Here's How We Remake the Economy - scheerpost.com
https://scheerpost.com/2020/07/27/heres-how-we-remake-the-economy/amp/?__twitter_impression=trueHere’s How We Remake the Economy
チェルネワ博士は失業が成長、所得の不平等、公衆衛生に及ぼす影響を研究し、ヴァレリーを待つ困難から人々を救うことが彼女の仕事の焦点です。で 仕事の保証のためのケース彼女は今年の夏に公開、Tchernevaは、連邦政府が1を望んでいる人には生活賃金の仕事を提供できる方法を説明します。
以下は、パンデミック失業保険金が経済にどのような意味を持つのか、そして米国がどのようにして雇用保証を制定できるかについての私たちの会話の編集された筆記録です。
これらの毎週の失業給付は経済にどのように影響しましたか？それは正しい行動でしたか？
誰もが失業保険プログラムが多くの人々にいかに大きな収入を提供しているかに焦点を当てており、議論は私たちがそれを維持すべきかどうかです。しかし、本当の問題は失業保険ではありません。本当の問題は私たちの経済の低賃金です。基本的な問題は、仕事とその給与の低さです。
米国の労働者のおよそ半数は、1時間あたり15ドル未満しか稼いでいません。それは非常に、非常に低いレベルの所得創出です。床は本当に岩の底です。失業保険は不十分であり、すでにパンデミックによって引き起こされた失業は、追加のレイオフや他の波及効果を引き起こすでしょう。私は、破産、請求書を支払うことができない人々、店先の閉鎖などについて話している。
これらの事態の発生を防ぐために、政府は毎週600ドルの支払いを1回だけ増やすことを決定しましたが、それは正しいことでした。それは本当に良い政策です。実際、それは、最も有利な立場にない労働者に向かってスケールを傾けました！これはメリットであり、欠点ではありません。あなたは市場がすでに歪んでいて、私たちにはすでにそのような暴走の不平等があることを理解する必要があります。そのため、平均的な労働者の収入を使用して、各失業者労働者にどれだけ多くを与えるべきかを補足として計算することは、小さな再調整でした。売りすぎたくない。連邦失業保険は、実際には単なるバンドエイド、パッチです。
はい。したがって、次に何をするかを決定する必要があります。主要な提案には問題があります。
まず、民主党は失業保険の強化を更新したいと考えています。それですべてうまくいきます。しかし、彼らは本当に他に提供するものは何もありません。本当の問題は雇用と賃金であることを思い出して、大恐慌を振り返ってみましょう。FDRは最低賃金を設定し、数年後にトルーマンはそれを2倍にしました。これは、私たちが今やることについて考えなければならないことです。連邦の最低賃金が1時間あたり7.25ドルである場合、少なくとも2倍にして1時間あたり15ドルにする必要があります。しかし、それでもまだ十分ではありません。依然として大量失業が続くでしょう。したがって、雇用を創出するポリシーが必要です。民主党は継続する失業保険を擁護すべきですが、彼らは他にも何かを提供しなければなりません。
「FDRは最低賃金を設定し、数年後、トルーマンはそれを2倍にしました。これは、私たちが今やることについて考えなければならないことです。」
Pavlina Tcherneva、バードカレッジの経済学の准教授
一方、共和党は、人々が働くことを阻害するので、失業の支払いを取り除く必要があると主張しています。もちろん、これは大量失業に対処する残酷な方法です。それは言う：「人々がそこにいない仕事を探しに出かけることができるように人々が持っている少しのサポートを取り除いてみましょう。」彼らが作成しようとするインセンティブの数や、人々を提出に押し込めようとする試みの量は関係ありません。人々はそこにない仕事を見つけられず、そこにある仕事は十分に支払われません。
シカゴ大学の経済学者によるその論文は、あなたが説明している残酷な視点を支持しています。
はい。彼らは支払いの分配が問題だと言います。彼らは、低所得者がもう少し多くのお金を得ているので、プログラムがより不平等であることを暗示しています。しかし、彼らは今日の収入がすでに極端に歪んでいることを認識していません。経済が非常に長い間不公平に所得を分配していることを認識せずに、プログラムが不公平に収入を分配していると主張することはできません。
経済学者が道徳的な立場を持たないふりをするのは不誠実だと思います。その論文で何度か著者たちはこう主張している：「私たちはこれらの長所と短所をどのように比較検討すべきかについて何の立場もとらない」。もちろん彼らは立ちます！彼らの立場は次のとおりです。「これらの支払いはモラルハザードを生み出します」、それは経済学者が言うには「彼らは人々を怠惰にし、彼らは彼らに働くことを思いとどまらせます。」これは価値判断です。失業保険を阻害要因と呼ぶことは道徳的主張であり、経済的主張ではありません。これらの人々は彼らの生存のために戦っています。あなたが突然毎週$ 600をさらに獲得し、あなたの住宅ローンを支払うことができ、クレジットカードにデフォルトがない場合、それは生存のための戦いの助けになります。これらは私が本当に露出する必要があると思う種類のブラインドです。経済学者は問題について中立的な方法で話すふりをします。しかし、道徳的な主張と仮定が私たちのすべてのモデルの根底にあり、私たちはそれらを公開する必要があります。
私たちの文化や企業が染み込んだメディアは、外見や経験の表面を超えて、人々がこれらのことについて深く考えることを奨励していません。
正しい。しかし、これを理解するために専門家である必要はありません。多くの人々が失業保険は人々にもっとお金を与えるので悪いことだと言っています。これは従来の話のポイントになっています。これを表面で見て、「Hey！誰かが以前よりも多くのお金を得ています！」顔が不公平だと思います。しかし、さらに掘り下げてその理由を尋ねると、1週間あたり600ドル追加してもそれほど多くのお金ではないことがわかります。それをニューヨーク市の毎月の家賃に比べてください。人々が通常国家の失業プログラムから得る300ドルの平均は、代替収入ではありません。それはほとんど十分ではありません。1週間あたり600ドルの追加料金で一部の人を最優先にすると、実際に一部の人が給料をどれだけ下回っているかが明らかになります。前に言ったように、アメリカ人労働者の半分以下が1時間あたりおよそ15ドルを稼ぎます。そして、それらの多くはさらに少ない収入を得ます。
残業の問題に残酷な視点からアプローチしなくても、人を助けたいという気持ちからアプローチしても、さらに掘り下げる必要があります。個人レベルでは、これらのプログラムに実際の影響があります。雇用主にも。そして、私たちはそれらを見逃すことはできません。
たとえば、ジムを経営している友人がいます。彼は私に言った：「私はビジネスを再開する必要があり、だまされた労働者から誰を連れ戻すかを理解する必要があります。一方で、私は彼らが週に600ドルを失うことになるので、あまり給料が支払われていない一部の労働者を呼び戻したくありません。しかし、私が彼らを連れ戻さなければ、彼らは永久に解雇されるでしょう。100％のスタッフ能力でビジネスを再開することはできません。」
だから、誰かが切られるだろう、そしてそれは低賃金の人々です。そして、彼らは その後の就職に最も苦労する長期失業者となるでしょう 。ここにCatch-22があります。低所得者は、現在600ドル余分に手に入るので、仕事に戻りたくないかもしれません。しかし、彼らが仕事に戻りたい場合、例えば年末に、彼らの福利厚生がいつ終了するかに応じて、それまでに経済は跳ね返って十分な雇用を創出することはなく、彼らは長期失業者になり、直面するでしょう労働力を再入力するための高い障壁。
私たちは賃金を上げたいのですが、事業主の観点からすると、彼らは非常に薄いマージンで運営しています。多くの企業は、2倍の賃金を支払う余裕がないか、入ってきたくない人の利益に匹敵する余裕がありません。一方、失業者は非常に多く、雇用主が雇用したい場合、より多くの人々がこれらの少数の仕事に必死になっており、企業はより良い給与を提供するという圧力を感じません。
したがって、失業の支払いだけを続けることは、最終的に私たちの経済を修正することにはなりません。また、失業中の人々の利益を奪って、一部の人々に低賃金の仕事を強制し、他の人々は仕事を見つけられません。代わりに国は何をすべきですか？
ほとんどの人がおそらく気づいていないのは、政府が経済をほぼ全体的に支えているということです。CARES法は2.2兆ドルでした。それは非常に不公平に分配されましたが、それは巨大なチャンクでした：私たちの経済の10％。政府が支援しているため、民間部門は生命維持に取り組んでいます。連邦準備制度はローンを提供しています。議会はより多くのローンを流用している。そして失業保険があります。COVIDと危機管理に費やされるでしょう。しかし、彼らは、非常に不平等なシステム、つまり大量失業と大量破壊に耐えようとしているシステムを支える方法でそれを行っています。支出に対する恐怖症を振り払うとき、政府はそのお金をどのように使うべきかという問題から始めて、より良い質問をすることができます。
大恐慌の間、米国はニューディールで経済の基盤を再考しました。私たちは、より高い賃金、より強力な雇用、より良い労働条件、そしてより強力な労働者保護を約束しました。今日、経済はこれに匹敵する経済的安全を提供していません。パンデミックの中で普遍的なヘルスケアはありません。実際、健康保険に加入していた何百万人もの人々が、仕事に結びついていたために保険を失いました！
「支出についての恐怖症を振り払うとき、政府は何にお金を使うべきかという問題から始めて、より良い質問を始めることができます。」
チェルネワ博士
やるべきことはたくさんあります。しかし、私たちはボールに目を留める必要があります—豊富でより給与の多い仕事です。私は、政府がインフラの改善や経済の緑化を含む、地域社会におけるあらゆる無視に対処するために、大胆かつ大胆な投資および雇用プログラムを作成することを望んでいます。私にとって、グリーンニューディールは、将来の社会がどのように見えるべきかを明確に説明するものです。それは私たちが物を生産する方法を再調整します。地域の持続可能な慣行に焦点を当てています。それには社会的要素があります。つまり、風化した家に住むことだけを許可するのではなく、実際にすべての人に家があることを保証します。いくつかのソーラーパネルを備えたホームレスの世界にはなりません。政府はこの危機に対処するために莫大な資金を投入するでしょう。これらのリソースを使用して、経済と社会の両方を再構築し、現在必要な雇用の安全と雇用を提供するグリーンアジェンダを追求することを選択できます。
あなたがそれを想像するとき、あなたは何を見ますか？
だから、私は連邦の仕事の保証に取り組ん でいます。私にとって、これは雇用のセーフティネットの重要な部分です。あなたが失業中の人なら、あなたは公共職業安定所に行き、公共サービスの仕事を得ます。私たちはあなたがあなたのコミュニティで仕事を見つけるのを手伝います。仕事の保証は重要なセーフティネットであり、グリーンニューディールの重要なコンポーネントです。これにより、この新しい世界を追求すれば、誰もがその場に立つことができます。化石燃料の抽出に依存する鉱山のコミュニティや町に人々を置き去りにすることはありません。コミュニティをクリーンアップして再構築します。
一部の政治家や民間の雇用主が言うことに反して、人々は働きたいと思っています。しかし、民間部門は十分な仕事を提供していません。だから、仕事の保証は空白を埋めるために介入します。
あなたが長い間在宅の親であったとしましょう。あなたの子供は大学を卒業していて、あなたは有給の仕事を望んでいます。しかし、どこから始めますか？あなたの履歴書は空白です。あなたは、Job Guaranteeを通じて地元でいくつかの良いコミュニティの仕事をすることができます。実際には、人々はすでに仕事のために自分たちを組織しています。パンデミックで出現した相互扶助グループでは、人々はすでにコミュニティのニーズに対処するために現場で作業をしています。あなたはそれをジョブ保証のジョブ作成のエンジンにすることができます。そして仕事の性質—それを動機づける力は、私たちが現在持っているほとんどの仕事とは根本的に異なります。民間部門では、利益の動機がコスト削減を確実にし、不安定な給与と労働条件につながります。仕事の保証により、仕事が提供されるという条件は公共の目的と公共の利益のためです。
さて、一歩戻りましょう。仕事の保証は気が遠くなるかもしれません。今日の政治を考えると、障害は乗り越えられないように見えるかもしれません。他の危機は言うまでもなく、COVIDへの対応は不十分です。しかし、事実は、100年近く前、大恐慌の間の本当に絶望的な時代の真っ只中に、私たちは根本的な方法で政府の目的を再考したということです。これはリーダーシップを取った。今それを得るのか、もっと待たなければならないのかは分かりませんが、これは私たちが生きている瞬間のようなものです。それは同じ種類の再考と大胆な行動を要求します。
何が起こるかを知る水晶玉はありませんが、ニューディールに至るまでの年月を考え続けています。この種の再考、活動、現場での取り組みは、FDRが大統領に選出されるまで数十年間繁栄していました。1900年代の初めから1800年代の終わりまで、より良い労働条件へのこの強い要求は強く、それは市民社会の多くのコーナーと仕事が合体したことから来ました。今、私たちには環境問題があり、悪化するだけの危機です。ふつうの常識に挑戦している人がいます。
2008年は政府の政策を変革し、私たちの経済の不平等を是正する瞬間かもしれないと思いました。しかし、それを怠ったことで私たちはここに来ました。この危機とそれがもたらす困難に取り組む準備ができていないのです。同時に、右翼政権は経済的苦痛を掴んでいます。私たちは民主的な解決策を必要としています。うまくいけば、この機会を逃さないでください。
ユニバーサルベーシックインカム（UBI）のアイデアは、多くの人々に刺激を与えています。仕事の保証はそれとどのように関係していますか？
UBIにはさまざまなバージョンがあるので、話している内容に十分注意する必要があります。私は、富裕層または貧困層にかかわらず、皆に年間30,000ドルまたは35,000ドルを与えるUBIに反対します。今、働けない・働かない人がいて、ベーシックインカムが必要です。それはUBIとは異なります。Green New DealとJob Guaranteeでは、仕事をしてはいけない人のための収入支援があります。たとえば学生の場合、授業料なしの大学はベーシックインカムの一種です。もし私たちが普遍的なヘルスケアを持っていれば、それは一種のベーシックインカムです。
私の職務保証の提案では、退役軍人や障害を持つ人々のための基本的な収入支援とともに、普遍的な育児や普遍的な児童手当と組み合わせる必要があると私は主張します。重要なのは、収入は人が経験している不安の特定の側面をターゲットにしているということです。
右翼支持者は言うまでもなく、UBIのシリコンバレー支持者は、既存のセーフティネットの代替としてこれを推進しています。Andrew Yangは、受信者に社会保障をオプトアウトさせることで、月額1,000ドルの「自由の配当」に明示的に資金を提供しています。これは人々を非常に心配するはずです。私にとって、UBIはトロイの木馬であり、誤った約束です。「私はあなたに収入を与えるだけです。外出して、手頃な家賃を見つけます。手頃な価格の保育所を見つけに行きましょう。」きちんとした給与を今日持っている人々はすでにこれらのものを見つけることができません！
したがって、UBIは、私たちが直面している他の問題を解決しません。それは常に上流階級の個人とより共鳴します。2つか3つの仕事をジャグリングしている働く人々は働きたいと思っています、そして彼らは安定した良い仕事を望みます。しかし、私が受け取る嫌悪感のあるメールは、通常、大学教育を受けた人から次のように伝えられます。なぜ普遍的なベーシックインカムに反対しているのですか？」そして、私は考えています。「まあ、私は懸命な社会的セーフティネットを失いたくないし、それを望む人々に仕事を提供する経済が欲しいのです。」
「私にとって、[Universal Basic Income]はトロイの木馬であり、誤った約束です。それは言う、「私はあなたに収入を与えるだけです。外出して、手頃な家賃を見つけます。手頃な価格の育児を見つけに行きなさい。」きちんとした給与を今日持っている人々はすでにこれらのものを見つけることができません！」
チェルネワ博士
さて、人々がいつも尋ねる質問をさせてください：どのようにして仕事の保証とグリーンなニューディールを買うことができますか？
私たちは政府がこれらのプログラムを買う余裕がないという神話を覆すためにかなり良い仕事をしてきたと思います。COVIDへの対応として、私たちは莫大な予算を一晩で通過したことを覚えておいてください。2008年の金融危機の間も同じことをしました。危機のこの瞬間に、政府は公共の資源、財政力を要求し、彼らは予算を通過させます。「でも、どうやってそれを払うの？」という質問は常に拒絶すべきだと思います。政策が優先事項である場合、それへの資金提供に問題がないことは明らかです。
ですから、最初に連邦政府が自己資金で賄っていることを認識しなければなりません。それはすでに財源を持っています。それは他のすべてに支払う方法と同じように仕事の保証またはグリーンニューディールに支払います：資金を供給するために財務省と連邦準備制度が調整する予算を流用することによって。州政府とは異なり、連邦政府は支出する税収に依存していません。通貨の発行者です。それは公的な独占を持っています、そしてあなたがドルを発行することで独占を持っているなら、どうすればあなたはそれらを使い果たすことができますか？ほとんどの人は、この非常に基本的な人生の事実に焦点を合わせていません。政府はドルを発行し、議会を通じて適切な支出を行うと、経済に新しいドルが注入されます。税金の支払いは、それらのドルの回収を表します。税金は資金調達メカニズムではありません。
したがって、次のように考えてください：投票資金プログラム。票を集めることができる限り、政府の主権金融機関（財務省と連邦準備制度）が調整してすべての支払いを行います。繰り返しになりますが、政府は危機に何らかの形で支払います。質問です：それはで過ごすと、使用リソースウィル 反応 マスimmiserationや環境破壊へ？それとも、それを私たちの経済の予防と再建のために使うのでしょうか？
これは、あなたや他の現代通貨理論派の経済思想派が、連邦政府の支出に関する従来の理解に加えた重要な修正です。ロナルド・レーガンはアメリカ人に、連邦政府は 家計がそうであるように予算を組まなければならないと言った 。つまり、政府は国民のニーズに応えることができず、お金がないために素晴らしい社会を築くことはできません。あなたは先ほど言ったように、それはので、しかし、連邦政府は正確にお金を使い果たすことはできません 発行 お金を家庭や個人がないのに対し、。そして、このように考えて話すのは保守派だけではなく、左側の膨大な数の活動家も同じようにしています。
はい。率直に言って、私は左の困惑している人々の立場を見つけます。見て、保守派が問題なく行えることは2つあります。一つは、彼らは彼らの反動的な議題を追求するために公共財布の力を使用することをためらうことはありません。 決して。そして、それらはレーガンからチェイニー、トランプまで、非常に明確でした：赤字は問題ではありません。自分のお金を印刷します。しかし、左側の多くの人々はこの基本的な事実を認めず、偽りの尊敬の念を隠しています。彼らは健全な財政に固執することにより、彼ら自身の政策アジェンダを不自由にしています。では、武器にすべての道具がない場合、どのような戦いをしていますか？
他の問題は仕事です。絶望的な時代に、権利は懲罰的労働プログラムを立ち上げるのに問題がないでしょう。失業者にとって、これらのプログラムは、まったく仕事がないよりはましだと考えられます。左の選択肢は何ですか？私の見解では、それは仕事の保証です。それは、ワークフェアの代替手段です。仕事のための自発的でまともな公共オプションです。
しかし、左派の多くは普遍的なベーシックインカムにしがみついており、一部は明らかに雇用保証に反対しています。彼らは白旗を掲げるべきかもしれない。失業の脅威が永遠に続く場合、収入だけで労働の地位を強化することはできません。実際、市場経済では、所得援助は雇用主の賃金助成金です。政府が小切手を約束しているのに、なぜ企業に生活賃金を要求するのか。そしてもちろん、これらのチェックは他の利点を犠牲にして行われます。
むかしむかし、まともな雇用は基本的な人権であるという信念に左翼は固執した。今日、ロボットや貿易のせいで仕事が永遠になくなるという考えには、一種の投機があります。しかし、失業について不可避なことは何もありません。もちろん、求人を作成することはできます。もちろん、彼らは良いと給与の良い仕事になることができます。政府は、銀行預金から教育まで、政府契約のための特定の種類のローンや利益まで、経済のあらゆるものを保証しています。雇用を保証することは、実際にはまったく根本的な命題ではありません。権利は仕事を約束することに問題はありません。（もちろん、その多くは誤りです。トランプは製造業の仕事を取り戻すことはありません）。
しかし、左翼は大量失業を経験したコミュニティに何を提供しなければならないのでしょうか？企業への補助金？決して来ない仕事のためのトレーニングプログラム？懲罰的ではなく、既存の福利厚生を労働条件としない、まともな給与の高い雇用機会を創出する就職保証はどうですか？公共の目的に役立つ有用なプロジェクトを作成するプログラム？民主党は非常に迅速に非常に信頼できるメッセージと雇用計画を策定する必要があります。これは、政府が国の隅々で機会を創出するために必要な大胆な行動を取ることを確信させるものです。1930年代にそれをやった。私たちは確かに再びそれを行うことができます。
したがって、全体として、お金を再考する必要があります。政府の政策、特に雇用政策もまた見直されなければならない。公共財布の力をどのように活用しますか？それをどのように使用して経済のバランスを再調整しますか？どのように私たちは環境を浄化し、ケアを提供し、ヘルスケアを保証し、すべての人に適切な雇用機会を提供しますか？これらの問題はすべて密接に関係しています。主権支出、公共投資、経済安全保障です。
By Alexander Reed Kelly / Original to Scheerpost
It has been several weeks since Valerie suffered a nightmare. After falling asleep, instead of suddenly finding herself at a grocery store checkout counter with no money, as happened so often in the past, or under arrest for crossing state lines to find shelter with her children, she has dreamt simply of flying, traveling, being alone in quiet fields, and reading.
Last month, Valerie caught up on her electric bill. She paid off some debt, tipped generously for grocery delivery and, for the first time in six years, deposited money into a savings account. In June, she gave her son “the best birthday of his life”, sparing no expense for a dart board, an indoor mini-trampoline, a box of “kinetic sand”, and Lego Minifigures for him and his brother.
At age 48 and recently divorced, Valerie, who wished to remain anonymous for this article, is raising her two sons alone on a declared income of $19,270 per year in a small city in the Mid-Hudson Valley, one hour north of New York City. She is one of some 39 million people in the United States who lost their livelihoods to the Covid-19 pandemic this spring. She could afford her expenses and the gifts for her children because the federal government did something rare and wonderful: In response to mass unemployment caused by the pandemic, it gave those who lost their jobs an additional $600 in weekly financial support to stay home and help them cover living expenses.
This week, however, the four-month period of Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation stipulated in the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) will expire and those payments will stop. Republican lawmakers have publicly considered reducing the benefits to between $200 and $400 per week, and sending another round of $1,200 stimulus checks to taxpayers. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has shown no urgency for people like Valerie, who stand to lose between 50 and 85 percent of their income.
“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” she told me over the phone in mid-July. “I’m terrified to start cleaning AirBnBs again. I don’t really have the energy and I’m nervous to be in spaces where people from New York City have been. I’m scared to bring the virus home to my children.”
Valerie does not have to imagine what it is like to contract COVID-19. Though she was careful to keep her distance from people, to wash her hands and avoid touching her face, she says she caught the virus somehow in April. As she waited to recover, her boys, ages 11 and 12 took care of their mother and each other. Her generosity on her son’s birthday was also a thank-you to both of them for stepping up when she could not maintain their home and her future was uncertain.
“My 12-year-old cooked and took care of the cleaning as best he could,” she said. “He kept us afloat. Children shouldn’t have to take on that kind of responsibility, but they did. They were terrified and they never let it show until after I was well.”
Twelve years ago, Valerie quit her job in IBM’s intellectual assets and property division to take care of her first child, who was born with autism and four genetic diseases, three of which are shared by his younger brother. The boys can have allergic reactions to perfume and their own sweat, she says. Valerie homeschools the boys and spends between five and six hours each day preparing food that will not hurt them. She regularly monitors them for reddened lips and other indications that a kind of “silent” anaphylaxis is underway in their bodies.
The boys know that their circumstances are fragile. Since the pandemic began, they have had nightmares that they did not have before, including about the end of the world.
“They’re the healthiest kids that doctors who treat these disorders have ever seen, so I’m doing something right,” she beamed proudly. “I’m constantly looking out, but now I haven’t worked a proper ‘job’ since 2007, so I’m basically unemployable.”
The boys know that their circumstances are fragile. Since the pandemic began, they have had nightmares that they did not have before, Valerie says, including about the end of the world.
“My big guy’s not talking to me as much,” Valerie said. “He says: ‘There are some things I need to keep just for me’ and I completely agree with that. My little one has never been terribly articulate verbally, but he’s more emotional and needy. He’s requesting to spend a lot more time cuddling and reading, and pretending to fall a lot. It’s just not like him to do that.”
Valerie lives in one of many places in the United States where people have self-organized in beautiful mutual aid operations to help each other survive through the pandemic. She has called upon the group to get deliveries of prescription medications, medical supplies and health services, but before the pandemic, she rarely sought help from her neighbors.
“I don’t bother people,” she said. “I just figure that everyone is going through their own shitshow and I try to get through every day as best I can.” When she really needs someone to talk to, she calls her father, an “incredibly bright, intuitive and insightful” retired blue-collar worker who lives in the Midwest and whom her boys adore. Custody rules prevent her from traveling the distance that would be required to live with him or her sister, hence her recurring nightmares about getting arrested for crossing state lines.
In the absence of a safe way to work and earn money, Valerie and her boys need the weekly $600 federal payments or some large portion of them to be renewed in order to survive.
“I don’t think there’s a hope in hell of it happening,” she said. “But I do think that they should extend it to at least the end of January 2021. I’m not up on all the proposals for what could happen. I skim the news very gently and from very specific sources. I think they should give everyone a universal income; $40,000 is an insane cap that I saw being thrown around randomly, but in New York that’s nothing. Especially for single family households. I would like to see our tax money going towards supporting people to be able to make choices about savings, and not having to panic with a calculator at the grocery store. Or to be able to treat their kids to something in these extraordinary times.”
“I have to think they’re completely out of touch and not actual demons. Because it feels like they might be demons.”
Valerie
“The kids should not be going back to school,” she continued. “I can’t even go to the Social Security Administration office and get the name on my Social Security card changed back to my maiden name. I thought, ‘I must be able to do this. The bars are open.’ But I can’t. They’re not letting us have access to Social Security Administration employees for urgent business because they’re protecting those employees. But they’ll send children back to school like sacrificial lambs so the parent worker bees can work again and make the gazillionaires richer. It’s appalling.”
“I have to think that these politicians don’t understand the implications of their actions because they’re of such privilege at this point,” she concluded. “They’ve been making over $100,000 a year and getting kickbacks from everywhere, and they have great jobs lined up for after their time in Congress. I have to think they’re completely out of touch and not actual demons. Because it feels like they might be demons.”
In late March, shortly after the pandemic erupted in the United States, my friend Peter Frase published an article in Jacobin warning that the bipartisan ruling elite would sooner sacrifice the lives of working people than allow a government response to the pandemic to diminish their power to profit. Four months later, the Trump administration has not just failed to end the pandemic; rates of COVID-19 infection and deaths are spiking as states and businesses reopen and close again, and frightened, vulnerable people are being forced back to work.
In addition to helping people pay their bills and stay safe by staying home, the $600 weekly Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation has been a lifeline for U.S. businesses too. Consumer spending — the cash we spend on food, energy, entertainment and tchotchkes, etc. — is a key driver of the nation’s economy. For every three dollars consumers spent before the pandemic erupted, they spent just two dollars under lockdown. Corporations and businesses panicked and the government took action. It passed the CARES Act, which among other things simply put cash into the hands of tens of millions of jobless people. By late June, consumer spending returned to within a few points of pre-pandemic levels. (Predictably, poorer people — who must spend their money to stay alive — are spending closer to pre-pandemic levels than wealthier people.)
As a general stimulus then, the $600 weekly pandemic unemployment payments were not just a lifeline to people in need. They kept businesses afloat as people spent their benefits into the economy.
With characteristic cruelty, Republicans tried to prevent these benefits from reaching unemployed people. As if the fabric of society were not coming apart, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham complained that modestly high unemployment payments would give people the freedom to refuse to report to life-threatening jobs in exchange for poor wages, and called for the payments to be reduced. Ignoring the fact that unemployment laws prevent people from collecting benefits if they turn down a job because of low pay, Graham later rationalized: “If you pay someone $23 an hour not to work, they’re going to take you up on it… You shouldn’t be paid more in unemployment than you do at work.”
But Senator Bernie Sanders fought for the unemployed, using his bully pulpit to publicly shame Republicans like Graham and threatening to halt passage of the CARES Act. Business owners and capitalists can thank the socialist for their recovered revenue.
Instead of preserving this vital support, the Trump administration and the conservatives in Congress are ready to pull it out from underneath people and businesses that are barely standing. “The economy going back into recession is likely if we cold-turkey cut the extra unemployment insurance benefits,” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi told Fortune in late June. Additionally, conservative politicians and pundits are whining over some kind of imagined unfairness because two-thirds of the 25 million people receiving the $600 weekly payments are getting more money than their employers paid them — 34 percent more, on median. (“Personal income rose [more than] 9 percent in April and May from a year earlier,” wrote the economics analyst Doug Henwood.)
These politicians are pissed that the unemployment program is actually helping people in need. And it’s not just Republicans who are the problem. In Colorado, Democratic Governor Jared Polis justified his decision to allow landlords to evict jobless people during the pandemic by simply asserting that, “People should generally be back at work and earning money” — despite the fact that unemployment is rising in the state.
Conservatives are not just seeking to slash unemployment benefits. They are also working to shield employers from the threat of lawsuits filed by workers who get sick with Covid-19. Two Congressional Progressive Caucus staffers warned that the new policy “would make it nearly impossible to sue corporations for Covid-19-related legal claims by workers [and] give employers a free pass to flout worker safety laws.”
Being unemployed is not simply a vacation, free of onerous requirements, legal hazard and threats of punishment from the state. As the journalist David Sirota wrote recently, jobless “workers can be harshly sanctioned for trying to collect benefits if they dare turn down any job, no matter how poorly paid or dangerous.” In many cases, “unemployment systems are now set up to deny benefits at every opportunity,” says Michele Evermore of the National Employment Law Institute — with the rate of erroneous benefit denials nearly doubling over the past decade.
According to Michigan Public Radio, Michigan’s automated computer system “falsely accused more than 40,000 people of fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits” between 2013 and 2015. After Republicans took control of the state in 2011, people accused of collecting benefits after refusing a job offer can be forced to repay four times the amount of money they received, plus 12 percent interest.
The chief scholarly justification for ending the payments comes from a trio of University of Chicago economists — academics who decided that the most important contribution they could make to the general welfare in this time of danger was to scrutinize the amount of money being used to help poor people. Claiming twice in their May paper that they “take no stand” on how much support the involuntarily jobless should receive, they nonetheless provided anti-worker politicians and pundits with academic cover to lecture the public as if the main problem with the government’s pandemic-economic response is that poor people have a little money with which to make their lives tolerable.
By contrast, these servants of the rich are not motivated to quibble with the hundreds of billions of dollars that the CARES Act shoveled toward corporations, millionaires and billionaires; nor do they question the Federal Reserve’s policy of providing “incessant” support to Wall Street but not working people and the institutions that benefit them.
To defend the $600 unemployment payments as both morally and economically necessary is not to suggest that the CARES Act is a sufficient solution to our economic problems. Nor, says Pavlina Tcherneva, Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute and advisor to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, is the Democratic-led HEROES Act, which would extend the payments through January 2021 if Senate Republicans and the Trump administration would support it.
What is happening to Valerie and tens of millions of other people fired, laid off or losing benefits, healthcare or housing is not simply “natural” – it is the predictable and preventable consequence of established government policy. Alternatives are known, and working people, organizers, activists and voters must discover them and force them upon politicians and government if society and life are not to further deteriorate under pressure from the pandemic, a rigged economy and worsening, generalized fear.
Dr. Tcherneva studies the impact of unemployment on growth, income inequality and public health, and saving people from the hardship that awaits Valerie is the focus of her work. In The Case for a Job Guarantee, which she published this summer, Tcherneva explains how the federal government could provide a living-wage job to anyone who wants one.
What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation about what the pandemic unemployment payments meant for the economy and how the United States could enact a Job Guarantee.
How did these weekly unemployment benefits affect the economy? Was it the right action?
Everybody is focused on how the unemployment insurance program is providing greater income for a lot of people, and the debate is whether we should retain it or not. But the real problem is not unemployment insurance. The real problem is the low wages in our economy. The fundamental issue is jobs and how poorly paid they are.
Roughly half the workers in the United States earn less than $15 an hour. That is a very, very low level of income generation. The floor is really rock bottom. Unemployment insurance is inadequate and the job losses already caused by the pandemic would cause additional layoffs and other ripple effects. I’m talking about bankruptcies, people not being able to pay their bills, storefronts shuttering, etc.
To stop these things from happening the government decided to use this one-time boost of $600 weekly payments, and it was the right thing to do. It’s a really good policy. In fact, it tipped the scales toward the least advantaged workers! That’s a benefit, not a shortcoming. You have to appreciate that the market is already so skewed and that we already have such runaway inequality, so using the average worker’s income to calculate how much we should give to each unemployed worker as a supplement was a tiny rebalancing. I don’t want to oversell it. The federal unemployment insurance is really just a Band-Aid, a patch.
Okay. So now we have to decide what to do next. The major proposals are problematic.
First, Democrats want to renew the unemployment insurance boost. That’s all well and good. But they don’t really have anything else to offer. Remembering that the real issue is jobs and wages, let’s think back to the Great Depression. FDR put a minimum wage in place and a few years later Truman doubled it. This is the sort of thing we have to think about doing now. If our federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, we have to at least double it to $15 per hour. But that’s still not going to be enough. We’ll still have mass unemployment. So we need a policy that creates jobs. Democrats should defend continued unemployment insurance, but they have to offer something else as well.
“FDR put a minimum wage in place and a few years later Truman doubled it. This is the sort of thing we have to think about doing now.”
Pavlina Tcherneva, Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College
Now, Republicans on the other hand insist that we have to remove the unemployment payments because they disincentivize people from working. This, of course, is a cruel way of dealing with mass unemployment. It says: “Let’s just take away the little support that folks have so that they can go out and look for jobs that aren’t there.” It doesn’t matter how many incentives they try to create or how much they attempt to flog people into submission: People won’t find jobs that aren’t there and the jobs that are there won’t be well-paid.
That paper by the University of Chicago economists supports the cruel perspective you’re describing.
Yes. They say the distribution of payments is problematic. They imply that the program is more unequal because lower-income folks are getting a little bit more money. But they don’t recognize that income today is already extremely skewed to the top. You can’t argue that the program unfairly distributes income without recognizing that the economy has been distributing income unfairly for a very long time.
I think it’s disingenuous when economists pretend that they don’t have a moral position. Several times in that paper the authors claim: “We take no stand on how one should weigh these pros and cons.” Of course they take a stand! Their stand is the following: “These payments create moral hazard,” which is economist-speak for “they would make people lazy, they would discourage them from working.” This is a value judgment. Calling unemployment insurance a disincentive is a moral claim, not an economic claim. These people are fighting for their survival. If you suddenly get $600 more every week and you’re able to pay your mortgage and you’re not defaulting on your credit card, that’s an aid in your fight for survival. These are the kinds of blinders that I think really need to be exposed. Economists pretend to have a neutral way of talking about issues. But moral claims and assumptions underlie every one of our models, and we have to expose them.
Our culture and the corporate-soaked media don’t encourage people to think about these things deeply, beyond appearances and the surface of their experiences.
Right. But you don’t have to be an expert to understand this. A lot of folks are saying that unemployment insurance is bad because it gives people more money. This has become a conventional talking point. You can look at this on the surface and say, “Hey! Somebody is getting more money than they got before!” It feels unfair on its face, I guess. But if you drill deeper and ask why, well then you can see that an extra $600 per week is not that much money. Just compare that to what rent costs each month in New York City. The $300 average that people normally get from state unemployment programs is not replacement income. It’s not nearly adequate. If the $600 per week extra puts some people on top, then that really exposes how poorly some people are getting paid. Like I said before, less than half of American workers make roughly $15 per hour. And a whole lot of them earn even less.
Even if you don’t approach the issue of unemployment payments from the cruel perspective, even if you approach it from the desire to help people, we still have to drill deeper. At the individual level, there are real consequences to these programs. For employers, too. And we can’t overlook them.
For instance, I have a friend who manages a gym. He told me: “I have to reopen the business and need to figure out who to bring back from the furloughed workers. On the one hand, I don’t want to bring some workers back who were paid so little because they’ll lose the $600 per week. But if I don’t bring them back, then they’ll become permanently laid off. I can’t reopen my business with 100 percent staff capacity.”
So, someone’s going to get cut, and it’s the low wage-folks. And they will become the long-term unemployed who have the hardest time getting jobs afterwards. There is a Catch-22 here: Low-income folks might not want to go back to work because right now they can have the $600 extra. But if they want to go back to work, say at the end of this year—depending on when their benefits end—the economy won’t bounce back to create enough jobs by then, and they will become the long-term unemployed and face higher barriers to re-enter the workforce.
We want to raise wages, but from the perspective of a business owner, they’re operating on razor-thin margins. Many businesses simply can’t afford to pay double wages or match the benefits of the person who doesn’t want to come in. On the other hand, there are so many unemployed people that, if employers want to hire, there will be many more people desperate for those few jobs, and firms will not feel the pressure to offer better pay.
So, continuing the unemployment payments alone won’t ultimately fix our economy. And neither will taking jobless people’s benefits away to force some of them to take underpaid jobs while the others find no work. What should the country do instead?
What most people probably don’t realize is that the government is essentially supporting the economy almost in its entirety. The CARES Act was $2.2 trillion. It was distributed very inequitably, but it was an enormous chunk: 10 percent of our economy. The private sector is on life support because the government is supporting it. The Federal Reserve is providing loans. Congress is appropriating more loans. And there’s unemployment insurance. There’s going to be spending on COVID and crisis control. But they’re doing it in a way that props up a very unequal system, a system that is going to endure mass unemployment and mass devastation. When we shake off our phobia about spending, then we can start to ask better questions, starting with the question of what the government should spend its money on.
During the Great Depression, the U.S. rethought the foundations of the economy with the New Deal. We committed to stronger wages, stronger employment, better working conditions and stronger protections for workers. Today, the economy does not provide comparable economic security. We don’t have universal healthcare amid a pandemic. In fact, millions of people who had health insurance lost it because it was tied to their jobs!
“When we shake off our phobia about spending, then we can start to ask better questions, starting with the question of what the government should spend its money on.”
Dr. Tcherneva
So there is much to do. But we need to keep our eye on the ball — abundant and better-paid jobs. I would like to see the government create big and bold investment and employment programs to address all the neglect in our communities, including improving our infrastructure and greening the economy. To me, the Green New Deal is the clearest articulation of what the future society should look like. It rebalances how we produce things. It focuses on local sustainable practices. It has a social component, which means we’re not going to just allow people to live in weatherized homes, we’re actually going to ensure that every person has a home; it’s not going to be a world of homelessness with some solar panels. The government will be spending enormous resources to deal with this crisis. We can choose to use those resources to pursue a green agenda that restructures both our economy and society and provides the employment security and jobs that we need right now.
When you envision that, what do you see?
So, I work on the federal Job Guarantee. For me that is a critical piece of the employment safety net. If you’re an unemployed person, you will go into a public employment office and get a public service job. We will help you find work in your community. The Job Guarantee is a critical safety net and a critical component of the Green New Deal, which ensures that if we pursue this new world, everybody will have a place in it. We won’t leave behind people in mining communities and towns dependent on fossil fuel extraction. We’ll clean up and rebuild our communities.
Contrary to what some politicians and private employers say, people want to work. But the private sector doesn’t provide adequate jobs. So, the Job Guarantee steps in to fill the void.
Say you’ve been a stay-at-home parent for a long time now. Your kids are off to college and you want paid work. But where do you start? Your resume is blank. You could do some good community work locally through the Job Guarantee. In reality, people already organize themselves to work. In the mutual aid groups that have emerged in the pandemic, people are already doing work on the ground to address their community’s needs. You can make that the engine of job creation for the Job Guarantee. And the nature of work — the forces that motivate it are fundamentally different from most of the jobs we have now. In the private sector, the profit motive ensures cost-cutting and leads to precarious pay and working conditions. With the Job Guarantee, the terms on which work is offered is for public purpose and the public good.
Now, let’s step back. The Job Guarantee might sound daunting. The obstacles might seem insurmountable given today’s politics. We are dealing so poorly with COVID, let alone other crises. But the thing is that nearly 100 years ago, in the midst of really desperate times during the Great Depression, we rethought the purpose of government in radical ways. This took leadership. I don’t know if we’re going to get it now or if we’ll have to wait longer, but this is the kind of moment we’re living through. It calls for the same kind of re-thinking and bold action.
I don’t have a crystal ball to know what will happen, but I keep thinking of the years that led up to the New Deal. This kind of rethinking, activism and work on the ground was thriving for decades before FDR was elected president. From the early 1900s, even the late 1800s, this push for better working conditions was strong, it came from many corners of civil society and the work coalesced. Now, we have environmental problems and it’s a crisis that will only get worse. I see people once again challenging conventional wisdom.
I thought 2008 might be the moment to transform government policy and remedy the inequities in our economy. But our failure to do that has brought us here, more unprepared to tackle this crisis and the hardships it will bring. Simultaneously, rightwing governments are seizing on the economic pain. We need democratic solutions and hopefully we won’t miss this chance.
The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) inspires many people. How does a Job Guarantee relate to that?
There are many different versions of the UBI, so we really need to be very careful of what we’re talking about. I object to the UBI that just gives everybody $30,000 or $35,000 per year, rich or poor. Now, there are people who cannot work and should not work, and they need basic income. That’s different from UBI. In the Green New Deal and the Job Guarantee, there is income support for those who should not be working. If you’re a student, for example, tuition-free college is a type of basic income. If we have universal healthcare, that’s a kind of basic income.
In my Job Guarantee proposal, I argue that it should be coupled with universal childcare and universal child allowance, along with basic income support for veterans or people with disabilities. The point is that the income is targeted to the specific dimension of insecurity that a person is experiencing.
Silicon Valley advocates of UBI, not to mention rightwing supporters, are pushing it as a replacement for the existing safety net. Andrew Yang explicitly funds his $1,000 per month “Freedom Dividend” by having recipients opt out of Social Security! This should worry people very, very much. To me, UBI is a Trojan Horse and a false promise. It says, “I’ll just give you income. Go out and find affordable rent. Go find affordable childcare.” People who have decent salaries today already can’t find these things!
So UBI does not solve these other problems that we face. It always resonates more with upper middle class individuals. Working folks who are juggling two or three jobs want to work, and they want stable, good work. But the hate mail I get is usually from some college-educated person who tells me: “I would like to spend my life gardening. Why are you against universal basic income?” And I’m thinking, “Well, I don’t want to lose our hard-fought-for social safety net, and I want an economy that provides jobs for those who want them.”
“To me, [Universal Basic Income] is a Trojan Horse and a false promise. It says, ‘I’ll just give you income. Go out and find affordable rent. Go find affordable childcare.’ People who have decent salaries today already can’t find these things!”
Dr. Tcherneva
Alright, let me ask the question that people always ask: How can we afford a Job Guarantee and a Green New Deal?
I think we’ve been doing a pretty good job of debunking the myth that the government can’t afford these programs. Remember, in response to COVID we passed an enormous budget overnight. We did the same thing during the 2008 financial crisis. In these moments of crisis, the government musters the public resources, the fiscal power, and they pass a budget. I think we should always reject the question of “But how we will pay for it?” It is quite clear that when a policy is a priority, there is no problem funding it.
So first we must recognize that the federal government is self-funding. It already has the financial resources. It pays for the Job Guarantee or the Green New Deal the way it pays for everything else: by appropriating budgets which the Treasury and the Federal Reserve coordinate to fund. Unlike state governments, the federal government does not depend on tax revenue to spend. It is the issuer of currency. It has a public monopoly, and if you have the monopoly on issuing dollars, how can you possibly run out of them? Most people just don’t focus on this very basic fact of life. The government issues the dollar, and every expenditure it appropriates through Congress results in an injection of new dollars into the economy. Tax payments represent the retrieval of those dollars. Taxes are not a funding mechanism.
So think of it like this: Votes fund programs. As long as you can muster up the votes, then the sovereign monetary institutions of the government — the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — coordinate to make all payments. Again, the government will be paying for the crisis one way or another. The question is: Will it spend and use resources in reaction to mass immiseration and environmental destruction? Or will it spend them for prevention and the rebuilding of our economy?
This is a key correction that you and others in the Modern Monetary Theory school of economic thought have made to the conventional understanding of federal government spending. Ronald Reagan told Americans that the federal government must budget as a household does. In other words, the government can’t afford to meet the public’s needs and we can’t have a wonderful society because the money isn’t there. But as you said a moment ago, the federal government can’t run out of money precisely because it issues money, whereas households and individuals do not. And it’s not just conservatives who think and talk this way, enormous numbers of activists on the left do it as well.
Yes. Frankly, I find the positions of some people on the left baffling. Look, there are two things that conservatives have no problem doing. One, they never hesitate to use the power of the public purse to pursue their reactionary agenda. Never. And they have been extremely clear, from Reagan to Cheney to Trump: the deficit doesn’t matter. We print our own money. But many on the left refuse to acknowledge this basic fact and hide behind a fake respectability. By clinging to sound finance they cripple their own policy agenda. So, what kind of fight are you fighting when you don’t have all the tools in the arsenal?
The other issue is jobs. In desperate times, the right will have no trouble launching punitive workfare programs. For the unemployed, these programs will still be considered better than no jobs at all. What is the left’s alternative? In my view, it is the Job Guarantee. That is the alternative to workfare: a voluntary, decent public option for jobs.
But many on the Left cling to universal basic income and some are clearly opposed to the Job Guarantee. They might as well raise the white flag. One cannot strengthen the position of labor by providing income alone when the threat of unemployment is perennial. In fact, in a market economy, income assistance is a wage subsidy for the employer. Why demand living wages from firms when the government has promised checks? And, of course, these checks will come at the cost of other benefits.
Once upon a time, the left was steadfast in their belief that decent employment is a basic human right. Today, there is a kind of surrender to the idea that jobs are forever gone, either because of robots or trade. But there is nothing inevitable about unemployment. Of course, we can create jobs. Of course, they can be good and well-paid jobs. Government guarantees all sorts of things in the economy, from bank deposits, to education, to certain types of loans or profits for government contracts. Guaranteeing employment is in fact not a radical proposition at all. The right has no trouble promising jobs. (Much of it is false, of course. Trump won’t bring back manufacturing jobs).
But what does the left have to offer a community that has suffered mass unemployment? Subsidies for firms? Training programs for jobs that never come? Why not a Job Guarantee that creates decent, well-paid employment opportunities that are not punitive and don’t make existing benefits conditional on working? A program that creates useful projects that serve the public purpose? Democrats need very quickly to develop a very credible message and a plan for jobs, one that instills confidence that the government will take the necessary bold actions to create opportunities in every corner of the nation. We did it in the 1930s. We can certainly do it again.
So, overall, money has to be rethought. Government policies, and specifically employment policies, have to be rethought as well. How will we engage the power of the public purse? How will we use it to rebalance our economy? How will we clean up the environment, provide care, guarantee healthcare and decent employment opportunities for all? All of these issues go hand-in-hand: sovereign spending, public investment and economic security.
Alexander Reed Kelly lives in the Hudson Valley in New York State. He served as an advisor in the state’s Senate and Assembly and as Associate Editor at the news and opinion website Truthdig. Follow him on Twitter @alexreedkelly.
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