads, rail, ports – perfectly acceptable but become agitated by projects that improve the lives of ordinary citizens. The big projects get the tick with the barest scrutiny while community halls, youth centres, sports facilities and libraries are ridiculed as outrageous examples of pork-barrelling.
He also says that the major weaknesses of the scheme was that it was rushed in to cope with the rapid rise in unemployment in 2004-05. The best time to bring in a Job Guarantee scheme is when the labour market is strong to bed down all the operational issues. Unfortunately, for reasons you will learn below, the previous Government failed to do that.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=1644
There was a story in The Australian newspaper today entitled RED schemes are good written by a former minister in the Whitlam government in the early 1970s. He was extolling the virtues of the old Regional Employment Development scheme, which was a public works direct job creation scheme. He was suggesting such schemes may again find favour as the recession deepens. The RED scheme was a less generous version of the Job Guarantee and suffered as a result of its modesty. It was never based on any fundamental understanding of a modern monetary economy as as such was always a “defensive” program. Defending itself continually from the conservative, soon-to-be, neo-liberal critics. That made me recall my favourite conservative “put down” term – boondoggling and raking – which is used whenever direct public job creation is mentioned as a possibility. Then I recalled a letter that was written by the previous Federal Employment Minister explaining in 2004 why my Job Guarantee proposal was a crock. One thing followed another …
Barry Cohen, the author of the RED scheme story makes a telling point in relation to public perceptions of direct job creation.
The media finds billion-dollar national infrastructure projects – roads, rail, ports – perfectly acceptable but become agitated by projects that improve the lives of ordinary citizens. The big projects get the tick with the barest scrutiny while community halls, youth centres, sports facilities and libraries are ridiculed as outrageous examples of pork-barrelling.
He also says that the major weaknesses of the scheme was that it was rushed in to cope with the rapid rise in unemployment in 2004-05. The best time to bring in a Job Guarantee scheme is when the labour market is strong to bed down all the operational issues. Unfortunately, for reasons you will learn below, the previous Government failed to do that.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=1644
