Private sector competition stimulates the whole economy.

Brancaccio: One criticism — besides, perhaps, the cost of employing so many people as a matter of policy — one criticism is that, with the government offering the guaranteed job, private employers would have to raise what they pay, and that would make the U.S. less competitive when competing with countries that don’t do that.

Wong: See, I gotta say I think that’s a feature not a bug of this idea. We should be raising pay. It’s really important that workers who we now see are essential, grocery clerks and delivery workers and home health aides, they need to make a living wage — of course, to support their families, but also to support the whole economy. These folks need to be able to themselves pay for education, buy groceries, go on vacation. That stimulates the whole economy. And they can’t do that right now on the sub-minimum wages that they’re getting.

Brancaccio: As you imagine a new, and what you see as an improved economy coming out of this crisis, you have an idea of maybe borrowing from … well, we could look at Germany, right?

Wong: Right, we could look at Germany; we could look at Denmark. One of the reasons that those economies are faring better than the U.S. economy, they have much lower unemployment rates than we do, is that they have something called tripartite bargaining, whereby workers and worker representatives actually sit at the table when making labor market plans.