5. JG facilitates green tech investment/innovation key to sustainable development

(Michael, Economics@Bemidji, Mathew, Economics@UMKC, Introduction In Full Employment and Social Justice: Solidarity and Sustainability ed. Murray and Forstater, )

The Job Guarantee also has the potential to increase worker productivity, especially when complemented with an education and training component. Increasing innovation in technology that structurally changes the way we live, work, and play fuel the global twenty-first-century economy. This model of creative destruction requires a robust model of education and training, one that is responsive to the changing needs of regional markets and national economies (Wisman and Reksten 2013). Through education and training, the Job Guarantee sector can take the lead in developing and investing in alternative green technologies. The public sector is the only economic sector that has the means to invest in alternative technologies; because unlike private businesses, it can divorce itself from the profit motive. Many existing federally financed goods and services are not economically profitable, but societies decide that they serve a larger social benefit; current examples include government investment in mass transit, national parks, and the investment in public education, to name just a few. In a similar vein, part of the education and training component can be orientated toward these and similar welfare-enhancing programs. Specifically, federal governments can use the Job Guarantee program as a means to seriously address the dual problems of ever increasing natural resource use and climate change through the teaching and adoption of a “green economic” system of development alongside traditional workforce development programs.(4)