1. ECONOMICS 101
• Sales Create Jobs
• Income Creates Sales
• Spending Creates Income
• Cutting the Deficit Will:
o Reduce Income
o Reduce Sales
o Destroy Jobs
2. The Price of Unemployment
• Direct Costs
o Loss of Output/Income
• Indirect Costs
o Social exclusion & loss of freedom
o Skill degradation
o Psychological Harm, including suicide rates
o Poor health & reduced life expectancy
o The loss of motivation
o Undermining of human relations and
family life
o Loss of social values & responsibility
3. Every Government must Choose
which One to Accept
• Pure Unemployment
– Labour Buffer Stock with
zero wage and no tasks
• Unemployment
Compensation
– Labour Buffer Stock with a
wage and no tasks
• Transition Job
Job Guarantee
– Labour Buffer Stock with a
wage and a task
4. MMT Favours the Job Guarantee
• JG provides a transition job, something
useful to do until the private sector is
ready to reemploy people
• Performs the job of a true automatic
stabilizer
• Absorbs workers in the JG pool when the
economy turns down.
• Releases workers from the pool when
the economy improves.
• Reduces losses borne by the private
sector (indirect costs)
5. Job Guarantee is NOT Work-for-Dole
• The JG is, categorically, not a more elaborate
form of Workfare.
• Workfare does not provide secure
employment with conditions consistent with
norms established in the community with
respect to non-wage benefits and the like.
• Workfare does not ensure stable living
incomes are provided to the workers.
Workfare is a program, where the State
extracts a contribution from the
unemployed for their welfare payments. The
State, however, takes no responsibility for
the failure of the economy to generate
enough jobs.
6. What the Job Guarantee is
• In the JG, the state assumes this
responsibility and pays workers
award conditions (a living wage,
likely minimum wage) for their work.
• Under the JG workers could remain
employed for as long as they wanted
the work. There would be no
compulsion on them to seek private
work.
• They could also choose full-time
hours or any fraction thereof which
can include any benefits that would
be provided by the private sector.