Guaranteed Public Service Employment
Essays
Guaranteed Public Service Employment
By Wade Lee Hudson
Growing interest in a federally funded public-service job guarantee — as reflected in the Job Guarantee Manifesto — challenges the assumption that avoiding poverty is primarily an individual responsibility. In fact, a personal deficiency is not the main reason workers can’t find a living-wage job.
According to conventional wisdom, the cause for poverty is lack of skill, lack of discipline, or emotional instability. The solution therefore is assumed to be more education and training, better habits, or mental health treatment — so poor people can get a job, gain experience, and find jobs that pay a non-poverty wage.
Based on these assumptions, society only provides minor, stigmatizing relief, claims its apparent lack of compassion is justifiable tough love, and denies any responsibility to prevent poverty. People say to the poor, Get your act together. Climb the ladder.
If you focus only on the individual, there can be some logic to this argument. Any one individual may be able to do more to improve their situation. But if you look at society as a whole, the flaw in the argument is clear. There aren’t enough living-wage jobs for everyone. If one individual finds a living-wage job, countless others can’t get that job. It’s a game of musical chairs.
The best case scenario accepts that millions will always be poor at any one time, struggling to get lucky or skillful enough to rise out of poverty. Most poor people will suffer poverty for many years — if not for a lifetime. That suffering is assumed to be the price we must pay for a productive economy. But this argument is a rationalization. Poverty and the threat of poverty make it easier to exploit workers, but they aren’t essential for a healthy economy.
This tough love is not love. Society could, one way or the other, guarantee living-wage job opportunities. This country has more than enough money to pay people to do important public-service work that needs to be done.
Many social and environmental needs are being neglected. We need more nursing home staff, child care workers, substance abuse counselors, teacher’s aides, park and recreation staff, infrastructure repair workers, environmental cleanup, tree planters, family farm workers, and many other public-service workers. A public-service employment program could match workers’ interests and skills with job openings. These jobs often don’t require extensive training beforehand; when needed, on-the-job training is sufficient. They could often involve serving as assistants to permanent positions — positions that would not be devastated if the assistant found a higher-paying job.
Potential income sources include financial transaction taxes, higher corporate taxes, a wealth tax, transferring wasteful spending from the military budget, and higher income taxes on the super-rich. For example, if the top 1%, whose incomes are more than $500,000 per year, paid 35% of their income in federal taxes rather than 27% (their 2014 rate), the increased revenue would be more than $160 billion per year — enough to pay five million full-time workers $15/hour.
Guaranteeing everyone a living-wage job opportunity is a moral imperative. Democracy affirms everyone’s essential equality. “All men are created equal.” Everyone is endowed with “the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” As Elizabeth Anderson expressed it:
Egalitarian principles must identify certain goods to which all citizens must have effective access over the course of their whole lives…. Democratic equality entitles all citizens to the goods they need to function as free and equal citizens, and to avoid oppression by others…. Goods [should] be distributed....so (people) can enjoy freedom as equals…. [Liberty requires] having the means to do what one wants.
Providing “equal opportunity” (or a “fair, equal start” as Cory Booker and Ezra Klein affirmed on Klein’s recent podcast) is a common anti-poverty strategy. But it’s not adequate. Anderson argues:
Recent egalitarian writing has come to be dominated by the view that the fundamental aim of equality is to compensate people for undeserved bad luck,... [which is] essentially a "starting-gate theory." ...According to this concept, what really matters is that people enjoy fair shares at the start of life.... The starting-gate theory guarantees a minimally decent life only before one has made any adult choices....
Moreover, the starting-gate theory offers aid that is deeply disrespectful of those to whom the aid is directed. [It provides aid to the needy] only at the cost of paternalism [which] makes the basis for citizens' claims on one another the fact that some are inferior to others in the worth of their lives, talents, and personal qualities.
Egalitarian political movements, on the other hand, affirm everyone’s equal moral worth....
*****
In an email, Philip Harvey, a Rutgers law professor who’s worked on the issue for decades, reports that three major proposals are being forwarded. He says the authors “are in substantial agreement with one another and are jointly promoting the Job Guarantee Manifesto.” This manifesto, which has been endorsed by more than 85 organizations and many individuals, reads:
Jobs for All: A Manifesto
Imagine a world:
Where everyone who wants to work has a living-wage job.
Where no one needs to cobble together multiple jobs to make ends meet.
Where joblessness and its consequences no longer exist.
Where millions are working in concert to heal our environment, rebuild our physical and care infrastructure, and renew our public art.
Where the basic right to a job is guaranteed.
We face a crisis of economic insecurity. At this moment of economic and ecological upheaval, when pervasive economic insecurity and racial exclusion exist alongside concentrated wealth and a sweltering planet, we need a strategy to build an economy that produces economic security and dignity for all.
A Federal Job Guarantee is our way forward. By ensuring every person who wants to work can find a good job meeting vital community needs, a Federal Job Guarantee can be the cornerstone of an inclusive, thriving, and sustainable 21st century economy
Add your voice. Join us in calling for a Federal Job Guarantee - our path to an economy centered around human value. Show your commitment by signing the manifesto.
This campaign is led by Policylink, National Jobs for All Network, and Modern Money Network. For more information, see their Background Statement and Guiding Principles for Designing a Job Guarantee. For any questions, email sarah@policylink.org.
Attention to this issue has been boosted by advocates for the Green New Deal, a Congressional resolution that addresses climate change and economic inequality, and affirms the intent “to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States.” This proposal is rooted in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was a set of social and economic reforms and public works projects. The Green New Deal combines Roosevelt’s approach with proposals to advance renewable energy and resource efficiency.
The youth-led Sunrise Movement is a prominent supporter of the Green New Deal. According to The New Yorker, Sunrise was founded in 2017 by “a dozen or so twentysomethings” and has “established itself as the dominant influence on the environmental policy of the Democrat’s young, progressive wing.” The Sunrise website describes the Green New Deal as “a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society to 100% clean and renewable energy by 2030, a guaranteed living-wage job for anyone who needs one, and a just transition for both workers and frontline communities.” (emphasis added)
*****
The three full proposals referred to by Harvey are:
H.R.1000 - Jobs for All Act. This bill directs the Department of Labor to establish a Full Employment National Trust Fund with two separate accounts for: (1) Employment Opportunity Grants to states, Indian tribes, local governments, publicly-funded elementary and secondary educational institutions, educational institutions in the Federal Work-Study Program, and tax-exempt non-profit organizations for job-creating activities in communities whose economy is not at a level of full employment; and (2) Workforce Investment programs.
The Federal Job Guarantee—A Policy to Achieve Permanent Full Employment, by Mark Paul, William Darity, Jr., and Darrick Hamilton, proposes:
The permanent establishment of a National Investment Employment Corps (NIEC). The NIEC will provide universal job coverage for all adult Americans. The permanent establishment of the NIEC would eliminate involuntary unemployment.
The elimination of poverty wages through the pay structure of the NIEC. The federal job guarantee would provide a job at a minimum annual wage of $24,600 for full-time workers (poverty line for a family of four) and a minimum hourly wage of $11.83….
The inclusion of fringe benefits.
Guaranteed Jobs through a Public Service Employment Program, by Randall Wray, Stephanie A. Kelton, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Scott Fullwiler, and Flavia Dantas, outlines a new proposal for a federally funded program with decentralized administration. Their Public Service Employment program would offer a job — paying a uniform living wage with a basic benefits package — to all who are ready and willing to work.
Harvey, a principal consultant in the drafting of H.R. 1000, reports that the three proposals differ on these points:
Wages:
Wray proposes that the job creation program pay all participants the same wage — which would be phased in over several years to reach $15 an hour and would be subject to periodic adjustments after that (plus a package of benefits).
Paul proposes that the program pay a minimum wage equal to the hourly wage required for a full-time employee to earn twice the official poverty threshold for a family of four and that wage rates for different skill levels be scaled (plus a package of benefits).
H.R. 1000 would pay the same wages and benefits that public sector employees receive for doing the same work or work of comparable worth in the community where the job creation project operates — with a variety of measures to ensure that every program participant would receive an income capable of supporting a decent standard of living taking the local cost of living and a worker’s family responsibilities and special needs into consideration.
Entities Eligible to Receive Program Funding to Establish and Administer Job Creation Projects:
Wray and H.R. 1000 would include not-for-profit organizations among the eligible entities. Paul would restrict recipients of grants to government agencies.
Funding:
Consistent with modern money theory, Wray would fund the program with newly created money.
Paul is not clear, but in private conversations, they seem content to accept the modern money mechanism proposed by Wray.
H.R. 1000 would fund the program with a dedicated Financial Transactions Tax, revenue from revenue-generating job creation projects, tax receipts from income and payroll taxes levied against program wages, savings generated by the job-creation program in other parts of the federal budget, and (if ever needed) cancellable loans from the Federal Reserve.
Eligibility Requirements:
Wray would guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one. They’re unclear how jobs of different types, all paying the same wage, would be allocated.
Paul would similarly guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one, and they argue privately that the program should be administered so that anyone who walks into a program office seeking work could walk out with a job. They, too, are unclear how jobs would be allocated and qualifications checked, but in private discussions they seem to suggest that hirings would be provisional based on a verification of qualifications.
H.R. 1000 would guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one but would require most applicants to first complete a 30-day evaluation of their interests and qualifications, and an assisted job search for employment that matched their interests and qualifications outside the program. The program would also impose a weakly enforced obligation on program employees to remain available for non-program jobs as they became available due to the economy’s recovery from a recession or local economic growth.
*****
These differences aren’t fundamental. Given the political will, they can be resolved. What’s required is a rejection of the tough-love assumptions that poor people are to blame for poverty and the solution to poverty is more education and training or more personal discipline.
Guaranteeing public-service job opportunities need not involve a new, enormous federal bureaucracy. We don’t need millions more federal employees. But only the federal government can raise the necessary funds and distribute them to state and local governments. Philanthropists as well could contribute to a federal trust fund dedicated to this purpose, or they could donate to private charities that hire public-service workers. And governments can do more to support the creation of private-sector jobs.
But one way or the other, if we are to be a compassionate society, we must assure that everyone who is able and willing to work can find a living-wage job.