Patricia Pino has written a thoughtful and detailed response to my recent posts on modern monetary theory (MMT) and the Job Guarantee (JG), which I shared this morning. I welcome that. These are issues that deserve serious engagement, not sloganising. And if there is one thing that matters in political economy right now, it is that we are willing to interrogate our own assumptions as rigorously as we challenge those of others.
What follows is my response.
Patricia's core claim is straightforward. She has suggested that the Job Guarantee is not an optional add-on to Modern Monetary Theory, but a logical necessity arising from it. The argument is that if the state creates the obligation to pay tax in its own currency, it must also guarantee access to the means of earning that currency. Otherwise, it is said, the state is imposing an obligation without providing the means to meet it.
That is an elegant argument. It is also, in my opinion, fundamentally flawed.
First, it assumes that paid employment is the only legitimate means for people to access the currency needed to settle tax obligations. That is not true. There is an inherent problem in this claim: it implies people must work, which is clearly not always possible, and the assumption has inherent within it an implication of compulsion which those promoting it deny, but which I think would be embraced by anyone who might propose it politically. There is also a conflict in here. The implicit assumption is that money is created by work, which must be created to let taxes be paid. MMT makes it quite clear that this is wrong: money is created by government spending, and taxes are only required to recover it. Patricia's argument for the JG appears to contradict this core MMT understanding.
Second, the state already provides income through multiple channels other than work, including pensions, social security, and various kinds of transfers, including interest payments. There is no inherent requirement within a fiat monetary system that income must be mediated through a job. To suggest otherwise is to conflate monetary design with labour market structure.
Third, the JG presumes that unemployment is a deliberate policy tool embedded within macroeconomic management. That may be true in an economy embracing NAIRU (Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment) orthodoxy. It is not a necessary feature of a well-managed economy. The objective of any proper fiscal policy (whether embracing MMT or not) should be to eliminate involuntary unemployment through appropriate fiscal design. That is not the same thing as creating a permanent institutional mechanism to absorb it, when a proper fiscal policy should ensure it does not exist, which a proper understanding of MMT should facilitate.
Fourth, it assumes that the only credible way to secure full employment is via a standing labour buffer administered by the state, which is what the JG would create. That is precisely the point at issue. The JG cannot be assumed as a premise in order to prove itself as a conclusion.
So I do not accept that the Job Guarantee is intrinsic to MMT. It is a policy preference. It may be a sincerely held one. But it is not logically unavoidable.
Let me also make this key point. In my opinion, and as a matter of fact, a government that did not subscribe to the MMT view of how money works within an economy could, nonetheless, decide to offer a job guarantee as part of its social security programme, as a consequence seeking to maximise employment, reduce benefits paid, and increase its tax revenues, whilst maintaining a workforce that does not suffer the damaging psychological consequences of unemployment. It would, in fact, be an entirely reasonable thing for any government that cares about the population that it serves to do this if it thought that its own fiscal policies could not deliver full employment, although I would suggest that it should revise those fiscal policies instead. I think that the fact that this possibility exists is unarguable. As a result, it necessarily follows that there is no intrinsic link between MMT and the job guarantee; no other conclusion is possible.
I would also stress that a job guarantee delivered in this way by a government that did not subscribe to the ideas implicit in MMT on fiscal policy management could be accommodated within a neoliberal framework that embraced fiscal rules, existing monetary policy management systems, and similar approaches. Again, this has to be true, because those frameworks can at present accommodate payments using a social security system to maintain those who are made unemployed through no fault of their own within the existing economy and, as the proponents of the job guarantee within MMT make clear, inclusion in that programme would always be voluntary, would be an alternative to the payment of benefits, and would therefore necessarily not displace the existing social security system, which is going to be retained as a result within any economic system.
My point, then, is simple: MMT does what it says on the tin. It describes how money works in a modern economy; that is it. Let us not pretend otherwise. Winning the battle to achieve credibility for the facts around that system is a big enough task for us to take on. Latching onto this claim, something which is a policy proposal that it makes possible, but which, as I have demonstrated, is not in any way integral to it, and which could be adopted and implemented by a government, makes the likelihood of MMT adoption very much harder, to the point of impossibility.
Let me then turn to the specific claims made in its defence.
On administration, it is argued that complexity is not a decisive objection. We run the NHS. We run education. Therefore, we can run a Job Guarantee. That analogy is superficially appealing. It is also misleading. The NHS delivers defined services within professional standards, with clear objectives and established institutional structures. The Job Guarantee, by contrast, requires the continuous creation of new work, necessarily tailored to individuals (or they would not undertake it unless compelled to do so) whose circumstances are constantly changing, in ways that must avoid displacement of existing employment, while also being meaningful, productive, and socially valuable.
That is not the same type of problem. It is a qualitatively different one. The issue is not simply scale. It is the nature of the task. Designing and sustaining an ever-evolving set of roles for potentially millions of people is not comparable to delivering healthcare or education. It is an open-ended, indeterminate administrative challenge, and that matters.
Next, regarding inflation, it is suggested that the Job Guarantee provides a nominal anchor through a fixed wage floor, which is already provided by the minimum wage. Again, that is an elegant idea. But it assumes that labour markets behave in a way that allows such an anchor to operate effectively across a highly differentiated economy when the modern economy is not a single labour market. It is a complex set of interlocking markets, with different skill levels, bargaining structures, sectoral dynamics, and constraints. A single wage floor set by a JG could not, in practice, anchor this system as some MMT theory suggests. And, as Patricia acknowledges, much inflation (such as that now coming our way) arises from factors entirely unrelated to wages, such as energy price and supply shocks, market power, and geopolitical disruption. A job guarantee does not address those. Nor does it provide a credible mechanism for managing them.
On stigma and labour market position, it is argued that being in work, any work, is better than being unemployed. That might be true. But it is not the relevant comparison. The question is not whether a job guarantee is better than unemployment. It is whether it is the best way to eliminate unemployment in the first place. If we accept a Job Guarantee as a permanent feature of the economy, we are, in effect, institutionalising a secondary labour market. We are saying that there will always be a group of people whose employment is not secured through the primary dynamics of the economy, but through a fallback scheme. That has consequences. It risks entrenching a hierarchy of work, with all the social and economic implications that follow, which I have previously discussed.
On fiscal policy, Patricia suggests that investment and industrial strategy cannot guarantee that every individual will be matched to employment. That is correct. But it, again, misses the point. The objective of fiscal policy is not to match every individual to a specific job at every moment in time. It is to create the conditions in which sufficient demand exists to make full employment possible. That requires sustained investment, active industrial policy, regional development, skills provision, and social support. It requires the state to take responsibility for the level and composition of economic activity. What it does not require is the creation of a permanent, parallel employment system to mop up the consequences of failure elsewhere.
And that brings me to what I think is the real point of disagreement. It is suggested that my approach is “project-led” whilst the Job Guarantee is “person-led”. I do not accept that characterisation.
My approach begins with people. It begins with the recognition that everyone who wants to work should be able to do so in a job that is properly paid, secure, and socially valued. It then asks what economic structures are required to make that possible.
The Job Guarantee begins with a different premise. It assumes that the economy will not, and perhaps cannot, deliver that outcome. It therefore creates a residual mechanism to ensure that no one is left entirely excluded. That is a fundamentally different ambition.
Finally, there is the question of meaning, and here my correspondent invokes Viktor Frankl, as I had done previously. This matters because work is not just about income. It is about identity, recognition, purpose, and, most of all, meaning.
The claim is that the Job Guarantee can confer legitimacy on socially useful activity that is currently unrecognised. That may be true in some cases. But we should be cautious. Meaning in work is not created simply by institutional recognition. It is shaped by social context, by relationships, by the perception of value, and by the integration of that work into the wider economy. There is a risk that work created within a job guarantee framework might be seen, by participants and others, as something different. As something less. That is not inevitable. But nor can it be dismissed as I think the probability is high.
So where does this leave us? Let me suggest three conclusions.
First, the Job Guarantee is not a necessary implication of MMT. It is one possible policy response to unemployment, but it is not the only one.
Second, the case for it rests on assumptions about administration, inflation, and labour market dynamics that are, at best, unproven at scale in an economy like the UK's and which are, at worst, problematic.
Third, and most importantly, it risks lowering our ambition. Instead of asking how we create an economy that delivers full, meaningful employment for all, it asks how we manage the failure to do so. I think we should aim higher than that. The real task is not to design a better buffer stock of labour. It is to eliminate the need for one. That means using the full capacity of the state, across fiscal and monetary policy and institutional power, to create an economy that works for everyone. It means investment on a scale we have not yet contemplated. It means rethinking the state's role in shaping markets, and not merely correcting them.
And it means being clear about this: unemployment is not an inevitable feature of a modern economy. It is a policy choice. We should choose full employment.
NOTE: This article was modified after publication, with sentences being added to the third paragraph of the non-italicised section
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Of course a job guarantee is not a “logical necessity” with MMT.
The latter is a simply an accurate description of how public spending and taxation work in a modern fiat monetary system. There is no choice about it. We are already “doing “ it, just like we “do” gravity or quantum mechanics. There is no choice.
The former is a policy choice. Some may think it is desirable, but it is no more inherent or implicit or “necessary” in MMT than any other policy choices, from a nuclear deterrent to the NHS.
Thank you
Two well-constructed arguments. I can see the attraction for the Job Guarantee but I have to agree with Richard that the core MMT argument about how money works is a tough sell let alone adding JG. Corbyn’s free broadband proposal – timid compared to JG – was broadly ridiculed so imagine the pushback. Let’s unite around the bullet proof explanation of how money works provided by MMT. Although I think a less ambitious scheme of proving a job for those unemployed for a year could work.
I’ve been doing some community work in Middlesbrough since the beginning of the year and asked ChatGPT how a JG scheme might work there. Here (with the usual AI caveats) is what it said.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/159g4Smd_uIT_af8LffeeHd2rZj45QzZ8DakEXFua87w/edit?tab=t.0
Thanks
And interesting, especially concerning part-time work and the JG
The key insight for me is how much management a JG scheme in Middlesbrough would need – and whether the town has the capacity to supply it. I’m a big fan of the people I’m working with but everyone is incredibly stretched. MMT talks about the need to focus on real resources, as the money can be created by central government – but in a place like Middlesbrough finding and developing the resources to deliver a JG would be a significant challenge.
This is my key point. Having jobs available at all times when there is no certainty that they will be undertaken is the worst form of lottery bidding process yet invented, and lottery bidding is a terrible form of allocation of resources already.
Hi Eddy,
i’m originally from Middlesbrough, so read the AI JG piece with some local knowledge. An excellent analysis overall, but ChatGPT was perhaps too polite to point out that Lord Houchen and his mates should be nowhere near the administration of such a scheme.
The theory of this is way above what I can grasp, but it’s good to see the civilised discussion, and it is necessary if MMT proponents are seriously preparing for its acceptance by government, as I know Richard is.
The one thing I struggled with was the “obligation to pay taxes by getting money from employment”. Richard deals with half of that in his response, pointing out that not all money comes from work.
My little brain (and food bank experience) was wondering when reading Patricia Pino’s article, what taxes an unemployed homeless person is “obligated” to pay and for which they need the fiat currency? Not income tax or NI, no VAT on charity shop clothes, none on food, no council tax on their sleeping bag and cardboard box or bivouac and no CGT! The system as it is now, does not extract tax from those excluded from it by unemployment and its poverty-inducing consequences. The cost of living crisis is such that unemployment very rapidly produces such poverty that the citizen is no longer liable to pay any tax at all because homelessness follows quite rapidly. Such citizens are effectively cast out of society by the system as it is now, becoming mere “bodies” to be kept alive by throwing a combination of charity and welfare in their direction. Hospital, death or prison are the usual outcomes. We have a minimal subsistence system for refugees that formalises this exclusion from society, called “no recourse to public funds”.
To summarise, better minds than mine must work this out, but for me, I jibbed at Patricia’s statement about the obligation to pay taxes creating a demand for currency and therefore, for work. Whether that kills the JG idea is beyond my ability to say.
I, too, have difficulty with that. There is too strong a whiff of compulsion about this.
The whiff of compulsion is correct. But is that not just the existing whiff of the way things work anyway? We should have modern social theory: All citizens are expected (compelled) to have a job between education and pension. Insurance schemes exist for health and unemployment. What MMT does is to open up possibilities to have other social arrangements. How about all companies are expected to provide jobs? Maybe in proportion to the goods they sell. This acts as pre condition for the privilege to sell products. The possibilities are many.
The trouble is, MMT accepts the neoliberal work narrative
Is the point not that the general requirement to pay tax leads to the society wide demand for the currency, regardless of each individuals requirement to pay tax. Therefore, it logically follows that as the demand is imposed by the government, the government should ensure everyone has the ability to meet the minimum demand.
What then doesn’t follow though would be the JG, and instead i’d say is an argument for a more adequate welfare system and perhaps a UBI. Would be fascinated to see a similar discussion on UBI, as that took is something I’ve flipped back and forth on.
The government’s job is to design a tax system that reflects the bases available within its society – not to coerce those bases into existence
I would like to address your final comment. The point of the JG is precisely to use the full capacity of the state across fiscal and monetary policy for an economy the works for every one. The whole point is eliminate the need for a JG by creating a standard that the private sector has to meet or surpass. Once that threshold has been meet, there would be no need for a JG. It should remain in place as a buffer, but its purpose is to eliminate itself as an everyday mechanism.
We have achieved your goal. It is the minimum wage.
By this defintion a JG has nothing left to do. I do of course, accept that the minimum wage is inadequate. But that is a separate issue. So might the wage payable by the JG be inadequate.
The Minimum Wage does not create full employment. The JG does.
The JG does not create full employment. People can opt out. It is voluntary. It can only involve enforced labour if it is to deliver full employment. Is that what you mean?
Today’s Bristol Post
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/businesses-struggling-pay-real-living-10895714
Okay, that refers to RLW not the Min Wage, but I would have thought those businesses were also struggling to pay extortionate rents, and unnecessarily high interest rates, but the headlines always blame the greedy workers for demanding enough pay to buy food AND keep warm AND pay their rents.
Synchronicity in action:
Peter May’s offer of a “place” on Progressive Pulse and Richard’s critiques of the Job Guarantee as being integral to MMT, brought to mind the first piece I ever read (in 2019) that helped me realise that debating the JG was permissible.
Background: I worked in the Jobcentre in various roles from the very first day of Jobseeker’s Allowance in 1996 until my retirement in 2014, so have encountered most of the arguments against the JG – most importantly, those offered from the view of the unemployed themselves.
Peter May wrote of a town at the foot of Dartmoor, close enough to the infamous prison on the Moor at Princeton.
1. How does a JG cope with a 300% rise in unemployment in Newton Abbot? The question is based on a real life case.
2. How does a JG remove the stigma of “Workfare”? Bussing participants across neighbouring councils to fix potholes around Newton Abbot might recall the sight of chain gangs being taken to labour on the roads…
3. Is the tax demand a greater imperative than maintaining the life of citizens? Unemployment Benefit, the dole, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Universal Credit were/are all taxable benefits. The payments will need to be continued even if a JG is instituted if we are to believein the Social Contract.
4. And still, throughout all these debates, hovers the unanswered question: “What defines work?” How many hours? How many days? Or nights? How much commuting time is reasonable? A fixed pay or hours-related?
Peter May’s article from March 2019:
https://www.progressivepulse.org/economics/modern-monetary-theory-is-logically-inconsistent-with-a-job-guarantee
Thank you
Rather than an inadequate minimum wage, which tends be per hour rather than per week or per annum, would a universal basic income policy, funded where necessary by MMT, be a better solution?
Ms Pino comes across as not liking the state or capitalism. Although I too don’t like the way they are configured either, it does not mean that they need disposing of for reasons of ideological hygiene only. The best ‘truth’ I ever heard about economics was Paul Krugman’s assertion that ‘everyone’s wages is someone else’s wages’. That in a nutshell is how economics really works in society and Ms. Pino needs to get her head around it pronto.
A state sponsored JG would need good feedback loops back to policy creators and be dynamic not static in the Neo-liberal sense – it would need an ‘interventionist’ outlook as and when needed; an integrated approach to other services would be needed that cut down the cost of living to help people move between and adapt to local/national markets (education and training would play a key role here with the JG).
An economy lives on disposable income – income and benefit polices would need to be reorientated to sustaining Krugman’s epiphany. And then of course we would need to look at sustainability – what sort of economy would Pino’s vision deliver and would it be sustainable in nature? What would this economy be delivering and servicing? Lots of artists, counsellors etc., or people who can fix and maintain stuff or both? Innovators? Better policies across society would mean fewer counsellors for example?
The JG as evinced by Ms Pinto comes across as a cottage industry. I’m not sure that’s the right approach. Integration with other policy goals and modernising and improving democracy has to be at the centre of it. That is how human politics works, that is why ongoing planning, doing, reviewing would take place to achieve optimum performance.
Great to see the case for and against a job guarantee being put in such detail. This is the level of investigation we need for all of our major policy suggestions. I am sure everyone who engages with the discussion Richard has instigated about the JG will be in a much better position to reach their own conclusions.
Thank you Richard for this well-reasoned post.
Ever since I started reading about MMT, the concept of Employer of Last Resort (ELR) which was rebranded to Job Guarantee or JG has always been problematic to me for all the reasons you mentioned and also the article shared by Anne Cruise (thanks, Anne).
Most proponents will say it is compulsory or be cute and say it isn’t but if you do not accept a job then you don’t get any support. Most proponents believe in the positive socialisation aspect of work; totally disregarding the reality of most workplaces where management insists on being as hellish place. And that is something that shows how most of those proponents (the well known) are talking from a place of privilege, they either owned their business or work in academia from what I read. There’s many reasons why most of us aspire to retire (that goes into your point about what is work?)
What gets to me is how unethical it is. If there’s meaningful and useful work to be done by society then government ought to do it with a well-paid job offer and not rely on JG. It seems to me that it is also an attempt to break labour unions which I would also consider unethical.
Money was invented because bartering created problems. Money was intended to be our servant, not our master. Putting people into work so that money is deemed to be working properly turns that on its head. The purpose of work is to meet other people’s needs. One way or the other, and usually both, we’re all involved in this relationship. That’s what really matters. Money needs to be cut down to size.
Momney was not created as an alternative to barter. Read David Graeber and others on this issue.
Thanks. I’ve had a look at a resume of David Graeber’s view, and I can begin to see how the problems we have with money were perhaps baked in from the start.
But I still think my last 4 sentences above aren’t far off the mark. Though changing how money works isn’t everything. There needs to be a change in people’s hearts, and MMT may well be part of that journey. Anyway. May God’s blessings be upon you.
I was only addressing the one issue, not the rest
Sometimes one is made to feel ones age….
I’m pushing 80. I can remember growing up in the ’50’s and ’60’s when there was full-employment – unemployment was purely frictional. Lots of external shocks in the ’70’s with unemployment becoming structural by the ’80’s.
So what do we get? Attempts at disguising it by ROSLA (raising the school leaving age – subsequently repeated several times), introducing YOPs (Youth Opportunities Programme – which, up here, did do a lot to temporarily improve the local footpaths) and the YTS (Youth Training Scheme – basically a meaningless scam imposed on teachers – who were essentially being obliged to endeavour to ‘polish a turd’ – as another way of keeping unemployed youths off the statistics).
Now, from experience, what would I favour? The policies of state directed post-war reconstruction, of hope, care and a desire to build a better and fairer future , or schemes to massage the unemployment data?
Thank you
Unless it is workfare, the Job Guarantee is more properly called a Job Offer or perhaps a Guaranteed Job Offer.
But there is a complete logical contradiction in thinking that money is created by decree and unlimited as long as you can usefully find available things and people to spend it on – but then deciding that essential to this idea is a requirement for a buffer stock of the unemployed as a counter-cyclical ‘anchor’….
Why on earth would you have people unemployed when your whole theory rests on the fact that government is not limited by finance but resource? The money creating government needs to spend sufficiently to ensure there are effectively no unemployed!
I suggest that the MMT Job Guarantee is actually a bizarre self-contradiction.
Thanks, Peter
I have followed both yourself and Patricia for a while so was great to see this interaction. I started agreeing with Patricia, but have changed my mind, due to a combination of your points regarding the JG not being the intrinsic to MMT, and that it sells us short of what we should be trying to achieve.
Thanks to both of you for the reasoned arguments, I will no doubt adjust my opinion again in the future as I learn more, but for now, I’m convinced.
Thanks
I do love a heated agreement!
If only this sort of constructive debate was more common in the public realm.
I was expecting some reference to the lessons from the infamous ‘Youth Training Scheme’ and ‘Community Programme’ established under the Tories in the 1980s.
Also, could we have links to the evaluations of JG in Austria and elsewhere, please?
Very good to have a detailed argument – although some of the details difficult to get head around .<p>
Intuitively – Richard’s perspective is more appealing – that MMT describes how money works, and leaves ‘policy measures, such as job guarantee schemes – as political choices and not inherent to the way the money system works.<p>
If we try to characterise the whole economic system , we would include not only money, but all the real resources, the population, its demographic , age and income and skill and educational profile, the inherited physical capital – the land and the built environment, manufacturing capacity and public and private service institutions , the transport system etc. Then we would model how government money creation and money circulation interacts with and mobilised all these real resources , the level of employment and unemployment, then taxation and the level of prices and interest rates etc etc <p>
Is it fair to suggest that Ms Pino’s ‘ job guarantee ‘ suggestion, arbitrarily picks out one part of the real economy – the labour market – and gives it a unique role in making the monetary system work?
I came to thinking about economics through issues arising from the need for Social Care: the support disabled people need to lead comfortable, independent lives. Probably the largest number of jobs that the job guarantee would fund are in the larger area of care: Social Care. the NHS, Child Care, Children’s services, participation in community activities, etc. The central feature of Care work is the need for reliable, continuing personal relationships. A crucial element of the job guarantee is that people come and go dependent on the state of the private job market. If I have had continuing help from a person I have come to trust, their removal is a significant loss. it would irresponsible to create a system for care which is so flawed. The job guarantee is superficially attractive but mistaken. What is needed is a system which plans to hire, train, and organise the people needed to do the job. We could do that and MMT helps us see that a government has those powers.
Thank you and much to agree with
Before discovering Richard a few days ago my knowledge of economics and especially MMT came from reading the blog and books from Bill Mitchell, one of MMT’s founders and a strong proponent of the Job Guarantee. My interpretation is that Bill is quite happy with the compulsion element that the JG implies as does the phrase ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their need’. I can see the point of this in a society where you can only expect to get out what you are willing to put in but it has moral issues tied up in it as well. The arguments against the JG which Richard puts forward are compelling and I am definitely moving towards his corner.
The possible alternative of a guaranteed income contains the risk of a reduction in participation, but also gives people the flexibility to do voluntary work, provide care for family members without the poverty that results for many people doing that now, explore alternative career paths that may suit them better or pursue other kinds of rewarding work that are not clearly done for monetary gain. For myself, since retiring I have enjoyed more artistic endeavours which generate no income but give me great satisfaction and, according to the feedback I get, significant pleasure to the people who visit exhibitions containing my work. I pay tax on my pension so am still fulfilling the obligation that Patricia Pino suggests I must.
PS I would love to see a debate between Richard and Bill, I’d pay money for a ticket to that.
Thanks Richard,
Agree that JG should be talked of as distinct from MMT (really just to avoid confusion).
Sadly I think you continue to straw man the JG position as if it’s an either or with other kinds of fiscal policy.
“ The objective of fiscal policy is not to match every individual to a specific job at every moment in time. It is to create the conditions in which sufficient demand exists to make full employment possible.”
Warren Mosler makes this straw man abundantly clear. He sees fiscal policy as the key and primary tool just like you are suggesting Richard. The JG is simply there as the remaining backstop when (as you admit yourself) fiscal policy fails to guarantee employment to all.
Perhaps it is easier to avoid straw manning if you think of the JG more as a job transition programme (this is how I’ve heard Mosler describe it). It is there to enhance and support other fiscal programmes AND private employment and the goal is to match unemployed workers to those other streams, not to replace those streams as your article seems to suggest the JG claims to do (it doesn’t).
love your work as always x
It is not me misreading on the JG. I say it is a policy choice. Some in MMT are the people not getting this. They say it is integral to MMT. It is not. That is my point. I am not condemning it. I am making clear what it is. It is not MMT.
Thanks Richard,
You may have missed my broader point. I already conceded that the JG is not essential to MMT so we are in agreement there
I then went on to point out how you have straw manned the details of the JG (in particular the kind of JG Mosler has proposed) .
I wonder if your critiques (the ones in addition to your critique that JG is not MMT) still hold for a ‘Job Transition Programme’ (JTP) that is there to work alongside (not as an alternative to) Keynsian fiscal policy.
As I suggested, I think you are absolutely right, Keynsian job creation should be doing the bulk of the work. Mosler would also agree and add that the JTP should be there to assist with that.
It is a backstop, not a replacement. You yourself accept that keynsian policy is not designed to mop up all the unemployed. JTP is simply that final employer of last resort.
I think the JTP is the better way to think of the JG to avoid these straw mans and confusion with what it is and isn’t proposing.
I just wondered if you had a response to that in particular.
Many thanks x
We need a policy of full employment. That will require retatining, support, and more. That is proactive. The JG is reactive. That is my point
Cheers,
And apologies in advance for the tedium.
I think most people would concede the JTP is reactive by design, while keynsian employment schemes would be proactive.
Again, I agree that the proactive scheme should be at the forefront, am only suggesting that the reactive scheme is there to work along side as well as being there as a final backstop (in the same way we have unemployment benefits as a final backstop today).
I can’t quite tell whether you are saying that a reactive scheme like a JTP has no place at all (in which case we disagree) or simply that a proactive scheme is preferable to a reactive scheme (in which case we are in complete agreement).
I would agree with you completely that if the proactive schemes you espouse lead to full employment, then there is no need for the reactive scheme.
Where I’m still unclear on your position, is whether if, hypothetically, we did every scheme imaginable that you would like to see and still (god forbid) had people that hadn’t been employed by these schemes, would you support a reactive JTP (the goal of which is to ultimately match those remaining people to public/private employment in the future)?
The answer to that last question would really clarify your position I think.
Again thanks for your time, I will try make this the last response! x
My aim is for optimal policy. A JTP Mis not that. So I prefer better options. Who wouldn’t? A JTP is a last gasp, and a sign of failure. No one should make it a policy feature.
I will take that as a resounding no then to my hypothetical.
In which case you will be unlikely to find much agreement from the vast bulk of MMT folk.
Your engagement is most welcome as always x
I wish I knew what you were saying; commenting in riddles helps no one. And let’s be clear: I do not care if people in MMT agree with me. I write what I think. As I have long said, MMT explains money. That is it. If more is claimed it is not MMT. It is political economy, but not MMT.
No riddle.
Am just wanting you to be explicit in answer to the hypothetical I posed earlier:
“Where I’m still unclear on your position, is whether if, hypothetically, we did every scheme imaginable that you would like to see and still (god forbid) had people that hadn’t been employed by these schemes, would you support a reactive JTP (the goal of which is to ultimately match those remaining people to public/private employment in the future)?”
It sounds like your answer is still no? And if so, I’m pointing out that most MMTers find that hard to understand.
Whether you care about that or not is a different question. You are clear you don’t! Which is fine I suppose.
I don’t play silly games (and very poorly constructed ones at that) to justify what can NEVER be a part of MMT, but could be a part of political economy. If that is the desperate resort you need to play, using semantics alone to jiustify what is supposedly essential to MMT, you lost before you started. Please do not waste my time. I have explained much ebtter policy options. IF the MMT community is interested in pedantry rather than the political economny of the real world, let’s be clear it has nothing to say, and no wonder it is not listened to. I live in hope that it has better exponents than you.
Can I separately (and humbly) suggest that in future you try and steel man your opponent rather than straw man them.
It would make it much easier as a reader to properly understand both their positions and your own without requiring these comment chain clarifications (though I acknowledge we all fall into this trap from time to time)
What does this mean?
I did not straw man the JG. If anything, I was overly generous to it.
Just a suggestion Richard from a frustrated reader.
You can take it or leave it.
Much love x
Four things. You submitted it here. That is not a matter of take it or leave it. I got it. You sent it. I did not have a choice but deal with it. Can’t you work that out?
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Second, write with a view to being understood without presuming I will recall all you previously said. I won’t. You are one of many. It’s arrogant to think otherwise and presumptive to think I will keep referencing back.
Third, please don’t offer love and kisses. That’s very annoying and deeply patronising in tone.
Fourth, if you’re frustratedstop commenting. It must have been apparent that you have miserably failed to chang my minbd.
Alright Richard,
Last one from me then I promise.
I am not an exponent of MMT. I am not an expert, I am not an economist and nor do I claim to be any of those things.
I would call myself a recovering neoliberal. I am an admirer of yours and appreciate what you add to the heterodox conversation. I probably agree with you on almost everything you put out so I regret that I have clearly come across as overly combative, that was not my intent.
I stumbled upon MMT about 4 months ago which is what led me to your work and that of other heterodox commentators.
As someone trying to learn and understand this stuff, it is particularly frustrating when important commentators like yourself don’t articulate the positions they seek to critique in the most favourable way. Of course this is not limited to you, I have seen this from many heterodox/MMT folk (Mitchell, Mosler, Keen etc). It makes it far more difficult for us non-experts to clearly understand the key points of contention.
I can’t imagine I am the only one that has this frustration, so I merely wanted to point this out in good faith.
You may have come across Rapoport’s Rule? …
Restate: Re-express your opponent’s position so clearly and fairly they say, “I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
Acknowledge: List any points of agreement.
Praise: Mention anything you have learned from your opponent.
Only then are you permitted to offer a rebuttal
This is what I think is missing from these kinds of conversations.
I hate to do it to you but I must end with a sincere:
xoxo
these kinds of conversations can always use a bit of extra love 😉
I have written 24,000 blog oosts
I have dealt wuth 350,000 comments
I create a video every day
I have covered what MMT is many times
I cannot do so every time a nee p-erson comes along
Sorry
I also have a life
Please be realistic
And read the comments policy