Unless I am missing something major, seems like a good idea to me.

Physically active jobs would be the best. And there are TONS and TONS of things that need to be done nationwide. Even single parents could do some work if we could provide them with decent childcare.

But, of course, conservatives would call this creeping communism ... Even if it worked under Roosevelt to get us out of the Depression:
https://en.wikipedia.org/...n_Conservation_Corps

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An actual bill with details.

That article was an awfully vague aspirational summary.

There are a lot of details to hash out. For example, two of the examples given are child care and elderly care. Those would likely require background checks. Do all jobs require a background check? What about drug testing?

What are the standards of performance? Can you get fired? If so, are you then eligible for another public works job?

What's the interplay with other forms of public assistance? Is one of these jobs exclusive of some forms of public assistance?

Is there really a jobs shortage?

What salary are we talking about? What other benefits? Healthcare?

How do we handle those things for all current government jobs? What do all the folks in DC cashing a check from the US government do? I figure these folks would get paid like that. At a minimum 15 an hour.

If you get fired, cycle them to another job. Or if they are found to be "incompetent" or "idiots" and can't hold a job, then they go back on welfare. But that would take a panel and hearing to be deemed an "incompetent" person or labeled an "idiot" who is not capable of holding gameful employment.

Some details to work out for sure, but if we could immediately employee several million folks, focused on the minority groups that are often marginalized, then it would be a huge first step.

We did this once, it was called the New Deal, and it worked in the conditions it was created in. Would it work now? I seriously doubt it. Too much overhead to be viably supported in the long term.

Plus we have that now, in a way. It is called the military and assuming you weren't a bad boy or girl or dropped on your head as child (or have a medical condition) you are in with technical training and a guaranteed income.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

I'd like to see everyone who wants to work have a decent job.

On the other hand is there anything we don't want the gov't to do? They have to protect us against foreign and domestic aggressors. Pandemics, natural disasters, cyber attacks etc. And any new program never seems to result in some savings elsewhere in the system The list has no end.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

I like the military but think many people have moral or conscious reasons why they don't want to sign up for a job that may required to kill or assist in the killing of folks they never met in a foreign land because some old dude in Washington is telling them to.

Just giving someone a job to help build a road, take out trash, hand out flyers at a national park, or whatever for 15 an hour makes sense. Get them off hand outs and give them a hand up ( a job)

The answer to this 20 years a go was a hardy (YES). We didn't want the government up in all of our business. Now, that answer is probably, NO, let the government do everything and more.

1 .Military: Yes
2. Public Health rules: Yes
3. Stimulus and jobs: YES
4. Social norms: YES
5. Environment: YES
6. Government Regulation: If it helps folks YES
7. Taxes : YES, have to pay for it all


If someone has a problem now, the first place they look is for aid from the government.


The coming age of folks are much less independent and resilient than generations ago and have a more collectivist mindset than that of rugged indivuality. It is what it is. Since we are going that way, might as well let the government take care of everyone.

How is this that different from what Paul Ryan wanted? Wasn’t Paul Ryan wanting welfare for work?

Seems like it would get strong support from both parties. The idea just more so seems like a conservative idea to lower government testing for welfare (what Paul Ryan wanted with his “opportunity grants”) along with a liberal welfare state.

I think you are looking at this through a pair of "Make America Great Again" glasses. While there were certainly periods within the last 100 years that we were more individualistic than we are now, I don't think it's true to say that we are at our "collectivist" peak in recent year (save, of course, the pandemic).

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
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I could be having a senior moment and telling the young uns to get off my lawn and "go figure it out" on their own, that is a possibility. I do see people looking to blame others for their ills it seems more now that in the passed but it maybe just social media creates that feeling.

Either way, I dont' care and in terms of policies I have a big back of "fuck it", lets hand out money and make everyone happy. I am actually fine with a "lets take care of everyone" attitude. Why not? Let's spread the wealth, give everyone a job, give everyone health care and see how it goes. No reason not to try.

I would say you get work, a 15 an hour job and then no welfare. Seems like a bi partisan plan.

Funny thing. At that time (1930-1940) United States and Soviet Union had a lot in common. There were no clear conflict between communism and capitalism. In fact both countries were underdogs trying to come to world stage and opposing a dying superpower - British Empire. In both countries equality were quite important, unlike for British aristocracy. There were even Hollywood movies about American boy and Russian girl living happily ever after :) Churchill hated that more than Mondays.

But then Truman had different feelings about USSR, and the relationships moved in a different direction.

Now, of course, there is no chance US or any other country in the world move significantly towards communism for the next 50-100 years.

I guess my problem is gov't can't take care of everybody. The present infrastructure doesn't look remotely sustainable. In my province Ontario, Canada before the pandemic we couldn't balance our books. Recovery is going to take years. At the end of the year public debt will be 32,000 per person four times that of California per capita. Our debt is bigger than the gdp of something like 140 countries including new zealand and the ukraine. If interest rate go up one or two percent it will choke off healthcare and education. How are we going to take care of people if they are dependent on everything from gov't. I guess they will adapt and do without. Sigh

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

I think this is a key point. People who wan't to derail this idea will become obsessed with "whatboutism" for the incompetent people (we can't have any program unless we can 100% ensure nobody takes advantage of it). With few exceptions, even for very stupid people you can probably find something they are capable of doing. Likewise, people will say everyone will just fuck off because it's a guaranteed job. I disagree, most people will try to do a good job provided they are treated with respect and receive reasonable pay (meaning actually working will give you enough money to make your life better than it is without working). Sure 10% maybe 20% of the people in this program (which would work out to maybe like 5% of all Americans) will be a problem no matter what. For those people, perhaps they have a future as a Congressman in a strongly Republican district. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the merely good.

The second part is, you need to make sure the benefits of being in the program are better than just getting welfare/entitlements for doing nothing. Not necessarily way better, but enough to make a real incentive (my number one rule of economics and life in general is "people respond to incentives"). This delta is the incentive to prevent intentional incompetence. If your life is better off by doing some work and trying to do it well, most people will do that. Again, I resist the general Conservative/Republican view that everyone wants to be a freeloader and not try to be productive. But yes, there will always be some scammers, but that isn't.a reason not to try things.

FIFY

Interesting strawman. If we have a guaranteed jobs program, EVERYONE will drop out of the private workforce and join this program and "let the government take care of everyone" instead of reaching for the best possible outcome in a free market? Guaranteed jobs is a safety net, a floor, there is no way it would ever be a ceiling.

Not speaking about you directly, but one of the worse lies I hear from Republicans/Conservatives is that the Democrats have a plan to make EVERYONE dependent on the government so they can be controlled by the government (which will presumably be completely controlled by Democrats, who are the granters of free things to people; in contrast to Republicans who are the granter of free things to corporations).

But that is completely stupid, how is the government going to control everyone, when a wealthy person (like Bill Gates, or Bezos or Musk) can start and own a company and make it a much better option to work for them than be dependent on the government?

It's worth spending a little time figuring out where the holes are, especially when we're talking about a program that would be advertised as covering 100% of Americans. If we were just talking about a program that would offer a few jobs, that would be one thing. But if we're talking about a program that guarantees a job for every single American, that's different.


Maybe. But are we then making up work for them to do, just for the sake of saying we had a job for them? Are those jobs all located where the people are living? Or are we going to expect people to move to wherever the govt provided job is needed? Are we going to make up jobs for stupid or incapable people by having them do low skill labor that then takes jobs away from other people who were already doing those jobs through the private sector?

I'm not trying to shoot down the concept, but it's worth spending time going down rabbit holes so we don't throw tons of taxpayer dollars at something that's poorly thought out.

The plan has to make sense in terms of what we spend. It has to provide incentive (as you mentioned) for people to choose this over welfare, and then to do good work while in the job. But it also has to probably not provide a serious competitor to private sector work, because we don't want to kill the economy by draining people out of private sector and into increasingly made-up govt work program jobs.

There would be lots of work to do to make sure something like this didn't end up a disaster. And I'm not talking perfect as enemy of good. I'm talking just making it good, and not shitty.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Do we guarantee a job for those that do a crappy job? What if the person is given a job say picking up the park. They show up late every day, stand around and do a crappy job? Do we fire them? Then we can't say they are guaranteed a job? I actually like the concept. If you are able bodied and collect welfare, I would be more than happy to see people given jobs as a way to collect wellfare. Even working around their schedule so that they can look for a job they really want. Or even offer job training while on wellfare.

But I'm not sure we can guarantee a job to everyone because the few bad apples will spoil the bunch.

How about we get rid of all current programs for those who are able bodied. Then give everyone an unemployment check each week that is the equivalent of $7.50/hr. Then offer everyone a government job at $12.50/hr and set federal minimum wage to $15/hr. Government minimum wage lower than private so the government doesn’t end up competing for labor. Or perhaps just get rid of private federal minimum wage with it de facto set by the government guarantee wage.

People can get fired easily from the government jobs (not the same protections that current civil servants have.). So if they don’t clean the park at $12.50 get fired and collect unemployment at $7.50.

Besides mentally challenged people I also see a problem with childcare issues for the now employed.

The rugged individuals that succeeded hoarded opportunities. They voted not to fund public universities. They stopped employment training programs in companies and told the kids to pay for it themselves. I know a lot of directors and above at work without a degree. Just none under 45 because that work your way up in a company path no longer exists- it is 100% blocked by job requirements of a degree. I went through school/work right at the break point. I have brilliant friends high up in high tech with no degree just 5 years older than me- but none younger.

The opportunities available for hard workers with out resources behind them in big companies are way smaller than they were a generation ago.

Again, a bogus strawman. This program will never come close to "covering all Americans". Yes, every American will be eligible (if you want to play semantics), but I am highly confident that at most we would see something like 20% of American take part. Your argument is like saying 100% of people with homeowners insurance will make a claim or 100% of people with term life insurance will die and make a claim; the number of people covered by something and those who actually use it are completely different. And you need to evaluate programs by actual usage, because that's where basically 100% of the costs come from. Why would anyone who has a regular job which pays better than this program take part in it?

Again, you are taking the typical conservative/Republican approach to any new government program. Start by grossly exaggerating the size of the program to scare everyone.

You are totally spot on with this. And this is why we need such a program as a safety net. Although it would certainly be great to work on creating more opportunities that are accessible to everyone (who is willing to do the work to be successful).

I play liberal here, but I worry about this. Even with the best of intentions.

Giving relatively low-skill government jobs to people, particularly minority groups, may not help resolve the underlying issues of marginalization.

It would let the private sector off the hook for issues with systemic bias. They no longer have a responsibility to correct their bias. The government will take care of those people.

And it may not teach the people with those jobs the skills they need to eventually re-enter the private job marketplace.

And again, there maybe is no job shortage. If there's no job shortage, then we don't need the government to manufacture new jobs.

I'm not opposed to public works programs. But I just think we should be very, very careful about implementation. It can go way wrong. E.g. there was a bi-partisan effort to provide low-cost government housing with the same idealism in the 50's-70's. The result was "the projects," e.g. concentrated populations of minorities that became gang-ridden and ugly both cosmetically and figuratively. We don't want to engineer well-meaning solutions that make things worse.

It's pretty ballsy of you to claim I'm constructing a strawman when the OP says just what I'm saying. The program is advertised as covering 100% of Americans. The way you know is because the link in the OP says it will cover "all Americans." The title of the article is "Pressley Calls for a Federal Job Guarantee for All Americans." I didn't construct anything. It's exactly how the proposed program is being advertised right now.

Of course, that could change, and of course, the details of the program might tell a very different story.


I didn't suggest anything like any of that. I never said or suggested that 100% of Americans would take advantage of the program. I said that if you're going to advertise a program as guaranteeing a job to all Americans, then it's fair to look at some of the problematic people that fall into that group ("all Americans").

Quote:

Again, you are taking the typical conservative/Republican approach to any new government program. Start by grossly exaggerating the size of the program to scare everyone.

That's not anywhere close to what I was discussing.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

The successful rugged individuals aren't the ones responsible for making a college degree the bare minimum for entry into the workplace. That's on our society as a whole over the past several decades and out insistence on every kid going to college, and our discounting the trades or other options as equally valid or valuable.

If you try to send everyone to college, then having a degree isn't special anymore.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Interestingly, a guy I know has decided to recently become a Ben Shapiro fan, being the rugged individual that he is. He ended up getting a history degree, which in most cases would have landed him a job as the manager of a Pizza Hut. He's 47 and grew up in Reston, VA. His best friend gets a degree in Physics and lands a job at a startup as a configuration management specialist. He then gets his three best friends hired in their early 20s, the other two having a marine biology degree, and a 3 month IT certificate.

So it just goes to show you that if you apply some rugged individualism, make friends the smart kid who lives across the street from you, and have your mom move you into the #2 tech corridor in the world during the biggest tech boom in history, you too can have the privilege of becoming fans of right wing pundits who convince you that you did it all on your own.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
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