The book. The pandemic has revealed the ridiculousness of a lot of the debates we had yesterday. Raising the minimum wage to 15 dollars (12.35 euros) an hour in the United States, it was said, risked costing millions of jobs. Today, it is obvious that the workers we have a vital need are also those for whom we cannot guarantee a decent salary: the staff of shops and warehouses, those responsible for shipping parcels and deliveries, the staff ensuring garbage collection and cleaning …
Yesterday, most of the US presidential candidates rejected the idea that it is up to the state to provide universal health care. Today, we see that the state is not only capable of it, but that it has a duty to do so.
Yesterday, economists grudgingly admitted that despite historically low unemployment, the US economy was by no means close to full employment and that millions of people were still seeking employment. ‘a good job.
Now that unemployment is reaching double-digit rates, we are faced with the immense task of returning to low unemployment.
The advantages of the employment guarantee
Why not design a system that would guarantee employment opportunities to anyone wishing to work, whatever their experience, training, or personal situation? What could such an economy look like? asks Pavlina Tcherneva in her essay Job Guarantee (Discovery).
From its mode of propagation to its virulence, including the enormous social cost it imposes on individuals, the community and the economy, “Unemployment acts, in many ways, like a silent epidemic”, underlines the economist, member of the Levy Institute. As William Vickrey, a former Nobel laureate in economics, said, unemployment is “At best the equivalent of vandalism” and causes unimaginable misery and misery to befall families and the whole social fabric.
Yet the idea that involuntary unemployment is an unfortunate but inevitable event, and that a certain level of unemployment is necessary for the economy to function properly, remains one of the great myths of our time. The book deconstructs this myth, and defends the cause of the job guarantee: to provide all citizens who want it with paid work allowing a decent living.
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