Universal PIC - DDI 2023

PICs vs. Basic Income & Jobs Guarantee
Competition—"Must Be Universal” Yes/No
JG = Yes Universal (Neg)
A Federal Jobs Guarantee is universal and unconditional.
Ryan Bhandari 19 {former senior policy advisor, economic program} - ("Third Way," No Publication, published 4-25-201, accessed 7-11-2023, https://www.thirdway.org/memo/what-is-the-federal-jobs-guarantee-and-what-are-people-saying-about-it)/
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.
Anyone can participate.
Pearkes, ’20 [George Pearkes, global macro strategist for Bespoke Investment Group, “The latest progressive economic policy is designed to stabilize the US labor market — and it looks a lot like the military,” published February 13, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/job-guarantee-economic-idea-progressives-us-military-similarities-2020-2 //jwc]
A federal jobs guarantee is a pretty simple idea: if you want a job, you get one, at a living wage and with full benefits that we associate with full-time labor, like healthcare. Granular specifics such as the level of wages offered or the specific level of non-wage benefits can vary, but all job guarantee proposals share those basic attributes.
FJG has no restrictions.
Novello, ’18 [Amanda Novello, senior policy associate at The Century Foundation, “Universal Basic Income versus Jobs Guarantee—Which Serves Workers Better?,” published December 17, 2018, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/universal-basic-income-versus-jobs-guarantee-serves-workers-better/ //jwc]
A federal jobs guarantee is a simple idea with transformational potential: it’s the idea that the government would provide a job for anyone that wanted one, because there are people who need jobs, and there is work to be done. Proponents of a federal jobs guarantee say that the federal government, in partnership with local job boards, could bridge the gap between willing labor and necessary work. Most interestingly, proponents argue that a federal jobs guarantee could address the failure of the private labor market to provide decent paying jobs by offering $15 minimum hourly pay, health care, and other benefits, forcing the private sector to offer more to compete.
It's voluntary, permanent, and on-demand.
Olderham, ’20 [James Olderham, Professor of Law and Legal History Emeritus at Georgetown Law, “Green Jobs Guarantee, Coronavirus, and Public Sanitation,” published Spring 2020, https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=econ_student_papers_economies //jwc]
First, it is necessary to describe exactly how the Green Job Guarantee is intended to work, at least in a general sense. To do so, it may be most helpful to first understand the intent of a general Jobs Guarantee/ELR proposal. In general, a Federal Jobs Guarantee program could be defined as: “…a public option for jobs. It is a permanent, federally funded, and locally administered program that supplies voluntary employment opportunities on demand for all who are ready and willing to work at a living wage. While it is first and foremost a jobs program, it has the potential to be transformative by advancing the public purpose and improving working conditions, people’s everyday lives, and the economy as a whole (Tcherneva, 2018).”
Job guarantee is universal.
MMN, No Date
The Modern Money Network, https://modernmoneynetwork.org/content/job-guarantee, panav
DEFINITION
A government job guarantee is a proposed program where the government would provide a job with a basic wage and benefits package to anyone willing and ready to work. The job guarantee is one component of an overall program to stabilize an economy. The job guarantee is financially feasible when a sovereign government’s currency uses a floating exchange rate.
Job guarantee is universal and permanent.
Tcherneva, Pavlina R., 2018 "The job guarantee: design, jobs, and implementation." Levy Economics Institute, Working Papers Series 902 (2018)., panav
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.
Despite real world examples, a full job guarantee is universal.
Ehnts, Dirk H., and Maurice Höfgen., 2019, "The job guarantee: Full employment, price stability and social progress." Society Register 3.2 (2019): 49-65., panav
With regards to real-world examples of JG programs, the empirical record of direct public employment programs ranges from large-scale programs in India (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), Argentina (Plan Jefes y Jefas) or the US (New Deal) to smaller-scale programs such as youth employment guarantees. While these programs offer insights about a potential outline of the JG as well about its social and economic effects, their applicability, however, is limited since those programs were of smaller scale, targeted to specific groups or time-limited. In contrast, the JG, as outlined in this paper, is a universal program of national scale.
A federal job guarantee is universal by design.
Paul 2018, [Mark Paul; Mark Paul is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. “The Federal Job Guarantee,” center on budget and policy priorities]
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.
A job guarantee is universal with no exceptions.
Dylan Matthew 17 { Dylan Matthews is a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox's Future Perfect section and has worked at Vox since 2014. He is particularly interested in global health and pandemic prevention, anti-poverty efforts, economic policy and theory, and conflicts about the right way to do philanthropy.} - ("Job guarantees, explained," Vox, published 4-24-2018, accessed 7-11-2023, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/6/16036942/job-guarantee-explained)/
“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.
—Can’t Require Training
No requirements exist for a FJG – anyone can get a job.
Tcherneva 20, [Pavlina Tcherneva is an Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, NY. She specializes in Modern Monetary Theory and public policy, 2020, "Job Guarantee FAQ," https://pavlina-tcherneva.net/job-guarantee-faq/, accessed 7-12-2023, panav]
The JG serves the function as a “public option for work” because it is open to all, irrespective of income or labor market status. Whatever work and pay conditions it offers will become the standard for the economy as a whole. Under special circumstances someone may prefer lower-paid private sector work, but as a rule the proposed JG wage ($15 per hour, plus benefits) will become the effective minimum wage. There is some empirical evidence that illustrates this effect (Tcherneva 2012).
Job guarantee is low-skill work, no training or skills can be required before.
Mitchell 05, [Mitchell, William F., and L. Randall Wray. "Full employment through a Job Guarantee: a response to the critics." Available at SSRN 1010149 (2005)., panav]
Sawyer (2003: 894) asks “how does … [the ELR wage] … compare with the productivity of the workers involved?” He then proceeds with a surprisingly neoclassical-inspired human capital analysis of three situations each of which compares the implied productivity of the JG job (q) to the ‘true’ productivity of the worker in an alternative job (Q). Where q < Q, the general case according to Sawyer (2003: 894) because “ELR jobs are low-skill, low-productivity jobs”, “underemployment replaces unemployment”. The design of jobs under a JG has to ensure the positions are accessible to the most disadvantaged workers in the labour market, for it is they who typically bear the brunt of unemployment. In that sense if productivity resides in the individual (as in human capital theory) as opposed (more realistically) to being the outcome of a complex mix of individual characteristics, team-based collaboration, on-the-job training, and job design and management, then it is highly likely that q will approximate Q, for most individuals who will rely on JG employment for anything other than short transitional unemployment.
JG = Not Universal (Aff)
Jobs guarantees make a job available to any qualifying individual, but those legal qualifications can be anything.
L. Randall Wray, 8-23-2009, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Research Director with the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability and Senior Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute, "Job Guarantee," New Economic Perspectives, https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2009/08/job-guarantee.html
A job guarantee program is one in which government promises to make a job available to any qualifying individual who is ready and willing to work. Qualifications required of participants could include age range (i.e. teens), gender, family status (i.e. heads of households), family income (i.e. below poverty line), educational attainment (i.e. high school dropouts), residency (i.e. rural), and so on. The most general program would provide a universal job guarantee, sometimes also called an employer of last resort (ELR) program in which government promises to provide a job to anyone legally entitled to work.
There are two categories of job guarantee proposals: ones like Tcherneva who think that universality is good, and others who think various eligibility criteria should be attached.
Hasdenteufel 21 – MA in Econ, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Marie Hasdenteufel, Modelling a Job Guarantee for Germany using a Job Search Model, November 2021, https://www.momentum-institut.at/system/files/2022-02/2022-Hasdenteufel-Marie-Masterarbeit-Modelling%20a%20Job%20Guarantee%20for%20Germany%20using%20a%20Job%20Search%20Model.pdf
There exist various approaches to define the group of eligible persons. At this point, the literature can clearly be divided into two fields: those, proposing a Job Guarantee to anyone willing to work (Tcherneva, 2020b); and those defining eligibility criteria such as age, duration of unemployment spell or other factors and proposing a Job Guarantee as a sociopolitical instrument to the unemployed (e.g. Picek, 2020; Lietzmann et al., 2018). In any case, the more restricted the criteria are, the bigger the threat of excluding potential candidates (Lietzmann et al., 2018), and consequently, the smaller the aggregate effect. Previous work argues that the number of people joining the public labor force would be higher than the number of officially registered unemployed: Sawyer (2003) puts emphasis on the “hidden unemployment” (Sawyer, 2003, p. 889)16 and concludes that the number of real unemployed workers is much higher.17 However, there are contrary opinions in the literature. Although there might be more unemployed persons than officially reported, the Job Guarantee is likely to have a stabilizing effect on the overall economy which would downsize the pool of workers in the public program (Tcherneva, 2018).
Real world examples of JG are not universal.
Tcherneva, Pavlina R., 2012, "The job guarantee: delivering the benefits that basic income only promises–a response to guy standing." Basic Income Studies 7.2 (2012): 66-87., panav
In sum, there are three critiques presented here: (1) there is a fundamental tension in the way income in a monetary production economy is generated, the manner in which BIG wishes to redistribute it, and the subsequent negative impact of this redistribution on the process of income generation itself. The BIG policy is dependent for its existence on the very system it wishes to undermine; (2) The macroeconomic implications of BIG for contemporary economies that use modern money are devastating, whereas the JG stabilizes both the macro-economy and the currency, while helping transform the nature of work; and (3) the version of the job guarantee in Standing’s piece is not an accurate presentation of the modern proposals. Additionally, there are several real-world examples that, although not universal, illustrate many of the benefits of job guarantee programs. I shall focus on one such example, the Argentinean job guarantee program Plan Jefes y Jefas and its subsequent replacement by Plan Familias (a?type of income guarantee) to evaluate their relative merits.
—Can Require Training
Job guarantee includes training programs to prepare workers.
Cloudthat 22, [Cloudthat, 8-30-2022, "How Do Job Guarantee Program Courses Work?," CloudThat Resources, https://www.cloudthat.com/resources/blog/how-do-job-guarantee-program-courses-work, accessed 7-12-2023, panav]
Establishing a new career can be overwhelming. It might be challenging to comprehend the best career choice with so many educational options open and available. Job guarantee program courses can assist you to learn the necessary skills to begin a new career, and offer a job guarantee to help recompense for high tuition prices. Job guarantee courses are skills-based programs that provide comprehensive, intensive training to prepare you to work in diverse fields.
ELR is a form of job guarantee that provides training
--ELR=Employer of Last Resort
Kaboub 07 (Kaboub, Fadhel. PhD from UMKC in Econ & Social Science C consortium. Research affiliation with the Levy Economics Institute. “Employment guarantee programs: a survey of theories and policy experiences. Working Paper No. 498, Levy Econ Institute of Bard College. Econstor. Pages 11-12, https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/31495/1/571694519.pdf.)
In the C-FEPS/CofFEE version of ELR, the government guarantees a real job opportunity for anyone ready, willing, and able to work at a fixed socially-established basic wage (plus benefits), thus exogenously setting the price of labor. With ELR, the government will provide a price anchor and establish greater price stability. During a recession, the size of the ELR pool increases to absorb workers displaced from the private sector, and when the economy booms it automatically shrinks when ELR workers find employment in the private sector, hence it operates as a buffer stock employment program. The ELR wage is fixed, while the quantity of labor in the buffer stock fluctuates. Private sector employers can obtain labor at a mark-up over the ELR fixed wage; hence the price-stabilization feature of the program. Furthermore, ELR reduces the depreciation of skills caused by unemployment, it contains a training component to prepare participants for private sector employment. ELR also gives more opportunities and freedom of choice for both workers and employers. Participation in the program is voluntary, so it is not a “make work” program. In addition, ELR does not displace private sector jobs since it offers jobs which are undersupplied or not supplied at all by the private sector, including companions to the elderly, public school classroom assistants, safety monitors, low-income housing restoration engineers, environmental safety monitors, daycare assistants for ELR workers, community and cultural historians, and ELR artists or musicians (Wray 1998).
Training is a core part of the JG --- it’s the only way it benefits users
Tymoigne 13 (Tymoigne, Eric. Assistant Prof of Econ. @ Lewis and Clark College. Research Associate @ the Levy Economics Institute. “Job Guarantee and Its Critiques Insights from the New Deal Experience.” International Journal of Political Economy, vol. 42, no 2, Summer 2013. Page 83. M.E. Sharpe, Inc. DOI: 10.2753/IJP0891-1916420203. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24696550.pdf Accessed 7/12/23.) //Ulven
Third, training and education must be part of a JG program, as proponents have always advocated, though these were mostly absent from the 1930s work programs. Training is all the more important if private businesses stop providing on-the-job training. Not only will training and education help tackle structural unemployment, they will also improve the productivity and flexibil

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