Sourcing critiques of a Job Guarantee

Submitted by Is There No Al… on May 20, 2019

Having trouble finding many critiques of the Job Guarantee proposals coming out a lot recently, even on libcom. Was wondering if anyone had links to any relevant essays/articles, on libcom or elsewhere?

Mike Harman

5 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Mike Harman on May 20, 2019

A lot of the 'jobs guarantee' stuff has been taken over by 'Green New Deal' - which includes a massive job creation strategy. https://communemag.com/between-the-devil-and-the-green-new-deal/ and https://www.viewpointmag.com/2019/05/16/plan-mood-battlefield-reflections-on-the-green-new-deal/ are two recent responses to the GND.

spacious

5 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by spacious on May 21, 2019

Yeah, I'm posting links to interesting stuff about the different types of climate change-related policies and anti-capitalist and social movement strategies to this thread:

http://libcom.org/forums/general/climate-change-war-effort-02022019

I haven't come across much that centers the job guarantee as a point of criticism or analysis, but I'm hoping that more will be written on it and also on the prospects of worktime reduction in relation to emission reduction and reducing the overall destructiveness of economic activity. A job guarantee and a really substantial worktime reduction wouldn't be a bad element of a transitional program, I think. Some posts further up in that thread go into that a little.

Is There No Al…

5 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Is There No Al… on May 22, 2019

Yes Mike, I've seen both of those essays previously, however they barely (if at all) critically engage with the political economic dynamics of a potential Job Guarantee. It seems there is a serious dearth of radical, communist critique on the specific subject.

Ugg

5 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Ugg on August 7, 2019

The Marxist economist Michael Roberts has a blog post criticizing the job guarantee program. It's part 3 of a series of blog posts on MMT. Here is a link.

One of the main criticisms is that the pay for these jobs will be very low. The rest of the article criticizes the problems of using MMT to pay for this program.

Here are links to part 1 and part 2 of his posts on MMT.

This post is slightly related to the job guarantee but is mostly just criticizing MMT being used to fund the Green New Deal.