Job Insurance – Labor Market Power for the Majority (plus a review of the Jobs Bill)

Introduction:

(For previous parts in the series, see here)

As is the case with any form of social insurance, one basic question that has to be answered is why, besides the motive of wanting ones-self  to be protected, people who are unlikely to need a program like Job Insurance should support the program? Beyond the moral and ideological issue that one should support measures that help people in need and that redistribution makes a society more just, there is actually a practical reason why the roughly 80% of the workforce who are employed should support Job Insurance.

And the reason is labor market power. Between 2000 and 2008, despite several years of steady growth and nominally low unemployment, the median income of wage workers shrank, with declines being most prominently felt among the working class, because even employed workers lack labor market power.

What Should Be In A Jobs Bill? (A Job Insurance Supplement)

Introduction:

Up until a week ago, the prospects for a second round of economic stimulus looked bleak; an ominous coalition of Senate moderates (the same folks who shrank the stimulus and cut out Pelosi’s teacher preservation program, and who’ve tried their level best to stop the health care reform effort in its tracks) threatened to force the U.S government into default unless Congress agreed to a deficit-reduction committee with authority over Social Security and Medicare, and President Obama responded by talking up deficit reduction in his next budget.

And then the October jobs report came out, showing unemployment rising over the magical 10% level that signals political disaster in a midterm election. Suddenly, President Obama began to talk up a December “jobs summit,” and Senator Reid announced that he’s pulling together a pre-election jobs bill.

This sudden momentum is welcome, but if we want to significantly reduce unemployment, and thereby protect our Democratic Congress at the same time, we need to be very careful about what goes into this jobs bill.

Job Insurance – Part 11 (For the Young)

Introduction:

Peter Coy’s article, “The Lost Generation – Bright, Eager, and Unwanted” drew much-needed attention to the disastrous impact of the current recession on the young. Unemployment rates for those under 24 are nearly twice the national average, and the trajectory for youth employment is not heartening. As young people, many of whom have sunk themselves deep into debt for college educations that were sold to them as tickets into the middle class, face years of empty spaces on their resumes and lost wage income and promotions they will begin to fall further and further back from their potential and become a truly lost generation.

Something needs to be done to save a generation from a blighted economic life, and to recover untold amounts of potential labor power that will go unused in the interim. Luckily, history gives us a perfect example of how to save this generation in the youth policies of the New Deal.

Working-Class Urbanism

Introduction:

Recently, there was a bit of a stir when geographer Aaron Renn posted an article on New Geography alleging that “progressive urbanism” was advocating for a model of urbanism that was melanin-deficient. Now, this study was flawed in many ways – the sampling excluded New York, Chicago and L.A as progressive urban models, it equated non-black population with white, which is a major mistake especially in the Southwest, it left out San Francisco, and so on.

However, while progressive urbanism can for the moment be cleared of the charge of being blind to issues of race, it is true that new urbanism as a movement has tended to emphasize the physical side of denser development, as opposed to some of the more human-scale issues – and class is one issue that comes to mind as an area that needs to be dealt with.

Job Insurance – Part 10 (The Powerpoint)

Introduction:

So before I even started the Job Insurance series, I wrote this post on presenting a plan for public employment.  And I still believe that it’s important for academics who are also activists to learn how to construct arguments that are streamlined and comprehensible to non-experts. so I thought I’d revisit my presentation and present an updated version for commentary.

Job Insurance – Part 9 (What is NAIRU?)

No, the other one.

Introduction:

(For previous parts in the series, see here)

In talking about job insurance, or indeed any policy that seeks to help the working class, there is always someone who will argue that any effort to reach a lower rate of unemployment will cause inflation to achieve Zimbabwean levels. The intellectual justification for this is NAIRU – a term invented by monetarist economists as part of their war against Keynesianism.

But what is NAIRU? Does it really exist? Is it a constant or does it change? And most importantly, is it a valid objection to attempting to lower the unemployment rate?

Job Insurance – Part 8 (What Is The Right to A Job?)

Introduction:

In this series about Job Insurance, I have discussed both the technical and intellectual means of a Job Insurance system. But it’s also important to explain what the ultimate purpose of a Job Insurance system is – namely, the establishment in enforceable legislation of the right to a job.

And no term has been so abused – witness the capture of the term “the right to work” – or so contested as the right to a job. So we must begin within explaining what this idea means, and where it came from?

50-State Keynesianism – Part 3

Introduction:

In part 1 of this series, I discussed the possibility of creating state economic recovery bonds that the Federal government could buy to lend its ability to deficit-spend in recessions to the state governments to counter-act their natural pro-cyclical tendencies. In part 2, I expanded on how we could adapt state governments to Keynesian economic policies by passing anti-recession budget reform initiatives allowing limited deficits during times of economic recession, establishing state banks to provide borrowing capacity for state governments, and establishing state job insurance programs.

So what remains to be done for Keynesian economic policy to be brought to the benefit of state government?

Job Insurance – Part 7 (Public/Private)

Introduction:

For earlier parts in the series, see here.

One of the largest ideological barriers to establishing Job Insurance, just as was the case with Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, is that it would in a fundamental way reshape the composition and relations of the public and private sectors. This more than anything else is what terrifies Republicans (it’s the reason why the GOP has targeted the public option especially) because it undermines one of the most important justifications for anti-statist and pro-corporate ideology. If the public sector and the private sector are not diametric opposites – if in fact, the public can do things that the private can, instead of the private sector being the only repository of competence and efficiency (and thus, capable of replacing the public sector) – then there is no practical argument against government intervention in the economy, and increasingly fewer philosophical arguments against it.

And so the argument will be made that this is socialist, that it’s un-American. And none of that is true.

Job Insurance – Part 6 (Historical Models)

Introduction:

(For Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, see the lovingly hand-crafted links provided.)

So far in the Job Insurance series, I’ve been largely focusing on how a Job Insurance program would function in the abstract, rather than dealing with the harder questions of how things could go wrong. On one level, it’s important to start by outlining in full the parts  of how the program should operate, so that people understand the ideal and be able to recognize departures from it.

At the same time, it’s important to be realistic and acknowledge that any Job Insurance program would face problems both of policy design and political opposition, and that it’s important to grapple with them if we’re going to make sure that a future program would succeed.

At the risk of annoying my former teacher, Eric Foner, who used to say that there are no such things as the lessons of history, I do think there are insights we can clean from historical examples of jobs programs.