Is Unemployment Planned???

[Kimura]

"Welfare doesn't prolong or create unemployment."

Now, why would you claim that....when item #4 in the OP clearly proves that the opposite is true.


Tends to remove any possibility that you have cachet or expertise in the area.

No, it doesn't prove anything. I'm more than familiar with Robert Rector and the Heritage Foundation. I read that paper years ago, it's full of problems to say the least. Remember, correlation is not causation.

Here’s the problem: There aren’t enough available job openings for the current number of people looking for jobs. We’re not even factoring in the disabled, elderly or discouraged workers. If the government were to toss these people off welfare, the number of job seekers would massively increase in an economy which isn't creating a sufficient amount of jobs. The problem isn’t people dropping out of the labor force, but rather an economy which is structurally not equipped to create more jobs. In other words, welfare isn’t acting as some disincentive to find a job. Welfare is basically functioning as supplementary income for people who cannot secure employment due to changes and the overall structure of the labor market.

Nonsense.


Covered in chapter five of Peter Ferrara’s “America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb.”

1. The colloquial use of “poverty” implies a material deprivation, which hardly exists. But this is not to say that a poverty of social conditions does not exist, and this cannot be remedied with money. In fact, the root cause of this poverty is the perverse, counterproductive incentives arising from the welfare system itself.

2. Charles Murray’s “Losing Ground” documented this effect using social indicators such as work, marriage, legitimacy, crime, and alcohol and drug abuse, and showing how the massive increase in government welfare programs worsened the problem.

3. A key to why ‘poverty’ ceased to decline almost as soon as the ‘War on Poverty’ began, is that the poor and lower-income population stopped working, and this led to the other deteriorating social conditions Murray cites. In 1960, almost 2/3 of lowest-income households were headed by persons who worked. http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-080.pdf

a. By 1991, this number was down to only one third….and only 11% working full time. Nor was this due to being unable to find work, as the ‘80’s and ‘90’s were boom times.


4. Here we see an inherent weakness in Liberal thinking, that is that they are the smartest of folks, and their brilliance is necessary for other to prosper. The sequitur is that the people that they guide are stupid. No, the problem is that, with government welfare programs offering such generous and wide-ranging benefits, form housing to medical care to food stamps to outright cash, many reduce or eliminate their work effort.


5. Proof? Sure. The government conducted a study, 1971-1978 known as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME-DIME, in which low income families were give a guaranteed income, a welfare package with everything liberal policy makers could hope for. Result: for every dollar of extra welfare given, low income recipients reduced their labor by 80 cents. http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/12794.pdf

a. Further results: dissolution of families: “This conclusion was unambiguously unfavorable to advocates of a negative income tax that would cover married couples, for two important reasons. First, increased
marital breakups among the poor would increase the numbers on
welfare and the amount of transfer payments, principally because the
separated wife and children would receive higher transfer payments.
Second, marital dissolutions and the usual accompanying absence of
fathers from households with children are generally considered unfavorable outcomes regardless of whether or not the welfare rolls increase.” http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30c.pdf

b. “When families received guaranteed income at 90% of the poverty level, there was a 43% increase in black family dissolution and a 63% increase in white family dissolution. At 125% of the poverty levels, dissolutions were 75% and 40%.”
Robert B. Carleson, “Government Is The Problem,” p. 57.



Perhaps you'd best stick to 'wax on, wax off.'

LOL @ Peter Farrara. Newsflash: Monetarily sovereign countries like United States cannot go bankrupt. It's operationally impossible.

So you decided to go with the Charles Murray. I also read Losing Ground. He's a social darwinist which is the least of his problems. Here's a guy that's singuarly obsessed with ending food stamps and welfare for single mothers.

Obviously, giving welfare to everyone, in the literal sense, is a stupid idea. It will inevitably raise prices, the same way as Food Stamps contribute to increased food prices. I personally don't like the basic income guarantee. I'm a proponent of the JG (Job Guarantee/ELR) as opposed to the Basic Income Guarantee, TANF or whatever.

What people like Charles Murray fail to understand is that the unemployed are already in the public sector. They're basically sitting idle at home and doing nothing which has very real social consequences.

 

[whitehall]

Employment just isn't a priority. If the fake crisis of global warming causes energy prices to rise and employment to fall it's just the sacrifice Americans will have to make to atone for their reckless consumption and dependence on fossil fuels.

 

[rdean]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkjbJOSwq3A

Check out what all these Republicans are applauding.

With 3.8 million jobs unfilled, and Republicans calling the president a snob for wanting education to be available for all Americans and Republicans trying to vote into office a "pioneer of outsourcing", then YES, unemployment is planned. But only by Republicans.

Millions of jobs go unfilled - skills shortage

Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary

Without an educated workforce, business will simply move overseas where the government actually supports their citizens. Who do Republicans hate more? The government or the US Middle Class?

Thanks, deanie.....

I appreciate the vid.....made a lot of sense!




BTW.....while you're here......did you happen to read the OP?

Pretty good, huh?

I admit I usually don't read what you write because while you start out with an issue worth discussing, you seem to always devolve into right wing disproven propaganda. And once again, you didn't disappoint. I got all the way to here:

Liberal hand-outs, i.e., welfare, is the cause of unemployment

Now I've been accused of attacking Republicans, but simply pointing out what their leaders are actually saying is not an attack. Like this video of Rick Santorum. Posting that, apparently is considered an "attack".



Most people that get food stamps are working full time or belong to a household where someone in the household is working full time. Welfare has a work requirement that was passed under Bill Clinton. Republicans have turned "American helping American" into "liberal handouts" and it's this propaganda that will insure the current Republican Party will be marginalized until it straightens up and gets past this nonsense and bullshit they can't seem to stop spouting.

The fact that people will attempt to vote into office a pioneer of outsourcing who moved one of his businesses to China the very month of the election, a man who ran on a platform of cutting education in this country and bringing immigrants with degrees to this country. The fact that people who need jobs wanted to make this man president proves the propaganda has turned their brains to duck shit. There isn't any other possible explanation.

Now, some are complaining that immigrants with degrees will take their jobs. Only they don't have the education to compete for those jobs because Republicans don't like "elites" and "education is for snobs". Pushing an agenda of such complete and utter bullshit has hurt that party terribly and only now a very, very few are beginning to "wake up". But they are so late to the party, they are now shrieking "revolution" like some idiot corner sitter sporting a dunce cap.

And I have personal experience with "government help". I was in the military and the GI bill helped me go to college. And even working full time and getting the GI bill, I still ended up owing $56,000.00. And I even got a grant for Americans of Italian Descent and I was grateful for every cent. And it meant every night when not at school, studying until midnight. And every weekend almost from getting up to going to bed studying.

And I admit, I don't talk like other engineers whose mom and dad paid for their education and left them with degrees without owning a cent. My English isn't as "polished". Sometimes I'm "mocked", until we start talking engineering. Then everyone shuts up and listens. Believe it. I'm the only engineer I know who will get so into the job and during the meeting will say fuck or bullshit. I don't do it on purpose, but I sometimes forget the sensitivity of the "gentile".

Listen to this moron:



Like everyone has parents with money. So getting help from your parents is "OK", but getting help from a government you pay for is "liberal handouts"? Who could be so brain damaged they swallow this swill? Besides Republicans I mean? But it's not the death of the party. It will change. But it will take a good ten years. They went from the "Party of Ideas" to a "Pile of crap". They will swing back the other way once they get tired of not having meaningful jobs. And making coffee is NOT a meaningful job. It's a job. A minimum wage job. But it's not meaningful. And I suspect many actually consider it "demeaning". And if you have the talent for more and know you do, then it probably is.

 

[Toro]

This conspiracy theory tends to be propagated by the far left.

The theory is that government is owned by corporations, and corporations want to keep wages as low as possible. So when wages start to rise, the central bank increases interest rates, which slows down the economy and causes people to lose their jobs.

It's silly, but frankly, if you understand how monetary policy operates, it's more valid than a theory about maintaining the welfare state.

 

[PoliticalChic]

See, we knew you were stupid as a fucking dried monkey turd..

you poor thing..

Well PC and her late-arriving sidekick seem to be unable to respond to anyone else without insults and vulgarities. Folks we might as well beam up, as there is no intelligent life down here. Catch me on any other thread.

And PC, no need to make a parting shot as I won't be reading this or any other of your threads for a while. But if it makes you feel good about yourself to insult other people.....

"... vulgarities."


That's a lie.

I never use vulgarities.....


...but I do specialize in pointed comments.

Glad you got the 'points.'

 

[PoliticalChic]

No, it doesn't prove anything. I'm more than familiar with Robert Rector and the Heritage Foundation. I read that paper years ago, it's full of problems to say the least. Remember, correlation is not causation.

Here’s the problem: There aren’t enough available job openings for the current number of people looking for jobs. We’re not even factoring in the disabled, elderly or discouraged workers. If the government were to toss these people off welfare, the number of job seekers would massively increase in an economy which isn't creating a sufficient amount of jobs. The problem isn’t people dropping out of the labor force, but rather an economy which is structurally not equipped to create more jobs. In other words, welfare isn’t acting as some disincentive to find a job. Welfare is basically functioning as supplementary income for people who cannot secure employment due to changes and the overall structure of the labor market.

Nonsense.


Covered in chapter five of Peter Ferrara’s “America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb.”

1. The colloquial use of “poverty” implies a material deprivation, which hardly exists. But this is not to say that a poverty of social conditions does not exist, and this cannot be remedied with money. In fact, the root cause of this poverty is the perverse, counterproductive incentives arising from the welfare system itself.

2. Charles Murray’s “Losing Ground” documented this effect using social indicators such as work, marriage, legitimacy, crime, and alcohol and drug abuse, and showing how the massive increase in government welfare programs worsened the problem.

3. A key to why ‘poverty’ ceased to decline almost as soon as the ‘War on Poverty’ began, is that the poor and lower-income population stopped working, and this led to the other deteriorating social conditions Murray cites. In 1960, almost 2/3 of lowest-income households were headed by persons who worked. http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-080.pdf

a. By 1991, this number was down to only one third….and only 11% working full time. Nor was this due to being unable to find work, as the ‘80’s and ‘90’s were boom times.


4. Here we see an inherent weakness in Liberal thinking, that is that they are the smartest of folks, and their brilliance is necessary for other to prosper. The sequitur is that the people that they guide are stupid. No, the problem is that, with government welfare programs offering such generous and wide-ranging benefits, form housing to medical care to food stamps to outright cash, many reduce or eliminate their work effort.


5. Proof? Sure. The government conducted a study, 1971-1978 known as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME-DIME, in which low income families were give a guaranteed income, a welfare package with everything liberal policy makers could hope for. Result: for every dollar of extra welfare given, low income recipients reduced their labor by 80 cents. http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/12794.pdf

a. Further results: dissolution of families: “This conclusion was unambiguously unfavorable to advocates of a negative income tax that would cover married couples, for two important reasons. First, increased
marital breakups among the poor would increase the numbers on
welfare and the amount of transfer payments, principally because the
separated wife and children would receive higher transfer payments.
Second, marital dissolutions and the usual accompanying absence of
fathers from households with children are generally considered unfavorable outcomes regardless of whether or not the welfare rolls increase.” http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30c.pdf

b. “When families received guaranteed income at 90% of the poverty level, there was a 43% increase in black family dissolution and a 63% increase in white family dissolution. At 125% of the poverty levels, dissolutions were 75% and 40%.”
Robert B. Carleson, “Government Is The Problem,” p. 57.



Perhaps you'd best stick to 'wax on, wax off.'

LOL @ Peter Farrara. Newsflash: Monetarily sovereign countries like United States cannot go bankrupt. It's operationally impossible.

So you decided to go with the Charles Murray. I also read Losing Ground. He's a social darwinist which is the least of his problems. Here's a guy that's singuarly obsessed with ending food stamps and welfare for single mothers.

Obviously, giving welfare to everyone, in the literal sense, is a stupid idea. It will inevitably raise prices, the same way as Food Stamps contribute to increased food prices. I personally don't like the basic income guarantee. I'm a proponent of the JG (Job Guarantee/ELR) as opposed to the Basic Income Guarantee, TANF or whatever.

What people like Charles Murray fail to understand is that the unemployed are already in the public sector. They're basically sitting idle at home and doing nothing which has very real social consequences.

As you seem ready to dismiss the individuals who provide the data rather than the actual data....here's another high profile individual you might like to attack: Newt Gingrich.


1. Newt’s discussion about welfare reform. Newt refers to a proposal by Peter Ferrara, who was in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Ronald Reagan. The proposal goes like this:

Block grants would still be provided to the states, and states would guarantee a day’s work assignment (paying the minimum wage) to everyone who reports to their local welfare office before 9:00 a.m. According to Newt, “The welfare office would provide free daycare for participants’ small children”, and the children would “receive medical care and treatment when necessary” (page 190). Moreover, those working a certain number of hours would receive a Medicaid voucher for private health insurance as well as housing assistance so they could purchase a home. They would also receive the earned-income tax credit. Newt also affirms that the disabled would be trained for some line of work.

a. Based on minimum wage of $7.25, or $15,000 for a full year’s work, plus EITC, which is $3,000 with one child, and $5,000 with two, plus $1,000 per child tax credit. This plus the in-kind transfers of child care and health care, are an adequate safety net. “What I like about this proposal is that it would give welfare recipients work experience and job skills rather than setting welfare against work.” Newt Gingrich?s To Save America 7: Welfare Reform, Health Care | James' Ramblings


b. The system would also end all incentives for having children outside of marriage, as a parent would have to work to support a child.

 

[PoliticalChic]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkjbJOSwq3A

Check out what all these Republicans are applauding.

With 3.8 million jobs unfilled, and Republicans calling the president a snob for wanting education to be available for all Americans and Republicans trying to vote into office a "pioneer of outsourcing", then YES, unemployment is planned. But only by Republicans.

Millions of jobs go unfilled - skills shortage

Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary

Without an educated workforce, business will simply move overseas where the government actually supports their citizens. Who do Republicans hate more? The government or the US Middle Class?

Thanks, deanie.....

I appreciate the vid.....made a lot of sense!




BTW.....while you're here......did you happen to read the OP?

Pretty good, huh?

I admit I usually don't read what you write because while you start out with an issue worth discussing, you seem to always devolve into right wing disproven propaganda. And once again, you didn't disappoint. I got all the way to here:

Liberal hand-outs, i.e., welfare, is the cause of unemployment

Now I've been accused of attacking Republicans, but simply pointing out what their leaders are actually saying is not an attack. Like this video of Rick Santorum. Posting that, apparently is considered an "attack".



Most people that get food stamps are working full time or belong to a household where someone in the household is working full time. Welfare has a work requirement that was passed under Bill Clinton. Republicans have turned "American helping American" into "liberal handouts" and it's this propaganda that will insure the current Republican Party will be marginalized until it straightens up and gets past this nonsense and bullshit they can't seem to stop spouting.

The fact that people will attempt to vote into office a pioneer of outsourcing who moved one of his businesses to China the very month of the election, a man who ran on a platform of cutting education in this country and bringing immigrants with degrees to this country. The fact that people who need jobs wanted to make this man president proves the propaganda has turned their brains to duck shit. There isn't any other possible explanation.

Now, some are complaining that immigrants with degrees will take their jobs. Only they don't have the education to compete for those jobs because Republicans don't like "elites" and "education is for snobs". Pushing an agenda of such complete and utter bullshit has hurt that party terribly and only now a very, very few are beginning to "wake up". But they are so late to the party, they are now shrieking "revolution" like some idiot corner sitter sporting a dunce cap.

And I have personal experience with "government help". I was in the military and the GI bill helped me go to college. And even working full time and getting the GI bill, I still ended up owing $56,000.00. And I even got a grant for Americans of Italian Descent and I was grateful for every cent. And it meant every night when not at school, studying until midnight. And every weekend almost from getting up to going to bed studying.

And I admit, I don't talk like other engineers whose mom and dad paid for their education and left them with degrees without owning a cent. My English isn't as "polished". Sometimes I'm "mocked", until we start talking engineering. Then everyone shuts up and listens. Believe it. I'm the only engineer I know who will get so into the job and during the meeting will say fuck or bullshit. I don't do it on purpose, but I sometimes forget the sensitivity of the "gentile".

Listen to this moron:



Like everyone has parents with money. So getting help from your parents is "OK", but getting help from a government you pay for is "liberal handouts"? Who could be so brain damaged they swallow this swill? Besides Republicans I mean? But it's not the death of the party. It will change. But it will take a good ten years. They went from the "Party of Ideas" to a "Pile of crap". They will swing back the other way once they get tired of not having meaningful jobs. And making coffee is NOT a meaningful job. It's a job. A minimum wage job. But it's not meaningful. And I suspect many actually consider it "demeaning". And if you have the talent for more and know you do, then it probably is.

Good job!

Notwithstanding the errors and outright untruths, it is a post one can get their teeth into.

Rep on the way!
Actually...it deserves its own OP status...but just a few notes:

1. "Most people that get food stamps are working full time or belong to a household where someone in the household is working full time."
This alone reveals that there is a design for the program beyond helping folks who need help. It fits neatly into the premise of the OP.

2. " Welfare has a work requirement that was passed under Bill Clinton."
...which was illegally obviated by Obama.

3. "liberal handouts"
As proven in #1 above.

4. " a pioneer of outsourcing "
I provided an OP showing that Obama was a leader in outsourcing, including loan guarantees to corporations in other nations.


5. " a man who ran on a platform of cutting education in this country"
Link?

6. "...don't have the education to compete for those jobs because Republicans don't like "elites" and "education is for snobs"."
The education industry is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party.


7. ".... the GI bill helped me go to college. And even working full time and getting the GI bill,..."
We need the same bill in education today....we call it the 'voucher plan.'


8. " And it meant every night when not at school, studying until midnight. And every weekend almost from getting up to going to bed studying."
Same here.


9. "will say fuck or bullshit. I don't do it on purpose, but I sometimes forget the sensitivity of the "gentile".
I don't.

10. "Like everyone has parents with money. So getting help from your parents is "OK",..
Did you know that Governor Romney gave away the money he inherited?
A successful businessman, just what the nation needed.....
...instead, you gave us a community organizer, socialist ideologue who manages to keep unemployment high while doling out food stamps.


All in all, good effort.

 

[regent]

At one time some of the wealthy realized, that for them, bad economic periods were not bad at all, in fact,bad economic periods could really be great economic periods for the wealthy. They called it "utility of poverty." One of the primary benefits, was that one's money just became even more valuable and a long list of benefits for the wealthy caused by bad economic times was discovered.
The question than became, can the economy be manipulated to cause depressions/recessions?
I don't know if that answer was ever found, but with the Republican House fighting to keep the nation from any economic movement, the next question might be, can recessions/depressions be manipulated to last for longer periods of time? Republicans have said their goal was to have Obama fail, did they mean the nation fail?

 

[Uncensored2008]

LOL @ Peter Farrara. Newsflash: Monetarily sovereign countries like United States cannot go bankrupt. It's operationally impossible.

So you decided to go with the Charles Murray. I also read Losing Ground. He's a social darwinist which is the least of his problems. Here's a guy that's singuarly obsessed with ending food stamps and welfare for single mothers.

Obviously, giving welfare to everyone, in the literal sense, is a stupid idea. It will inevitably raise prices, the same way as Food Stamps contribute to increased food prices. I personally don't like the basic income guarantee. I'm a proponent of the JG (Job Guarantee/ELR) as opposed to the Basic Income Guarantee, TANF or whatever.

What people like Charles Murray fail to understand is that the unemployed are already in the public sector. They're basically sitting idle at home and doing nothing which has very real social consequences.

The interesting thing is, regardless of the method employed, you still advocate for a centrally managed economy. It's interesting because there has never been a successful centrally planned economy in history.

A job guarantee is probably a more insidious cancer on an economy that even a minimum income. To be sure, both will cripple a society, but the act of divorcing performance from employment will have a farther reaching effect. Minimum income will empower those who will not work, but guaranteed employment will infect all levels of employment, resulting in the mess seen with Unions, the Federal Government, and the Soviet Union, where even ambitious workers were/are thwarted.

While we all understand that proposals such as yours remove any incentive to achieve, this kind of situation goes beyond that and actually punishes achievement as the UAW did. Exceeding production quotas was met with serious consequences.

Guaranteed Employment is the single most destructive element to a market. I realize that central planners dream of having the power to effect an economy without a market, but history shows this is not possible.

 

[Kimura]

Nonsense.


Covered in chapter five of Peter Ferrara’s “America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb.”

1. The colloquial use of “poverty” implies a material deprivation, which hardly exists. But this is not to say that a poverty of social conditions does not exist, and this cannot be remedied with money. In fact, the root cause of this poverty is the perverse, counterproductive incentives arising from the welfare system itself.

2. Charles Murray’s “Losing Ground” documented this effect using social indicators such as work, marriage, legitimacy, crime, and alcohol and drug abuse, and showing how the massive increase in government welfare programs worsened the problem.

3. A key to why ‘poverty’ ceased to decline almost as soon as the ‘War on Poverty’ began, is that the poor and lower-income population stopped working, and this led to the other deteriorating social conditions Murray cites. In 1960, almost 2/3 of lowest-income households were headed by persons who worked. http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-080.pdf

a. By 1991, this number was down to only one third….and only 11% working full time. Nor was this due to being unable to find work, as the ‘80’s and ‘90’s were boom times.


4. Here we see an inherent weakness in Liberal thinking, that is that they are the smartest of folks, and their brilliance is necessary for other to prosper. The sequitur is that the people that they guide are stupid. No, the problem is that, with government welfare programs offering such generous and wide-ranging benefits, form housing to medical care to food stamps to outright cash, many reduce or eliminate their work effort.


5. Proof? Sure. The government conducted a study, 1971-1978 known as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME-DIME, in which low income families were give a guaranteed income, a welfare package with everything liberal policy makers could hope for. Result: for every dollar of extra welfare given, low income recipients reduced their labor by 80 cents. http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/12794.pdf

a. Further results: dissolution of families: “This conclusion was unambiguously unfavorable to advocates of a negative income tax that would cover married couples, for two important reasons. First, increased
marital breakups among the poor would increase the numbers on
welfare and the amount of transfer payments, principally because the
separated wife and children would receive higher transfer payments.
Second, marital dissolutions and the usual accompanying absence of
fathers from households with children are generally considered unfavorable outcomes regardless of whether or not the welfare rolls increase.” http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30c.pdf

b. “When families received guaranteed income at 90% of the poverty level, there was a 43% increase in black family dissolution and a 63% increase in white family dissolution. At 125% of the poverty levels, dissolutions were 75% and 40%.”
Robert B. Carleson, “Government Is The Problem,” p. 57.



Perhaps you'd best stick to 'wax on, wax off.'

LOL @ Peter Farrara. Newsflash: Monetarily sovereign countries like United States cannot go bankrupt. It's operationally impossible.

So you decided to go with the Charles Murray. I also read Losing Ground. He's a social darwinist which is the least of his problems. Here's a guy that's singuarly obsessed with ending food stamps and welfare for single mothers.

Obviously, giving welfare to everyone, in the literal sense, is a stupid idea. It will inevitably raise prices, the same way as Food Stamps contribute to increased food prices. I personally don't like the basic income guarantee. I'm a proponent of the JG (Job Guarantee/ELR) as opposed to the Basic Income Guarantee, TANF or whatever.

What people like Charles Murray fail to understand is that the unemployed are already in the public sector. They're basically sitting idle at home and doing nothing which has very real social consequences.

As you seem ready to dismiss the individuals who provide the data rather than the actual data....here's another high profile individual you might like to attack: Newt Gingrich.


1. Newt’s discussion about welfare reform. Newt refers to a proposal by Peter Ferrara, who was in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Ronald Reagan. The proposal goes like this:

Block grants would still be provided to the states, and states would guarantee a day’s work assignment (paying the minimum wage) to everyone who reports to their local welfare office before 9:00 a.m. According to Newt, “The welfare office would provide free daycare for participants’ small children”, and the children would “receive medical care and treatment when necessary” (page 190). Moreover, those working a certain number of hours would receive a Medicaid voucher for private health insurance as well as housing assistance so they could purchase a home. They would also receive the earned-income tax credit. Newt also affirms that the disabled would be trained for some line of work.

a. Based on minimum wage of $7.25, or $15,000 for a full year’s work, plus EITC, which is $3,000 with one child, and $5,000 with two, plus $1,000 per child tax credit. This plus the in-kind transfers of child care and health care, are an adequate safety net. “What I like about this proposal is that it would give welfare recipients work experience and job skills rather than setting welfare against work.” Newt Gingrich?s To Save America 7: Welfare Reform, Health Care | James' Ramblings


b. The system would also end all incentives for having children outside of marriage, as a parent would have to work to support a child.

One step at a time.

I’m not done with that right-wing propaganda pimp, Robert Rector. We’ll move on to Newt Gingrich in due time. By the way, if need be, I’ll print out that paper, and rebut each point with “data”, that’s not a problem. Statistics can be massaged by anybody that’s trying to prove a thesis.

In 2009, if not mistaken, the government set the poverty threshold for individuals at around $11,000 and $22,000 for a family of four. US Census data indicates around 34 million Americas, that’s roughly 12% of the population, is living in poverty – the numbers have been increasing yearly. Perhaps Robert Rector, the Heritage foundation’s resident poverty expert, could attempt to survive on $11,000 per year.

Our ruling class apologist, Robert Rector, also neglects to mention the reason people aren’t starving to death in the streets is a direct result of government programs, such a Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps and SCHIP. This is somehow proof that the poor are solely dependent on government in his myopic worldview. I wonder if he feels the same way about tax-deductible donations to the Heritage Foundation or corporate welfare subsidies for multinationals or the one percent. I doubt it.

 

[Kimura]

LOL @ Peter Farrara. Newsflash: Monetarily sovereign countries like United States cannot go bankrupt. It's operationally impossible.

So you decided to go with the Charles Murray. I also read Losing Ground. He's a social darwinist which is the least of his problems. Here's a guy that's singuarly obsessed with ending food stamps and welfare for single mothers.

Obviously, giving welfare to everyone, in the literal sense, is a stupid idea. It will inevitably raise prices, the same way as Food Stamps contribute to increased food prices. I personally don't like the basic income guarantee. I'm a proponent of the JG (Job Guarantee/ELR) as opposed to the Basic Income Guarantee, TANF or whatever.

What people like Charles Murray fail to understand is that the unemployed are already in the public sector. They're basically sitting idle at home and doing nothing which has very real social consequences.

The interesting thing is, regardless of the method employed, you still advocate for a centrally managed economy. It's interesting because there has never been a successful centrally planned economy in history.

A job guarantee is probably a more insidious cancer on an economy that even a minimum income. To be sure, both will cripple a society, but the act of divorcing performance from employment will have a farther reaching effect. Minimum income will empower those who will not work, but guaranteed employment will infect all levels of employment, resulting in the mess seen with Unions, the Federal Government, and the Soviet Union, where even ambitious workers were/are thwarted.

While we all understand that proposals such as yours remove any incentive to achieve, this kind of situation goes beyond that and actually punishes achievement as the UAW did. Exceeding production quotas was met with serious consequences.

Guaranteed Employment is the single most destructive element to a market. I realize that central planners dream of having the power to effect an economy without a market, but history shows this is not possible.

A monetarily sovereign government like the United States can buy anything for sale which is denominated in dollars. This includes the labor of every unemployed person seeking gainful employment. This whole belief that the private sector is the only sector which can create jobs is a limited ideological hangout and simply incorrect.

The US government creates millions of jobs. Wouldn’t you consider military service a legit job? What about repairing tanks for the Army? What about working for the Veterans Administration? For example, when you go to your local supermarket, do you think the cashier examines your dollars to guarantee that they were earned by labor performed in the private sector? Of course not, that makes zero sense. The government – whether it’s federal, state or municipal - pays its employees in the national money of account (US dollars).

For example, defense spending is perfect example of a job-training program which functions as transitional deal. It essentially provides employment for every individual that is ready, willing and able to work. I think the only time in US history that we experienced near full employment and low inflation was towards the end of the WW2 period. This solution proved effective, except these jobs were related to the war effort. Either way, from an economic standpoint, it really doesn’t make a difference.

Money is completely fungible at the end of the day. Whether a Job Guarantee manufactures drones or cement foundations for bridges and railways, it really doesn’t make a difference in purely economic terms. Workers will spend their income on the identical real goods and services other workers purchase. The only important factor is whether there’s enough resources and labor available to produce the real goods and services with the tandem increases in demand so to speak. If the demand is sufficient, then there’s no reason for the government to get involved. This is the same profit motivation which firms use to produce widgets and can be guaranteed to induce production of another one.

We shouldn’t ignore some of the private sector dynamics occurring in this scenario. Many people make the incorrect assessment that if the public sector gets involved in making widgets at some random firm, that their wages will somehow create inflation. This has been disproved multiple times.

If our policy makers wanted to, the US could end mass employment is a rather efficient and painless manner. It would have zero effect of price stability.

 

[PoliticalChic]

At one time some of the wealthy realized, that for them, bad economic periods were not bad at all, in fact,bad economic periods could really be great economic periods for the wealthy. They called it "utility of poverty." One of the primary benefits, was that one's money just became even more valuable and a long list of benefits for the wealthy caused by bad economic times was discovered.
The question than became, can the economy be manipulated to cause depressions/recessions?
I don't know if that answer was ever found, but with the Republican House fighting to keep the nation from any economic movement, the next question might be, can recessions/depressions be manipulated to last for longer periods of time? Republicans have said their goal was to have Obama fail, did they mean the nation fail?

Are you based in the United States?

If not, you must be instructed: "...benefits for the wealthy..."

There does not exist any such perennial category in this nation that can be called "the wealthy."


It is a bête noire invented by the left, and continues to fool the ignorant.

You're welcome.

 

[PoliticalChic]

LOL @ Peter Farrara. Newsflash: Monetarily sovereign countries like United States cannot go bankrupt. It's operationally impossible.

So you decided to go with the Charles Murray. I also read Losing Ground. He's a social darwinist which is the least of his problems. Here's a guy that's singuarly obsessed with ending food stamps and welfare for single mothers.

Obviously, giving welfare to everyone, in the literal sense, is a stupid idea. It will inevitably raise prices, the same way as Food Stamps contribute to increased food prices. I personally don't like the basic income guarantee. I'm a proponent of the JG (Job Guarantee/ELR) as opposed to the Basic Income Guarantee, TANF or whatever.

What people like Charles Murray fail to understand is that the unemployed are already in the public sector. They're basically sitting idle at home and doing nothing which has very real social consequences.

As you seem ready to dismiss the individuals who provide the data rather than the actual data....here's another high profile individual you might like to attack: Newt Gingrich.


1. Newt’s discussion about welfare reform. Newt refers to a proposal by Peter Ferrara, who was in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Ronald Reagan. The proposal goes like this:

Block grants would still be provided to the states, and states would guarantee a day’s work assignment (paying the minimum wage) to everyone who reports to their local welfare office before 9:00 a.m. According to Newt, “The welfare office would provide free daycare for participants’ small children”, and the children would “receive medical care and treatment when necessary” (page 190). Moreover, those working a certain number of hours would receive a Medicaid voucher for private health insurance as well as housing assistance so they could purchase a home. They would also receive the earned-income tax credit. Newt also affirms that the disabled would be trained for some line of work.

a. Based on minimum wage of $7.25, or $15,000 for a full year’s work, plus EITC, which is $3,000 with one child, and $5,000 with two, plus $1,000 per child tax credit. This plus the in-kind transfers of child care and health care, are an adequate safety net. “What I like about this proposal is that it would give welfare recipients work experience and job skills rather than setting welfare against work.” Newt Gingrich?s To Save America 7: Welfare Reform, Health Care | James' Ramblings


b. The system would also end all incentives for having children outside of marriage, as a parent would have to work to support a child.

One step at a time.

I’m not done with that right-wing propaganda pimp, Robert Rector. We’ll move on to Newt Gingrich in due time. By the way, if need be, I’ll print out that paper, and rebut each point with “data”, that’s not a problem. Statistics can be massaged by anybody that’s trying to prove a thesis.

In 2009, if not mistaken, the government set the poverty threshold for individuals at around $11,000 and $22,000 for a family of four. US Census data indicates around 34 million Americas, that’s roughly 12% of the population, is living in poverty – the numbers have been increasing yearly. Perhaps Robert Rector, the Heritage foundation’s resident poverty expert, could attempt to survive on $11,000 per year.

Our ruling class apologist, Robert Rector, also neglects to mention the reason people aren’t starving to death in the streets is a direct result of government programs, such a Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps and SCHIP. This is somehow proof that the poor are solely dependent on government in his myopic worldview. I wonder if he feels the same way about tax-deductible donations to the Heritage Foundation or corporate welfare subsidies for multinationals or the one percent. I doubt it.

"The government conducted a study, 1971-1978 known as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME-DIME, in which low income families were give a guaranteed income, a welfare package with everything liberal policy makers could hope for. Result: for every dollar of extra welfare given, low income recipients reduced their labor by 80 cents."
http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/...eams/12794.pdf


True or not?

 

[Kimura]

As you seem ready to dismiss the individuals who provide the data rather than the actual data....here's another high profile individual you might like to attack: Newt Gingrich.


1. Newt’s discussion about welfare reform. Newt refers to a proposal by Peter Ferrara, who was in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Ronald Reagan. The proposal goes like this:

Block grants would still be provided to the states, and states would guarantee a day’s work assignment (paying the minimum wage) to everyone who reports to their local welfare office before 9:00 a.m. According to Newt, “The welfare office would provide free daycare for participants’ small children”, and the children would “receive medical care and treatment when necessary” (page 190). Moreover, those working a certain number of hours would receive a Medicaid voucher for private health insurance as well as housing assistance so they could purchase a home. They would also receive the earned-income tax credit. Newt also affirms that the disabled would be trained for some line of work.

a. Based on minimum wage of $7.25, or $15,000 for a full year’s work, plus EITC, which is $3,000 with one child, and $5,000 with two, plus $1,000 per child tax credit. This plus the in-kind transfers of child care and health care, are an adequate safety net. “What I like about this proposal is that it would give welfare recipients work experience and job skills rather than setting welfare against work.” Newt Gingrich?s To Save America 7: Welfare Reform, Health Care | James' Ramblings


b. The system would also end all incentives for having children outside of marriage, as a parent would have to work to support a child.

One step at a time.

I’m not done with that right-wing propaganda pimp, Robert Rector. We’ll move on to Newt Gingrich in due time. By the way, if need be, I’ll print out that paper, and rebut each point with “data”, that’s not a problem. Statistics can be massaged by anybody that’s trying to prove a thesis.

In 2009, if not mistaken, the government set the poverty threshold for individuals at around $11,000 and $22,000 for a family of four. US Census data indicates around 34 million Americas, that’s roughly 12% of the population, is living in poverty – the numbers have been increasing yearly. Perhaps Robert Rector, the Heritage foundation’s resident poverty expert, could attempt to survive on $11,000 per year.

Our ruling class apologist, Robert Rector, also neglects to mention the reason people aren’t starving to death in the streets is a direct result of government programs, such a Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps and SCHIP. This is somehow proof that the poor are solely dependent on government in his myopic worldview. I wonder if he feels the same way about tax-deductible donations to the Heritage Foundation or corporate welfare subsidies for multinationals or the one percent. I doubt it.

"The government conducted a study, 1971-1978 known as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME-DIME, in which low income families were give a guaranteed income, a welfare package with everything liberal policy makers could hope for. Result: for every dollar of extra welfare given, low income recipients reduced their labor by 80 cents."
http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/...eams/12794.pdf


True or not?

Fix the URL, I'm getting redirected here:

File Was Not Found - PolicyArchive

 

[rdean]

This conspiracy theory tends to be propagated by the far left.

The theory is that government is owned by corporations, and corporations want to keep wages as low as possible. So when wages start to rise, the central bank increases interest rates, which slows down the economy and causes people to lose their jobs.

It's silly, but frankly, if you understand how monetary policy operates, it's more valid than a theory about maintaining the welfare state.

There is a war in the Republican Party right now. Many of the leaders have been bought by corporations (see the BP apology), and those guys want to bring immigrants here who already have degrees. A deluded base thinks doing that will take jobs away from them. Only they aren't qualified for those jobs because they mock the "elites" and think education is for snobs. So on one hand, corporations do indeed own much of the party, on the other hand, the base is starting to rebel, but they don't have a clear vision of what their goal is beyond hating minorities. It's a mess.

 

[Uncensored2008]

A monetarily sovereign government like the United States can buy anything for sale which is denominated in dollars.

Of course. Use of fiat currency ensures that the central bank can simply create legal tender at will.

This includes the labor of every unemployed person seeking gainful employment. This whole belief that the private sector is the only sector which can create jobs is a limited ideological hangout and simply incorrect.

This was not my argument.

Certainly the federal government can produce dollars to pay workers to dig holes and fill them back in. No question.

My statement is that this destroys markets, not that the government can't do it. The government SHOULDN'T do it because of the damage it does.

The US government creates millions of jobs.

Yes, but do those jobs create, or consume value?

Wouldn’t you consider military service a legit job? What about repairing tanks for the Army? What about working for the Veterans Administration?

None of these are guaranteed employment positions. Of course military service is a legitimate job. I do believe that the military is about 4 times the size that it should be.

But none of this is pertinent to the question of guaranteed employment, which is what I took umbrage to.

For example, when you go to your local supermarket, do you think the cashier examines your dollars to guarantee that they were earned by labor performed in the private sector? Of course not, that makes zero sense. The government – whether it’s federal, state or municipal - pays its employees in the national money of account (US dollars).

In fact, currency is less and less relevant. Generally, transactions are purely electronic - credits and debits to balance sheets, with no physical transfer of notes. About 75% of our economy is transacted electronically today, with that percentage increasing every year.

The concept of the Treasury floating T-Bills and the Fed printing mountains of FRN's that we all learned in college becomes further removed from reality by the day. Our monetary system is mostly electronic. Any check placed on monetary expansion that was had by physical currency is gone. We operate purely on the full faith and credit of the Federal Reserve. Whether this is a good or bad thing is subject for a different discussion.

For example, defense spending is perfect example of a job-training program which functions as transitional deal. It essentially provides employment for every individual that is ready, willing and able to work. I think the only time in US history that we experienced near full employment and low inflation was towards the end of the WW2 period. This solution proved effective, except these jobs were related to the war effort. Either way, from an economic standpoint, it really doesn’t make a difference.

Except this isn't really true.

From the period between 1984 and 2003, the military turned away millions of applicants. Standards for military service were tightened. Those with criminal records or lacking high school diplomas were routinely turned away. As Iraq dragged on, standards have been lowered. But even now, a criminal record will disqualify a person from military service.

And the induction of large numbers into military service does little to expand an economy. Remember, we calculate GDP by consumption. Military personnel in WWII offered very little consumption. What drove that war economy was the reduction of job seekers by the fact of so many shipped overseas.

Money is completely fungible at the end of the day. Whether a Job Guarantee manufactures drones or cement foundations for bridges and railways, it really doesn’t make a difference in purely economic terms. Workers will spend their income on the identical real goods and services other workers purchase. The only important factor is whether there’s enough resources and labor available to produce the real goods and services with the tandem increases in demand so to speak. If the demand is sufficient, then there’s no reason for the government to get involved. This is the same profit motivation which firms use to produce widgets and can be guaranteed to induce production of another one.

Again, not really the point.

I will be happy to debate Keynesian turns with you, but for this particular discussion, I was stipulating that the act of guaranteeing employment stifles productivity by removing the incentive that drives people to produce. Harken back to my UAW example, the man told to put 3 bumpers on cars per shift, no more, has zero reason to innovate of become more efficient. Stagnation is the goal and the mandate. This is the reality of guaranteed employment - stagnation.

We shouldn’t ignore some of the private sector dynamics occurring in this scenario. Many people make the incorrect assessment that if the public sector gets involved in making widgets at some random firm, that their wages will somehow create inflation. This has been disproved multiple times.

I'm not sure who makes that assumption.

I do know that when government gets involve in a particular market, monopoly soon follows. With the government established and maintained monopoly, prices rise, service and quality fall. In key markets, such as health care, this will inevitably lead to inflation. But this is due to the size of the market as a percentage of the overall economy.

If our policy makers wanted to, the US could end mass employment is a rather efficient and painless manner. It would have zero effect of price stability.

Nonsense.

 

[rdean]

Thanks, deanie.....

I appreciate the vid.....made a lot of sense!




BTW.....while you're here......did you happen to read the OP?

Pretty good, huh?

I admit I usually don't read what you write because while you start out with an issue worth discussing, you seem to always devolve into right wing disproven propaganda. And once again, you didn't disappoint. I got all the way to here:

Liberal hand-outs, i.e., welfare, is the cause of unemployment

Now I've been accused of attacking Republicans, but simply pointing out what their leaders are actually saying is not an attack. Like this video of Rick Santorum. Posting that, apparently is considered an "attack".



Most people that get food stamps are working full time or belong to a household where someone in the household is working full time. Welfare has a work requirement that was passed under Bill Clinton. Republicans have turned "American helping American" into "liberal handouts" and it's this propaganda that will insure the current Republican Party will be marginalized until it straightens up and gets past this nonsense and bullshit they can't seem to stop spouting.

The fact that people will attempt to vote into office a pioneer of outsourcing who moved one of his businesses to China the very month of the election, a man who ran on a platform of cutting education in this country and bringing immigrants with degrees to this country. The fact that people who need jobs wanted to make this man president proves the propaganda has turned their brains to duck shit. There isn't any other possible explanation.

Now, some are complaining that immigrants with degrees will take their jobs. Only they don't have the education to compete for those jobs because Republicans don't like "elites" and "education is for snobs". Pushing an agenda of such complete and utter bullshit has hurt that party terribly and only now a very, very few are beginning to "wake up". But they are so late to the party, they are now shrieking "revolution" like some idiot corner sitter sporting a dunce cap.

And I have personal experience with "government help". I was in the military and the GI bill helped me go to college. And even working full time and getting the GI bill, I still ended up owing $56,000.00. And I even got a grant for Americans of Italian Descent and I was grateful for every cent. And it meant every night when not at school, studying until midnight. And every weekend almost from getting up to going to bed studying.

And I admit, I don't talk like other engineers whose mom and dad paid for their education and left them with degrees without owning a cent. My English isn't as "polished". Sometimes I'm "mocked", until we start talking engineering. Then everyone shuts up and listens. Believe it. I'm the only engineer I know who will get so into the job and during the meeting will say fuck or bullshit. I don't do it on purpose, but I sometimes forget the sensitivity of the "gentile".

Listen to this moron:



Like everyone has parents with money. So getting help from your parents is "OK", but getting help from a government you pay for is "liberal handouts"? Who could be so brain damaged they swallow this swill? Besides Republicans I mean? But it's not the death of the party. It will change. But it will take a good ten years. They went from the "Party of Ideas" to a "Pile of crap". They will swing back the other way once they get tired of not having meaningful jobs. And making coffee is NOT a meaningful job. It's a job. A minimum wage job. But it's not meaningful. And I suspect many actually consider it "demeaning". And if you have the talent for more and know you do, then it probably is.

Good job!

Notwithstanding the errors and outright untruths, it is a post one can get their teeth into.

Rep on the way!
Actually...it deserves its own OP status...but just a few notes:

1. "Most people that get food stamps are working full time or belong to a household where someone in the household is working full time."
This alone reveals that there is a design for the program beyond helping folks who need help. It fits neatly into the premise of the OP. The "design" is that food stamps actually become a business subsidy. Some companies just can't pay all that much. But at least someone has a job.

2. " Welfare has a work requirement that was passed under Bill Clinton."
...which was illegally obviated by Obama. That's a bullshit lie. Some Republican governors asked Obama to make an "exception" clause because you can't go for job training and get welfare. Now, with federal approval, you can. It's "common sense" and Romney tried to get Obama on that but some Republican governors had to step in and "educate" Romney. The campaign wasn't that long ago. How could you forget something that made such "news"?????

3. "liberal handouts"
As proven in #1 above. GOP Lt. Gov Andre Bauer said "feed the poor and they will breed" and who was it that said "hungry children work harder"? It pains me that so many Republicans see helping the poor as "liberal handouts". It only proves right wingers kneel at the Altar of the Church of the Heartless Bastard.

4. " a pioneer of outsourcing "
I provided an OP showing that Obama was a leader in outsourcing, including loan guarantees to corporations in other nations. And what did he get for it? There is always a deal. Remember when Republicans held millions of unemployed hostage to get the Bush Tax cuts (or subsidies) for the rich extended? And yet, Republicans hammered him for extending the tax cuts. He wasn't willing to let millions of Americans suffer. Republicans are and they will still sleep very well at night. Worse, many of those lost their jobs under Bush and the Republicans when so many jobs were sent to China.


5. " a man who ran on a platform of cutting education in this country"
Link? How many times to I have to link to this? You know, I look at the links right wingers post. I want to see if they actually have something or are they simply spewing nonsense. Listen, just so you don't think it's a trick, go to Youtube, put in "Romney Philadelphia teachers class size" or "Romney wants fewer Police, Firemen and Teachers". Fewer teachers, larger class size means cuts to education.

6. "...don't have the education to compete for those jobs because Republicans don't like "elites" and "education is for snobs"."
The education industry is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party. That's a bullshit lie to avoid education. Many teachers have no political agenda. Many are into academia and nothing else. I think right wingers use that excuse because education is difficult and they simply don't have what it takes.


7. ".... the GI bill helped me go to college. And even working full time and getting the GI bill,..."
We need the same bill in education today....we call it the 'voucher plan.' No, that's stupid. That would only help the wealthy. If you don't have any money, you can't pay into a plan. And when I was in the military, I certainly didn't have much money and some of those guys were sending money back to needy families.


8. " And it meant every night when not at school, studying until midnight. And every weekend almost from getting up to going to bed studying."
Same here. If you have an education, how are you so easily taken in by Ayn Rand right winger bullshit.


9. "will say fuck or bullshit. I don't do it on purpose, but I sometimes forget the sensitivity of the "gentile".
I don't. Lucky you. Speaks nice, but with a heart as hard as stone.

10. "Like everyone has parents with money. So getting help from your parents is "OK",..
Did you know that Governor Romney gave away the money he inherited?
A successful businessman, just what the nation needed.....
...instead, you gave us a community organizer, socialist ideologue who manages to keep unemployment high while doling out food stamps. More ignorant bullshit while idolizing the wealthy. Obama didn't have a father who was a governor and an Auto exec and him you demean and idolize Romney who was a terrible bully in school and tortured the family dog. What does that say about you?


All in all, good effort.

Not yours. Endless repetition of the most ignorant BS the right wing has to offer. A good 10 years. That's how long it will take before that unfortunate party recovers from your kind.

 

[Moonglow]

So the problem with the unemployed is a plot in the 1930's to give unemployed welfare to make them lazy and that way a Soviet styled Bolshevism govt. could take over the US govt.?
Talk about your meandering mind of a journalists starving for readers so he can pay to have his butt massaged in bed.

Did you miss this part of the OP?


" In 1934, William A. Wirt testified in Congress that officials of FDR's Agriculture Department planned on retarding economic recovery to speed the revolution, and so they can rebuild America in the Soviet's image. "Wirt claimed he had "discovered" evidence of a plot within FDR's administration to launch a Bolshevik takeover of the United States..... "....." The Washington Monthly"


You know that it is a fact that FDR's program retarded recovery....don't you?




Actually, the dots connect nicely.


a. The psychological effect of unemployment

b. The use of that effect, the crisis, to manipulate the electorate...

c. FDR shredded the Constitution....and got away with it due to a & b above.

d. Obama using Keynesian Stimulus as a pretense....it is known not to be as successful as cutting spending...

e. The vid is the kicker!



Now....don't tell me that a smart guy like you, Drop-Draws, was taken in by propaganda???

Except for the fact that FDR was no communist or Bolshevik, The reason why, communism, socialism and fascism, it was looked on in favor during the Great Depression was it's ability to grow and prosper when capitalism had one again failed, same with Japans form of govt.
It is not the govt. that keeps companies from hiring full time.

 

[Kimura]

A monetarily sovereign government like the United States can buy anything for sale which is denominated in dollars.

Of course. Use of fiat currency ensures that the central bank can simply create legal tender at will.

This includes the labor of every unemployed person seeking gainful employment. This whole belief that the private sector is the only sector which can create jobs is a limited ideological hangout and simply incorrect.

This was not my argument.

Certainly the federal government can produce dollars to pay workers to dig holes and fill them back in. No question.

My statement is that this destroys markets, not that the government can't do it. The government SHOULDN'T do it because of the damage it does.

Yes, but do those jobs create, or consume value?

They create value. Workers can purchase real goods and services whether employed by the public sector or private sector. The government is the only entity which can separate labor from the profitability of hiring workers. In other words, the government can create a permanent elastic demand for labor without having to worry about costs in the least.

None of these are guaranteed employment positions. Of course military service is a legitimate job. I do believe that the military is about 4 times the size that it should be.

But none of this is pertinent to the question of guaranteed employment, which is what I took umbrage to.

That's a fair point, I also would like to see a reduced military footprint overseas.

In fact, currency is less and less relevant. Generally, transactions are purely electronic - credits and debits to balance sheets, with no physical transfer of notes. About 75% of our economy is transacted electronically today, with that percentage increasing every year.

The concept of the Treasury floating T-Bills and the Fed printing mountains of FRN's that we all learned in college becomes further removed from reality by the day. Our monetary system is mostly electronic. Any check placed on monetary expansion that was had by physical currency is gone. We operate purely on the full faith and credit of the Federal Reserve. Whether this is a good or bad thing is subject for a different discussion.

I agree. At the end of the the day, under our fiat system, money creation is essentially a balance sheet operation. Many people don't realize this. Either way, the gold standard has historically been a disaster, the fiat system is orders of magnitude superior to the gold standard.

Also, I'd like to add, bonds primary function are simply to add and subtract net reserves from the banking system under a fiat system. There aren't even operationally necessary at this point, they're simply a legal requirement. The whole thing has been hijacked by politicians.

Except this isn't really true.

From the period between 1984 and 2003, the military turned away millions of applicants. Standards for military service were tightened. Those with criminal records or lacking high school diplomas were routinely turned away. As Iraq dragged on, standards have been lowered. But even now, a criminal record will disqualify a person from military service.

And the induction of large numbers into military service does little to expand an economy. Remember, we calculate GDP by consumption. Military personnel in WWII offered very little consumption. What drove that war economy was the reduction of job seekers by the fact of so many shipped overseas.

During the war, service member consumed real goods and services, whether it was provided by the government sector or private sector.

I will be happy to debate Keynesian turns with you, but for this particular discussion, I was stipulating that the act of guaranteeing employment stifles productivity by removing the incentive that drives people to produce. Harken back to my UAW example, the man told to put 3 bumpers on cars per shift, no more, has zero reason to innovate of become more efficient. Stagnation is the goal and the mandate. This is the reality of guaranteed employment - stagnation.

That's fine, but I'm not a Keynesian.

My point is, for the most part, that we shouldn’t use unemployment to control inflation. Ultimately, this model is problematic, and NAIRU should be replaced with a national employment buffer stock. We can do this by tossing supply-side nonsense out the door and literally hiring from the bottom up, which would curtail inflationary pressures. We could then stabilize unemployment through floating national employment buffer stock. buffer stock.

This type of program will soak up labor demand, as opposed to targeting some arbitrary output gap. You essentially tie deficit spending to employment. Automatic stabilizers will tell us how much we need to spend so to speak. For example, we need to employ x amount of people for a public project, so we need to spend X amount of dollars. The will benefit the private sector in multiple ways; they'll have a trained pool of labor, which will reduce any costs associated with training unskilled labor.

There’s a plethora of macroeconomic benefits with the Job Guarantee. One that comes to mind is inflation control. The budget will decrease in a counter-cyclical fashion as the private sector improves by hiring workers directly into the private sector. This also keeps the supply of labor tilted towards a minimum wage ($12/HR, $15/HR, whatever is decided), which is way better than the current NAIRU nightmare.

Lastly, modern capitalist economies aren't structured for full employment, so we’re spinning our wheels. We abandoned full employment as a national policy many moons ago.

We shouldn't ignore some of the private sector dynamics occurring in this scenario. Many people make the incorrect assessment that if the public sector gets involved in making widgets at some random firm, that their wages will somehow create inflation. This has been disproved multiple times.

I'm not sure who makes that assumption.

You'd be surprised, many do.

I do know that when government gets involve in a particular market, monopoly soon follows. With the government established and maintained monopoly, prices rise, service and quality fall. In key markets, such as health care, this will inevitably lead to inflation. But this is due to the size of the market as a percentage of the overall economy.

If our policy makers wanted to, the US could end mass employment is a rather efficient and painless manner. It would have zero effect of price stability.

Nonsense.

Inflation is an increase in the general price level, not sectors (health care) or certain asset classes.

Health care in the US is a total market failure layered upon other market failures. It's basically a joke compared to the rest of the OECD countries, given the amount of money we pay for health care outcomes.

 

[Freemason9]

Socialism was SO popular in fact that a famous National Socialist was Time Magazines' "Man of the Year". Google that!

Hitler being Man of the Year had nothing to do with Socialism being popular.

Hitler wasn't a Socialist.

Let's see if Hyrcamajerk is educable:

Hitler was a National SOCIALIST....



Nazi...national socialism....based on nationalism and/or race... Communism....international socialism.



"Liberals claim the center by placing socialism on the left and national socialism on the right, even though Lenin/Stalin and Hitler/other Nazis had much in common as they centralized power and preached hatred. A more accurate spectrum would place totalitarians of many stripes on the left and defenders of religious, political, and economic freedom on the right."
WORLD | Let's admit who we are | Marvin Olasky | July 17, 2010




Since we're buds, I'll just call you 'jerk'......OK?

Now I get it--you're a stupid, sociopathic person with a dictionary and a template.