Your Government Owes You a Job

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/article/179476/your-government-owes-you-job?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign


Involuntary unemployment is barbaric. In the wealthiest country in history, almost 30 million people wish they had full-time work. But, as always, there aren’t enough jobs. And because economic security requires decent work, it’s unsurprising that 50 million people are poverty-stricken and 16 million children are hungry.

This is a disgrace and an economic error: the US government can easily afford a Job guarantee (JG) program, becoming our employer of last resort.

A right to a job may sound outlandish, but it’s common sense. You need dollars to eat, and unless you steal the dollars, you generally have to earn them. If the government wants to protect property with cops, courts, and prisons, issue a single, common currency, and tax and fine us in it, it should at least guarantee we can work for our own dollars. Politicians ramble about equality of opportunity and the dignity of work, but to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we need boots. And lest our boots stomp each other’s necks in senseless competition for too few jobs, we need a job guarantee.

A job guarantee isn’t that radical. Thomas Paine proposed one in 1791. In 1944, FDR included the right to a living wage job in his Second Bill of Rights and his Republican opponent promised state-ensured employment. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrined the right to work and philosophers Rawls and Dewey advocated government provide enough work. LBJ deliberated a JG and Martin Luther King Jr., demanded one.

[mattclearing]

1. I absolutely agree. Unfortunately people have to seriously adjust their thinking to accept this.

The right to employment is so antithetical to modern ideas regarding capitalism as to make it seem alien and radical, despite its rather common-sense premise, which is that when all else fails, it's cheaper for government to employ people than to police them as they fight over scraps and fall through the cracks of society.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Yes, this was one of the main principles of the postwar consensus in the UK..

which was destroyed by Maggie Thatcher et al.

It's not true that there is no work to do due to technology. We can all see, every day, areas where work needs to be done and is not being done.

Also, there is the ironic situation where some people are working long hours that are harming their health and family life, while others are unemployed. It would be better for everyone to be working somewhat shorter hours.

Moreover, the problem is not just unemployment as such, but insecure employment. An ever-increasing number of people are in non-tenured jobs where they have no security and can be dismissed at any time; the extreme in the UK is the abuse of so-called 'zero-hours contracts'. Unfortunately, the post-Thatcherites have the implicit and often explicit attitude that job insecurity improves performance; that people will not be productive unless they are living in fear of unemployment. Obviously, people deserve to be sacked if they really don't do their jobs; but it's gone way beyond that to produce a culture of fear, which is not only bad for the individual, but often inhibits creativity, flexibility and plain common-sense.

[Enthusiast]

4. +1!

Thank you for sharing the unusual perspective. I think of Maggie Thatcher as your Reagan equivalent.

[hfojvt]

10. and you didn't mention Ruskin either

sic transit gloria mundi

But I am reminded of the late 1990s. Clinton and others were calling for more people to volunteer. There was a story on it on CNN or something at my parents' house.

And I said something like "yeah, they used to pay people to do this stuff, and they know it still needs to be done and they want people to do it for free".

And then Ted Kennedy was quoted saying "We used to pay people to do this work ..." essentially what I had just said, and I was kinda yelling at the TV "THANK YOU, TED KENNEDY!!"

But thanks to the Republican recession and Republican philosophies which are almost unchallenged in the media, state and local governments have CUT something like 500,000 jobs since Obama took office.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. We need another WPA....

The last one built the Supreme Court building so I'd like to see those Conservative Clowns claim it's unconstitutional.

[Enthusiast]

5. It's heartbreaking how far this nation has fallen

under right wing control.

The Conservative Clowns® can make any claim, no matter how outrageous, yet never be challenged in the media. Just consider Scalia's recent assertions for example.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

14. The media was infiltrated long ago by the Right....

They blamed the media for the fall of Nixon and the loss of the Vietnam War.

(It couldn't be that Nixon was a crook and Vietnam was a pack of lies)

They figured that would never happen again if the media was in their pocket so they systematically took over the big media and gradually swallowed up the smaller ones under media consolidation like any monopoly does. Iraq showcased their success as their lies were reported as fact.

You have to remember, prior to Obama you had the likes of Tucker Carlson saying the latest bin Laden tape sounded like the same things being said by Liberals thus PROVING Liberals were working with the terrorists. Not intentionally, but in the same "useful idiots" way they did back during the Cold War.

[Enthusiast]

16. That is also my understanding.

But I often wonder how Vietnam would be better off than they are now, if we had "won". And how would the US be better off? It was a mistake all the way, imho.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

18. A line flashes by in the movie "Forrest Gump"...

"After we win this war and we take over everything..."

That was the entire attitude from the Right Wing even though they denied it.

Just like they could wear a T-shirt reading, "Kick their ass and take their gas" while denying Iraq was about oil.

[Enthusiast]

19. Iraq was about oil, war profiteering and making Bush the Lesser a war president.

Then he could strut around like a little bad ass. I think the right actually believed they could massage Bush into some sort of right wing 1% version of FDR.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

22. Iraq was also about pointing to the Democrats as not only weak on national security but TRAITORS....

Things got so bad with Republicans dividing America that there were long term friendships and even marriages that broke up.

I've had a few return from those days come back and apologize to me. There are still a few that refuse to admit they were wrong.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

12. I was about to say the same thing but backed out of the posting page to see if anyone

had already mentioned the WPA.

The government should be hiring every unemployed, able-bodied man and woman to build solar power plants and a new smart grid that carries internet along with the electricity.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. Also geothermal at the Yellowstone Supervolcano....

Who knows? If we grab all of that heat it might not blow after all.

[Enthusiast]

20. Geothermal at Yellowstone could even be done outside the eyes of the public.

If there was a will. But there is too much easy profit in fossil fuel.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

21. The way they generate power at a plant is to boil water into steam to drive a turbine....

What could be cheaper for a power company than to dig for natural steam?

Seriously. There's even a big lake already there. A few cooling towers and they could be pumping water down bore holes and getting free steam in abundance.

[Shandris]

6. I think a right to an -income- and a recategorization of what constitutes...

...proper 'work' is more called-for than simply greasing the wheels of capitalism even more just so people can eat. There aren't enough jobs as it is now, and there will be 40-50% less of them in the not-so-distant future as it is. Isn't it about time that we recognize authors, mothers, grandparents, poets, sculptors, community volunteers, and other 'non-standard' workers' contributions as just as valuable as the CEO, the policeman, or the grocer?

I think it is.

[Laelth]

7. Hear, hear! k&r

FDR argued the same when proposing his "Second Bill of Rights:"

Roosevelt's remedy was to declare an "economic bill of rights" which would guarantee eight specific rights:

Employment, with a living wage
Food, clothing and leisure
Farmers' rights to a fair income
Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
Housing
Medical care
Social security
Education

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights

It was a good idea then, and it's a good idea now. Our oligarchs, of course, disagree.

-Laelth

[hfojvt]

8. too bad they don't mention Ruskin

He spells it out in his preface to "Unto this last" (or maybe it was another title, I cannot get my hands on the book right now, but I was reading it about a year ago and that passage just gobsmacked me).

I wish I could quote it or even nail down which book it was, but naturally, right now I cannot find the book.

The old saw is - where do you hide a tree?

The answer is, in a forest.

In the same way, you can all too easily hide a book in my house/library.

[socialist_n_TN]

9. I agree. That's why I'm tired of talking about a "minimum" wage......

I don't care how high the minimum wage is if there are no jobs to be filled. I want to talk about a living wage based on the costs of living in each area, along with job sharing AT FULL PAY (that living wage I spoke of earlier) until everybody that wants a job HAS a job.

And if capitalism can't supply those jobs, then government should do so.

[Octafish]

11. It's not like there isn't anything to do.

From health care to education to construction to energy to justice...

[rrneck]

15. The government owes the populace a way to contribute human capital for the benefit of all.

Creating imaginary wealth from imaginary productivity based on imaginary profits is not contributing human capital. It's feeding off it.

[jwirr]

17. And for all those rw religious zealots -Calvin said that when there was not work the government

should provide it. If I remember correctly the was in The Protestant Work Ethic.