Breaking The Mold Isn't Just A Democrat vs Republican Thing

Old status quo politicians-- I usually refer to them as careerists-- feel very threatened when Democratic constituencies elect younger non-establishment representatives. That's the dynamic we've been witnessing with the calumny heaped on AOC and the refusal by most Democrats to ever try to understand what she's trying to accomplish with the Green New Deal and why raising the margin tax rate from annual income over $10 million (an extremely modest proposal).

On Friday, NPR's Jeff Brady reported that despite few details and much doubt, the Green New Deal generates enthusiasm... among people, not among lobbyists the donor class and politicians.

The resolution has few details, but it aims to overhaul the U.S. economy and spread wealth more evenly. It calls for a speedy shift in energy generation, from fossil fuels to renewable sources like wind and solar, and for "a fair and just transition for all communities and workers."

Much of the early criticism revolves around the scope of the plan, which backers say is big to match the challenge of the climate change problem.

"All great American programs, everything from The Great Society to The New Deal, started with a vision for our future," said co-sponsor Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

But this vision is for an extremely near-term future.

"I'm afraid I just cannot see how we could possibly go to zero carbon in a 10-year time frame," former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz tells NPR's All Things Considered.

Moniz, now CEO of Energy Futures Initiative, agrees that the U.S. needs to "pick up the pace" of its shift away from carbon, but he calls the decade-long time frame "impractical." He worries it could turn off key constituencies needed in the climate effort, including labor unions, oil companies and the business community.

The Green New Deal doesn't even mention some of the usual ideas for addressing climate change, such as a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program. Instead, it calls for lots of spending to create, among other things, infrastructure and transport that don't rely on fossil fuels.

Environmental groups generally support the resolution.

"It is a breath of fresh air to see leaders in Congress discussing climate solutions that rise to the scale of the challenge," said Aliya Haq, federal policy director for the Climate & Clean Energy Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council in a statement.

These days, transportation accounts for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions. Green New Deal backers say they want more high-speed trains to make airline travel less necessary, and more electric cars and charging stations. But experts warn that changing the existing fleet of cars in the U.S. would be an extraordinary effort.

"There's 350 million liquid fuel cars on the road today in the United States and most Americans don't buy a new car except every decade," says Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Change is always hard. Big change takes extraordinary efforts. And extraordinary leaders, rather than careerist politicians of the status quo. And AOC and her ideas aren't the only targets for establishment pols. Pelosi appointed AIPAC's chief lobbyist in Congress, New Dem Eliot Engel, to head the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He's from the other side of the Bronx from Ocasio Cortez-- rich, white, Jewish Riverdale. And he filled his lid when Rashida Tlaib started making waves about Israel. She announced she's not going on the AIPAC-sponsored trip to Israel that every freshman is "supposed" to take. Instead she proposed a trip to see what life is like for Palestinians. Smelling salts and fainting couches on both sides of the aisle! Texas dentist Brian Babin (R), a dullard, sent a letter to each Democratic House Committee chair demanding they deny her the right to take such a congressional delegation, insisting it would threaten the U.S. relationship with Israel.

Babin didn't have to lobby Engel, who quickly tried to silence Rashida and condescendingly claim that she, a Palestinian-American, did not know what she was talking about when it comes to the Middle East. "Instead of her talking about things-- she’s new here-- she ought to listen and learn and open her mind and then come to some conclusions,” Engel told Al-Monitor. “If you’re going to be close-minded and have your views, no one’s going to change her views. But I would hope that once you’re elected to Congress, you would at least care to see the other side of the coin.”

Completely mind-boggling from someone who was appointed chairman of the Committee precisely because he is so utterly close-minded! And there are worse assholes than Engel. On Sunday, Haaretz reported that Kevin McCarthy is promising to take action against Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. He's demanding "action" from Pelosi and Hoyer and says if they don't take any, he will. "This cannot sustain itself. It’s unacceptable in this country." He said their questioning of the nature and scope of U.S. relations with Palestine "were equal to King’s and more so."

There is no member of Congress and no district safe from the wrath of AIPAC. Earl Hilliard served in the Alabama state legislature from 1975 through 1992 when he was elected to serve as the member of Congress from the gerrymandered district that managed to twist and turn all over the state to encompass as many back areas as possible, from the black neighborhoods of Birmingham to the back neighborhoods of Montgomery to Tuscaloosa and the Black Belt rural counties of middle Alabama. No Republican and no white politicians was ever going to offer Hilliard an obstacle to reelection. But in 2001 Hilliard voted against a bill funding military support increases for Israel and opposing criminalization of Palestinian politicians. AIPAC set out to destroy him with the use of a conservative black corporate whore and AIPAC pawn, Artur Davis, who, by the way, later switched parties and became a Republican. It isn't the first time Israel has interfered directly in American elections through AIPAC. And now they're after Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Today, scummy Blue Dog Max Rose and Chelsea Clinton, as well as Liz Cheney, came down on the side of AIPAC against Ilhan, of course. Other right-wing New Dems like Seth Moulton (MA), Josh Gottheimer (NJ) and Elaine Luria (VA) have jumped on the bandwagon as well, hoping to be rewarded by AIPAC for their efforts against their colleague. Just disgusting. If you'd like to contribute to Ilhan's reelection efforts, the thermometer on the right goes to an ActBlue page for incumbents doing an especially good job.

This repulsive and misleading statement came from Pelosi's office this afternoon, just as I was finishing up this post. It made me sick to my stomach, but I bet Kevin McCarthy is laughing about how easy it was to get Pelosi and the House Democrats to dance to his tune:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján, Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries and Caucus Vice Chair Katherine Clark issued this joint statement condemning anti-Semitic comments made over Twitter by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar:

“Anti-Semitism must be called out, confronted and condemned whenever it is encountered, without exception.

“We are and will always be strong supporters of Israel in Congress because we understand that our support is based on shared values and strategic interests. Legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies is protected by the values of free speech and democratic debate that the United States and Israel share. But Congresswoman Omar’s use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel’s supporters is deeply offensive. We condemn these remarks and we call upon Congresswoman Omar to immediately apologize for these hurtful comments.

“As Democrats and as Americans, the entire Congress must be fully engaged in denouncing and rejecting all forms of hatred, racism, prejudice and discrimination wherever they are encountered.”

Naturally that didn't satisfy the Republicans, not when they smell blood in the water and sense an opportunity to drive a wedge been the AIPAC-loving Democratic establishment and the Democratic grassroots that generally abhors AIPAC and other lobbyists trying to dictate American policy. After Pelosi's surrender, the NRCC immediately released their own statement: "It’s time for Angie Craig, Dean Phillips and Collin Peterson to take a stand against anti-Semitism and bigotry by calling for Ilhan Omar’s immediate removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee." I wonder if Pelosi will cave on this too.

Support For Job Guarantee Is Growing Rapidly-- Will It Be A Campaign Issue?

A campaign manager I've worked with on a few campaigns in the past has been asking for for the last few days to consider endorsing the candidate he's working with this time. The candidate doesn't seem bad and it's a winnable race. There are 4 Democrats competing for the nomination and the DCCC isn't involved so they all seem somewhat progressive. His candidate doesn't seem financially competitive-- but when have we ever allowed that to determine supporting someone. The newly redrawn district has counties that went for Bernie and counties that backed Hillary. In the general, Trump won-- though not by double digits.

Before agreeing to speak with his candidate-- let's call him Candidate X-- I asked him a few questions... like which primary candidate is most progressive and if Candidate X supports Job Guarantee and College Debt Elimination. His response was that "It is close, but X is more progressive-- his priorities are good jobs, better public schools and quality and affordable health care for everyone-- it is still a Republican district and he will have to pick up Independents and Reasonable Republicans-- so kitchen table issues are the way to go on the surface. Below that-- he is very strongly against gun violence and pro-choice. He put out a statement against Trump's Transgender Ban in the military and is strongly for LGBTQIA+ rights. He has signed the no money from Fossil Fuels Pledge (all four candidates have)-- but X will be signing the End Citizens United No Corporate Money pledge in the next couple of days-- no other candidate has signed it... He supports plan for a job guarantee for people that want a job-- although it is new concept to him and we spoke about it."

Not very convincing. Remember, what Blue America is looking for is courageous principled candidates-- like Kaniela Ing, Jenny Marshall, Alan Grayson and Dan Canon who are going to go to Congress and not worry about voting with conservatives in order to get reelected. Another campaign manager told me last week that his candidate will do it "the West Virginia way, like Joe Manchin does." Good luck with that. It's not what we're looking for-- not even close.

So, he didn't answer the question about College Debt Elimination and didn't have anything much to say about Job Guarantee. So what will he be like in Congress? A scardy cat? Who thinks voting for equal right for gays and willing to vote pro-Choice defines a progressive? Doesn't sound like the kind of champion we're looking for this late in the cycle. But I'll keep an open mind. And send him the Marie Solis report in Newsweek from yesterday: Can A Federal Jobs Guarantee Help Democrats Defeat Trump In 2020? How about elect a Democratic House in 2018? Bernie is about to unveil plans "that would guarantee every American worker a minimum $15 an hour position complete with health care, a retirement plan and the same paid leave benefits granted to federal public-sector employees." Even less credible would-be presidential candidates like Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker are trying to jump on the bandwagon.

There’s already widespread support for a federal jobs guarantee program among voters across the country, and-- most notably-- across the political spectrum, according to Sean McElwee and his colleagues at Data for Progress, a progressive polling and analysis firm. In March, they found that a majority of voters in all 50 states supported a jobs guarantee, even in states that went overwhelmingly to Trump. The state that polled lowest was Utah, where a solid 57-percent majority still said they would favor the proposal.

When researchers at Civis Analytics, another progressive data analytics firm, narrowed the data by voting pattern, they found that 56 percent of those who went from voting for former President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 supported a jobs guarantee, and 58 percent of non-voters looked favorably on the idea as well.

... “If we’re speaking strictly about winning campaigns, running on jobs is 100 percent a smart move, and it’s 100 percent what Democrats should be doing,” Sean McElwee, a researcher and co-founder at Data for Progress, told Newsweek. “Democrats can run on jobs without sacrificing other progressive causes.”

McElwee cautioned Democrats against getting too excited about the number of Obama-turned-Trump voters they can win over with the policy-- it’s still modest. But it’s enough to cut a path to victory in 2018, he says.

“If you can get back about one-third of Obama-Trump voters and energize non-voters, there you are,” he said. “You’ve got your House majority.”

Indeed, some who switched their votes from Barack Obama to Trump told Newsweek the idea seemed common-sense.

“If this could help the people get jobs, I support it,” said Eileen Sorokas, from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, which went to Obama in 2012 but to Trump by 20 points four years later. “I know what it’s like not to have a job-- it’s kind of scary. If it works, I’m all for it.”

Before she retired, Sorokas, now 70, worked at a dress factory that shut down and went overseas in the mid-90s. Her husband Richard worked at Procter & Gamble for over three decades until he retired 17 years ago. He said a jobs guarantee interests him because he’d like to see fewer Americans rely on the country’s welfare system.

“I remember Trump wanted to get people off of welfare, and he said he was going to make jobs for people who want to work” he told Newsweek. “What stuck out for me was getting people off of welfare. I thought that was a great.”

Both Richard and Eileen-- who said they’d been lifelong Democrats-- said they’d consider voting for a member of their party again if they campaigned on a strong jobs platform, like the guaranteed jobs proposal.

But they’re not totally sold yet. After a beat, Richard posed what might just be a multi-billion dollar question: “Where do you get the money?”

Policy research institutes like the Center on Budget and Policy Proposals and the Center for American Progress have priced federal jobs guarantee plans similar to Booker’s and Sanders’s at $543 billion and $158 billion, respectively. The government could fund a jobs program by raising income tax on the rich-- a proposal that is controversial in some circles. But proponents of the policy in the Senate see it as a worthwhile expenditure.

...House candidates are already testing the waters for the 2020 presidential hopefuls. Dan Canon, who’s running in the Democratic primary in Indiana’s 9th District-- which went to Trump by double digits in 2016-- says he’s spoken to hundreds of voters about his proposal for a jobs guarantee, and not one of them has voiced any opposition to the idea.

“A jobs guarantee is good for the economy, it’s good for unemployment and it’s good for infrastructure,” Canon said.

In Canon’s district, home to some of the most rural parts of Indiana, he says voters have two top concerns: jobs and infrastructure. As Canon sees it, fixing the first problem with a jobs guarantee can solve the other. If people need jobs, they can take government-sponsored work fixing the district’s roads, public transit system, energy grids and broadband access, Canon says. The House candidate's proposal, and others like it, harken back to the Works Progress Administration implemented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a program that gave some 8.5 million unemployed Americans jobs building up the country's infrastructure during the Great Depression.

“I have not found a single person in Indiana that disagrees with this idea or thinks it’s a bad one,” Canon told Newsweek. “The only pushback I ever got when presenting people with a jobs guarantee is from political theorists who think the district just isn’t ready. But those tend to be D.C. think-tank types who don’t understand the people on the ground here in Indiana."

We asked some the other candidates Blue America has endorsed how they speak about Job Guarantee to the voters. Hawaii candidate Kaniela Ing told us that "America’s promise has always been clear-- work hard and your family will prosper. Today, too many hard-working Americans feel that our leaders have gone bad on that promise. I talk to folks who tell me everyday, they grind and sweat, but struggle to get by. Wages are stagnant, unemployment and underemployment are rising, the threats of automation and globalization are becoming real, all while costs are skyrocketing. But just take a walk outside and look around at all the work that needs to be done in America. There are bridges to be built, highways needing repair, kids to be taught, aging folks needing care, oceans to be cleaned, trees to be planted. But private markets fall short. For every job opening in America, four people are gunning for it. This pits worker against worker and creates a power imbalance between workers and their bosses. It’s too risky for a worker to stand up to wage theft, inhumane working conditions, or sexual harassment, when they know there’s nowhere else to go. Our elected representatives must stop pretending that everything is okay, and that the job market will some home fix itself. It’s time for real solutions that will actually help working families across America. It’s time for a new New deal. Since the start of my campaign, I’ve been leading with a universal job guarantee, and I ask other progressive candidates to join me. Let’s remind the establishment that the ability to work for a livable wage is a human right that should be afforded to all. In these uncertain times, progressives will lead with real solutions that offer hope to the many, and just the privileged few."

Ellen Lipton is the former state legislator and progressive Democrat running for the open seat in the suburbs north of Detroit. She's interested in Bernie's Jobs Guarantee ideas and told us that "the federal government has been at the mercy of corporate-controlled lobbyists for long enough. How long are we going to allow them to offer the same tired economic policy of tax cuts for the phantom 'job-creators?' How about trying something that actually has a track record of working-- direct federal investment in people rather than profits. A guaranteed jobs program would put people to work on everything from infrastructure to IT, renewable energy to healthcare and social work-- the possibilities are endless."

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, the Blue America-endorsed candidate running in the open Albuquerque district, is also a big fan of Job Guarantee. This is what she told us some time ago: "I believe that all human beings deserve to live in dignity, and that as part of that we build a government that ensures a well-paying job to each and every individual. Imagine if we guaranteed to all human beings a well-paying job with a livable wage that allows for healthcare, housing, transportation, food, and ultimately the dignity of work? What it would mean for our communities, poverty, racial and gender equality? Well, we've done parts of this before with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the New Deal era. Imagine a program that achieves delivering well-paying work to all individuals, all while overhauling our nation's infrastructure and educational systems. It has the potential to breakdown the entrenched racial and gender-based inequality that exists in our labor force, and enshrines the ideal that all Americans who want a good job will have one. It assures that the dignity of a well-paying job is not just for a plurality of Americans, but for all who seek it. In an increasingly evolving economy, it's important that our government think creatively about the future of our labor force, and ensure that people's needs are put first in the changing labor economy."

Like Dan Canon, Jenny Marshall's North Carolina primary is May 8 sees the idea of Job Guarantee as something relatively easy to explain to voters. (Maybe that's because she's a school teacher.) She's campaigning for the seat held by a multimillionaire, Virginia Foxx, who has never exhibited any interest whatsoever in giving a hand to working families. "People," Jenny told us," want to work and give back to their communities in real tangible ways. They also want to provide a decent, secure life for their family. Think of all the New Deal programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Works Progress Administration that helped put people to work and which began to pull us out of the Great Depression in the 1930's. While those programs did not lift all out of abject poverty it did jump start our economy in a way that can still be witnessed today. Frankly, our infrastructure is long outdated and our national parks and memorials need tending to. Here in the 5th district we have national forest that needs trail cleanup, buildings that need to be repaired and programs that need to be staffed. We need to repair dams, bridges and other infrastructure projects. People need jobs and ones that pay a living wage. Why not offer work that would put an investment back into our communities?"

The Government Has A Job To Do-- Creating Full Employment... And It's Been Failing At It

There have been rumors circulating for months that one of the planks of Bernie's 2020 platform will be Job Guarantee. This week the Levy Institute at Bard College published a paper that could well be the intellectual underpining of that plank, Public Service Employment-- A Path To Full Employment by distinguished economists L. Randall Wray, Stephanie A. Kelton, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Scott Fullwiler, and Flavia Dantas. It's well worth reading the entire report (at the link above). This is the executive summary:

Despite headline-grabbing reports of a healthy US labor market, millions of Americans remain unemployed and underemployed. It is a problem that plagues our economy in good times and in bad-- there are never enough jobs available for all who want to work. The problem is most acute for women, youths, blacks, and Latinos, although research also finds a persistent lack of employment for large numbers of working-age men. This report asks a set of big questions: What if we sought to eliminate involuntary unemployment across all demographic groups and geographic regions, by directly creating jobs in the communities where they are needed through a federally funded Public Service Employment program? How could such a radical transformation of the labor market be implemented? What would it cost, and what would it mean for the US economy?

A number of important implications emerge from this analysis. Joblessness, defined as the inability to secure a job at a living wage ($15 per hour), can be eliminated in every corner of America for every eligible person who desires to work. With a standing job offer-- a “public option”-- available at all times, the US labor market would transition to a permanent state of true full employment. Millions of American families would be lifted out of poverty, and the economy would grow as the benefits of the program spill over into the private sector. Perhaps most astonishingly, this can all be done without the need to raise taxes and without creating an inflation problem.

We propose the creation of a Public Service Employment (PSE) program that would offer a job at a living wage to all who are ready and willing to work. This is a “job guarantee” program that provides employment to all who need work by drawing from the pool of the otherwise unemployed during recessions and shrinking as private sector employment recovers. Federally funded but with a decentralized administration, the PSE program would pay $15 per hour for both full- and part-time positions and offer benefits that include health insurance and childcare. In addition to guaranteeing access to work on projects that serve a public purpose, the PSE program establishes effective minimum standards for wages and benefits.

We have simulated the economic impact over a ten- year period of implementing the PSE program beginning in 2018Q1. Drawing from the unemployed, underemployed, and those who are out of the labor force, the program would attract roughly 15 million people into the PSE workforce, based on our higher- bound estimates of likely program participants. While the report also presents lower-bound estimates, the results highlighted here correspond to this higher- bound scenario:

•  Real, inflation-adjusted GDP (2017Q4 dollar values) would be boosted by $560 billion per year on average, once the PSE program is at full strength (from 2020 to 2027).

•  The economic stimulus generated by the PSE program would also increase private sector employment by up to an additional 4.2 million private sector jobs relative to the baseline, due to the “multiplier effects” of the program.

•  Even though it boosts GDP by over $500 billion per year, adds more than 19 million private and public service jobs, and raises wages nationwide above $15 per hour, the program’s impact on inflation is minor: the boost to inflation peaks at 0.74 percentage points higher than the baseline projection and then progressively falls to a negligible 0.09 percentage points higher than the baseline by the end of the simulation period.

•  The program’s net impact on the federal budget averages 1.53 percent of GDP in the first five years of the program (2018–22) and 1.13 percent of GDP in the last five years (2023–27). These net budgetary impacts could be significantly overestimated, since the simulation makes very cautious assumptions about offsetting reductions in Medicaid and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) expenditures that would result from higher employment and wages.
•  State-level government budgets are improved by a total of $53 billion per year by boosting employment and growth.

•  Based on the demographics of estimated PSE participants, the program would disproportionately benefit women and minorities.

•  One full-time worker in the PSE program could lift a family of up to five out of poverty. With one full-time and one part-time worker, a family of eight could rise above the poverty line.

•  In addition to these measured benefits, the PSE program would lower spending by all levels of government, as well as by businesses and households, on a range of costly problems created by unemployment. It is possible that the program would “pay for itself” in terms of savings due to reduced crime, improved health, greater social and economic stability, and larger reductions in Medicaid and EITC expenditures than those assumed in the simulations.

•  The projects undertaken in every community would provide visible benefits, meeting specific local needs through work that involves caring for people, strengthening communities, and protecting and renewing the environment. This report develops a blueprint for the design, jobs, and implementation of the PSE proposal for the United States.


Unemployment, hidden and official, with all of its attendant social harms, is a policy choice. The results in this report lend more weight to the argument that it is a policy choice we need no longer tolerate. True full employment is both achievable and sustainable.


Alan Grayson is running for Congress again. This is right up his alley. Yesterday he told us that "During the worst of the Great Recession, with unemployment in double digits, I pointed out that the Government could hire every single unemployed person, paying them all $15 per hour, and that would cost around half of the military budget. Today, it would cost barely a quarter of the military budget or, alternatively, right around the cost of the Trump tax cuts for the rich. And if we did, then America would no longer be a country of cheap labor and debt slavery."

Jenny Marshall is the progressive candidate running for the 5th district in North Carolina, currently held by Virginia Foxx-- a big waste of a seat. This morning, Jenny told us that "as she has "traveled around the district what I have found is that people want to work. They want a job that pays the bills. The jobs guarantee would provide work to those who need it in places and spaces where they could have a huge impact in empowering their community and providing much needed labor. I have been talking to people in the recent weeks about this proposal and people are excited about it. They start rattling off places that need help and things that need fixed. With a jobs guarantee, we could tackle those and so much more. A job gives a person autonomy, dignity and builds community. The jobs guarantee is a win-- win situation."

No, The Federal Budget Is Not Like Your Family's Budget

I just got back from Thailand. I was traveling for 26 hours. I went the wrong way 'round-- through Doha instead of someplace normal on the way like Shanghai or Hong Kong. So it took 26 hours. I'm beat. For anyone wondering why I go to Thailand so often... easy: I take an awful to of medics and some of it is very expensive-- even with insurance. One that treats neuropathy costs $4,000 a month. But I get it in Thailand for $600 a month. But everything is inexpensive like that. (Plus I love Thailand, so it's a pleasure. Still... I bought months worth of stuff this time.)

Anyway, while I was flying over India or somewhere, a post I wrote in advance came up, Destroying America's Social Contract-- Will Paul Ryan's Dream Come True?. A few people I had asked to help me out with it e-mailed me while I was flying. I added the first one I saw as an update, Pavlina Tcherneva's. She's a brilliant economist and I was so thrilled to get that feedback from her. So here it is again, along with comments from an old friend and two new ones-- Alan Grayson, Scott Wallace and Amy Vilela. All three are running for Congress this year/ First Pavlina again:

"The political establishment has convinced the American public that a balanced budget is the fiscally responsible thing to do. Nothing can be further from the truth. Every dollar that the government taxes (i.e., takes away from US families and firms) and that is not returned back to the economy via government spending is a lost dollar to the economy. In other words, surpluses drain money from the private sector while deficits add dollars to it. Now Republicans understand this very well. The large tax cuts will produce deficits which will in turn fill someone's coffers, but they prefer to fill the coffers of the wealthiest families. Once they've done that, they demand that the budget be balanced on the backs of middle income families, by cutting programs and entitlements, that benefit the majority of households. It is perfectly sensible to demand greater government deficit spending. But the responsible thing to do is to demand that this kind of government spending is done for the public purpose and in a way that supports the incomes of the vast majority of families, not the select few."

Do you know who Scott Wallace is? He's know as Scott Wallace but his full name is Henry Scott Wallace. His grandfather was the greatest vice president America ever had. Got it now? Henry Wallace, who served under FDR from 1941 through 1945. He has his own fascinating story of course, but we'll save that for another day. His grandson is running for Congress in the new first district of Pennsylvania, basically Bucks County. Before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court de-gerrymandered it a couple of months ago it was PA-08, Brian Fitzpatrick's district. Under the new boundaries Hillary would have won 49.1% to 47.1% and the district is much more competitive now. There's no reason why Scott won't be the new congressman come next January. "Republicans knowingly lied that their trillion and a half dollars in unfunded tax cuts would be free, due to "economic growth," he wrote while I was flying back. "Not a single reputable economist agreed. They planned all along to use the exploding deficit as an excuse to cut life-or-death programs for regular people-- Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Destroying entitlement programs has been their Holy Grail for decades. And now they can taste it. Every single Republican owns this callousness, this devotion to the 1% over the 99%. Now let's make them pay for it." Sounds like our kind of congressman, right?

Amy Vilella, out in Nevada does too. She's running in the north Las Vegas district Ruben Kihuen is giving up. It's a pretty blue bastion and if Amy gets through the primary, she'll be another solid progressive in Congress next year. And she's real smart: "As someone who has spent her entire career in finance, as an executive level accountant, the notion that the federal government's budget can be compared to a household budget is absurd. The federal government prints its own currency and levies taxes, payable only in that same currency. For starters, that's not how our families operate, but beyond that, the idea that American households do not spend more than they bring in is simply not true. In fact, our entire financial system is predicated on the fact that Americans do the majority of their spending-- especially for major purchases, like homes, cars, and higher education-- via credit. Debt, for better or worse, fuels American consumerism, and many of these so-called fiscal conservatives have been the ones pushing financialization into every facet of our lives. A balanced budget amendment is not about fiscal responsibility; it's about gutting the public sector and eliminating as many of the vital social programs that poor, working, and middle class Americans depend on."

And Grayson? Well even if I didn't mention whose quote this was, you might have been able to guess by the tenor and the rhythm: "Ayn Rand, and her humorless and pious court jester Paul Ryan, have done more to rationalize sociopathic behavior than anyone since Beelzebub. No, selfishness is not a virtue. Selflessness is the virtue. If you’re going to insist that selfishness is a virtue, then why leave out arrogance, anger, laziness, stupidity, cowardice, dishonesty and the ever-popular gluttony?" I CAN NOT wait to see Grayson back in Congress, making Republicans cringe and feel ashamed again!

Destroying America's Social Contract-- Will Paul Ryan's Dream Come True?

Ryan learned everything he knows about economics from an adolescent Ayn Rand book

It looks likely that Paul Ryan will announce his retirement from Congress close to Wisconsin’s June 1 filing deadline. There are rumors circulating that he’s selected Tom Hillman, his former aide and now an investment banker in Madison, as the sacrificial lamb. A last minute announcement will make sure that no other mainstream conservative candidates will have time to get into the primary between Hillman and neo-Nazi Paul Nehlen. Ryan is worried that if a bunch of mainstreamish candidates jump into the race, Nehlen could win. Ryan himself could be headed for Trump’s cabinet, possibly to HUD or the EPA. Or maybe he really does just want to stay home with his sons and teach them to master the bow and arrow before they leave for school.

Besides, Ryan is on the verge of accomplishing his longtime goal of rolling back the New Deal. Wrecking social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare and the V.A. has always been his top priority. Now that he’s passed the first step-- tax cuts that will “bankrupt” the country, the second part of the plot is to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, something the House will deal with starting this week. Ryan and his cronies want to pass something that treats the U.S. government like a family budget-- mandating that Congress not spend more than it brings in.

Reactionary Virginia Judiciary Chair, who is also retiring, has written an amendment that would require three-fifths majorities in both the House and Senate to pass tax increases or increase the debt limit. The amendment can’t pass but the far right wants it as a purity test for Republican members. (It is also a purity test for Democrats. Any Republican who votes against it will be vulnerable to a primary from the right and any Democrat who votes for it will be vulnerable, at least in theory, to a primary from a progressive.

Goodlatte’s statement: "A constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget would finally bring discipline to federal spending and would benefit generations to come. I have demonstrated my commitment to fiscal responsibility by introducing constitutional amendments to mandate a balanced budget every Congress since 2007… I commend the decision made by House leadership to bring H.J.Res. 2 to the floor for a vote. I challenge my colleagues in the House and Senate to do what is morally right and responsible by passing this amendment and sending it on to the states for ratification.”

Ro Khanna is the congressman from Silicon Valley. More than a view observers of Congress say he's the most progressive member of that body. Here's what he told us about Ryan yesterday: "Paul Ryan sought to operationalize the Ayn Rand and Hayek world view. Basically, his goal is the reconstruction of the administrative state. Democrats need a counter vision that affirms the role of the state in giving people a fair chance at the American Dream. We need to be for a jobs guarantee, a $15 minimum wage, debt free college, a massive expansion of the EITC, investments in tech jobs and apprenticeships. We won’t beat a conservative ideology with platitudes. Rather we need to build our platform based on the framework on Stiglitz and Kelton and Reich and stand for something bold!"

Randy Bryce, AKA, @IronStache, is the progressive Democrat who has turned Ryan's world upside down. He speaks plainly and gets to the point quickly, as he did yesterday: "Paul Ryan got to where he is today using the same programs he is going to take away from the rest of us. A perfect illustration of someone kicking the ladder once he gets to the top so no one else can raise themselves up."

Progressives understand the danger and are ready to stand firm against it. Sam Jammal is the progressive candidate running in CA-39, mostly located in northeast Orange County. "There are a lot of reasons why this is an important election," he told us. "One of the defining issues-- thanks to Paul Ryan and Trump's reckless tax reform-- is preserving Social Security and Medicare. Trump severely undermined our budget by creating a $1.5 trillion hole in our budget. Now, Ryan is going to use that to advocate for deep cuts. Democrats are going to need to stand firm and hold the line against cuts. Our seniors earned this, but Ryan just looks at things from an ideological perspective. What is even more dangerous is that Republicans are going to use the deficit to undermine every investment we have traditionally made to build our country. Democrats must be prepared to replace Trump's tax reform and fight for critical investments in education, infrastructure and health care. This is Ryan's last stand to dismantle our government."

UPDATE From Pavlina Tcherneva

"The political establishment has convinced the American public that a balanced budget is the fiscally responsible thing to do. Nothing can be further from the truth. Every dollar that the government taxes (i.e., takes away from US families and firms) and that is not returned back to the economy via government spending is a lost dollar to the economy. In other words, surpluses drain money from the private sector while deficits add dollars to it. Now Republicans understand this very well. The large tax cuts will produce deficits which will in turn fill someone's coffers, but they prefer to fill the coffers of the wealthiest families. Once they've done that, they demand that the budget be balanced on the backs of middle income families, by cutting programs and entitlements, that benefit the majority of households. It is perfectly sensible to demand greater government deficit spending. But the responsible thing to do is to demand that this kind of government spending is done for the public purpose and in a way that supports the incomes of the vast majority of families, not the select few."

Job Guarantee, Good-- Guaranteed Basic Income, Scam

Elizabeth Esty is a New Dem backbencher from northwestern Connecticut (CT-05)— Meriden, Waterbury, Danbury, New Farfield, Mew Milford, Salibury… Obama won the district both times (with 56.4% in 2008 and 53.5% in 2012) and Hillary beat Trump 49.9% to 45.8%. The district’s PVI is D+2, least blue in the state. Esty is a relatively conservative Democrat, an EMILY’s List politician, who won Chris Murphy’s seat in 2012 when he ran for the U.S. Senate. She won the primary by beating progressive House Speaker Chris Donovan in a 3-way race, a real tragedy since he’s a proven leader and she’s a big waste of a seat, a seat she’s being forced to vacate after being exposed for creating a horrible workplace by retaining a chief of staff, a violent sexual harasser for three months after she first learned of the allegations in 2016. Among the Democrats eyeing the race to replace her are Harvey Weinstein buddy Dan Roberti, Waterbury Mayor Neil O'Leary, state Rep. Liz Linehan of Cheshire and former state Sen. Dante Bartolomeo of Meriden are considered top contenders. Luckily for the Democrats, the filing deadline is June 8 and the primary is August 14.

Not much of a news story, right? But it’s getting a thousand times more coverage than Chris Hedges’ TruthDig column about, a scam being pushed by oligarchs, guaranteed basic income, which is a thousand times more consequential. Bernie, the most important advocate of Job Guarantee has been warning his supporters that UBI is a scam. Hedges agrees. He wrote that “A number of the reigning oligarchs-- among them Mark Zuckerberg (net worth $64.1 billion), Elon Musk (net worth $20.8 billion), Richard Branson (net worth $5.1 billion) and Stewart Butterfield (net worth $1.6 billion)-- are calling for a guaranteed basic income. It looks progressive. They couch their proposals in the moral language of caring for the destitute and the less fortunate. But behind this is the stark awareness, especially in Silicon Valley, that the world these oligarchs have helped create is so lopsided that future consumers, plagued by job insecurity, substandard wages, automation and crippling debt peonage, will be unable to pay for the products and services offered by the big corporations.”

The oligarchs do not propose structural change. They do not want businesses and the marketplace regulated. They do not support labor unions. They will not pay a living wage to their bonded labor in the developing world or the American workers in their warehouses and shipping centers or driving their delivery vehicles. They have no intention of establishing free college education, universal government health or adequate pensions. They seek, rather, a mechanism to continue to exploit desperate workers earning subsistence wages and whom they can hire and fire at will. The hellish factories and sweatshops in China and the developing world where workers earn less than a dollar an hour will continue to churn out the oligarchs’ products and swell their obscene wealth. America will continue to be transformed into a deindustrialized wasteland. The architects of our neofeudalism call on the government to pay a guaranteed basic income so they can continue to feed upon us like swarms of longnose lancetfish, which devour others in their own species.

“Increasing the minimum wage or creating a basic income will amount to naught if hedge funds buy up foreclosed houses and pharmaceutical patents and raise prices (in some cases astronomically) to line their own pockets out of the increased effective demand exercised by the population,” David Harvey writes in “Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason.” “Increasing college tuitions, usurious interest rates on credit cards, all sorts of hidden charges on telephone bills and medical insurance could steal away the benefits. A population might be better served by strict regulatory intervention to control these living expenses, to limit the vast amount of wealth appropriation occurring at the point of realisation. It is not surprising to find there is strong sentiment among the venture capitalists of Silicon Valley to also support basic minimum income proposals. They know their technologies are putting people out of work by the millions and that those millions will not form a market for their products if they have no income.”

The call for a guaranteed basic income is a classic example of Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci’s understanding that when capitalists have surplus capital and labor they use mass culture and ideology, in this case neoliberalism, to reconfigure the habits of a society to absorb the surpluses.

…This phase of capitalism ended once industry moved overseas and wages stagnated or declined. The well-paying unionized jobs disappeared. Jobs became menial and inadequately compensated. Poverty expanded. The oligarchs began to mine government social services, including education, health care, the military, intelligence gathering, prisons and utilities such as electricity and water, for profit. As a publication of the San Francisco Federal Reserve reportedly noted, the country-- and by extension the oligarchs-- could no longer get out of crises “by building houses and filling them with things.” The United States shifted in the 1970s from what the historian Charles Maier called an “empire of production” to “an empire of consumption.” In short, we began to borrow to maintain a lifestyle and an empire we could no longer afford.

Profit in the “empire of consumption” is extracted not by producing products but by privatizing and pushing up the costs of the basic services we need to survive and allowing banks and hedge funds to impose punishing debt peonage on the public and gamble on tech, student debt and housing bubbles. The old ideology of the New Deal, of government orchestrating huge social engineering projects under the Public Works Administration or in the War on Poverty, was replaced by a new ideology to justify another form of predatory capitalism.

In Harvey’s book A Brief History of Neoliberalism he defines neoliberalism as “a project to achieve the restoration of class power” in the wake of the economic crisis of the 1970s and what the political scientist Samuel Huntington said was America’s “excess of democracy” in the 1960s and the 1970s. It achieved its aim.

Neoliberalism, Harvey wrote, is “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.”

American oligarchs discredited the populist movements of the 1960s and 1970s that had played a vital role in forcing government to carry out programs for the common good and restricting corporate pillage. They demonized government, which as John Ralston Saul writes, “is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good.” Suddenly-- as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, two of the principal political proponents of neoliberalism, insisted-- government was the problem. The neoliberal propaganda campaign successfully indoctrinated large segments of the population to call for their own enslavement.

The ideology of neoliberalism never made sense. It was a con. No society can effectively govern itself by basing its decisions and policies on the dictates of the marketplace. The marketplace became God. Everything and everyone was sacrificed on its altar in the name of progress. Social inequality soared. Amid the destruction, the proponents of neoliberalism preached the arrival of a new Eden once we got through the pain and disruption. The ideology of neoliberalism was utopian, if we use the word “utopia” as Thomas More intended—the Greek words for “no” and “place.” “To live within ideology, with utopian expectations, is to live in no place, to live in limbo,” Saul writes in “The Unconscious Civilization.” “To live nowhere. To live in a void where the illusion of reality is usually created by highly sophisticated rational constructs.”

Corporations used their wealth and power to make this ideology the reigning doctrine. They established well-funded centers of propaganda such as The Heritage Foundation, took over university economic departments and amplified the voices of their courtiers in the media. Those who questioned the doctrine were cast out like medieval heretics, their careers blocked and their voices muted or silenced. The contradictions, lies and destruction within neoliberal ideology were ignored by those who dominated the national discourse, leading to mounting frustration and rage among a populace that had been abandoned and betrayed.

The propagandists for neoliberalism blamed the other-- Muslims, undocumented workers, African-Americans, gays, feminists, liberals, intellectuals and, of course, government-- for the downward spiral. Politicians who served the interests of the corporate oligarchs told dispossessed white workers their suffering was caused by the ascendancy of these marginalized groups and a cultural assault on their national identity and values, not corporate pillage. It was only a matter of time before this lie spawned the xenophobic, racist hate speech that dominates American political life and led to the rise of imbecilic and dangerous demagogues such as Donald Trump.

“Each of Globalization’s strengths has somehow turned out to have an opposing meaning,” Saul writes in The Collapse of Globalization and the Reinvention of the World. “The lowering of national residency requirements for corporations has morphed into a tool for massive tax evasion. The idea of a global economic system mysteriously made local poverty seem unreal, even normal. The decline of the middle class-- the very basis of democracy-- seemed to be just one of those things that happen, unfortunate but inevitable. That the working class and lower middle class, even parts of the middle class, could only survive with more than one job per person seemed to be the expected punishment for not keeping up. The contrast between unprecedented bonuses for mere managers at the top and the four-job family below them seemed inevitable in a globalized world. For two decades an elite consensus insisted that unsustainable third-world debts could not be put aside in a sort of bad debt reserve without betraying Globalism’s essential principles and moral obligations, which included unwavering respect for the sanctity of international contracts. It took the same people about two weeks to abandon sanctity and propose bad debt banks for their own far larger debts in 2009.”

The oligarchs mask their cruelty and greed with an empty moralism. They claim to champion women’s rights, diversity and inclusivity, as long as women and people of color serve the corporate neoliberal project. An example of this moralism occurred last Tuesday when NPR’s Ari Shapiro interviewed Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer and former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett, a member of the company’s board, about diversity and gender equality in the workplace. Shapiro asked about Lyft offering free rides to those marching against gun violence and donating to the ACLU.

“We serve our drivers, we serve our passengers, and we serve the employees that work for us,” Zimmer said in the interview. “And when it comes to [resisting gun] violence, when it comes to equality, those are things that we’re going to stand up for.”

America’s “gig economy,” as I wrote last week in my column, is a new form of serfdom. Corporations such as Lyft use lobbyists and campaign donations to free themselves from regulatory control. They force poorly paid temporary workers, who lack benefits, to work 16 hours a day in a race to the bottom. This neoliberal economic model destroys regulated taxi and livery services, forcing drivers who were once able to make a decent income into poverty, bankruptcy, foreclosures, evictions and occasionally suicide. By fighting gender, sexual and racial inequality in the workplace rather than economic inequality, by denouncing mass shootings rather than out-of-control police violence and mass incarceration, these corporations hide their complicity in societal disintegration. Their empty moralism and faux compassion is an updated version of the publicity stunt that John D. Rockefeller, whose personal fortune was $900 million in 1913, or $189.6 billion in today’s terms, used when he handed out shiny new dimes to strangers.

Neoliberalism heralds a return to the worst days of unregulated capitalism, after the Industrial Revolution when workers were denied a living wage and decent, safe working conditions. Oligarchs have not changed. They are out for themselves. They do not see government as an institution to defend and promote the rights and needs of citizens. They see it as an impediment to unrestricted exploitation and profit. Human beings, to oligarchs, are commodities. They are used to increase wealth and then discarded. Oligarchs don’t propose programs such as a guaranteed basic income unless they intend to profit from it. This is how they are wired. Don’t be fooled by the grins and oily promises of these human versions of the Cheshire Cat. The object is to spread confusion while they increase levels of exploitation.

“Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ ” Lewis Carroll wrote. “The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’”

The longer the elites keep us in darkness with their ideological tricks and empty moralism, the longer we refuse to mobilize to break their grip on power, the worse it will get.

In a brilliant new working paper, Job Guarantee: Design, Jobs, and Implementation, Pavlina Tcherneva answers the questions “Why don’t we just give people cash assistance instead?” and “Isn’t universal basic income (UBI) a better program?”

Even if UI were increased, other cash assistance programs were strengthened, and a form of basic income guarantee were implemented, people would still want jobs.

Research indicates that the nonpecuniary costs of unemployment (85–93 percent) far outweigh the pecuniary costs (15–7 percent). This suggests that interventions that are based on providing income alone will not be successful. People reap a great many benefits from working; income is but one of them. Decent work at decent pay brings significant mental and physical health benefits, it increases and deepens one’s social capital, strengthens educational and labor market outcomes of other family members, and offers institutional support and economic opportunities not available to those outside the labor market, to name just a few.

While there are many good reasons why some people cannot or should not work and why other public policies should be designed to offer them economic security, income assistance does not solve the problem of involuntary unemployment.

There are reasons to doubt the effectiveness of UBI programs. The first is that they do not address unemployment and the associated social and personal costs. Experiments around the world show that, even in places where some form of UBI has been implemented, many people still seek but are unable to find paid employment.

Secondly, UBI in and of itself does not guarantee access to needed real resources. Working families today have trouble finding adequate housing, care, afterschool programs, clean public spaces, etc., even if they already have above-poverty incomes.

The JG guarantees both: the income and the public goods and services that are currently in short supply. The JG is a type of guaranteed income, except it guarantees both the income-- through public service employment-- and the provisioning of the very goods and services communities need.

I had a discussion with Bernie's economic advisor and Stony Brook professor, Stephanie Kelton, about this today. “The Silicon Valley version of a UBI is obviously a self-serving Trojan horse,” she told me. "Money for Nothing and the [shredding of the last vestiges of the New Deal and Great Society] for free.” 

Whenever someone pitches a basic income guarantee, ask them: (1) Is it genuinely universal?-- ie does everyone get the same no-strings-attached payment? (2) Is it enough to live on without working? (3) How do you “pay for it?” Chances are, it’s a scheme to enrich those at the top by eviscerating the safety net-- that’s their “pay-for-- under the guise of “efficiency” or some other bogus neoliberal label. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Stephanie introduced me to Geoff Coventry last January and he did a guest post on Modern Monetary Theory. He’s a serial entrepreneur and a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group dedicated to ending the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America. I asked him to comment on this one as well. “We all recognize,” he told me this morning, “that there are some people in society who should be the beneficiary of income support, including children & students, the elderly, those who cannot or will not work for various reasons. But we should also recognize that there are many who want to work for a living but are denied this opportunity to participate in the economy, contribute their skills, and provide a living for themselves and their families. The Job Guarantee specifically addresses this need by providing local work for any who seek it but who are not currently needed for any private or public sector labor needs. It also provides a floor to what a full time job deserves in terms of wages, benefits, and working conditions. Proponents of a UBI but not a job guarantee are suggesting those who want a job should not receive a job but instead receive income, effectively denying these citizens their right to work.

“In addition to meeting a basic need of society, a well designed job guarantee can play a key role in reshaping our economy in ways that reduce discrimination, wage suppression, inequality, and structural poverty. The formerly incarcerated, the long-term unemployed, those living in abandoned towns and communities all need targeted opportunities to learn skills, become reconnected in their communities, and contribute to meeting the needs unique to their locale. Income alone does not connect people together. Income alone does not help people gain skills and confidence by working with others. It does not provide pride of having done something in the community that matters to their friends and neighbors. It doesn’t set a new bar for company wages, benefits and working conditions. A job guarantee is a foundational policy for those who seek to restructure our economy to one that works for all, raises the standard of living for those who most need it, and providing a path for both personal and community development.”

 

What Sounds Better To You-- Guaranteed Basic Income Or Federal Job Guarantee

I love learning new stuff and this cycle Blue America is backing some really smart candidates with some excellent ideas. Every time I speak with milllennial political leaders like state Rep Kaniela Ing (HI) and former Treasury Department economist Austin Frerick (IA), for example, I feel like I’m learning something new. And because of some of their ideas, I’ve been in touch with economic policy experts Stephanie Kelton and Pavlina Tcherneva. I feel like I get smarter each time I interact with either one of them. It was Kaniela who first raised the question with me about the pros and cons between Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Job Guarantee (JG), something many of the Blue America candidates have been discussing as well. One of them turned me on to a year old Jacobin piece, Why We Need a Federal Job Guarantee by academics Mark Paul, William Darity and Darrick Hamilton.

They never call UBI a trap and they point out many of the positive aspects, like with this Robert Reich video from just before the 2016 election. They don’t even denigrate the idea by pointing out many of the flaws behind Silicon Valley’s enthusiasm for it.



But in the end Paul, Darity and Hamilton come out-- as have Kelton and Tcherneva-- on the side of JG. “A job guarantee,” wrote Paul, Darity and Hamilton, “is not a new idea. It has been part of the American conversation at least since populist governor Huey Long put forth his Share Our Wealth Plan. In 1934, he argued that the United States should use public works to ensure “everybody [is] employed.” These calls were echoed by politicians from Roosevelt in his Economic Bill of Rights to George McGovern during his 1972 presidential bid. Martin Luther King also stumped for a job guarantee, demanding immediate ‘employment for everyone in need of a job.’ He saw ‘a guaranteed annual income at levels that sustain life and decent circumstances’ as the second-best option. Here are five reasons to agree with him.”

1- A Job Guarantee Means Fewer Poor Americans

A job guarantee would reduce poverty more quickly and provide more benefits than a UBI. To ensure a sufficient income, we argue for a FJG that would pay a minimum annual wage of at least $23,000 (the poverty line for a family of four), rising to a mean of $32,500. This would eliminate the “working poor” for full-time working households. In addition to the wage, workers in the FJG program would receive health insurance and pension benefits in line with those that all civil servants and elected federal officials receive.

In comparison, many of the UBI proposals promise around $10,000 annually to every citizen (for an example, see Charles Murray’s proposal here). On the one hand, this plan would break the link between employment and money. But it does so at half the rate that would be available under the FJG, not even considering lifesaving benefits like health insurance.

2- The Robots Haven’t Taken Over Yet. We Still Need Workers.

The dangers of imminent full automation are overstated: there is little evidence that companies are largely replacing human workers with robots. As Dean Baker explains,

If technology were rapidly displacing workers then productivity growth-- the rate of increase in the value of goods and services produced in an hour of work-- should be very high, because machines are more efficient. In the last decade, however, productivity growth has risen at a sluggish 1.4 percent annual rate. In the last two years it has limped along at a pace of less than 1 percent annually. By comparison, in the post–World War II “Golden Age,” from 1947 to 1973, productivity grew at an annual rate of almost 3 percent.

No doubt, stable and high-paid employment opportunities are dwindling, but we shouldn’t blame the robots. Workers aren’t being replaced by automatons; they are being replaced with other workers— ones lower-paid and more precariously employed. Nevertheless, technology, and globalization, have struck fear into American workers.

Not because they are by nature a raw deal, but because the balance of forces over the last few decades has been skewed so dramatically in the favor of capital. Technology, nor globalization, need have negative employment effects on workers-- but they certainly can. It’s time to get the rules right, and ensure workers are provided the dignity of a job. A federal job program would solve the real problem, while UBI would simply treat a side effect.

3- A FJG Could Build An Inclusive Economy.

Conventional wisdom holds s that people dislike work. Introductory economics classes will explain the disutility of labor, which is a direct trade-off with leisure. Granted, employment isn’t always fun, and many forms of employment are dangerous and exploitative. But the UBI misses the way in which employment structurally empowers workers at the point of production and has by its own merits positive dimensions.

This touches on a heated debate on the Left. But for now, there is no doubt that people want jobs, but they want good jobs that provide flexibility and opportunity. They want to contribute, to have a purpose, to participate in the economy and, most importantly, in society. Nevertheless, the private sector continues to leave millions without work, even during supposed “strong” economic times.

The workplace is social, a place where we spend a great deal of our time interacting with others. In addition to the stress associated with limited resources, the loneliness that plagues many unemployed workers can exacerbate mental health problems. Employment-- especially employment that provides added social benefits like communal coffee breaks-- adds to workers’ well-being and productivity. A federal job guarantee can provide workers with socially beneficial employment-- providing the dignity of a job to all that seek it.

The FJG would also act as a de facto wage floor-- private employers will have to offer wages and benefits at least as enticing as the federal government to attract workers. There has been extensive public support for recent increases in the minimum wage, such as the Fight for $15 campaign, demonstrating that most Americans believe workers deserve a living wage. Fighting for a higher minimum wage is an important step to ensure that workers are compensated a living wage rather than a poverty wage, yet let us not forget that the effective minimum wage in this country without a UBI or a job guarantee is $0. This must change.

Finally, some argue that a “skills mismatch” explains why some workers remain unemployed. While we reject that narrative, a well-designed FJG will nevertheless include a training element to build workers’ skills and a jobs ladder to create upward mobility in the workplace.

All of these elements will build an inclusive economy that provides good jobs for all. The UBI, in contrast, could subsidize bad jobs-- allowing low minimum wages and lack of benefits to persist.

4- Federal Jobs Could Provide Socially Useful Goods And Services.

During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were public employment programs designed to put Americans back to work after the national unemployment rate reached 25 percent. These programs, implemented under the Roosevelt administration, provided socially beneficial goods and services that benefited all Americans. Some of our national parks-- Zion, Glacier, and Shenandoah-- received substantial work contributions from employees of the federal jobs programs. The Blue Ridge Parkway was a federally funded and staffed infrastructure program.

A new federal job guarantee could undertake similarly bold and much-needed public-works projects.

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the United States a D+ in infrastructure and prices necessary repairs at $3.6 trillion. This lack of investment has lowered employment rates, cost businesses sales, and reduced incomes for American families. Make no mistake, these are government choices. They could choose instead to hire unemployed workers to repair bridges, maintain roadways, and update power grids.

Likewise, Bill McKibben just called for us to “declare war” against climate change. With climate change being perhaps the largest threat to our well-being, bold action is needed. The job guarantee program would create the capacity to do just that. Professor Robert Pollin of the Political Economy Research Institute calls for scaling up the transition to a green economy, which would create millions of new jobs along the way. He and his colleagues estimate what a Green New Deal would look like, and find that a transition to a green economy would amount to an estimated $200 billion in investment annually, resulting in a drop in “US emission by 40 percent within 20 years, while creating a net increase of 2.7 million jobs.” In part, this is due to the labor-intensive nature of energy efficiency and other “green” investments.

Additional services, when combined with a FJG, would save average American households thousands, if not tens of thousands, a year. According to the Economic Policy Institute, for example, tuition-free and universal child care and education-- staffed by FJG workers-- would trim an average of $22,631 annually from families’ budgets in expensive places such as DC while saving households in places like Arkansas a more modest $5,995 on average.

To be sure, a UBI would free up time to volunteer, to care for sick relatives, or to start small businesses. Additionally, the UBI would finally provide greater financial freedom to those that choose to stay at home and engage in care work-- disproportionately provided by women. However, the FJG has the ability to provide high quality services, such as child care and elder care, that would greatly reduce the care burden, providing more choice while building on the current social safety net.

5- It’ll Stabilize The Economy

A FJG would bring us much closer to actual full employment, not the neoclassical full employment that subjectively allows for some optimal frictional unemployment. Most contemporary economists rely on the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) to calculate this less-than-full full employment artificial statistic which functions as a disciplinary tool of the bourgeoisie, but this, according to Roger Farmer is “an idea past its sell-by date.”

By full employment, we mean simply that everyone seeking a job gets one. We’d wager that if you asked the average American what full employment means to them, they’d give you a similar answer-- a job for all. Indeed, a plurality of Americans will also tell you they support a FJG.

The UBI would likely still leave a substantial segment of the population in poverty. As Belgian philosopher Philippe Van Parijs, one of the most prominent UBI advocates, acknowledged, even a large payment through the UBI won’t necessarily secure a comfortable living for all citizens. How about those without jobs, or those who earn below subsistence wages? Of course, a UBI coupled with a non-poverty wage option and strong unionization could seriously combat poverty. The UBI would eliminate the effective minimum wage of $0 currently offered in the United States, though it would fail to provide adequate employment for all that demanded it-- a crucial shortfall of such a program.

A FJG is a sounder mechanism to combat structural inequalities, for instance through closing the persistent unemployment gap experienced by stigmatized groups who face continued discrimination. (Note, since 1972 unemployment has average double digits for black workers and has never fallen below 7 percent-- a level that is only reached during times of economic crisis-- for white workers).

Further, the FJG will have a strong macroeconomic stabilization effect. During economic downturns, it would expand and hire more people; it would then shrink during economic boom periods as people move from public to better-paying private employment. Pavlina R. Tcherneva, a leading voice on the FJG’s macroeconomic effects, argues that policies like the UBI have no counter-cyclical features. Thus, when the economy takes a downturn-- say as it did in 2007-- basic incomes provide no automatic stabilizers to right the sinking ship.

This is good for the economy as a whole. Rather than expanding the unemployment insurance rolls during economic busts, the FJG would put folks to work and moderate the business cycle. Federal workers’ paychecks will increase demand, which will increase economic growth. Many economists agree that today’s secular stagnation-- insufficient demand-- is contributing to continued “lackluster” growth after the Great Recession. Only modest upticks in growth for the foreseeable future will come if we continue the status quo.

Finally, as a less costly program a FJG might be easier for a future left government to enact. Some estimate that basic income could easily cost more than $3 trillion each year, while others say it will only come to $2.7 trillion. The FJG, on the other hand, will cost orders of magnitude less. Even if we conservatively guess that fifteen million unemployed workers need jobs, funding the FJG would take about $750 billion.

We want to build an inclusive economy. The FJG will build an economy that serves the working class more efficiently and effectively than the UBI.

The benefits will be immediately and broadly distributed. The FJG will directly target the unemployed-- remedying a key predictor of poverty. By providing universal employment, it will also counteract employers’ systematic discrimination against ex-offenders, recent military veterans, and certain racial groups. Furthermore, through providing a guaranteed job, workers will be emboldened to take new actions in the private sector. This could be just the policy to reinvigorate the labor movement, spurring unionization drives to improve working conditions. These benefits will result in the federal jobs raising beneficiaries and their families above the poverty line. The UBI can make no such guarantee.

Not only would a federal job guarantee bring justice to the millions who desire work, but it would also address the long-standing unjust barriers that keep large segments of stigmatized populations out of the labor force.

Finally, it would reverse the rising tide of inequality for all workers. By strengthening their bargaining power and eliminating the threat of unemployment once and for all, a federal job guarantee would bring power back to the workers where it belongs.

Tim Canova, a South Florida reformer in a tight contest with status quo Democrat Debbie Wassermann Schultz has been a long time supporter of a federal jobs guarantee. "In the 1990s, at the National Jobs For All Coalition, we called for this approach,” he told me recently. “The need for a federal job guarantee has been even greater since the 2008 financial collapse and the trickle down recovery that has followed. New Deal public works programs helped build so much of the country’s infrastructure while providing hope and dignity to millions of people. Today there are millions of Americans, particularly among our youth, who are unemployed or underemployed in bad part time jobs. We need to provide them with opportunities in public jobs programs, building our crumbling infrastructure, in conservation projects, and in service to others. This is a big part of our agenda."

Kaniela Ing, the cutting edge policy candidate in Hawaii, has been working with Stephanie Kelton on how to make sure Job Guarantee serves the needs Hawaii's working families. A few weeks ago Kaniela told us that "America’s promise has always been clear-- work hard and your family will prosper. Today, too many hard-working Americans feel that our leaders have gone bad on that promise. I talk to folks who tell me everyday, they grind and sweat, but struggle to get by. Wages are stagnant, unemployment and underemployment are rising, the threats of automation and globalization are becoming real, all while costs are skyrocketing. But just take a walk outside and look around at all the work that needs to be done in America. There are bridges to be built, highways needing repair, kids to be taught, aging folks needing care, oceans to be cleaned, trees to be planted. But private markets fall short. For every job opening in America, four people are gunning for it. This pits worker against worker and creates a power imbalance between workers and their bosses. It’s too risky for a worker to stand up to wage theft, inhumane working conditions, or sexual harassment, when they know there’s nowhere else to go. Our elected representatives must stop pretending that everything is okay, and that the job market will some home fix itself. It’s time for real solutions that will actually help working families across America. It’s time for a new New deal. Since the start of my campaign, I’ve been leading with a universal job guarantee, and I ask other progressive candidates to join me. Let’s remind the establishment that the ability to work for a livable wage is a human right that should be afforded to all. In these uncertain times, progressives will lead with real solutions that offer hope to the many, and just the privileged few."