Thread: Unions: Universal Jobs Guarantee- Guaranteed Employment

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Unions ask for "Universal Jobs Guarantee" Guaranteed Employment

Here's a solution for the unemployment problem from the UK that will likely have your head spinning: If you are out of work for an extended period of time, the government gives you a job. It's called "Universal Jobs Guarantee".

Please consider Unions call for guaranteed jobs for long term unemployed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010 ... job-losses

A coalition of labour market experts including the TUC, the Work Foundation and James Purnell MP - the former work and pensions secretary – will today urge the government to guarantee anyone claiming Jobs Seekers Allowance (JSA) for 12 months or longer be given a job.

The coalition argues that if the government fails to implement the so-called "universal jobs guarantee", unemployment will continue to rise for years after the recession ends.

Making The Program Work

Believe it or not, with a few reasonable modifications, the "Universal Jobs Guarantee" program would be much better than the current cumbersome unemployment insurance scheme.

To make the program pay for itself, all we need to do is cut the minimum wage for guaranteed jobs to $2.00 per hour ($80 per week) for someone over the age of 18 and under the age of 65, not in school, hired to do nothing for which there was no genuine government job available. This would replace our current, cumbersome unemployment insurance system.

Benefits would not start until someone applied for the "Universal Job Guarantee". Moreover, as soon as someone did apply, they would have to perform an actual government job if jobs were available.

For example: If someone was willing to do genuine work such as state park maintenance, parking meter enforcement, garbage pickup, etc. (and openings were available) they would receive a much higher minimum wage, say $5.00-$6.00 per hour depending on the job. To encourage participation in the program, any able-bodied person turning down a genuine job offer would be hired at $0.10 per hour to do nothing.

If no jobs were available, a person applying under the "Universal Jobs Guarantee" program would receive $2.00 per hour and placed on call for jobs, should jobs become available. Those receiving $2.00 per hour benefits the longest would be called first (alternating at random to a lotto basis to prevent gaming the system). Once called and offered a job, an able-bodied person would have to take the job or their benefits would immediately and permanently be reduced to $0.10 per hour.

Unemployment insurance programs would only be needed to fund the amounts described above. Small businesses would be more willing to hire, freed from the high costs of the current unemployment insurance system.

Moreover, unemployment would immediately drop to zero as a direct result of people being hired to do nothing. Best of all, genuine jobs would be filled at taxpayer friendly wages to qualified workers.

Finally, everyone would have a job and the administration would be the first in history to have full employment.

Yes, I realized this is not the ideal Austrian economic solution of outsourcing everything and doing nothing. However, by toying with what sounds at first glance to be a ridiculously bad idea, the above proposal would be a vast improvement over the existing system while maintaining some social safety nets that many would insist upon. It would also encourage able-bodied people to work or all they would receive would be $0.10 per hour for their non-work.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... antee.html

The trouble with unions is that they breed mediocrate. If we want to have jobs, we need industry and manufacturing to return. Guaranteed jobs is a load of $***.

Also our once free market economy has been turned into a monopoly market. John D. Rockefeller said, "competition is sin." Only if you want total control is it a sin. To people who want a fair chance to build something out of nothing does it hamper them. Because the big business oligarchs use government to legislate roadblocks to keep anybody from coming up and toppling their economic empires.

Government should not be involved in business accept to where it is enumerated to do so in the Constitution.

But in order for our infrastructure to get up and going again, we need to have industry and manufacturing to return. Once it does, other jobs are created by the need for other services and ifrastructure in support industries.

Unions ask for "Universal Jobs Guarantee" Guaranteed Employment



Ohhhh.....so that's what they're calling it now, are they?

Do they really believe people are so stupid?

I have mixed feelings about these schemes. One friend of mine divided people into "net tax gainers" vs. "net tax losers." Someone working in corporate, paying taxes and keeping the rest would be a net tax loser. Someone working for government and paying taxes would be a net tax gainer, because while government employees still pay taxes, they get all their salary and benefits from the government which gets the money from - taxes. For society to have a mix of these is ok, but when it tilts too much towards the net tax gainers, then that stresses the value generating segments of society, as governments tend to maintain more than innovate. Someone on unemployment or welfare would be an ultimate tax gainer, of course. This is one way to look at the situation.

This is so ridiculous that I dont even know where to start with it. People need real jobs, not fake jobs. This is a good example of how governments think these days. And a great example of why we are all so screwed up. Instead of solving the problem, they try to devise a scheme to make it look like it does not exist.

Bringing down the minimum wage will just breed more poverty and people will need more services. Businesses will end up having to pay for those services, simply because no one else will have any money. Eighty dollars a week ....lol. Give me a break.

Poverty breeds crime and restlessness....not good. So the cost for law enforcement will also increase. Who will buy the goods that businesses produce? Some businesses will fail. I cant see anything coming out of this idea except a downward spiral.

We were once a great country because we had a MIDDLE CLASS. A middle class cant grow without REAL JOBS AND REAL PAYCHECKS. Who is going to pay for healthcare for everyone? Who is going to pay to fix the roads? Law enforcement? Fire services? Who will pay for it?

Just think about all of the various types of jobs a government could come up with for flunkies!

Sort the flunkies from the decent folks and you have a workforce from hell! What kind of job would they be best suited too?

Communism has job titles that differ from other forms of governments.

This was actually in the former Soviet Union Constitution, everyone was guaranteed a job. Look where it got them.

Originally Posted by Bowman

This was actually in the former Soviet Union Constitution, everyone was guaranteed a job. Look where it got them.

Hence my comment.

My employer is a typical example of someone raised in the Soviet Union, the product of that "guaranteed job" system.

Yeah, he managed to escape it but guess what....he brought that mindset with him, the only difference being is that now....in his psychology....he's "the govenment" in a manner of speaking and those of us working for him are the governed.

I can tell you firsthand what that form of "guaranteed job" crap begets. It ain't pretty.

Originally Posted by azwreath

Originally Posted by Bowman

This was actually in the former Soviet Union Constitution, everyone was guaranteed a job. Look where it got them.

Hence my comment.

My employer is a typical example of someone raised in the Soviet Union, the product of that "guaranteed job" system.

Yeah, he managed to escape it but guess what....he brought that mindset with him, the only difference being is that now....in his psychology....he's "the govenment" in a manner of speaking and those of us working for him are the governed.

I can tell you firsthand what that form of "guaranteed job" crap begets. It ain't pretty.

Does the word tyranny come to mind?

Originally Posted by Hylander_1314

Originally Posted by azwreath

Originally Posted by Bowman

This was actually in the former Soviet Union Constitution, everyone was guaranteed a job. Look where it got them.

Hence my comment.

My employer is a typical example of someone raised in the Soviet Union, the product of that "guaranteed job" system.

Yeah, he managed to escape it but guess what....he brought that mindset with him, the only difference being is that now....in his psychology....he's "the govenment" in a manner of speaking and those of us working for him are the governed.

I can tell you firsthand what that form of "guaranteed job" crap begets. It ain't pretty.

Does the word tyranny come to mind?

On a daily basis Hylander...on a daily basis.

That's why anyone who doesn't think tyranny is what our government is going for......well, have I got news for them. What I experience might be on a smaller scale but it's all the same.....systematic impoverishment and an entire system set up to where you are guaranteed to be left with nothing if you lose your job or decide to just walk away.

Any of that sound familiar to anyone? If it doesn't, it damned well should.