Neg - MMT Job Guarantee - Michigan 7 2023 BEJJP

T---Taxes
Blocks
T-Taxes---Violation---2NC
MMT deliberately excludes redistributive taxation
Brian P. Hanley 21, Ph.D., founder and chief scientist for Butterfly Sciences, 2021, “Is Modern Monetary Theory’s prescription to spend without reference to tax receipts an invitation to tyranny?,” Acta Oeconomica, 71(3), pp. 431-450
MMT does not currently advocate, nor demand taxation for redistribution of wealth for the purpose of addressing inequality. However, Wray would like to tax the wealthy until they are no longer rich, though this is not a formal part of MMT (Wray 2020). 3 The redistribution of wealth through taxation is a fundamental feature of the neoclassical theory (Samuelson 1956; Mas-Colell et al. 1995; Keen 2011), but such wealth redistribution is absent from MMT (Wray 2014a). Redistribution taxation is no longer practiced as much as it once was, particularly in the USA (FRED 2020d), and despite its foundational position in neoclassical theory, it is rarely mentioned in public discourse today. However, I think that adding redistribution taxation to the MMT system is probably a necessity to stabilize the economy (Weller 2010), and to accomplish political stability (Acemoglu – Robinson 2012). The former reason is that taxation for redistribution lowers Gini, and thus, stabilizes demand growth. While Weller and Rao’s argument is relative to the emerging economies, the same issues appear in the developed ones. Relative to politics, Acemoglu and Robinson’s work shows that the more unequal economic hierarchies produce political instability together with worse economic performance. Barring this kind of taxation, other careful work must be done to prevent rentier gaming of the economy, although Mosler’s concept of eliminating bond sales has a great deal of merit.
T-Taxes---Topical Version---2NC
There’s a topical version of the aff consistent with MMT---even if taxes don’t directly fund spending, they can be used to directly redistribute income
Emilio Carnevali 23, Associate Professor, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne; and Giuseppe Fontana, Professor, University of Leeds Business School, 2023, “What modern monetary theory is, and what it is not,” European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, 20(1), pp. 56-66
It is fair to say that MMT authors tend not to emphasise the potential detrimental effects of high interest payments. As a result of political choices, real resources could de facto be diverted from low-income taxpayers, on whom the general taxation system relies disproportionally in developed countries, to high-income domestic or foreign savers. Of course, this also depends ultimately on who are the holders of government bonds. Yet regressive redistributive effects cannot be ruled out, when these holders are predominantly the representatives of the most affluent portions of the population. Even if one holds the MMT assumption that government expenditure is not funded by taxes, taxes are still used to drain real resources from the private sector: when a citizen pays taxes, the individual relinquishes purchasing power and gives it to the government. Interest payments on government debt correspond to a transfer of this purchasing power to individuals. Again, this could come with bottom-up redistributive effects. It makes a lot of difference whether public money is used to provide public goods (for example, to build schools or hospitals) or to pay interest on government bonds to a specific portion of the domestic or foreign population.
CP---Subsidized Employment
1NC
CP---Subsidized Employment---1NC
The Unites States Federal Government should adopt a subsidized employment program.
The CP solves unemployment through providing jobs to those that cannot currently find jobs. Solves better than a guarantee because programs can include training using public funds rather than MMT.
MDRC 13, Organizaton committed to finding solutions to some of the most difficult problems facing the nation — from reducing poverty and bolstering economic self-sufficiency to improving public education and college graduation rates, 2-2013, “Subsidized Employment: A Strategy for Bad Economic Times and for the Hard-to-Employ,” https://www.mdrc.org/publication/subsidized-employment-strategy-bad-economic-times-and-hard-employ // KG
Bottom Line: Subsidized employment programs provide jobs to people who cannot find employment in the regular labor market and use public funds to pay all or some of their wages. Some programs are designed primarily to provide short-term income support in poor economic times, while others also seek to improve long-term employment outcomes among “hard-to-employ” groups. Evaluations of subsidized employment programs suggest that they are effective at providing jobs in the short term but are less successful at helping participants transition to unsubsidized employment. However, these programs can also have valuable ancillary benefits, including the value of the work produced, reduced welfare receipt, and decreased recidivism among ex-offenders. To address lingering high unemployment rates for the long-term unemployed in the aftermath of the Great Recession, subsidized employment programs may be part of the answer, much as they were in past periods of deep unemployment.
What Do We Know?
Unemployment remains high for many disadvantaged and displaced groups. Nationally, the unemployment rate hovers around 8 percent long after the official end of the Great Recession. The rate is 15 percent — almost two times higher — if one counts involuntary part-time workers and “discouraged workers” who are not looking for jobs. Jobless rates are even higher for teenagers, individuals with criminal records, workers without any postsecondary education, and other groups that have difficulty finding jobs even when economic conditions are good. For a long time, policymakers have been searching for strategies that can provide people with immediate income (as they face the loss of unemployment insurance benefits), help to reduce the “scarring” that may hurt the employment prospects of the long- term unemployed, and aid the “hard-to-employ” in gaining work experience.
A subsidized employment program is one way to provide income support to people who cannot find jobs in the regular labor market, particularly during periods of high unemployment. The largest subsidized employment initiatives have been counter-cyclical programs, operated during periods of high unemployment. These programs have been designed primarily to provide work-based income support and have often targeted a broad range of unemployed people. Most recently, many states developed subsidized employment programs under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund, which was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). These programs scaled up very quickly and employed about a quarter million people in 2009-10. Unlike in the past, the largest state programs placed most participants in subsidized jobs in the private sector, rather than creating public service positions.
Subsidized employment programs can also be used to train people with few hard skills, little previous work experience, or other barriers to employment for jobs. A subset of smaller-scale subsidized employment programs have targeted groups of people that tend to have low rates of employment even when the labor market is healthy. These people typically lack education and work experience. The goal of these programs is to improve long-term employment outcomes by providing some soft skills and hands-on training with paid work experience. In some cases, improved employment outcomes are expected to lead to other effects, such as decreases in recidivism among ex-prisoners.
Transitional jobs (TJ) programs are the most common example of this approach and have been found to increase employment in the short term. But more must be done to improve longer-term employment outcomes for those with serious barriers to employment. Studies show that several TJ programs for former prisoners and welfare recipients generate very large increases in employment initially — due to the subsidized jobs themselves — suggesting that the programs have succeeded in employing many people who would not otherwise have worked. However, the TJ programs tested thus far have generally not improved long-term employment outcomes. Two possible explanations are that TJ programs fail to make participants more attractive to employers because transitional work is not perceived as valuable or hard skill-building — or that the programs have lacked strong job development components, which would more directly connect individuals to employers.
Some of the TJ programs have produced other positive effects. The Transitional Work Corporation (TWC), a TJ program that targeted welfare recipients, reduced welfare receipt and welfare payments. Another program that targets former prisoners, the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), generated decreases in recidivism through three years, a rare achievement resulting in as much as $8,300 in savings to taxpayers for each program participant. However, four other TJ programs that targeted recently released prisoners did not consistently reduce recidivism — even during the early period when there was a large impact on employment.
Older subsidized employment models that provided wage subsidies to private employers have been successful at improving employment and earnings outcomes for welfare recipients and other groups, but these programs were small and selective. It will be important to see whether the next generation of subsidized employment models that provide on-the-job training or place participants directly into subsidized jobs with private firms can produce better outcomes.
What’s Next?
These findings suggest that providing transitional jobs can provide short-term income support to individuals with serious barriers to employment or to broader groups during poor economic times, but it does not guarantee improvements in long-term employment or other outcomes. Thus, it is important to test enhanced models of subsidized jobs that include partnerships with private employers, the use of incentives for participants and employers, additional training in hard skills to better prepare people for unsubsidized jobs, and other supports designed to address the specific needs of the population being served.
Two major, multisite projects run by MDRC — the Department of Labor’s Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration — are currently testing the next generation of subsidized employment models, which are distinctly different from older TJ programs. These programs aim to increase the long- term employment of a variety of hard-to-employ populations, including welfare recipients, former prisoners, and low-income noncustodial parents. They also have additional goals specific to the target population, such as reducing welfare receipt, reducing recidivism, and increasing child support payments.
2NC
Solvency---General---2NC
Subsidized employment solves better --- improves wages, provides work experience and helps the economy.
Laura Meyer 21, Master of Public Policy Student, University of Michigan, 4-1-21, “Subsidized Employment: A Proven Strategy to Aid an Equitable Economic Recovery,” https://www.cbpp.org/research/income-security/subsidized-employment-a-proven-strategy-to-aid-an-equitable-economic // KG
Subsidized employment programs, meanwhile, have improved workers’ wages and employment for decades, and can provide economic benefits for participants that last for years. In the recovery from the Great Recession, state subsidized employment programs resourced through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund placed more than a quarter-million people in public- and private-sector jobs, giving them needed income and work experience. Experience like this, in turn, can connect participants to unsubsidized employment, improving their long-term job prospects.
Subsidized employment programs have improved workers’ wages and employment for decades and can provide economic benefits for participants that last for years.
The current crisis calls for a permanent subsidized employment program that can similarly respond to short-term needs as well as support workers who are disadvantaged even in good economic times. The resulting higher wages and employment levels would help not just these workers but the economy, as such workers are likelier to keep the money they earn flowing into local economies. Federal policymakers should ensure such a program makes it to the finish line and is included in the recovery legislation that they will consider later this year.
Solvency---vs JG---2NC
Subsidized employment solves better – they ensure unskilled workers aren’t left behind
Samuel Hammond 18, Resident senior fellow. He previously worked as an economist for the Government of Canada specializing in rural economic development, and as a graduate research fellow for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 3-27-18, “Why Not A Job Guarantee?” https://www.niskanencenter.org/not-job-guarantee/ // KG
3: Subsidized employment beats public employment.
Monetary policy and automatic fiscal stabilizers can support near-full employment without the political-economic problems of a job guarantee. New Zealand’s central bank, a historical leader in monetary policy innovation, recently updated its mandate to include “maximizing sustainable employment” alongside price stability. The Federal Reserve can and should interpret its dual mandate in an equally vigorous way.
That said, even a strong economy will leave some marginalized or discouraged workers behind. Providing subsidies to private sector employers for hiring hard-to-employ groups, from the long-term unemployed to individuals with disabilities, is a realistic strategy for closing the last mile of involuntary unemployment. As I’ve noted before, the United States trails the developed world in spending on active labor market policies. Researchers at the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality have published a review of the evidence from 40 years of U.S. employment subsidy programs and experiments, with many lessons for how a program with dedicated federal funding could work.
Solvency---Inequality---2NC
Empirics prove – subsidized employment programs have decades of proven success and can successfully reduce poverty and remove structural barriers to employment. Prefer neg ev – it is specific in the way it targets innequality at the roots.
Algernon Austin et al. 23, PhD, consults on race, politics, and economics in Washington, DC. He is the former director of the program on race, ethnicity, and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute. Et al. Natalia Cooper and Kali Grant, 2-22-23, “Subsidized Employment Can Help Fight Poverty in Good Times & Bad,” https://www.georgetownpoverty.org/issues/subsidized-employment-can-help-fight-poverty-in-good-times-bad/ // KG
Nearly 15 million people in the U.S. who would like to work are unable to find a job right now—despite a historically low national unemployment rate.1 This joblessness is not uniformly distributed across the country but concentrated in the most disadvantaged communities, particularly Black and Brown communities. A targeted, large-scale subsidized employment program can help these communities increase employment and reduce poverty.
Last year the national unemployment rate was 3.6 percent.2 The last time the national rate was this low was in 1969.3 But the national average hides the fact that there are many communities that are suffering from persistent, high levels of joblessness. In every state, one can find communities that have been similarly left behind due to deindustrialization, disinvestment, and discrimination related to the legacy of redlining and other policies. These communities tend to have a high share of workers with low incomes or workers of color. For example, last year the unemployment rate in the majority-Latinx town Yuma, Arizona, was 10 percent, nearly three times the national rate. It was 11 percent in both Flint, Michigan, and Magoffin County, Kentucky, predominantly Black and white locales, respectively. It was higher still in Jefferson County, Mississippi, where the unemployment rate is 14 percent and the large majority of residents are Black. It was 16 percent in the Alaska Native-majority Kusilvak area of Alaska.4
A large-scale employment program, where the federal government subsidizes all or part of a worker’s wages and targets communities with the highest rates of unemployment, can help increase employment where it is needed most. During periods when the national unemployment rate is holding steady or declining, the program should be ramped up to reduce unemployment in places with high rates of joblessness. This would help all communities share in the nation’s prosperity.
A half-century’s worth of evidence proves subsidized employment is a powerful, beneficial, and versatile policy tool for supporting structurally excluded communities and workers, who face a variety of systemic barriers to employment and who also tend to be most impacted by inflation. Well-designed programs that provide on-the-job training and vital wraparound supports, like child care and transportation assistance, can strengthen local economies and boost employment rates. Subsidized employment programs have also been shown to increase incomes, reduce involvement with the criminal legal system, improve the psychological well-being of participating workers and their families, and reduce long-term poverty.
Programs can be tailored to meet the specific needs of different communities, with lasting ripple effects. For example, evaluations of the New Hope program in Milwaukee showed improved test scores and academic performance among children of participating workers five years after the subsidized employment placement ended, and improved positive social behavior eight years after the placement’s end. There are countless other examples of effective subsidized employment programs that targeted workers with serious or intersecting barriers to employment, such as people facing racism, sexism, or discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, people experiencing challenges related to caregiving and health conditions or disabilities, people with criminal legal system involvement, or people without a high school credential or equivalent.
In March 2022, the Federal Reserve hiked the interest rate for the first time in more than three years—and has raised rates seven times since then—in the hope of reducing inflation. A typical consequence of the Federal Reserve’s actions is higher unemployment. Often the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes lead to a recession.
It would be useful to have a targeted, automatically responsive, national subsidized employment program in place to support communities consistently left behind throughout the business cycle, and especially during times when the nation’s unemployment rate is decreasing. That way, when the Federal Reserve is increasing interest rates and unemployment, we could still preserve some level of employment through subsidized jobs. Since these jobs would be targeted to communities with the highest levels of unemployment, the jobs support would always benefit those who need it the most. And it would help mitigate the rise in unemployment and poverty that usually results from Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. In this way, a large-scale subsidized employment program could help disadvantaged communities in good economic times and bad.
It solves – scalable, accessible program that is proven to significantly reduce poverty rates.
Indivar Dutta-Gupta et al. 18, Co-Executive Director of the Georgetown Center on

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