Talk:Job guarantee

Motivation: General explanation

Section added. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 21:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Whilst there is some literature in Wikipedia on Employment Guarantees for specific countries who have introduced them. There is no general explanation of what a Job Guarantee is. This article seeks to give a basic understanding of of Job Guarantee that expands on current Employment Guarantee literature. --Tomsof (talk) 04:57, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks kindly for the article! It has since grown from your seedling.

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 21:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Worldwide view

I believe the policy originated in the USA so, inevitably, the article will be largely about the USA. However, there is also mention of Argentina, India, South Africa and the International Labour Organisation so I think the article does give a worldwide view. Biscuittin (talk) 20:30, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I think I was wrong about the USA. Mitchell and Muysken seem to be at Maastricht University [1]. Biscuittin (talk) 13:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

William (Bill) Francis Mitchell was at Maastricht with Muysken and is at time of writing a professor of economics at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, and Docent Professor of Global Political Economy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. With L Randal Wray and Martin Watts, he is co-author of *Macroeconomics*, an MMT based tertiary textbook. So the longtime Australain association also supports a worldwide view. Hedley Finger Hfinger 05:08, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Questions

Some questions that occur to me, that might be worth writing about in the article (many of these questions also apply to the closely-related topic of workfare schemes, by the way):

• How would applicants be assigned to jobs? Would they have any choice in the matter?
• What would happen if a welfare recipient refused to take a JG job offered to them?
• What would be considered valid reasons for refusing a JG job? Disability? Religious reasons? Not liking a job? Not wanting to (literally) get one's hands dirty?
• Would JG employees have full employment rights?
• What would happen if a JG employee wanted to resign from their JG post, but did not have a job offer lined up?
• What would happen if a JG employee turned up at work, but deliberately worked extremely slowly or not at all?
• What would happen if a JG employee committed other forms of misconduct?
• What criticisms have been made of the JG?
• What is the relationship between the JG and Modern Monetary Theory?

--greenrd (talk) 14:24, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Typically applicants can either choose from various assignments available. There may be a bidding process where companies and sgencies bid for applicants, as happened in the UK in during 2010, or any number of ways. In order to be compatable with the UN Charter mentioned in the article, there would have to be some choice available.

The connection with Modern Monetary Theory comes from Prof. William "Bill" Mitchell, who co-founded MMT and designed the Job Guarantee, based on earlier versions. It is his insight which provides the macroeconomic frame-work within which the Job Guarantee makes sense. See his book "Full employment abandoned: shifting sands and policy failures". Because labour economists have mostly focused on the balance between employment and inflation, JG naturally associates itself with MMT, though not all MMT proponents see JG as intrinsic to MMT in the way Mitchell does.

According to Mitchell, JG should be as close to ordinary employment as possible. So employees are disciplined or sacked in the same way, and can even have union representation (although the wage is non negotiable). Disability and sickness work the same way too. Mitchell advocates that ultimately the Job Guarantee all-but replaces Income Support and Job Seekers Allowance. Others say that at least some further safety net should be used, even if the reduction in income is significant. In the short term JG would run alongside IS / JSA until it is fully bedded-in.

Hope this helps.

Charles Jurcich (talk) 12:22, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Need criticisms section

This article only seems to present the positive view point of this program. There definitely needs to be a criticism section added to this article. Pretty much everything on wikipedia should have a criticism section & certainly anything that is so political as adding an essentially socialist program in a capitalist country should have plenty of criticism to add to this article. Certainly adding a link to the wikipedia criticisms of socialism seems appropriate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_socialism). I didn't have time to do research on this, but here's an article from WSJ that has some criticism (https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-problem-with-a-federal-jobs-guarantee-hint-its-not-the-price-tag-1525267192). Just thinking about it after reading the WSJ article and it definitely seems like a slippery slope into full-blown socialism. For example, in the US, 16M un- & under-employed plus 54M employed but making < $15/hr would take the $15/hr fed job program to start. Once the program exists at $15/hr, the next politician who wants to get elected merely needs to propose raising the rate to $16/hr or so & he's already got $70M votes to start, so pretty likely he gets elected. Assuming he implements what he promised, now another group (those earning between $15-$16/hr) quit their private sector jobs & join the program. Then the cycle repeats until everyone is working for this government program & the US is a full socialist economy. We already know that socialist economies are not as strong as capitalist economies so that's a pretty strong argument against this. Anyway, I didn't put much thought into this & I'm way too busy at my private sector job to spend more time on this but hopefully somebody can dig up some well thought out criticism & add it to this article. There must be plenty of criticism of this program from people much smarter than me & it needs to be added to this article. Thanks, -rgs — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.169.203.201 (talk) 18:16, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Pardon, your ideology is showing. Wikipedia articles are summaries of information taken from existing sources, hence the prohibition of unpublished and original material, and the many many citations required so that readers can verify for themselves that the summary is correctly representing the sources. The article and its talk are not the place to argue about whether articles should be allowed because they reflect a particular kind of political regime. Nor is talk the place to argue whether the concepts propounded are practicable. As writers and editors, it is our job to find sources representing all sides of an issue, summarize them, and provide the appropriate citations. If your inclination is towards democracy, you are a good editor/writer if you can assemble an article that reflects the pro and cons of an heredity dictatorship. Hedley Finger Hfinger 08:24, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

We need to find better sources for the pro and con of the article; not just adding because we think this is a slippery slope. We need to focus on a better wikipedia. Geraldshields11 (talk) 20:37, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Slippery-slope argument aside, research shows fertility responding to unemployment rates, e.g. this from 2014, among others. We could extend this and the basic economics of lower marginal cost of job seeking (i.e. you get a job by going to work, not by spending hours and days and weeks searching) causing more entry into the workforce by people with less marginal benefit from work (not lower wage, but rather people who don't need the income, but would like something to do, or just a little extra income to spend) to arrive at an increase in non-basic-welfare employment (people don't need jobs, but get them) rather than just jobs for people who *need* them, meaning a non-zero unemployment rate isn't the infliction of poverty; and a consequence of…well, an infinite boomer generation forever. This would be an economic and environmental nightmare, given the strain on our resources and the abundance of frozen sea bed methane that *will* eventually become accessible by increases in technological innovation. If the supply of renewables doesn't keep up, more fossil fuel will be burned. That, however, is WP:OR unless you can find someone who's observed and published the same. John Moser (talk) 16:17, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Reevaluate the class of this article Comment WikiProject assessment

Dear fellow editors, I just tired to do a copyedit of this article and I propose to change the class to C instead of B. See my comments and the wiki discussion of the C class checksheet. I will be on and off wiki for awhile so I many not response quickly. Geraldshields11 (talk) 20:33, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Statements not backed by cited reference

"When inflation rises, the government pursues contractionary fiscal or monetary policy, with the aim of creating a buffer stock of unemployed people, reducing wage demands, and ultimately inflation.[2]" While the reference promotes the "job guarantee" idea, it barely touches on notions such as the government deliberately promoting unemployment as a "buffer" of some sort, the page itself doesn't even have the word "inflation." 45.234.133.66 (talk) 23:50, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Australia's work for the dole, amongst others in the list, is not employment or a job.

There needs to be clear distinction between Workfare and a jobs guarantee. A jobs guarantee gives you a job under standard conditions of employment, i.e. minimum wage, worker's compensation, etc. Work for the Dole doesn't, and I'm pretty sure other schemes don't. Some workfare schemes such as the UK and Australia actually are totally unpaid or only cover costs of travel (also, there is no guarantee you will even get a job after your participation in the scheme has ended. As noted in the article, WFTD is not even considered employment at all by the government. So it shouldn't be considered a "jobs" guarantee, if there is no job whatsoever.

I have removed this twice now, so obviously a discussion needs to be had. MarkiPoli (talk) 08:45, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree. Helper201 (talk) 22:29, 2 October 2023 (UTC)