Toward a Jobs Guarantee at the Center for American Progress (!)
(Dan here…hat tip NDd for this post. Very long and well worth reading)
By Lambert Strether of Corrente\
Toward a Jobs Guarantee at the Center for American Progress (!)
I had another topic lined up today, but this (hat tip alert reader ChrisAtRU) is so remarkable — and so necessary to
framecontextualize immediately — I thought I should bring it your attention, dear readers. The headline is “Toward a Marshall Plan for America,” the authors are a gaggle of CAP luminaries with Neera Tanden leading and Rey Teixeira trailing, and the “Marshall Plan” indeed includes something called a “Jobs Guarantee.” Of course, I trust Clinton operatives like Tanden, and Third Way types like Teixeira, about as far as I can throw a concert grand piano. Nevertheless, one sign of an idea whose time has come is that sleazy opportunists and has-beens try to get out in front of it to seize credit[1] and stay relevant. So, modified rapture.In this brief post, I’m going to look at the political context that drove CAP — taking Tanden, Teixeira, and the gaggle as a proxy for CAP — to consider a Jobs Guarantee (JG), briefly describe the nature and purpose of a JG, and conclude with some thoughts on how Tanden, Teixeira would screw the JG up, like the good liberals they are.
There are plenty of jobs out there now. Real problem: they don’t pay as much as a truly free — YOU KNOW, HIGH UNION DENSITY — labor market would pay.
My (cab driver) point of view: if fast food with 33% labor costs can keep enough customers to survive (might get more — min pay recirculating demand to lower pay firms) at $15/hr, then Target at 10-15% labor costs should BE ABLE TO PAY $20/hr, and Walmart with 7% labor costs could plausibly pay $25/hr.
Top Clinton economic adviser Jason Furman once said that Walmart saves poor consumers $260 billion a year in lower prices. Cut 10% from that and Walmart could give every one of it’s 1.2 million employees a $20,000/yr raise.
More!!!!!!!!!!!!: fed min wage is $4 below what it was when per capita income was half today’s (1968!).
A POSSIBLE EIGHTH-GRADE MATH PSYCHOLOGICAL HOOK?:
Bottom 45% lost 10% of their income share (down from 20%) — while per capita income doubled — leaving them in the same place ABSOLUTELY …
… ON THE AVERAGE …
but, the bottom 20-25% are worse off absolutely than when average income was half today’s.
Let me repeat that (hopefully psychologically catching): the bottom 20-25% are worse off absolutely than when average income was half today’s.
****************
So why don’t we stop playing around with guaranteed jobs and guaranteed income and start rebuilding US labor market density which is down to 6% in private economy (not much different from 1%) Stop talking about manufacturing and make Walgreen’s jobs (great place to work other than pay) pay $20/hr?
Simply make union busting a felony, starting at progressive state by progressive state level. (For those of you only concerned about the Dem party, not really people) Republicans will have no place to hide.
It really isn’t a question of private jobs being out there. It is a question of our willingness to fund jobs that can and should be done, and to not attach opprobrium to them. We need people to maintain our parks. We need people to maintain our national resources. We need enough peole to fix sidewalks, streets, etc. We simply haven’t been willing to fund the jobs, usually through taxes. So….
Carol, we have gone from spending less than 10% of GDP on government services prior to WWI to about 30% in 1960 to more than 35% today.
Perhaps it’s that the government is paying people to NOT work.