The Job Guarantee and Modern Money Theory: Realizing Keynes’s Labor Standard (Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity)

The contributors to this edited collection argue that a flexible Job Guarantee program able to react to an economy’s fluctuating need for work would stabilize the labor standard, the value of employment in relation to money. During economic downturns, the program would expand to provide more public sector jobs in response to private sector layoffs. It would then contract when economic growth offered private sector employment opportunities. This flexible full employment program would create a balanced, perpetually active labor force, providing the macroeconomic stability necessary to define a functioning labor standard. Just as the gold standard measured the worth of money against gold reserves, John Milton Keynes argued, so a labor standard ought to measure the value of money in terms of its labor equivalent. However, he failed to account for the fact that, unlike a gold standard, a labor standard does not have any kind of surety that money will continue to match its value in paid work over time. Together, the contributors argue that full employment would provide this missing security and allow authorities to define the value equivalencies of money and labor, the way that money once represented its exact equivalent in gold. The contributors to this edited collection argue that a flexible Job Guarantee program able to react to an economy’s fluctuating need for work would stabilize the labor standard, the value of employment in relation to money. During economic downturns, the program would expand to provide more public sector jobs in response to private sector layoffs. It would then contract when economic growth offered private sector employment opportunities. This flexible full employment program would create a balanced, perpetually active labor force, providing the macroeconomic stability necessary to define a functioning labor standard. Just as the gold standard measured the worth of money against gold reserves, John Maynard Keynes argued, so a labor standard ought to measure the value of money in terms of its labor equivalent. However, he failed to account for the fact that, unlike a gold standard, a labor standard does not have any kind of surety that money will continue to match its value in paid work over time. Together, the contributors argue that full employment would provide this missing security and allow authorities to define the value equivalencies of money and labor, the way that money once represented its exact equivalent in gold. Front Matter....Pages i-xxi Goal-Oriented Taxation: A Brief Discussion of the Living-Space Tax....Pages 1-23 Public Policy for Working People....Pages 25-46 The Job Guarantee: A Superior Buffer Stock Option for Government Price Stabilisation....Pages 47-72 The Employer of Last Resort for a ‘Capital-Poor’ Economy....Pages 73-88 The Job Guarantee and Eurozone Stabilisation....Pages 89-115 How to Fight Unemployment with the Minsky Alternative in Italy and in the EU....Pages 117-148 Paltamo Full Employment Experiment in Finland: A Neo-chartalist Job Guarantee Pilot Program?....Pages 149-169 Financial Sovereignty and the Possibility of Full Employment in Saudi Arabia....Pages 171-205 Who Owns the Intellectual Fruits of Job Guarantee Labor?....Pages 207-223 Back Matter....Pages 225-228 1. Goal-oriented Taxation: A Brief Discussion Of The Living-space Tax -- 2. Public Policy For Working People -- 3. The Job Guarantee: A Superior Buffer Stock Option For Government Price Stabilization -- 4. The Employer Of Last Resort For A Capital-poor Economy -- 5. The Job Guarantee And Eurozone Stabilization -- 6. How To Fight Unemployment With The Minsky Alternative In Italy And In The Eu -- 7. Paltamo Full Employment Experiment In Finland: A Neo-chartalist Job Guarantee Pilot Program? -- 8. Financial Sovereignty And The Possibility Of Full Employment In Saudi Arabia -- 9. Who Owns The Intellectual Fruits Of Job Guarantee Labor?; Rohan Grey. Michael J. Murray, Mathew Forstater, Editors.