Federal Jobs Guarantee

[Making Chimichangas]

8 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

I agree wt what you said.  No issues.  Rising tide lifts all boats is also used when speaking of globalization. It has lifted millions overseas out of poverty but as you note wages became stagnant here.   We (American leaders) thought the high tech, brainy jobs would remain here and that re-education would train workers displaced by jobs going else where and we'd all be computer programmers or something. However that hasn't happened as forecast-ed. There just happens to be very smart people around the world who can do those brainy jobs just as well as us in the USA - at cheaper rates.  So globalization has worked for some but not for all. 

 

Like I said, I would love to see something like what Bernie is proposing happen.  But it won't.  And not only for the reasons I mentioned above.  There's also one I didn't mention: robots and automation.  

 

Robots Taking Jobs

 

So why should, from purely a business owners point of view, they hire and pay someone 7, 9, or more dollars an hour when they can buy a robot that'll do the same job, doesn't need health insurance, and never gets sick?  But the scary thing is, robots will probably end up taking away most jobs--not just the lowest level ones.

 

What happens to Bernie's program then?  Basically I agree with you that'll never happen.

 

Side Note: Sorry if I'm all over the place.  I post almost exclusively from my phone because the hard drive crashed on my laptop and I don't have the money to buy a new laptop.  So it makes following these threads with long posts pretty difficult to follow.  

[RedDenver]

4 hours ago, knapplc said:

I'm skeptical of this idea in the same way I'm skeptical of Guaranteed Basic Income. If it's a modern version of the New Deal, I'll listen to more before passing judgment.

I think that's the prudent view given that we haven't even seen a draft proposal yet.

 

3 hours ago, Making Chimichangas said:

 

Like I said, I would love to see something like what Bernie is proposing happen.  But it won't.  And not only for the reasons I mentioned above.  There's also one I didn't mention: robots and automation.  

 

Robots Taking Jobs

 

So why should, from purely a business owners point of view, they hire and pay someone 7, 9, or more dollars an hour when they can buy a robot that'll do the same job, doesn't need health insurance, and never gets sick?  But the scary thing is, robots will probably end up taking away most jobs--not just the lowest level ones.

 

What happens to Bernie's program then?  Basically I agree with you that'll never happen.

 

Side Note: Sorry if I'm all over the place.  I post almost exclusively from my phone because the hard drive crashed on my laptop and I don't have the money to buy a new laptop.  So it makes following these threads with long posts pretty difficult to follow.  

Guaranteed jobs is one of the ways to address automation, so I think you're making the opposite argument. The idea is that the government creates jobs for people and then gets the funding for those jobs from taxes, which would come increasingly from those that own the robots and are making the money.

[Making Chimichangas]

1 hour ago, RedDenver said:

I think that's the prudent view given that we haven't even seen a draft proposal yet.

 

Guaranteed jobs is one of the ways to address automation, so I think you're making the opposite argument. The idea is that the government creates jobs for people and then gets the funding for those jobs from taxes, which would come increasingly from those that own the robots and are making the money.

 

Yeah that's why I said sorry if I was all over the place.  I guess the net result is "free money", whether it is called basic income, or Bernie's Federal Jobs Program, or Living Wage...whatever it is called...the wealthy, the elite will make sure they give enough bribes, sorry...campaign contributions, to Republicans to make sure nothing like that ever passes here in America.  Only the rich, through corporate welfare, are entitled to free money and handouts.  But I'm not angry or bitter about it.

 

     

[Landlord]

8 hours ago, Making Chimichangas said:

You're the one not living in reality.  Could we please dispense with the ludicrous notion that anyone goes to or patronizes small businesses anymore for most of their monthly spending?

 

 

No, sorry, I don't think we can.

 

https://www.score.org/blog/how-many-americans-shop-small-businesses

 

An amazing 90 percent of Americans shop at a small business —a company with fewer than 500 employees — at least once each week. More than 40 percent of those shoppers visit small businesses at least three times per week!

 

https://smallbiztrends.com/2014/05/ups-survey-buying-from-small-businesses-important.html

 

An annual survey conducted by The UPS Store found that 94 percent of Americans believe shopping at small businesses is important. And 90 percent of the people responding to The UPS Store survey believe that small businesses are important to the economy.

 

...

 

The survey found that the number of people who paid more in order to support a small business increased by 41 percent between 2013 and 2014. The survey also found that the number of respondents who said they traveled out of their way to support a small business increased by 36 percent over the same period.

 

https://fitsmallbusiness.com/small-business-saturday-trends/

 

 

https://digital.com/blog/small-business-statistics/

 

According to the US Small Business Administration, there are nearly 30 million small businesses in the United States employing 47.8 percent of US workers. All of these small businesses have a big impact on the US economy through job creation, innovation, and economic impact.

 

GENERAL SMALL BUSINESS STATISTICS

 

• Recently, small businesses have added more new jobs than large businesses (500+ employees). Firms with 1-49 employees have contributed most to this growth.

 

• Microbusinesses (those that employ fewer than ten employees), despite declining in overall number since the 1970s, still make up 75.3% of private-sector employers. These companies employ 10.5% of all employees in the private sector.

 

• In 2015, businesses with less than $5 million in annual revenue experienced an average growth of 7.8% in sales. Past performance does not imply guaranteed future returns, but there is certainly a market for the offerings of small businesses. Indeed, many owners are optimistic about their businesses’ futures.

[Danny Bateman]

Here is a take on this type of program from the Intercept.

 

Interestingly, they noted a study that found while a guaranteed jobs program would increase the federal deficit (duh), it would actually lead to surpluses at the state and local level, due to the increased spending and tax revenue.

 

The polling on this is generally popular. Here's what I don't get. How is this type of program all that different from any other type of market force? If the government came in and provided a job with a good wage to someone who otherwise couldn't get one, isn't that a good thing? Would that put upward pressure on employers to provide lower compensated workers better wages and decent benefits to compete? It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to drive employers who can't afford to out of business, just that those folks would work in the public sector. This is one of the most direct ways of lowering unemployment and dealing with stagnant wages rather than looking to trim government spending and bowing at the alter of the holy free market.

 

If Republicans are going to write a $1.5T giveaway that hugely embiggens the deficit, Dems should feel comfortable with deficit spending when are next in power. And they should go ahead and just completely ignore all the Republicans that turn on a dime and suddenly care so much about deficit spending when they do so. Clearly not that many people cared about increasing the tax bill increasing the deficit itself; the unpopularity of the bill stems from who the benefits are going to (and not going to).

 

Lastly, if it turns out like the New Deal, great. That jobs program was hugely popular. People got paid to build bridges, work in national parks & perform theater or music. Clearly the private sector can't meet demand for things like new infrastructure because so much of it just dilapidates without repair. Why shouldn't the government fill that need?

[BigRedBuster]

7 hours ago, Clifford Franklin said:

If the government came in and provided a job with a good wage to someone who otherwise couldn't get one, isn't that a good thing?

What are these people going to do?

 

if someone doesn’t want a job and they are able to work, do they stop getting government benefits?

[knapplc]

I don't see the need for this program, at least not at this time.  Unemployment is really low, so it's not like we have a massive pool of laborers looking for unavailable work. If people want to work, there's work.

 

[RedDenver]

24 minutes ago, knapplc said:

I don't see the need for this program, at least not at this time.  Unemployment is really low, so it's not like we have a massive pool of laborers looking for unavailable work. If people want to work, there's work.

 

Those numbers reflect one way of counting unemployment, but it doesn't tell the whole story. From the intro of the study I previously linked (emphasis mine):

Quote

 

Today, economists and policymakers, including the governors of the Federal Reserve System, tend to associate “full employment” with a four-to-six percent unemployment rate, using the standard measure of unemployment.[4] This measure of unemployment counts workers who do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the previous four weeks, and are currently available for work; it does not count the millions who have stopped actively seeking employment, or those inadequately employed in temporary, seasonal, or other precarious employment situations. The four-to-six percent unemployment rate referred to above is based on a conception defined by economists as the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU).  It is noteworthy that this “target” has changed throughout time. Moreover, an economy with these unemployment rates needlessly condemns millions of U.S. workers to unemployment and underemployment, often resulting in severe economic hardship for those left behind by decisionmakers’ policy choices.

 

At today’s relatively low unemployment rate of 4.1 percent (January, 2018), 6.7 million workers remain unemployed, an additional 5 million are working part-time though they would prefer full-time work, and job seekers still substantially outnumber job openings.[5] 

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

25 minutes ago, knapplc said:

I don't see the need for this program, at least not at this time.  Unemployment is really low, so it's not like we have a massive pool of laborers looking for unavailable work. If people want to work, there's work.

 

 

You are absolutely correct.  Want to know an area of HUGE need right now?  Truckers.  There currently is a huge shortage of truck drivers.  This was caused by several things.  The average age of truckers was very high.  So, we already had a number of truckers that were close to retiring.  Then, the E-Log laws went into affect (one of the dumbest regulations of the Obama era). This caused a lot of those close to retirement, to just go ahead an retire.  THEN...because of E-Log, truckers can't drive as many miles per day as they used to be able to.

 

So, you have a perfect storm of a big problem.  This easily is the biggest stress for our company right now.  We have the orders.  We have the customers wanting the product...but no truck to haul it.

 

Here's a couple articles on it.

 

Now, if someone wants a job...here's a job.  

 

LINK

 

LINK

[Danny Bateman]

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

What are these people going to do?

 

if someone doesn’t want a job and they are able to work, do they stop getting government benefits?

 

It's a job guarantee. It's not necessarily linked to receiving government benefits. Making sure people work to receive their benefits is more of a conservative endeavor. But if they wanted to get on board with this and use it as a way to streamline government assistance for the able-bodied but unemployed/underemployed American, all the better. But the broad outline of this type of program is fairly simple: If you work, you get a wage. If not, you don't... through this program.

 

I listed examples of the types of work they could do. The New Deal put people to work in a number of areas. The chief area that comes to mind is infrastructure, right now. So many roads need repaired. Think of all the things we could repair and rebuild if we put millions of people to work on it instead of watching the work go undone.

 

Man, how times have changed. Conservatives touting unemployment rates and leftists quoting U6 unemployment. Wild stuff.

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

12 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

This measure of unemployment counts workers who do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the previous four weeks, and are currently available for work; it does not count the millions who have stopped actively seeking employment, or those inadequately employed in temporary, seasonal, or other precarious employment situations.

 

Isn't it amazing how when Obama was President, Obama talked about the dropping unemployment rate.....Trump ranted on and on about the fake unemployment rate.  NOW....Trump brags about how great the unemployment rate is and Democrats talk about how fake the stat is.

[RedDenver]

1 minute ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

Isn't it amazing how when Obama was President, Obama talked about the dropping unemployment rate.....Trump ranted on and on about the fake unemployment rate.  NOW....Trump brags about how great the unemployment rate is and Democrats talk about how fake the stat is.

Well, I'm not a Democrat, and I thought the stat was misleading back when W was president. I would have thought it was misleading before that, but that's the first time I found out how unemployment is calculated.

[BigRedBuster]

1 minute ago, RedDenver said:

Well, I'm not a Democrat, and I thought the stat was misleading back when W was president. I would have thought it was misleading before that, but that's the first time I found out how unemployment is calculated.

 

I didn't mean to imply you.  I was speaking about the broader political debate around the country.  I have seen some national Democrats starting to make that argument.

[knapplc]

5 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Then, the E-Log laws went into affect (one of the dumbest regulations of the Obama era).

 

It's a smart rule. The dumb thing is that truckers get paid by the mile, not by the hour, so they fudge their log books if there's a delay (like an accident slowing traffic or a mechanical breakdown) even though they're on the clock.  This leads to driver fatigue, which leads to accidents.  If employers paid truckers by the hour, they would be less inclined to lie on their log books, and we'd have safer roads. 

 

Source 1

 

Source 2

 

Of course, truckers are among the first jobs that will be replaced by automation when driverless rigs become safe enough to hit the highways, so this shortage will only last as long as that takes to implement.

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

3 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

It's a smart rule. The dumb thing is that truckers get paid by the mile, not by the hour, so they fudge their log books if there's a delay (like an accident slowing traffic or a mechanical breakdown) even though they're on the clock.  This leads to driver fatigue, which leads to accidents.  If employers paid truckers by the hour, they would be less inclined to lie on their log books, and we'd have safer roads. 

 

Source 1

 

Source 2

 

Of course, truckers are among the first jobs that will be replaced by automation when driverless rigs become safe enough to hit the highways, so this shortage will only last as long as that takes to implement.

 

 

 

This is an argument for another thread.  I'm not going to derail this one.  

 

The fact is, there is a mass shortage of drivers right now.  If people want jobs, the jobs are there.  This i just one example.