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The second proposal is that poverty be eliminated by combining a guarantee of decent employment for everyone who wants a job with an income guarantee for those persons who are unable or not expected to earn their own livelihood. The first prong of this strategy would use direct job creation by government to guarantee the availability of an adequate supply of jobs. The second prong would use conventional transfer programs to provide a range of income security benefits. For purely descriptive purposes, I shall refer to this as the "Jobs and Income" (JI) strategy in this article. 26

Like the BI strategy described above, the idea of using a combination of work and income guarantees to combat poverty has a long history. 27 It was expressed quite clearly over two centuries ago in the French Constitution of 1793, which declared that "[p]ublic aid is a sacred debt. Society owes subsistence to the unfortunate, either by procuring them work, or by assuring the means of existence to those who are unable to work." 28 In the United States the idea [*164] achieved its most authoritative endorsement during the New Deal era, when social welfare planners within the Roosevelt administration proposed that the federal government combine direct job creation with other social insurance benefits to guarantee the economic security of all Americans. 29 An early but impressively complete expression of this proposal can be found in the report of the cabinet-level Committee on Economic Security, whose recommendations in early 1935 led to the enactment of the New Deal's most significant social welfare legislation. 30 The Committee explained the job guarantee component of its overall social welfare strategy in the following terms:

To overcome the problem of involuntary unemployment, which can cause societal and personal issues as shown in the forgone chapters, the idea of a Job Guarantee is prominent in the economic literature. A variety of papers approached this topic using a multitude of labels, including “buffer stock employment” (Mitchell, 1998), “public service employment” (Forstater, 2003),“employment of last resort” (Wray, 2006) or “guaranteed job program” (Wisman, 2010). In this thesis, the underlying concept is coined by the term Job Guarantee. All of these concepts share the same idea: overcoming involuntary unemployment by creating an infinitely elastic demand for labor by the state. It is important to note is that it is not a ’workfare’ program, implying that people would have to work in order to receive their social benefits, but rather have an option to exit unemployment. The goal is further to enable social inclusion through a job (Kaboub, 2007).

With a Job Guarantee, the state offers employment to anyone willing to work at a certain wage. By this, a lower limit to the price of labor is being set (Kaboub, 2007). This can have an impact on the private economy, especially in the low-wage sector. As workers do have an outside option, it is being argued that an increase in the bargaining power of workers takes place (Kaboub, 2007). In an economy without JG, the hiring behavior of firms depends on the business cycle and profit expectations, workers suffer from recessions (Minsky and Kaufman, 2008). With a Job Guarantee, the pool of workers in the public program will increase during recession; in times of economical booming, the pool will get smaller (Kaboub, 2007).

The development of the JG can be dated to the late 1990s with the publication of Gordon (1997), Mitchell (1998), Mosler (1997-1998), Forstater (1998) and Wray (1998), regarded by JG advocates as seminal contributions (Juniper, Sharpe and Watts, 2014-2015: 298). All envisaged a state-guaranteed “employer of last resort” as the only effective solution to unemployment, and describe it in similar ways. The government should “offer[…] a public-service job to anyone who wants one” (Mosler, 1997-1998: 167), to “continuously absorb[…] workers displaced from the private sector” (Mitchell, 1998: 549). Such a program would not be discretionary, but would be “bound to hire the […] workers that no other employer is willing to hire” (Gordon, 1997: 828). As with Pierson (1979) and Minsky (1986), these authors see the JG as a force for both full employment and price stability. Mitchell (1998: 548) calls it “the only rational strategy for a government that [issues] a fiat currency and wishes to maximise macroeconomic benefits and price stability”

The capitalists, of course, will not guarantee employment for all of the reasons listed above, so the government must step in by providing a good job to everyone who wants and needs one. This is the essence of the job guarantee. Policies with similar aims have been pursued in the past, notably Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which lowered unemployment through vigorous infrastructure and public works projects. Today's proposed Green New Deal, in fact, is best thought of as a job program, as it seeks to employ workers to massively expand environmentally sustainable infrastructure. Such programs should serve as an inspiration for us today, and if our constitution was worth anything, the right to a job would be enshrined within it. The government shouldn't be trying to increase unemployment - it should be actively trying to eliminate it entirely. The U.S. postures itself as a beacon of freedom, but all of the so-called freedoms in our constitution are secondary to our material needs. What good is the freedom of the press if all of the journalism jobs are being eliminated? Why do we need the right to bear arms if we can't even put food on the table? A government that was worth anything would not leave the fate of its citizens to the whims of the market. Every one of us should be able to leave IU with a job - it is, after all, a human right?

In 2006, India embarked on an ambitious attempt to fi ght poverty by attempting to introduce a wage fl oor in a setting in which many unskilled workers earn less than the minimum wage. The 2005 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act creates a justiciable “right to work” by promising 100 days of wage employment in every financial year to all rural households whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Work is provided in public works projects at the statutory minimum wage notifi ed for the program by state governments that are responsible for implementing the Act under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Work must be made available within 15 days of receiving an application to work, failing which, the state government is liable for paying an unemployment allowance. MGNREGS is the largest antipoverty public employment program anywhere. Yet until recently, it has been subject to very little rigorous evaluative research. If the scheme worked in practice the way it is designed, there would be little or no unmet demand for work among unskilled workers. Anyone who wanted work at the stipulated wage rates would get it. Under ideal conditions, such a scheme could almost certainly have a large impact on poverty in India. The work requirement will create a “self-targeting” mechanism, in that nonpoor people are unlikely to demand such work. The scheme could also help reduce future poverty through its secondround effects, including providing insurance in risk-prone environments, empowering workers and villagers generally, and creating useful assets

A federal job guarantee would provide every person with an enforceable legal right to a quality job. Extending beyond a project based approach, the Resolution calls for the creation of federal jobs that meet long-neglected community, physical and human infrastructure needs, such as delivering quality care for children and seniors, building and sustaining 21st century transit systems, strengthening neighborhoods, and protecting the environment. Funded by the federal government and implemented locally in partnership with communities, the program would provide public jobs for all adults seeking employment

Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley last week introduced a proposal to establish a federal job guarantee, a national program that would provide work for every American who wants it.

Under the proposal, the federal government would fund employment opportunities for everyone who could not find work within the private sector. The jobs would be created in “socially necessary and useful” fields including education, health care, emergency preparedness, infrastructure and environmental projects.

In the era of Donald Trump, ambitious progressive policies that were dismissed as fringe a few years ago are increasingly finding a foothold. One of these is the idea that every American who needs and wants a job has the right to one, at a livable wage, with decent benefits.

It’s called a federal jobs guarantee, and it has some heavyweight support. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) backs the idea and has said he will release a detailed plan in the fall. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has introduced legislation that would see a three-year pilot project set up to guarantee jobs in 15 regions of high unemployment. Among the bill’s co-sponsors is Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who tweeted in support of the policy in April.

JG is also the only real means of achieving the right to employment found in numerous governmental and other documents, such as the United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The right to employment is also the most important means to many other economic and social rights, such as the rights to food, housing, and healthcare.

Hence, when the US Congress drafted the Green New Deal (GND) resolution, informed observers singled out its proposal for a federal job guarantee as the crucial element. Likewise, the 2020 "democratising work" manifesto, which appeared in 43 newspapers in 27 languages around the world, identified the right to employment as a core demand and a critical component in decarbonising the economy. The International Labour Organisation also has formally recognised the idea as the best means for shaping "a fair, inclusive and secure future of work with full, productive, and freely chosen employment and decent work for all".

Why Not Simply Include a Justiciable Right to a Job in the Bill?

But why is this complicated tangle of de-facto job-guarantee provisions necessary? Why not simply include language in H.R. 1000 guaranteeing a program job to all jobseekers? The simple answer to these questions is that drafting a workable job guarantee provision for inclusion in a job-creation bill is harder than one might reasonably think.

In the face of the COVID19 pandemic and perennial economic crises, the world is reengaging in a conversation about reshaping the economy as a whole, and labor markets in particular. A recent call to democratize work has reverberated across the globe 5 , published in 45 papers in 26 languages, and supported by thousands of signatories. In it, guaranteeing the right to decent and remunerative employment was identified as a key demand and the modern Job Guarantee proposal was singled out as a cornerstone in the global environmental agenda. The Paris Accord had recognized that a green transition is not possible without ‘human rights [and] a just transition of the workforce, and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities’ 6 . In the US, the Job Guarantee has been called the most crucial component of the Green New Deal resolution 7 . It is also a core recommendation by a landmark report by the International Labor Organization’s Global Commission on the Future of Work 8 , echoing an earlier recognition and recurrent demand that the right to employment is a fundamental human right.

Policy Paradigm Shift

It is worth noting that the job guarantee is not the same thing as requiring an un- employed person, who appears at the welfare office hoping for assistance, to go somewhere to perform some assigned menial work before he/she can obtain the needed assistance. There is a difference between a dignified solution to a problem and a degrading temporary quick fix. We should beware of what the politicians call "work-based welfare reform."

John Dewey once wrote: "The first great demand of a better social order, I should say, then, is the guarantee of the right, to every individual who is capable of it, to work-not the mere legal right, but a right which is enforceable so that the in- dividual will always have an opportunity to engage in some form of useful activity, and if the ordinary economic machinery breaks down through a crisis of some sort, then it is the duty of the state to come to the rescue and see that individuals have something to do that is worthwhile-not breaking stone in a stoneyard, or something else to get a soup ticket with, but some kind of productive work which a self-re- specting person may engage in with interest and with more than mere pecuniary profit" [Dewey 1939, 420-421].

‘Job Guarantee’ (JG) has become the favoured term applied to a variety of approaches that seek to ensure what can be described as true full employment. While often used as a synonym for ‘Employer of Last Resort’ (ELR), these terms evoke quite different framing. Employer of Last Resort implies that there is an entity that stands by to provide jobs to those who otherwise have failed to secure them. The term Job Guarantee implies a right to a job, although it does not indicate how that right will be secured. However, if we are to include the right to a job as similar to other recognized rights (right to life, right to free speech, right to vote, right to marriage), this would seem to imply that it is government that is to provide the guarantee. Many proponents of the JG do emphasize the human rights angle, interpreting the UN Charter on Human Rights as explicitly guaranteeing the right to access to a job (See Harvey 1989, 1993, 1999; Burgess and Mitchell 1998).

Unfortunately, each term carries a negative connotation: ‘last resort’ can be seen as derogatory—the potential workers cannot find anything better; ‘guarantee’ implies that potential workers must be employed no matter what. Together, these associations fuel suspicion that work done is of low quality and otherwise without merit. There have been some efforts to rebrand the proposal as Public Service Employment (PSE) to emphasize the positive potential of such jobs (Wray 1999).

A job guarantee would fundamentally transform the current labor market in the United States. Our current conception of full employment is inadequate; we discuss a bold policy in this paper to bring the United States to a permanent, more accurate indicator of full employment—by which we mean that everyone who seeks a job can find one at non-poverty wages. Beyond providing full employment, the job guarantee could be a turning point for American workers. Workers are faced with stagnating real wages and a continued erosion of labor’s share of income. The job guarantee could significantly alter the current power dynamics between labor and capital—particularly for low-wage workers and traditionally marginalized groups.

Benefits of the program reach beyond those directly employed under the NIEC. If a job guarantee were to be implemented, it also would function as a de facto employment floor in the labor market. Private employers would have to offer wages and benefits that are at least competitive with the NIEC in order to attract workers. The universal nature of the program would ensure jobs for all—including those with some forms of disability who may not be employed through the private sector. The universal design is critical to ending working poverty and involuntary unemployment; this is in contrast to other forms of intervention in the labor market, such as minimum wage laws, which do not ensure access to employment in the first place. Nevertheless, complementary changes to the existing social insurance system would be necessary to eliminate poverty entirely, as some individuals may be unable to work for various reasons.[54] Despite the discussion of full employment as a national priority for nearly a century now, policymakers have failed to deliver an economy that prioritized employment for all. Full employment is a goal that the private market in unable to achieve, therefore requiring government intervention in the labor market. Above, we discuss a transformative policy proposal—a federal job guarantee—whereby the government engages in the direct hiring of workers at non-poverty wages to achieve, and maintain, a full employment economy. Whether or not policymakers agree with the specifics we suggest in our proposal, we encourage them to think about bold solutions to achieve and maintain full employment. Restructuring our public policies to eradicate involuntary unemployment and poverty is within our reach.

—used as a function word before singular nouns when the referent is unspecified

“The job guarantee asserts that, if individuals bear a moral duty to work, then society and employers bear a reciprocal moral duty to provide good, dignified work for all,” Jeff Spross adds in the influential center-left journal Democracy.

JG = targeted at full employment and price stability.

A federal jobs guarantee is as simple as it sounds on the surface: everyone in the country will be guaranteed a job by the US government should they desire one. There are two versions right now gaining attention. One plan is written by academics Mark Paul, Sandy Darity, and Darrick Hamilton. The other was written by Pavlina Tcherneva. In general, these plans promise:∂ Guaranteed jobs in infrastructure repair, ecological restoration, caregiving, and community development projects.∂ Benefits like health insurance, paid sick leave/vacation, and retirement plans.∂ Control for state and local governments that will decide which kinds of jobs to create.∂ A reduced uptake of welfare programs and unemployment insurance as well as decreased criminal justice costs.∂ The key difference between the two plans is the minimum wage for the new jobs. The Tcherneva plan establishes a $15 minimum wage and the Paul et al. plan calls for an $11.80 minimum wage for all federally guaranteed jobs. Yet, both have the same underlying goal: Permanently solve the problem of involuntary unemployment by making the federal government the employer of last resort.

While both developing and developed capitalist economies have overseen dozens of local and national public direct job creation programs targeting specific communities, industries, or seasons over the last century, no country has ever implemented a universal federal guarantee. For the purposes of this thesis, a job guarantee is universal when it provides permanent employment without significant restrictions. Among the list of implemented public job programs, three stand out. India, Argentina, and the United States have enacted the three largest and most comprehensive job programs, and the only federal job guarantees, in history. No other country has attempted programs as demographically or geographically comprehensive. Contemporarily, many theorists have explored the possibility of a job guarantee, but only Paul et al. and Tcherneva have provided specific proposals that describe the structure of a guarantee within the context of the American labor market. These two plans form the fourth and fifth case studies.

As discussed above, the JG is a permanent, universal program that provides jobs to all, in good times or bad. The program in India comes close to such a program. The NREGA guarantees at least 100 days of wage work to each household per year. The program enshrines the right to paid work into law—a right that has been written into the constitutions of many countries, inspired by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, though signatory countries have yet to meet that mandate. India’s program guarantees work by household only, not per individual—as in this JG proposal.