Does the future of work include a Federal Jobs Guarantee? (with Pavlina Tcherneva and Representative Ro Khanna)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Under a Federal Jobs Guarantee, rather than distributing unemployment checks, the government would give a living-wage job to everyone that needs one. It’s a concept that’s been gaining popularity recently, and it’s often pitted against universal basic income. For the second episode in this two-part series exploring both ideas, expert Pavlina Tcherneva and Representative Ro Khanna join Nick and Paul to make the case for a Job Guarantee. Pavlina Tcherneva is an Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. Her research on the job guarantee has informed the proposals of several members of congress, and she has collaborated with governments around the world on designing and evaluating employment programs. Twitter: @ptcherneva Ro Khanna is the U.S. Representative from California’s 17th congressional district. He sits on the House Budget, Armed Services, and Oversight and Reform committees and is first vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He also serves as an Assistant Whip for the Democratic Caucus. In 2018, he introduced legislation to ensure that every jobless worker in the country is given the opportunity to earn a living. Twitter: @RoKhanna Further reading: Ro Khanna Has an Ambitious Plan to Put the Unemployed to Work. Just Don’t Call It a Job Guarantee. https://slate.com/business/2018/07/ro-khanna-has-an-ambitious-plan-to-help-the-unemployed-just-dont-call-it-a-job-guarantee.html Trump’s bait and switch: job creation in the midst of welfare state sabotage: http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue78/Tcherneva78.pdf 4 big questions about job guarantees: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/27/17281676/job-guarantee-design-bad-jobs-labor-market-federal-reserve The Federal Job Guarantee - A Policy to Achieve Permanent Full Employment: https://www.cbpp.org/research/full-employment/the-federal-job-guarantee-a-policy-to-achieve-permanent-full-employment Unemployment: The Silent Epidemic: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_895.pdf The Job Guarantee: Design, Jobs, and Implementation: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_902.pdf

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Pitchfork Economics listeners on an upcoming episode we'll be talking about this really core
0:07.5	neoliberal economic idea called marginal productivity. It's the neoclassical economic idea that the market, because it's perfectly efficient, always pays you exactly what you're worth.
0:21.0	So we want to hear from you you whether you're a minimum wage worker
0:23.7	an executive or anything in between. Do you think you're paid exactly what you're
0:28.2	worth? Tell us what you do and whether you get paid what you're worth and we'll try
0:32.0	to play it on the show. And here's the number,
0:34.8	731 3889334.
0:39.4	Thanks.
0:40.4	Job creation in this country has not been equal when you look at geography and it has not
0:48.3	been equal when you look at race and it's not been equal when you look at economic class.
0:53.0	You might start thinking about this problem, like a
0:56.0	required hidden epidemic that people who live with it
0:59.0	they are all of these social costs.
1:01.0	Politics is largely the art of the possible.
1:04.0	If we can extend economic opportunity to people left out,
1:08.0	then we will appeal to the better angels of this country. From the offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitch Fork Economics, with Nick Hanauer, a conversation about how
1:26.3	capitalism actually works.
1:29.7	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
1:36.0	I'm Paul Constant and I'm a writer at Civic Ventures.
1:41.0	In the last episode we talked about universal basic income and today we are going to talk about its close cousin Universal basic jobs.
1:51.0	Yeah, so a job guarantee is similar but different than an income
1:58.9	guarantee and there's a ton of conversation in progressive policy, wonky progressive policy circles
	...

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