4 ms·

The Job Guarantee is an optimal buffer stock stabilisation policy that eliminates the dead-loss zone between the wage on the buffer stock and the bottom wage in

The Job Guarantee is an optimal buffer stock stabilisation policy that eliminates the dead-loss zone between the wage on the buffer stock and the bottom wage in the private sector. Sub-optimal buffer stocks do the same thing, but you need more people on them which leads to an opportunity loss of output at the peak of a private sector boom. The most destructive form of buffer stock being straight unemployment with no compensation. Turns out starving people and letting their job skills rot is pretty destabilising. Who knew? The buffer stock theory doesn't rely upon Job Guarantee. That's just the natural endpoint of trying to minimise the size of the buffer while retaining its stabilisation effectiveness. But there always has to be a buffer stock somewhere. What form it takes is a political choice. There are plenty of partial implementations. The UK Universal Credit system requires 35 hours a week looking for work that cannot exist in aggregate in return for a pittance of pay. The pay is too low, the job is punitive rather than constructive and you can't choose to go on it, but it has anchoring properties that a straight unemployment scheme doesn't have. People will tend to want to get off it and into a private job for example. However, without the balancing choice in the opposite direction it favours capital over worker.

brutusborn 4y ago
Thanks for the explanation. I've always wondered if the government could keep a "To do" list of tedious tasks that they can get under/unemployed people to do for some reward. Kind of like Mechanical Turk but with a base amount if the person refuses to compete any tasks. Or for more educated people, doing research for the Government. E.g. a Department of Health could have a ToDo list that includes: "Collate information on Tropical diseases for use by Doctors." A qualified person, such as a biologist, would be given an existing list of diseases and a list of recent research papers. They could simply flag papers that have info not in the Government list. In this way, when the actual Department worker goes to update the Tropical disease file, the references are all ready to go if the worker wants them. Spending 35 hours a week looking for jobs that may not exist seems incredibly foolish.

brutusborn 4y ago

Thanks for the explanation. I've always wondered if the government could keep a "To do" list of tedious tasks that they can get under/unemployed people to do for some reward. Kind of like Mechanical Turk but with a base amount if the person refuses to compete any tasks. Or for more educated people, doing research for the Government. E.g. a Department of Health could have a ToDo list that includes: "Collate information on Tropical diseases for use by Doctors." A qualified person, such as a biologist, would be given an existing list of diseases and a list of recent research papers. They could simply flag papers that have info not in the Government list. In this way, when the actual Department worker goes to update the Tropical disease file, the references are all ready to go if the worker wants them. Spending 35 hours a week looking for jobs that may not exist seems incredibly foolish.