Tag: employment

Women’s Work in South Asia: trends and challenges

Although gender equality in employment is among the Sustainable Development Goals for South Asia, progress is hard to observe. Determined to explore why female employment levels remain low and stagnant, Varsha Gupta and Arun Balachandran of YSI’s South Asia Working Group organized a webinar series. Featuring eminent speakers such as Prof. Jayati Ghosh, Prof. Sonalde Desai, Prof. Jeemol Unni, Prof. Ashwini Deshpande, Dr. Dipa Sinha and Dr. Ramani Gunatilaka, the resulting conversations shed much-needed light on the topic.

Illustration by Aneesha Chitgupi, Coordinator of the South Asia Working Group

Employment is a subset of work

The series began on May Day, with an inaugural session by Professor Jayati Ghosh. Highlighting the low female employment figures in India, she explained the difference between employment and work, the former being a subset of the latter. A major proportion of women are involved in work, though it is not paid and hence does not get counted as employment. The 2019 Time Use Survey in India reaffirms that women in India spend 2.5 times more time than men in unpaid activities. The gender wage gap exists and is high in private casual work. The Covid-19 pandemic has made things worse, furthering the case for gender-sensitive economic policies. View here

The impact of COVID-19

The second talk by Prof. Sonalde Desai focussed on employment trends during the Covid-19 pandemic. She presented the latest research with the use of Delhi Metropolitan Area survey (March 2019-20). The decline in employment occurred majorly in wage employment. With the use of econometric techniques, the research finds that in absolute terms, job loss for men was severe in the first wave of Covid-19, while the second surge hit women harder in the Delhi NCR region, India. The closure of schools and the consequent child rearing duties was one of the reasons that women’s wage work fell. Highly educated women were more affected than men. Rural areas absorbed the impact of the pandemic better than urban areas. The gender difference in impact was found to be highly dependent on the sector of employment and region. View here.

Informal workers bear the brunt

Jeemol Unni’s session concentrated on the impact of the Covid crisis on women and domestic violence among members of the informal workforce. Globally, pandemics harshly affect women more, due to the sectors and the kind of work women are involved in. The majority of the women form the bottom of the labor hierarchy. With the use of CMIE and NSS data, it is seen that the second wave of Covid-19 and lockdown affected women’s employment more vis-à-vis men. Discouraged worker effect is also visible among women.  View here.

Prof. Ashwini Deshpande’s talk focussed on the gendered patterns in employment in India during first wave of the pandemic. The world over, the subsequent economic recession led to more unemployment among women than men, a pattern different from previous recessions. This is visible in India as well, in the 2020 CMIE data. The already gendered labor market in India, with fewer women employed, worsened further for females. Though the absolute figures for job loss are higher for men, the impact has been higher on women due to the pre-existing gaps. There has been exacerbating of women’s position in the domestic division of labor during August-December 2020. View here.

The potential of public employment

The penultimate session was featured Dr. Dipa Sinha highlighting the relevance of public employment in generating opportunities for female labor force in India. Nations with higher female LFPR are the ones which also have higher proportion of women in the public sector. In India, the NSS data shows that government is a significant employer for women. There is also sectoral concentration of women in health and education, where they are engaged as contractual or honorary workers (ASHA’s, Anganwadi Workers). Creating regular permanent positions in these sectors could encourage female employment. View here.

Education is not enough

Various facets of female employment in Sri Lanka were brought in by Dr. Ramani Gunatilaka from International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo. While Srilankan women are better educated than their counterparts in other South Asian countries, they still remain disadvantaged in the labour market. As seen from a study led by Dr. Ramani on women’s activity preferences and time use, unpaid care and household work in Srilanka are mediated by social norms, and unequal division of unpaid work makes it difficult for women to take up paid work. View here.

Altogether, the webinars now form a virtual knowledge base on YSI’s YouTube Channel, making the insights available to young scholars all over the world.

About the organizers:

Arun Balachandran has a PhD in Economics from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, in collaboration with the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru. He is currently a Post-doctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, and serves as Coordinator of the YSI South Asia Working Group.

Varsha Gupta is a PhD student in Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She using NSS data to assess issues of labor and gender, and serves as organizer for the YSI South Asia Working Group.

The YSI South Asia Working Group provides a platform for young scholars from South Asia -or those interested in the region- to select an issue they wish to work on, collaborate and discuss for better conceptualization of the problem and, debate, critique and improve upon solutions. We also invite scholars to suggest the most pressing problems and challenges to better guide the path for this working group. Join us!

‘In Praise of Idleness’: the shorter working week is so much more than just a business fix

The January blues are a harsh reminder of the value of doing nothing. Bertrand Russell’s wistful paean to the redundancy of work shows that while this radical thinking is not new, it carries fresh challenges for today’s proponents a shorter working week.

By Robert Magowan

A four day week is back on the political menu. It’s about time. Despite global advances in technology and productivity, most countries have seen the overall number of hours worked go up, not down. It’s been over sixty years since most countries introduced a full weekend and we ‘gained a day’.

Among this current renewed chatter, one thinker above all tends to receive the deferent nod to history. John Maynard Keynes predicted in his 1932 Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren that the march of technology would reduce the necessary working week to just 15 hours – and even that would only be to “satisfy the old Adam in most of us”.

It is worth remembering though, that Keynes was far from alone. Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness from two years earlier mounts in a few short pages a resolute defence of idleness and an ambitious course for progress: “I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different to what has always been preached.”

Our attachment to work, Russell argues, stems originally and naturally from the necessity for sustenance that pre-industrial society entailed. Modern technology has severed the need for such an attachment, yet it sustains itself in a sense of morality – “the morality of slaves”. “The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own”.

Thus Russell fumes at the reverence of labour, or as he calls it, “moving matter about” (hardly a conception that needs much revision in the service economy of cursor and email). For him, the work ethic is an instrument of the aristocratic class to help maintain their own avoidance of work. Like Keynes’ Economic Possibilities, which lamented the “growing-pains of over-rapid changes” of the time, the piece is in many ways embarrassingly relevant today. The line, “that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich”, for example, rings too true in a political environment almost totally eclipsed by the ‘strivers’ vs ‘skivers’ debate just a few years ago. Modern methods of production should be sufficient to provide the “necessities and elementary comforts of life”, argues Russell, and the rest of our time to do with as we see fit.

To recall these utopian predictions is to recall just how far we have failed to realise what was once a central element of progress, indeed, how we fail now to even recognise it as such. Even major policy advances in the area, such as the EU’s Working Time Directive (with its focus on safety and productivity), have neglected any radical element of change. Idleness remains a vice, feared not just economically in terms of lost productive potential but even on the political left as a “lonely and unfulfilling vision”.

In this context, radical proposals for a four day week risk being reduced to little more than a business fix. Can employee motivation and concentration be improved sufficiently to increase marginal output? The boss of one of the most publicised recent trials, at an insurance firm in New Zealand, articulated this approach neatly in laying out his focus: “it’s productivity, productivity, productivity!”. Whilst this thinking may be helpful in establishing a sense of existing economic viability for the policy, it excludes its most crucial aspect – what we gain in our newfound free time.

Because of course, at this time of year more than ever, we know that doing nothing never means doing nothing. To recognise the true value of leisure and idleness means subverting material ideas about what it means to be productive. Most of us will have just returned from a Christmas break where jokes were made, opinions discussed, housework shared, books read, games invented, ideas pondered, friendships rejuvenated, attachments forged. No doubt for a brave few muscles were exercised and sports contested. This output isn’t the product of the invisible hand. This is the natural fruit of a shared indulgence in idleness safe in the knowledge that one’s security is guaranteed and one’s basic needs are met. As Bobby Kennedy argued in his critique of GDP as a measure of progress, it is this mass of economically ignored value that makes life worthwhile.

The modern economic challenges of working less

In Praise of Idleness also points to two major societal changes which make the task of delivering a shorter working week, if it is to be accepted, all the more challenging. Firstly, the remnants of a leisure class have largely disappeared. It is no longer just America whose “men work long hours even when they are well off” as Russell writes. Britain’s highest earners today work very long hours. Secondly, in Russell’s 1930s Britain, while earning is morally laudable, spending is deemed “frivolous”. Today, on the other hand, consumption – when based on ‘earned’ income – is not only culturally acceptable, but economically virtuous. Indeed the potential for material consumption to increase under a four day week is a convincing argument for it for some. Henry Ford, of course, was an early pioneer of this mantra, unilaterally granting workers a five day week in 1914 in the knowledge it would allow more time for weekend ‘leisure driving’.

The combined lesson of these two crucial differences is that long working hours are today more than just a moral kink underpinned by historical power. They have been fundamentally subsumed into our economic system.

Sixty years before Keynes and Russell, economist William Stanley Jevons discovered that the Watt steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of coal use, had actually increased overall coal consumption, as a result of heightened demand. The widespread tendency of the efficiency gains of technological progress to increase resource use rather than reduce it became known as the Jevons Paradox – and to this day it refuses to go away. The same has occurred with work. The slickest offices have delivered not shorter weeks but both higher output and bored staff. And perhaps worst of all, we are all in on the act. No longer can we simply decide to wrench the moral lauding of work from Russell’s leisure class who sustained it for their own benefit. As Aeron Davis has written, today’s elites are increasingly mere reckless opportunists, lacking the coherence and control to operate this system for theirs or anyone else’s benefit. Russell’s “morality of slaves” is preserved not in service to a dominant people but to the sovereign blob that is ‘the economy’. Hegemony – cultural and economic – is what now sustains the work ethic. This is why it is so hard to imagine a world with less of it.

In Praise of Idleness is, therefore, a timely reminder that a shorter working week is a much more fundamental challenge than simply delivering the same for less – just another efficiency gain, another productivity drive. It is part of a wider reckoning, a revaluation of the purpose of work and progress – the makings of an ideological basis for a post-capitalist economy.

At this time of year In Praise of Idleness is also a reminder of something more obvious. Leisure – “its ease and security”, and the indulgence in learning, good nature and “active energies” that it allows for – was once among the ultimate goals of civilisation. Reading Russell, it seems only right it should return.

About the author
Robert Magowan is an MSc Economics and Governance student at Leiden University in The Netherlands. He is active in the Green Party of England and Wales and is currently researching the socioeconomic implications of a shorter working week.

For Bold Solutions We Ought To Include MMT in Economic Discourse

By Justin R. Harbour, ALM

In a recent Financial Times article, Martin Sandbu identifies three major economic failures of competitive capitalism in the West: growing inequality; the disproportionate effects of The Great Recession on young people; and the threat of displacement in labor markets brought by improving technology and the presumed ubiquity of artificial intelligence. Sandbu connects these failures to recent victories of populist “extremist” parties in the EU, UK, and US, and asserts that if liberalism and competitive capitalism are to remain a viable and persuasive platform for the next generations a bolder thinking from the Western political economy is now more necessary than ever.

This need to revamp Western capitalism has brought renewed attention to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a school of thought that offers an important and bold perspective on economics and policy solutions. A universal basic income (UBI), universal basic services (UBS), and a job guarantee by the State are most commonly cited as a bold fix to current problems. So, it is worth asking, what are the merits of these aforementioned proposals, through the lens of MMT?

The Failures of Competitive Capitalism

To answer this question, we first look at the failures of the competitive capitalism. Growing inequality is nearly universal. According to the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD), the growth in inequality between the incomes of the top 10% of earners and the bottom 10% has not stopped since 1985: 

The Great Recession accelerated this trend and brought into stark relief the confounding need of the West to rescue and protect the Recession’s primary contributors (i.e., “too big to fail” banks). This approach made the resulting trends in unemployment all the harder to take, especially for the West’s younger workers. A 2012 report on the employment effects of The Great Recession by Stanford University found that those groups hit hardest were found those 25-54 years of age (i.e., the “prime working age” range, and hence a significant variable in overall economic growth). The report also found that minority groups found themselves bearing more of the burden than their racial-majority peers. A similar report from the Federal Reserve bank of St. Louis found that the recovery rates from unemployment after The Great Recession were lowest amongst younger prime-age workers and older workers. In Europe the young have fared even worse, according to a recent report from Eurostat:

The story for wealth creation and asset acquisition for younger citizens homeownership is similarly alarming. Since World War II, homeownership has been considered to be the financial outcome indicative of a successful economy due to its positive value as a long-term asset. The decline in home ownership thus includes a worrying picture, ceteris paribus. As shown in the graph below, declining home ownership in the United States accelerated during the Recession, and remains at a rate not experienced since the economic boom of the nineties:

Though homeownership is less likely to be understood as a sign of economic success and health in Europe, research suggests a similar trend in declining home ownership in the aftermath of the Great Recession was also seen in the EU.  Taken together, these trends make a generation’s economic skepticism of the ability of our current economy to deliver prosperity more of a logical first principle than not.

Three bold proposals to address this skepticism have become nearly commonplace in such reform-minded discourse: a UBI, a UBS, and a job guarantee. What does each propose, and which is best suited to address the issues identified above?

Three Bold Proposals

A UBI offers all citizens a basic level of income. UBI’s proponents commonly claim that this income is necessary for a variety of reasons. The fear of artificial intelligence taking over traditional labor tasks is commonly cited in defense of UBI. Some UBI proponents also argue that such an income would enhance human freedom by providing an option free from coercive and freedom-reducing labor arrangements. A UBI could also streamline social entitlement spending to be more efficient and less bureaucratic. A UBS does not offer income, but a variety of services deemed essential to maximize freedom and economic potential. Though the services offered differ between advocates, they often include improved and free public transportation, access to the internet, and job training, among others. A job guarantee is just as it sounds: anyone needing or wanting work but currently out of work would be offered a job by the local government to provide labor and/or services toward local projects that a community needs.

Each of these proposals includes explicit costs that must be heavily weighed. For example, the literal cost of providing a UBI substantial enough to achieve its purpose is very high. Some have suggested that its cost could range in the 30-40 trillion-dollar range in the United States. Cost-of-living variations also diminish the streamlining argument for a UBI since adjusting it for regional purchasing parity may make it even more complex bureaucratically than the current system. Explicit costs also represent an issue for UBS, though ostensibly less so than a UBI. Though the job guarantee does face some cost concerns, important work has recently demonstrated that the opportunity costs of such a program are well worth the explicit costs it may incur.

Though each proposal is bold in its promises and its trade-offs, the more important question here is which offers a better redress of the concerns raised by the Great Recession. It appears that the job guarantee is the better situated to address all those concerns on both explicit and implicit cost fronts. The job guarantee addresses the unemployment problem and wages problem directly. The job guarantee has the additional appeal of making it more likely that the newly employed will accumulate enough wealth to make home ownership an attractive option, and thus satisfy the third concern. Conversely, a UBI only deals with the wage issue directly and therefore the unemployment problem indirectly, while a UBS program does not address any of the problems directly. There are several other variables at play that strengthen the argument for job guarantee over the others. Most importantly, the job guarantee is the only one that signals the value of work – an implication necessary for future growth if an economy hopes to move beyond its current frontier. In doing so, it is more likely to find traction in our polarized political paradigm by avoiding the typical debates associated with strengthening social safety nets.

 

The Rise of Modern Monetary Theory

The economic school most strongly advocating for the affordability of a job guarantee program – Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) – has been experiencing a surge of public interest and acceptance as of late. This is not to say it is brand new or has not been trying to advocate for the policies its theory substantiates for a long time. But its appeal since the experience of the Great Recession is obvious once one digs into it. MMT is a theory of sovereign monetary policy that asserts that sovereign nations that issue debt in its own fiat currency cannot ever run out of money. Any restraint by a nation on their spending for any reason, including to stimulate demand or provide needed relief is, therefore, a purely political decision, and only restrained by the availability of real resources. MMT’s advocates thus model how under MMT’s reorientation of fiscal perspective, a nation’s fiscal and monetary policy options are much broader than under older and perhaps more dominant paradigms. The implication is that there are bolder and further reaching policy options always available to state to provide relief for distressed citizens during downturns if they can move beyond the unnecessary concerns for debt and deficits during such times.

The most notable of MMT’s more active contemporary economists include L. Randall Wray, Warren Mosler, and Stephanie Kelton. There are several websites dedicated to the defense of its theory by these authors and others: one by another of its theorists Bill Mitchell; and The Minskys, so named to honor one of the more prominent economists to set the foundations of MMT, Hyman Minsky. Of additional note would be Ms. Kelton’s work with the campaign of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and her recent inclusion into Bloomberg View’s stable of writers – an inclusion suggesting that MMT’s theories are gaining traction. There have also been recent news items such as a history of MMT in Vice News and a review of its contemporary appeal in The Nation. Finally, there has been the consistent work and advocacy of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. MMT, in other words, appears here to stay.

Important work has been produced recently by MMT economists as well. In the United States, the Levy Institute recently published a report on the macroeconomic effects of canceling all student debt. The report finds that effects of such a policy would have a greater economic stimulus on employment and GDP than its costs can reasonably argue against. So too did the Levy Institute publish a report on the feasibility of the guaranteed job program discussed above. The job guarantee has helpfully garnered bipartisan support from the political right, left, and center.

Though popular within certain corners of the public sphere and gaining traction, it is not without its legitimate faults and challenges. Nonetheless, an undergraduate or higher level secondary student is unlikely to be exposed to MMT during their introductory training. I am not here suggesting that the more traditional curriculum is not appropriate for introductory students, nor universally ambivalent about the inclusion of emerging theories. But I am saying that for some teachers and some curriculums, finding ways to include such exciting emerging work with profound implications on their economic thinking and potentially their communities are harder the more they are not engaged with by “mainstream” outlets. What’s more, some of the more ubiquitous and far-reaching introductory curriculums (Advanced Placement in America, for example, or the International Baccalaureate program) don’t consider it at all.

At a time when some are rightfully calling for economists to better communicate economic concepts, ignoring newer and bolder conceptions of economic pillars that have popular momentum and real-world applicability behind them – such as MMT – leaves a fruitful learning opportunity to advance economic thinking and communicating skills for the youngest of economists at the door. Mr. Sandbu is right; the experience of the Great Recession by Gen Xers, Millennials, and those closely on their heels demands bold reform to reanimate the economy’s perceived legitimacy. A generation of economists and their work will be informed by their experience with the Great Recession. Let us all hope that MMT and its similar promising competitors are taken as seriously as the older theories so that we can rethink and rebuild economics in a way that makes economic thinking and understanding economic theory a universal pillar to our civic discourse.

 

About the author

Justin Harbour is currently an Instructor for Advanced Placement Economics at La Salle College High School in Philadelphia, PA. Having studied history, government, and political economy at UMASS, Amherst and Harvard University, he has previously published book reviews on teaching and education for the Teacher’s College Record and essays in CLIO: Newsletter of Politics and History, The World History Bulletin, and Political Animal. Justin lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two children. Follow him on twitter @jrharbour1

It’s Time to Guarantee Jobs

The first half of the twentieth century was a challenging time for economics. The Great Depression wiped out incomes, investments, and most importantly, optimism. But when the traditional laissez-faire approach proved ineffective, the work of Keynes and FDR showed that there was another way. The New Deal employed American workers directly and restored confidence among business owners. Today, we could benefit from a similar program. It’s time for a new New Deal, or a Job Guarantee Program, that secures employment to all who are able and willing to work. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. By Johnny Fulfer.


What We Learned from the Great Depression

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the U.S. economy was in a recession just over 48 percent of the time between 1871 and 1900. But none were as bad as the crisis that followed The Great Crash of 1929.  Nevertheless, orthodox economic theorists urged policymakers to maintain the status quo and argued the economy would return to normal as long as it was left alone. This perspective was influential and often framed the ways in which political leaders such as Herbert Hoover understood the crisis. Hoover was not only politically committed to free-market ideas, he was psychologically invested in them, urging Americans to show thrift and self-reliance, practices which later resulted in more turmoil.

Elected president in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt did not have an all-embracing theory that would solve all America’s problems. Rather, he employed a wide range of policies, some of which failed, while others were successful in getting people to work. Perhaps the greatest impact Roosevelt’s New Deal had on American society was the change in perspective policymakers had toward government intervention. Earlier leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had had only moderate success producing government initiatives to restrain the predatory nature of American capitalism. But after the Great Depression, FDR helped policymakers and citizens markedly change their views in favor of government assistance, temporarily pushing the conservative opposition to the margins.

As such, FDR’s  New Deal momentarily ended the ‘rugged individualism’ of the Hoover era and demonstrated that free-market economics could not be relied upon in a time of crisis. When the economy falls into a slump, the government must be used as a source of relief.

This, too, is the argument that John Maynard Keynes makes in his influential 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Keynes challenged the neoclassical principle that the market naturally adjusts itself to full employment. Along with the two held theories of unemployment—voluntary and frictional—Keynes wrote, there is also the involuntary, which was the result of a shortfall in aggregate demand.

The volatility of investment, Keynes argued, is dependent on our expectations of the future. The only way entrepreneurs would invest is if they expect sufficient demand for goods and services. This was a problem during the Depression—spending money was scarce. When people are unemployed, or fearful of losing their jobs, they are likely to reduce spending. This creates a cycle of insufficient demand, bringing profit-expectations down. Increasing savings, Keynes showed, would only make things worse. A rise in savings would reduce spending, and thus bring down the total level of employment and income. Surplus inventories with nobody to buy commercial products would force firms to contract operations and lay off even more workers.

Therefore, Keynes concluded, there is no automatic recovery from depression; supply does not create its own demand. The only solution is for the government to heavily invest in public works, creating jobs and increasing demand to rebuild confidence in the business community.

Roosevelt’s New Deal did exactly this. It produced nearly 13 million jobs, over 60 percent of which came from the Works Progress Administration, an organization which hired a wide range of individuals, from artists and writers to laborers who constructed roads, bridges, and schools. An incredible number of public goods were provided through these programs, and money was placed in the hands of the workers, whose purchasing power gave business owners’ profit expectations the much needed boost.

 

Why We Need a new New Deal

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently published a report examining the current employment conditions in the United States. The unemployment rate stands at 4.1 percent, the BLS reports, which is roughly 6.6 million people in the labor force. While the unemployment rate is relatively low from a conventional perspective, Dantas and Wray argue that this does not consider the falling participation rate for prime-age workers and wide-spread income stagnation.

Moreover, we often gauge the economy based on the unemployment rate, although, this economic indicator does not consider the fact that 40.6 million Americans remain in poverty. A job paying the current federal minimum wage doesn’t mean a worker will make enough money to live without relying on various forms of welfare. In order to turn this around, we need a new New Deal.

While the New Deal of the 1930s was a centralized program, controlled by the federal government, Dantas and Wray propose that a “new New Deal” would be more efficient by creating a more decentralized workforce, hired by state and local governments to meet the needs of the local communities, with wages paid by the federal government. They propose a Job Guarantee program.

The idea behind this policy is that those who are involuntarily unemployed don’t have to be if the government supplied them with a job. Economist Carlos Maciel further argues that the Job Guarantee program would cost around 1 percent of the U.S. GDP, providing additional jobs through the multiplier effect. When the government invests $1, it multiplies through consumer spending, turning into $2 or $3 in the real economy. In his General Theory, Keynes estimated the multiplier to be somewhere between 2 ½ and 3.

Employment works in the same manner. If one new job is created from the initial government investment, the consumption created by the additional worker will produce more jobs in other industries, whose consumption will take the process further, until the multiplier is reached. Moreover, this program would redistribute money from current welfare programs toward the Job Guarantee program. Those who are currently under the poverty line will not need traditional welfare benefits if they have jobs that pay a living wage.

Perhaps the reason U.S. policymakers are hesitant towards a Job Guarantee program has less to do with economics, and more about an investment in the status quo, whether politically or psychologically. Many Americans are invested in the idea of ‘free markets’, whatever they envision that to be, pushing rational economic discourse and the notion of social justice to the margins, and elevating the politically constructed parallel between self-interest and the partial idea of the American Dream. We must move beyond the free-market ideology, which views everything as profit or loss, win or lose. Only time will tell how this polarized form of reasoning will impact the American people, especially the 40.6 million Americans that are currently below the poverty line, who stand to suffer the most.

About the Author: Johnny Fulfer received a B.S. in Economics and a B.S. in History from Eastern Oregon University. He is currently pursuing an M.A. in History at the University of South Florida and has an interest in political economy, the history of economic thought, intellectual and cultural history, and the history of the human sciences and their relation to the power in society. 

How Progressives Can Win Big: Casting out the Spirit of Defeatism, One Keystroke at a Time

By Steve Grumbine.

 

Progressives Trigger warning: Compassion required. When is the last time you heard Greens, Berniecrats or Indie voters not acknowledge the distinct and pressing need for election reform, campaign finance reform, voting reform? More to the point, when haven’t they mentioned unleashing 3rd parties from the fringe of irrelevancy and up onto the debate stage?

That is mostly what is talked about, simply because it is low hanging fruit.

It has long been known that our electoral system and methods of voting are corrupt, untrustworthy, and easily manipulated by less than savvy politicians, state actors, and hackers alike. The answers to many of these issues is the same answer that we would need to push for any progressive reforms to take place in America: namely, we need enlightened, fiery, peaceful, and committed activists to propel a movement and ensure that the people rise, face their oppressors, and unify to demand that their needs be met.

What is not as well-known, however, is how a movement, the government, and taxes work together to bring about massive changes in programs, new spending, and the always scary “National Debt” (should be “National Assets”, but I will speak to that later). In fact, this subject is so poorly understood by many well-meaning people on all sides of the aisle that these issues are the most important we face as a nation. Until we understand them and have the confidence and precision necessary to destroy the myths and legends we have substituted in the absence of truth and knowledge, it must remain front and center to the movement.

Progressives, like most Americans, are almost religiously attached to the terms “the taxpayer dollar,” and the idea that their “hard earned tax dollars” are being misappropriated. Often, the most difficult pill for people to swallow is the concept that our Federal Government is self-funding and creates the very money it “spends”. It isn’t spending your tax dollars at all. To demonstrate this, consider this simplified flow chart:

 

These truths bring on even more hand wringing, because to the average voter they raise the issue of where taxes, tax revenue, government borrowing, and the misleading idea of the “National Debt” (which is nothing more than the sum of every single not yet taxed federal high-powered dollar in existence) fit into the federal spending picture. The answer is that they really don’t.

A terrible deception has been perpetrated on the American people. We have been led to believe that the US borrows its own currency from foreign nations, that the money gathered from borrowing and collected from taxing funds federal spending. We have also been led to believe that gold is somehow the only real currency, that somehow our nation is broke because we don’t own much gold compared to the money we create, and that we are on the precipice of some massive collapse, etc. because of that shortage of gold.

The American people have been taught single entry accounting instead of Generally Accepted Accounting Practices, or GAAP-approved double entry accounting, where every single asset has a corresponding liability; which means that every single dollar has a corresponding legal commitment. Every single dollar by accounting identity is nothing more than a tax credit waiting to be extinguished.  Sadly, many only see the government, the actual dollar creator, as having debt; that it has liabilities, not that we the people have assets; assets that we need more and more of as time goes on, to achieve any semblance of personal freedom and relative security from harm.

In other words, at the Federal level it is neither your tax dollars nor the dollars collected from sales of Treasury debt instruments that are spent. Every single dollar the Federal Government spends is new money.

Every dollar is keystroked into existence. Every single one of them. Which brings up the next question: “Where do our hard-earned tax dollars and borrowed dollars go if, in fact, they do not pay for spending on roads, schools, bombs and propaganda?” We already know the answer. They are destroyed by the Federal Reserve when they mark down the Treasury’s accounts.

In Professor Stephanie Kelton’s article in the LA Times “Congress can give every American a pony (if it breeds enough ponies)” (which you can find here ) She states quite plainly:

“Whoa, cowboy! Are you telling me that the government can just make money appear out of nowhere, like magic? Absolutely. Congress has special powers: It’s the patent-holder on the U.S. dollar. No one else is legally allowed to create it. This means that Congress can always afford the pony because it can always create the money to pay for it.”

That alone should raise eyebrows and cause you to reconsider a great many things you may have once thought. It will possibly cause you to fall back to old, neoclassical text book understandings as well, which she deftly anticipates and answers with:

“Now, that doesn’t mean the government can buy absolutely anything it wants in absolutely any quantity at absolutely any speed. (Say, a pony for each of the 320 million men, women and children in the United States, by tomorrow.) That’s because our economy has internal limits. If the government tries to buy too much of something, it will drive up prices as the economy struggles to keep up with the demand. Inflation can spiral out of control. There are plenty of ways for the government to get a handle on inflation, though. For example, it can take money out of the economy through taxation.”

And there it is. The limitation everyone is wondering about. Where is the spending limit?

When we run out of real resources. Not pieces of paper or keystrokes. Real resources.

To compound your bewilderment, would it stretch your credulity too much to say that the birth of a dollar is congressional spending and the death of a dollar is when it is received as a tax payment, or in return for a Treasury debt instrument, and deleted? Would that make your head explode? Let the explosions begin, because that is exactly what happens.

Money is a temporary thing. Even in the old days we heard so many wax poetically about how they took wheelbarrows of government — and bank – printed IOUs to the burn pile, and set the dollar funeral pyre ablaze.  

In the same LA Times piece, Professor Kelton goes on to say:

“Since none of us learned any differently, most of us accept the idea that taxes and borrowing precede spending – TABS. And because the government has to “find the money” before it can spend in this sequence, everyone wants to know who’s picking up the tab.

There’s just one catch. The big secret in Washington is that the federal government abandoned TABS back when it dropped the gold standard. Here’s how things really work:

  1. Congress approves the spending and the money gets spent (S)
  2. Government collects some of that money in the form of taxes (T)
  3. If 1 > 2, Treasury allows the difference to be swapped for government bonds (B)

In other words, the government spends money and then collects some money back as people pay their taxes and buy bonds. Spending precedes taxing and borrowing – STAB. It takes votes and vocal interest groups, not tax revenue, to start the ball rolling.”

Let’s be clear, we are not talking about the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. We are not talking about Gandalf the Grey or Bilbo Baggins. We are not referencing “my precious!”. It’s not gold, or some other commodity people like to hold, taste and smell. It is simply a tally. Yet somehow, we have convinced ourselves that there is a scarcity of dollars, when it is the resources that are scarce. We have created what Attorney Steven Larchuk calls a “Dollar Famine”.

To quote Warren Mosler in his must-read book “The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy” (you can download a free copy right here) he states:

“Next question: “So how does government spend when they never actually have anything to spend?”

Good question! Let’s now take a look at the process of how government spends.

Imagine you are expecting your $1,000 social security payment to hit your bank account which already has $500 in it, and you are watching your account on your computer screen. You are about to see how government spends without having anything to spend.

Presto! Suddenly your account statement that read $500 now reads $1,500. What did the government do to give you that money? It simply changed the number in your bank account from 500 to 1,500. It added a ‘1’ and a comma. That’s all.”

Keystrokes. Is it becoming clearer? Let’s go further for good measure. Mosler continues:

“It didn’t take a gold coin and hammer it into its computer. All it did was change a number in your bank account. It does this by making entries into its own spread sheet which is connected to the banking systems spreadsheets.

Government spending is all done by data entry on its own spread sheet we can call ‘The US dollar monetary system’.

There is no such thing as having to ‘get’ taxes or borrow to make a spreadsheet entry that we call ‘spending’. Computer data doesn’t come from anywhere. Everyone knows that!”

So why do we allow people to tell us otherwise? Maybe it is too abstract. And on cue, Mosler explains this phenomenon via a sports analogy for those who are not comfortable with the straight economic narrative:

“Where else do we see this happen? Your team kicks a field goal and on the scoreboard the score changes from, say, 7 point to 10 points. Does anyone wonder where the stadium got those three points? Of course not! Or you knock down 5 pins at the bowling alley and your score goes from 10 to 15. Do you worry about where the bowling alley got those points? Do you think all bowling alleys and football stadiums should have a ‘reserve of points’ in a ‘lock box’ to make sure you can get the points you have scored? Of course not! And if the bowling alley discovers you ‘foot faulted’ and takes your score back down by 5 points does the bowling alley now have more score to give out? Of course not!

We all know how ‘data entry’ works, but somehow this has gotten all turned around backwards by our politicians, media, and most all of the prominent mainstream economists.”

Ouch! Mosler pointed out the obvious, the propaganda machine has polluted our understanding. So how is this done in economic language? Let’s let Warren finish the thought:

“When the federal government spends the funds don’t ‘come from’ anywhere any more than the points ‘come from’ somewhere at the football stadium or the bowling alley.

Nor does collecting taxes (or borrowing) somehow increase the government’s ‘hoard of funds’ available for spending.

In fact, the people at the US Treasury who actually spend the money (by changing numbers on bank accounts up) don’t even have the phone numbers of the people at the IRS who collect taxes (they change the numbers on bank accounts down), or the other people at the US Treasury who do the ‘borrowing’ (issue the Treasury securities). If it mattered at all how much was taxed or borrowed to be able to spend, you’d think they’d at least know each other’s phone numbers! Clearly, it doesn’t matter for their purposes.”

So why do progressives allow the narrative that the nation has run out of points deter us from demanding we leverage our resources to gain points, to win the game of life, and have a robust New Deal: Green Energy, Infrastructure, free college, student debt eradication, healthcare as a right, a federal job guarantee for those who want work and expanded social security for those who do not want to or cannot work?

How has a movement so full of “revolutionaries” proved to be so “full of it” believing that we must take points away from the 99% to achieve that which the federal government creates readily, when people do something worth compensating? Why does the narrative that the nation is “broke” resonate with progressives? Why do they allow this narrative to sideline the entire movement?

I believe it is because progressives are beaten down. Many have forgotten what prosperity for all looks like or sounds like. Many are so financially broke and spiritually broken that the idea of hope seems like gas lighting. It feels like abuse. It crosses the realm of incredulity and forces people into that safe space of defeatism.

If they firmly reject hope, then they can at least predict failure, be correct and feel victorious in self-defeating apathy. If the system is rigged; if the politicians are all bought off; if the voting machines are hacked; if the deep state controls everything; then we think we are too weak to unite and stand up and demand economic justice, equality, a clean environment, a guaranteed job, healthcare and security and then we have a bad guy to blame.

Then we can sit at our computers, toss negative comments around social media, express our uninformed and uninspired defeatism about the system, and proclaim it is truth by ensuring it is a self-fulfilling prophecy about which we can be self-congratulatory in our 20/20 foresight as we perform the “progressive give-up strategy”. Or, if we want to achieve a Green New Deal, then in a radical departure from the norm we can own our power; we can embrace macroeconomic reality through the lens of a monetarily sovereign nation with a free floating, non-convertible fiat currency and truly achieve the progressive prosperity we all deserve.

The choice is ours. It is in our hands.

 

**For more of Steve’s work check out Real Progressives on Facebook or Twitter

What is the Minimum Wage that Will Employ Everyone?

It is official, the unemployment rate in the US has dropped to its lowest level in 16 years. Economists all around the country must be tapping themselves in the back and buying each other drinks in congratulations, right? Wrong. Despite the official drop in joblessness, we have a decline in labor participation, an increase in the “skill gap” in the labor force (i.e. unemployed workers’ skills do not match those needed by open jobs) and, arguably most importantly, wages that fail to rise fast enough.

For starters, the latest reports show that the year-over-year wage growth rate has been stagnating; it reached 2.5 percent since last year, which is just marginally above inflation. It is difficult to determine exactly why people drop out of the labor force, but we can speculate that some do so because of the lack of pay increases. Whatever the reason, the dropout is a significant part of the declining unemployment rate—e.g. the May report shows that 429,000 people dropped out of the labor force. A nation with a population that is actively leaving the labor force and that deals with stagnant wages is a nation facing serious socioeconomic problems.

The problem at hand, then, is a question economists have been dealing with for ages: how can we increase earnings and employment at the same time? Common economic understanding would argue that we have to choose between higher wages and more jobs. The main argument against minimum wage hikes is that it would increase unemployment. That claim is factually untrue (just look at Seattle) and there are a number of ways to address the issue. At The Minskys we have tackled this topic several times, and shown that a decent minimum wage does not have to reduce the number of jobs out there. One way to have both is with a Job Guarantee (JG) program.

One of the more interesting consequences of a JG program is that it would create a de-facto minimum wage without the need of actually raising the minimum wage. The JG wage would become the minimum wage for the entire economy. Workers receiving less than the JG wage would be inclined to take a JG job, and employers would have to raise their salary offers in order to keep their workforce. Given the impact of the pay offered by the program, it is important that the JG wage rate be thoroughly discussed.

The JG literature has a large number of works focused on the topic of wages. Some suggest the pay to vary with skill-level. Others advocate for JG wages to be the same as they would be in the market.  But having multiple compensation packages would make the logistics and application of a JG program much more complicated.

To find the best wage rate for JG jobs, a few parameters should be considered. First, the JG framework is to create jobs that provide at least a minimum “subsistence” rate, so that workers can  live a decent life. As such, it is clear that the JG wage should at least be the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Second, the goal of the JG is not, and should never be, to replace the private sector. So, the JG wage should not exceed the average wage paid in the private sector ($25.31 in 2016). This creates an upper limit.  

With these lower and upper limits in place we can raise the floor or lower the ceiling, ultimately arriving at the proper wage rate paid by this full employment policy. Recent polls show that Democrats, Republicans and Independents—in their majority—all support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which suggests that there may be widespread political support to increasing the minimum wage.We can raise the lower limit further after we consider the per capita income in the US, which would put the fair minimum wage at $12.00 an hour. The lower limit of $12 an hour is appropriate since it is marginally above the poverty rate of $11.53 for a household with two children where only one of the parents is employed.

A good point within that range is the $15.00 hourly wage rate. Legislation regarding this wage rate has recently been approved in cities such as Seattle, Los Angeles, and the state of New York. There is also a movement by workers demanding that it becomes the floor in the fast food and retail industries. It seems appropriate, therefore, to follow these cities and movements by determining the going wage rate for a JG program to be set at $15.00 an hour. After all, a national JG cannot pay less than locally established minimum wages. On the other hand, the guarantee of a job in, for example, Seattle paying $15.00 per hour, while surrounding areas are offering lower pay could saturate one area in detriment of another.

As previously discussed, the JG wage would become the minimum wage to the entire economy. Consequently, workers who currently earn less than the $15.00 an hour rate would receive a raise. In total, accounting also for the ripple effects faced by workers in the $15.00 to $19.00 range, roughly 64.7 million workers would receive a wage increase, which means 43.5 percent of the labor force would see their wage income go up. To avoid inflationary pressures, allow for seamless implementation, and contain possible—albeit historically improbable—negative employment effects from the minimum wage hike, the transition to this wage through the implementation of the JG program will have to be done incrementally.

The Job Guarantee is an effective way to solve the three major problems currently facing the American labor market: the skill gap, the dropout of workers from the labor force, and most importantly the stagnant wages. We have empirically observed that wage increases not only do not increase unemployment, but they also serve as a catalyst for economic growth and towards social equity. The US economy has plenty of needs that can be fulfilled by giving well-paying jobs to its unemployed. The $15/hour wage is not only fair, it is a necessary measure to ensure the prosperity of this nation.

The Automation Grift: Robots Are Hiding From The Data But Not From The Pundits –Part 1

It’s conventional wisdom among pundits that automation will cause mass unemployment in the near future, fundamentally changing work and the social relations that underpin it. But the data that should support these predictions do not. Part 1 of this article contrasts this extreme rhetoric and the data that should support the inevitable robot apocalypse, and finds that these predictions are likely motivated by politics or outlandish assessments of technology, not data. Part 2 assesses the technology behind these predictions, and follows a thread from the mid-20th century onwards. Subsequent parts will examine the political economy of automation in both general and specific ways, and will also discuss what the future should look like — with or without the robots.

The Automation Grift: The Robots Are Hiding From The Data But Not From The Pundits – Part 1

By Kevin Cashman

The Rhetoric

Few things are more breathlessly written about than automation and how it will affect society. In the mainstream discourse, technology writers, policy wonks, public relations hacks, self-stylized “futurists,” and others peddle their predictions and policy prescriptions, as if they are letting the rest of us in on a secret rather than following in a long history of over-enthusiastic predictions and misplaced priorities. Others view automation as a panacea for social problems. Either way, mass unemployment is usually at the center of this narrative and how workers, especially poorer workers, will become outmoded in the age of robots. In the waning days of the Obama administration, the White House joined the frenzy, publishing a report warning about the dangers automation posed to workers as well as the benefits of technology.

This report cited (and further legitimized) a 2013 report that boldly claimed that 47 percent of occupations were at risk from automation in the next two decades. Since its release, this study has been cited close to 900 times. Other predictions are just as bold. One is that the entire trucking industry will be automated in the next ten or so years. “Visionaries” like Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk use their stardom to add to the fears of these claims — and push for policies that don’t make much sense, like taxing robot workers or creating a basic income that is an excuse to eviscerate our other social programs and do other bad things. Still others blame automation for causing past problems, like the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S., when they are easily explained by political decisions, not economic realities.

With all this interest and all these forecasts, you’d think there would be evidence that automation is affecting the economy in a significant way. Indeed, economists have determined a measure for “automation”: productivity growth. As productivity growth expresses the relationship between inputs (e.g. robots, people, machines) and outputs (i.e. goods and services), it should be a decent and measurable proxy for automation. More automation and robots would result in greater outputs for fewer inputs, which would show up clearly in the data. This is because replacing humans with robots only makes economic sense if it saves money or increases output. In both of these scenarios, productivity would increase.

The Data

So what do the data points say? They show that productivity growth on an economy-wide scale has been very low for the past ten or so years, at a rate that is a bit over 1 percent annually. (In fact, multifactor productivity — productivity of all combined inputs — decreased 0.2 percent in 2016, the first decline since 2009.) The previous ten years — the mid-1990s to mid-2000s — was a period of moderate productivity growth, or just over 3 percent annual productivity growth. From the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, there was another period of slow growth. And before that, there was a sustained period of moderate growth post war until the mid-1970s: the so-called “Golden Age” of prosperity. These data points do not support the assertion that automation is happening on a large scale.

It is important to note that productivity growth and automation are constantly happening, and that automation can affect small industries or occupations in big ways. It can also replace individual tasks but not entire jobs themselves; for example, you may order your food on a computer at a restaurant rather than talk to a waiter, who would still deliver your food. These things may not show up in the data because they do not represent fundamental changes to the entire economy. In other words, automation on a small scale is not evidence that automation will cause a sea change in how work is done: it is normal.

Other macroeconomic indicators support the low rate of productivity growth seen today. The labor market has still not recovered to pre-recession levels, levels which were depressed compared to the highs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Growth in wages and employment costs have also been relatively low. Since these indicate that there is still considerable slack in the labor market (i.e. in general it is easy to fill open positions, and there are many more applicants than open positions) there is less pressure to automate. After all, why would businesses en masse invest in automation on a significant scale if they can find desperate workers willing to be paid minimum wage?

History also provides useful data points. Technological change and its effects on the labor market have been consistently overstated in the past, which is acknowledged by even mainstream economists. If anything, this is evidence that automation is good for the economy because it creates jobs, in net, and it creates new sectors of the economy. It also can increase living standards by, for example, shortening work weeks or improving conditions of work (and together with organized labor, this happened in the “Golden Age,” which is how it got its moniker).

Supporters of the robots-are-taking-all-of-our-jobs myth usually ignore this evidence. They’ll say that productivity growth cannot take into account the changes that are happening and that automation will have catastrophic effects on the labor market either way. While there are legitimate debates to be had on how to measure automation, the reality is that despite all the spilled ink, the robot boosters do not have history or the data on their side. It is only their analysis of the technology that supports their assertions. They think that there is something extraordinary about the technological change that is happening now and it will be transformative, in contrast to the slow and steady automation that occurred in the past, where benefits were realized over a long horizon.

Part 2 assesses the technology behind these predictions.

About the Author
Kevin Cashman lives in Washington, DC, and researches issues related to domestic and international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Follow him on Twitter: @kevinmcashman.

Female employment rates are rising across the world, but not in the US. Why?

Japan is not exactly the country that comes to mind as a model of gender equality and high labor force participation for women. In 1995, the OECD estimated women’s employment rate in Japan at 56.5 percent, almost 10 percentage points lower than in the U.S., which had an employment rate of 66 percent for women at the time. Between 1995 and 1999, the employment rate for Japanese women grew by less than half a percentage point, while for women in the U.S. it grew by almost 3 percentage points.

However, since 2000 this trend completely reversed. Between 2000 and 2015, the employment rate for women in Japan increased by almost 14 percentage points, while in the U.S. it dropped by over 6 percentage points. Japan’s employment rate for women surpassed the U.S. in 2014. Currently, almost 65 percent of Japanese women are employed, while only about 63 percent of women in the US are employed.

In recent years, Japan has launched extensive campaigns to encourage labor force participation by women. The government took various steps such as increasing allowances given to new parents, subsidizing daycare, and ensuring both mothers and fathers benefit from paid parental leave.

A look at the employment rate for women in some other OECD countries over time shows that other countries had increases similar to Japan’s. The only country besides the U.S. where the participation of women in the labor force has decreased since 2000 is Denmark, which has seen a 1.8 percentage point drop in the employment rate of women. Despite this drop however, Denmark still boasts one the highest employment rates for women of any country in the world.

In Germany, Japan, Canada, France, and the U.K. the employment rate for women has been increasing. In the last 10 years, German women have seen the biggest gains in their employment rate, which increased by 17 percentage points. The increases in the other countries have been more modest: 2 percentage points for Canada, 11 percentage points for Japan, 4 percentage points for France, and 3 percentage points for the U.K.

By 2015 only France had a lower employment rate for women than the U.S. While France still trails behind the U.S., it has made progress in the past 10 years. The employment rate for women is on a steady upwards trend, meaning it could surpass the U.S. in the near future.

What all other countries besides the U.S. have in common is fairly generous parental leave policies for new parents. While in the U.S. new parents have no guarantee of paid leave, in Japan both mothers and fathers can take up to 58 weeks of paid leave. New mothers are guaranteed 58 weeks of paid leave in Germany, 52 in Canada, 50 in Denmark, 42 in France, and 39 in the U.K. For new fathers, France offers 28 weeks of paid leave, Germany, nine weeks, and the U.K. and Denmark, two weeks.

Furthermore, child care costs in the U.S. are extremely high, and are growing at a much faster pace than overall inflation. The rising costs of childcare make it unaffordable for many parents, especially for low-wage workers. The Economic Policy Institute found that childcare costs in some areas can take up more than a quarter of a family’s income. In some states, costs for daycare are higher than for college tuition.

This post originally appeared on the blog of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.