Should the Government Guarantee Everyone a Job?
“The specific aim of the proposal is to boost the employment rate for prime-age workers without a college diploma, and to keep it high. Right now, that would mean creating more than 4 million jobs—a number that would surge during a recession. Assuming that those jobs would pay $15 an hour plus benefits, the program would currently cost something like $158 billion a year—again, a number that would surge during a recession. ‘This is approximately one-quarter of Trump’s proposed tax cut for the wealthy on an annual basis,’ the report notes. For that kind of money, the government would pull millions of families out of poverty, proponents of guaranteed-jobs programs argue. It would push up the wages of workers with private-sector jobs by creating a hotter labor market overall. It would address income stagnation and the decline of the middle class. It would improve and expand public services. Rural America would get a boost, and the government would have a strong standing measure to counter recessions and end long-term unemployment.”