Episode 259 – Redefining Work with Tyler Emerson

Macro N Cheese – Episode 259
Redefining Work with Tyler Emerson
January 13, 2024

 

[00:00:00] Tyler Emerson [Intro/Music]: There’s really no doubt that we live in an extraordinarily wealthy society. The most wealthy society ever, by many standards. And yet we’re told to accept that some people didn’t earn it. They didn’t earn a job. They didn’t earn health care. They didn’t earn housing.

The job guarantee needs to be a voluntary program, and needs to be good work that people can undertake if they want to. And I want to make sure that’s clear with the disability question too, because we do not want to be forcing people to workfare.

[00:01:35] Geoff Ginter [Intro/Music]: Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:43] Steve Grumbine: All right. This is Steve with Macro N Cheese. My guest today is Tyler Emerson. This is special. There’s so much special about today that makes this exciting for me. First of all, it’s my father’s heavenly birthday, I know you’re watching over me pop today, and this is a really good time. We’ve got stuff going on with mom, the world is falling apart, but we’re talking about solutions.

And Tyler represents something really special. And I think you need to understand that generations of MMT informed people are growing up through the academic circles, through the activist circles. And Tyler is one of those next generation folks, working with Pavlina Tcherneva and Levy and EDI, which we’re going to talk about today.

Let me just give you a little bit of background on Tyler. And these are the things that give me hope, seeing new people get into the ring and begin this fight for informing and transforming society. And that’s what we’re all about here.

So, Tyler is an economist and musician, working as a research assistant for the OSUN, O S U N Economic Democracy Initiative at Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. His research on the link between unemployment and disability culminated in his thesis, the job guarantee, as it relates to people with disabilities. And I’ve got some stuff to say about that as well, this is exciting

Tyler’s area of interest continues to be the history and future of people with disabilities in the American labor force, and how macroeconomic and sociological trends affect their economic position.

Tyler, welcome to the show.

[00:03:31] Tyler Emerson: Thank you. Thank you so much, Steve. It’s great to be on.

[00:03:35] Grumbine: This is really exciting because it’s been a few years, but I interviewed Scott Fullwiler and his wife is disabled as well. When we were talking about the job guarantee, I said, why wouldn’t a person with disabilities be able to partake in the federal job guarantee? In fact, it seems custom made to be very inclusive, to allow people of all abilities to find a way to feel like they’re making a contribution.

And it was one of those a-ha moments, because I see the job guarantee as also a democracy enhancer that allows all of us to participate and say what matters to us, and look at opportunities to enhance the public purpose. And it seems like this is your calling. I’m really excited to talk to you today.

[00:04:20] Emerson: Yeah, I totally agree. And when I started at Bard and I had a chance to get an introduction to the job guarantee literature I was thinking, where’s disability in this? Disability has always been something my family had been aware of. And then I had to take medical leave from school for awhile. And I know firsthand that people with disabilities have a right to be included in our society in all dimensions, and want to be part of society in all dimensions.

And work is central, at least to the modern experience of participating in society and participating in democracy too. And so yeah, I think disability is core to that and the job guarantee fits, I think, so well into the structure of the economy, where people with disabilities have been left behind so consistently and are at the whims of private sector employment, which doesn’t necessarily prioritize social inclusion and cohesion.

[00:05:23] Grumbine: The average person thinks of private sector employment as the only valid expression of producing value. And it’s because of the profit minded nature that society has been completely polluted with, as a result of living in this system. This is transformative, not just for the disabled, not just for people that are hurting, but fundamentally restructuring our brains to how we envision partaking in society and redefining work.

Let’s start with defining how you envision disabled people partaking in such a thing.

[00:06:07] Emerson: Right. So, the main recommendations that I come to the job guarantee with, regarding people with disabilities, first, I think is just making sure where the job guarantee is so democratizing, is at the local level. It’s centrally funded and then locally administered. So you have communities giving their input into what the job guarantee should mean for their local communities.

And I think for people with disabilities, that means at the central level and at the local level, you really want representation in that decision making. Making sure that the projects that are undertaken are accessible to people with disabilities, the work that’s undertaken. And then also making sure that people with disabilities have a voice in that process at the central level. And making sure there’s not discrimination, because with a huge program, of course, there’s always a chance that there will be pockets of discrimination.

And then the other big question with people with disabilities, is losing their benefits in our current system. Benefits cliffs and fears about losing, whether that’s their supplemental income or it’s their health insurance. And I think that’s where the job guarantee is so important in strengthening that safety net.

But people with disabilities have to be especially sensitive to not wanting people to be cut off from their benefits if they choose to participate. And then the other thing is there are so many great non-profits and there’s debate about how a job guarantee should or shouldn’t include non-profits or other organizations.

And my recommendation is that they do include non-profits, regarding people with disabilities, because those are people who have the experience and expertise and understand- again- those benefit systems and other social structures, and have those existing community connections.

And then the other big thing is, our society is not really totally accessible right now. And I think just making sure there are jobs, job guarantee jobs, and programs that are really dedicated to making our public life more accessible to people with disabilities. And I think that’s something the job guarantee is so well suited for above everything else.

And then another thing is remote work. And that’s something, coming through the pandemic, we really saw become more normal. And people with disabilities- I think for a long time, certain disabilities- just hoped that that would be a pathway to inclusion.

And I think something I also haven’t read much in the job guarantee literature is the place of remote work. And I think that’s something people working on the job guarantee should be considering also, when they think about disability. So, those are my primary areas of interest for design and implementing the job guarantee.

Especially making sure that it’s accessible for people with disabilities or whatever it might be. Other people in the disability community, I also spent time in my thesis talking about, like the caregivers. And that’s such a huge component of that experience when precarity is a normal aspect of American life, especially for families who incur a lot of these costs related to disability and the medical system.

[00:09:31] Grumbine: I appreciate that. It’s incredibly important. In the Great Financial Crisis I lost a career and it fundamentally changed pretty much everything about my life. And the ability to pick up a job guarantee job, versus waiting around for that little pittance of unemployment. Talking about it, ‘gosh, I wish there was a job guarantee, I wish there was something other than this.’ and listening to other people, that maybe are not in the community of MMT and pushing for a job guarantee, it really was all about just giving people money.

I think that there’s some value here in understanding the mechanisms of a job guarantee and what some of the benefits- that maybe aren’t stated out loud as often as they should be.

What is the one thing that I have that I can’t trade, that is a static thing?… and that is my time. And if I have a job, a predatory company can’t poach me for a crap wage and then subsidize it with a UBI. I have some bargaining power with a job guarantee, that allows me to get a livable wage with benefits. And if that company isn’t going to meet or beat those things, they’re not going to get my labor.

So, even though a lot of the focus is on disability in this conversation, I think- broadly speaking- it’s almost like a union of voters. The opportunity to wage somewhat of an individual strike against bad wages. But collectively, because no one would have to take a bad wage because there’s a better alternative. I don’t know if ‘bargaining power’ is the right way of saying it, but it’s power of some variety.

Would you speak to that?

[00:11:28] Emerson: Yeah, I totally agree. The job guarantee- I do think- is essential for setting the minimum standards, whether that’s the wage or just the social conditions of work. I think there’s all the benefits for people individually, and the income, and the dignity of having a decent job. All of that is absolutely true, but really- as a macro tool- it does provide that public option.

That way of workers saying, ‘I’m not going to work a job where I have no notice about my hours.’ My hours can be cut. My hours can be increased without me having any say, and not being able to really plan to have the basic things that you have to do to have a decent life.

And benefits are part of that too. We have so many full time jobs now that just do not really provide people with the basic benefits and wages that they need to live in dignity. And also, often people have to search far and wide from their local communities to get that right job. And yeah, I think the job guarantee is so central to strengthening people’s position, because there are all sorts of private sector jobs, companies, profit models that really work for companies, but do not work for the workers.

And I think people should be able to opt out, especially- again- because the private sector just does not create enough jobs. It really does not and it will not do so, even in the rare circumstances it does for durable time. And I think the job guarantee says everyone is employable, and if you want a job, you should have access to decent employment right now.

[00:13:14] Grumbine: This is exactly the point. Who are you serving? Whose class interest is the government serving? Is it serving the interest of capital, to keep us desperate and wanting? Or is it serving the public at large, to ensure that it has agency in this dog-eat-dog capitalist world?

To me, it’s quite clear, that in the absence of a job guarantee, you’re serving capital. You need to give us something to have a countervailing force to fight back, otherwise we’re just completely at its mercy.

Let me jump ahead. I see that there’s been this huge push for designing a framework, for this concept for a job guarantee through your organization. This is one of the things that prompted me to reach out to Pavlina and to you for this interview.

I was very excited about it. There’s a lot of countries around the world that have a lot of people that are in severe poverty, that have no access to work. That the countries don’t understand how to work with a free-floating currency, a currency of their own creation, to provide for their public purpose.

And I think it’s instructive to note, that you can purchase anything that’s for sale in your own country, as long as it’s for sale in your currency. And we look at work of Fadhel Kaboob, who talks frequently about the spectrum of monetary sovereignty, of food, energy, and value added production sovereignty, to empower domestic production, to serve their needs. So they’re not at the mercy of the IMF and other predatory agencies around the globe.

And the job guarantee- by putting it out there- fundamentally counters a lot of those IMF structural adjustments. If you were to look at this with the lens of what I just stated, how might the framework- that you are putting forward- address this?

And let’s talk about the framework, too.

[00:15:13] Emerson: Yeah. So, we’ve just put out this site, thejobguarantee. org, which is really trying to synthesize, in a readable way- both for the general public and then scholars and policy makers too- what the job guarantee is, in a general sense. And provide some real examples with our global map, which has public employment programs from around the world, that fit some dimension of a job guarantee policy.

And I think what we have honed in on is, first of all, that these public employment programs are achievable around the world. They are done, and India is prime example of that with the rural employment guarantee, which employs between 60 and 100 million people a year. And so, the core principles that we felt embodied the job guarantee, the spirit of a job guarantee, our first is that financing is not the issue.

And you were just pointing to that. Which is, when countries have their currencies, they can pay for these programs. And they’re not really that expensive as far as, I think, the enormous social and economic benefits are. Most of these programs fall somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5% of GDP, which is a lot of money and resources.

But again, like you said, people are unemployed, people don’t have work, and so, those are unemployed resources. Again, the next principle, I think pointing to that, is there’s an abundant and unfilled need for socially useful work. And that sort of goes back to what we were talking about with private sector employment.

Profit models really do not always equal social good and social value. And then the third principle that we point to, is that everyone who wants a job, should have access to decent employment. And that’s something that’s core to the job guarantee, over just a public employment program. Also, no one is unemployable, which is a value statement about what the job guarantee should aspire to.

And then finally, unemployment should not be used as a policy tool. And that’s something you’ve had other people on the job guarantee talk about, with the NAIRU.

[00:17:36] Grumbine: I think that this is important to this whole conversation, at least it’s been to me. And it’s something, as long as I’ve been talking about this stuff, that I don’t think it resonated with me quite as much as it has been over the last couple months, and really in particular at the moment. And that is, there’s a fundamental change in understanding that has to take place in people’s hearts and their minds, before any of these things make sense.

I say a lot of things, but I say them so often, that I just believe that they’re so common sense and matter of fact, that it’s inescapable. How can you not see this? And aside from the propaganda that we’ve been force fed, there’s some wiring in the brain that tells us things that just ain’t so. Things that we have accepted as truth.

The value of a person is based on their income, what they can produce for society. Or the family lineage and what school they went to. A lot of these things sound great to people that have had that epiphany, but the vast majority- of even well meaning people- are trapped in a world where there’s a lack of empathy and imagination. But it’s a fundamental change in how we see what the value of human beings are.

And it’s particularly poignant right now with the wars in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, that bring us to this point where our nerve endings have started deadening because we’re overwhelmed with bad news and gloom and doom and death. And I’ve often heard MMT described as the light that shines on you, to show you your value system.

Once you understand, now I know who you are because I can see what you’re advancing. But people that don’t know, there’s this fundamental narrative to make us feel like we shouldn’t be doing good things for people. It’s just because they’re lazy and they made bad choices. And it’s so programmed into society, even the people that I think are allies, I find erring on that side.

How would you address that?

[00:19:59] Emerson: Well, I totally agree. I started out at a more traditional, neoclassical economics program and I transferred to Bard. And it was such a breath of fresh air because I was being taught the minimum wage is bad for people, it’s really bad for low wage earners. Those sorts of ideas were really central to the teaching.

And I just found that so disheartening and really uninspiring and unconvincing personally, but obviously a lot of people are convinced by those arguments. But when I went to Bard, I was so heartened because I think what MMT- and all the research around it, the researchers, their work- has shown so clearly that we have the resources. And many societies, but in the United States specifically, we’ve undertaken a lot of these large scale programs before.

I think there’s really no doubt that we live in an extraordinarily wealthy society. The most wealthy society ever by many standards, and yet we’re told to accept that some people didn’t earn it. They didn’t earn a job. They didn’t earn healthcare. They didn’t earn housing. And I think MMT and the job guarantee is a core part of that research tradition, saying we have the resources. And key to that is that money -which we are told is scarce and a dangerous tool when held by the government- is a tool of the government and is a public resource, and something that should be mobilized for the public good.

And I think getting that message out to the public, I think that’s what this website is trying to do in both providing a depth of resources, but also a clear, distinct message on the job guarantee, saying countries all around the world- even countries with a small fraction of the resources that we have in North America and in the United States- can undertake these social programs because money is a public resource, and these people don’t have work and they want work.

So, what I would say is, I think we need to move away from this scarcity mentality, which is drilled into us as Americans, even though we live in this remarkably abundant society. And remember that these tools- money is one of them- are abundant, and can serve the public interest. And getting that message more public is key to that.

[00:22:43] Grumbine: Your organization has got people from all around the world, and I’ve seen, predominantly Pavlina, and others in Europe and in Africa, South America. So, what is the unifying idea? Is it just simply that money is a public good and enabler of the public purpose? Or is it ‘we can solve poverty?’

What is the main message? How are we presenting it elsewhere? What makes sense outside of empire?

[00:23:18] Emerson: Right. One thing we feature centrally- on the site, on the homepage- is this UN report by Olivier De Schutter. And he’s the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. And what he highlights so well in that report, is that the job guarantee- specifically- is key, as part of that global strategy on addressing poverty. That without a job guarantee, addressing extreme poverty is maybe an impossible task. And the job guarantee is just part of that, but is a core part of that.

I think there’s all sorts of angles on it, but I do think that remembering that we set the rules for our governments and how money is used, and that money is a public good and should be used for the public good, is really central to that around the world.

And obviously, you’ve had people speak much more eloquently on this, but on a monetary sovereignty question, I think even though there are those disparities around the world, MMT and the job guarantee, as part of that, still provide a pathway for thinking about what currency can be and what currency should be used for.

[00:24:39] Grumbine: The minute you say ‘government money’, a lot of folks, the very first thing that comes to their mind is ‘printing money.’ And we know that Friedman and others, when they throw the words ‘printing money’ around, have poisoned the brain to believe that printing money- which is not a thing, by the way- is inherently inflationary. And I think the work of Isabella Weber- and even Warren Mosler’s take on interest rates, ‘they’re pumping money to the wealthy’- there’s never a real serious conversation about these things.

And when you think of a program like the job guarantee, everybody’s got these very stunted, warped ideas that it’s ‘make-work.’ It’s dig a hole, fill a hole… it’s socialism. So ultimately, we’re in this weird kind of zone of… there’s reality, there is new information, and then there is getting rid of the old information.

What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of these programs, to get past with people as you’re talking with them? As an economist, you probably work with more economists, but even economists- the post Keynesians who are cousins, but they’re not quite there, and the other neoclassicals and the positive money people, the new Keynesians- and none of them really see money as a public good.

What are the key misnomers that you see, that prevent people from accepting this? Let’s start with the academic circles, your peers and other disciplines. What are the key things that you feel are barriers, to moving forward with this kind of work?

[00:26:35] Emerson: Right. I think there’s a few big hangups. I think there’s the financing, there’s the administration, and then there’s the actual content of the work. And we’ve already touched on that financing question, but people think we’re going to employ millions of people and that’s going to cost us trillions and trillions of dollars.

And again, these programs- if universal- are not inexpensive financially, but they are probably less expensive than not undertaking them at all, because they already incur so many costs of unemployment and underemployment. We know there’s health effects, there’s social health effects… these are well noted in the literature.

So on that point- and again- they are usually between basically 0.5% of GDP and 2% of GDP, which- all things considered- is not financially out of reach, especially for countries like the United States. So, there’s the financing question.

Then there’s the administration question. I think this is where old habits die hard, is just thinking government can’t manage a big bureaucracy like this. It’s just inefficient, there’ll be corruption everywhere and just inefficiency, essentially. And I think- what even our historical experience with the New Deal shows is that- it can be done. We have, even at that time, no digital way of managing this.

We had enormous public investment and labor projects that provided work to millions of Americans, quickly and effectively. And I would tell other economists and our listeners, you’ve probably interacted with those New Deal projects on a weekly basis… your post office, your local schools, your local infrastructure, that’s all thanks to New Deal investment in public works.

And so, both in the United States and around the world, these programs can be administered quickly on a short time scale, and efficiently. And like every program or organization, there will be kinks to be worked out over time. But with the right oversight, those are totally manageable.

Then the last question is, what the work is. And I think- again, like I was just pointing to in the New Deal experience in the United States- there’s so much work to be done. Especially in our time of climate catastrophe, which will only be escalating through our lifetimes, there’s so much work to be done.

And so, I have no doubt, especially working with local communities. If you go to any local community, there’s all sorts of projects they want to be done. They don’t have the resources for the people, and the money. And I think, even in our own communities, we have ideas about what could be done. And so, there’s really no barrier there.

And just one last thing I want to point to that hasn’t been said explicitly in this conversation, is the job guarantee needs to be a voluntary program, and needs to be good work that people can undertake, if they want to. And I want to make sure that’s clear with the disability question too, because we do not want to be forcing people to work there.

So, that is another concern that people have, is if this becomes a Soviet-style mandate or something like that. I don’t think there’s good evidence that that would happen, and I think there’s lots of ways to prevent that from happening too.

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[00:31:07] Grumbine: I think one of the parts of this that really is challenging, is what does it mean for something to cost a lot? That fundamental difference of where the money’s coming from, I think, seems to always be the big stumbling block out of the gates. And you don’t see any politicians that are willing to say ‘what are you worried about?’

You’ve still got 99. 999% of them saying ‘their hard earned tax dollars’ and all this nonsense that fuels that scarcity narrative. And it fundamentally implies ‘tax is theft’, which fuels the libertarians and the other folks that would have natural inherent bias against anything done via the government… especially through a central organizing tool administered locally, even.

And then, I think the other point that I think is challenging, is there’s various forms of the job guarantee. I’ve heard other people talk about it, Warren Mosler calls it a transition job and frequently doesn’t like calling it the ‘job guarantee program.’

You have guys like Bill Mitchell, who will take that concept of the job guarantee- and even Fadhel Kaboob will take this to some degree- that you can create a job in the job guarantee, and take it to your local office and say, ‘I’d like to do this, I’m proffering this up as a job I’d like to do within this.’ The potential to design your own job.

And then of course, there’s the nonprofit models. And there’s a host of other ones. But the one thing that they’re largely consistent on, is that this is the base case. This is the replacement for a minimum wage. In other words , this sets the floor. And so, when I hear things like a Green New Deal, a lot of us would like to see a more expansive work program that would allow us to provide green jobs.

But Warren Mosler would say that we can provide any jobs we want. There’s no requirement that it be a minimum job, like a job guarantee job. That you can hire people for anything you want, at any wage you want, as the government has it like that. So, how do we differentiate the job guarantee, versus typical public hiring?

And where do we delineate the difference between the job guarantee, and this green work? How would you respond to that?

[00:33:42] Emerson: Yeah, I think it’s important. There’s a lot of room for debate and developing these models of a job guarantee. And now, I think we think about it at the Economic Democracy Initiatives, is first and foremost, the job guarantee should be providing that on demand, basic work. And that can be in the environment, that can be in social work, local, small infrastructure, you just want to have those jobs on demand.

And at the same time, you do not want to degrade the quality of existing public employment. You don’t want to replace the teachers in the school with job guarantee workers, for example. And I take that stance too. I would say that you could have a tiered system where with more credentialing, etc., you could have jobs under the job guarantee program that are paid more. But you have the basic work at that floor wage, which will be set for the entire economy.

Those are the biggest things that I think about.

[00:34:48] Grumbine: You were talking about credentialing. Why don’t we look at that? Because one of the things I had heard in the past was, ‘we have this job guarantee program and we’re going to create steps to create career based programs through the job guarantee that will provide education as a means of creating the next layer of, maybe even administrators, within the program.

It can have a pipeline that allows people to go from homelessness and having a guaranteed right to a job, to homed and with having a job and with benefits, to become a manager within this space and I’ve developed skills, and now I’m pulling the next person along and being a mentor, and I’m getting a bump in pay.

There was a whole bunch of neat ideas there, structurally limited only by our imaginations. Your thoughts.

[00:35:44] Emerson: I think that’s exactly right. And that’s something that I’ve thought about with the disability component. Also is, you may need an office, whether that’s centrally or at a state level, whatever it is, that’s helping to administer the program in an equitable way. I think training on the job- I think a lot of people know this- but a lot of your real training doesn’t come from school.

It comes from being at work and getting that on the ground experience, at whatever work you’re undertaking. And I think the job guarantee is central to that. I think generally, that base level job guarantee job, we do envision to be more transitional and not quote unquote as permanent, but there are jobs in the job guarantee that you would want to be more stable and more permanent.

And then some of those programs may be spun off eventually and turned into permanent public works divisions under the government. But exactly, I think that you would want the base level jobs to be not so socially essential- on a day to day basis- that if someone leaves and takes a private sector job or moves to another public sector job or another rung up on the job guarantee, that they couldn’t do that because that work is so socially essential.

So really with the job guarantee what you want is very basic, socially useful, meaningful employment on demand for people. But you also want to be providing jobs at a higher level, higher pay, etc., that are more skilled and come with that credentialing. And like you said, there’s all sorts of ways of imagining, whether that’s in the job guarantee or you have other public works programs, that aren’t part of the job guarantee.

 But I do think with the scale of need, whether it’s climate or social, that you want major public investment and real progression, that people can get that expertise and build those skills over time. Whether they stay in the public sector or they be used for private sector employment at a later time.

[00:37:48] Grumbine: That’s well stated. Most people think of ‘real work’, as they say, as a conveyor belt. And if you got five people in the conveyor belt and one person’s not doing their part, then the whole system fails. But what you’re suggesting is we recognize the transient nature of the job guarantee. We don’t want it to be something they can already feel the mental conservative creeping in here.

If it’s not necessary, why are you doing it? Isn’t that make-work? If you’re not going to miss them, if they don’t do it tomorrow… well, what value did that bring? And even within the nonprofit world, running a volunteer organization, we have people that come and go. And sometimes they do what they say they’ll do, sometimes they don’t.

And unfortunately- say you’re creating a podcast- if somebody doesn’t show up to do a certain part of it, the podcast doesn’t go out. So imagine, in a compensated fashion, how do you transition to balance that? Joey didn’t show up today. Johnny doesn’t get whatever he needed done. That seems to be a potential problem area.

I don’t know if it’s a problem, in terms of actually doing itm so much as it’s a problem of messaging and how you get past ‘isn’t it just make work?’

And I see these things as socially valuable. I think that we need to sell the understanding of the social value to society, of what people working and having something that they believe in. Even if it’s transient.

Help me bridge that. How might I work through that?

[00:39:30] Emerson: Like you said, I think with all types of jobs- so they’re at the highest level or whatever they may be- work is transient. Their life circumstances change. They move. They get a different job. So, I don’t think- in kind- it’s a problem that people would transition out of the program. And I think essentially, with that basic work, there would be so many people in the program.

There would always be people coming and going. You would not, I don’t think, you’re really running out of people to do that basic work at a local level. So, I think there would be continuity of service. And I think that’s where having a permanent program is so important, for making sure that those useful work goals are achieved and projects are finished.

I think the experience has been that these public projects, in more temporary programs, can be accomplished. I also don’t think there’s a problem with people staying permanently in those base level job guarantee jobs. I think that’s important with the disability discussion, as some people, their career is doing the job guarantee job.

And I think there’s different ways of taking that on, but I think people should be able- given that it is a public option- to stay there, and as long as they’re doing the work, then they should be welcomed to stay.

[00:40:50] Grumbine: I agree with that. Let’s go back to the website itself, that you guys have created. Can you step me through that?

Who is your audience? Who are you looking at to use this website? Is this for general information? Is this for governments? How do you envision its use ?

[00:41:08] Emerson: I think there’s something on this site for everyone. And I think our tagline is for engaged citizens, policymakers, and scholars. So essentially, we have the site set up. The homepage has got the UN report featured- which is an important document from 2023- which is outlining how important the job guarantee is for poverty alleviation.

Then we’ve got news and events on there from around the world, and articles as well, about the job guarantee. And then the way the rest of the site is organized, we really have centered just explaining what the job guarantee is, succinctly, in a general sense. Again, there’s different models of the job guarantee.

These are those principles we put forth, and that’s organizing: What is the job guarantee? Why is the job guarantee necessary and important? Why should we undertake it? And then how, that financing and real resources question. And then in addition to that, we also have a repository of resources for academics and policymakers who want to dig into what is the NREGA legislation really look like?

What does that law look like in India? We have programs from around the world and we have summaries of how they look and how many people they employ, how much they cost. And then we also have a huge bibliography, it’s got more than 300 articles. Really everything we could find on the job guarantee.

Listeners, if you have an article that you don’t find there, please send it our way. We’d love to include it. We have a section that’s on polls. We’ve got, I think, about a dozen polls, which- from around the world- show the public support a job guarantee. Which is important for policymakers to see, I think.

Then we also have a book list. All the books we could find on the job guarantee are there. It has both the succinct explainer, like Pavlina’s primer on the job guarantee does so well. We have that basic framework, so people can just dive in. We have frequently asked questions. People can say, ‘Well, what is this? Why not this?’ That’s all there in the FAQs as well.

So, people can just come to the site with no understanding of the job guarantee and really walk away with clear vision for what the job guarantee would look like, how it would happen. But for people who want to stick around- people who are doing research- they can spend hours checking out the academic resources that are there, and getting those research questions rolling for the next wave of job guarantee literature.

[00:43:39] Grumbine: That’s fantastic. A couple of years back now, we did a book club for Pavlina’s A Case for a Job Guarantee, and we had Rohan and Nathan and Fadel and Pavlina came and went through various chapters of it, and we have that recorded on our website. Years ago there was a white paper at Levy about dealing with all the different pushback that people do for MMT. I think it was called a response or reply to critics, or something like that.

Does such a thing exist for the job guarantee as well?

[00:44:18] Emerson: So, I don’t know that we have a succinct paper like that. I know, in the bibliography, there’s at least one article that’s a response to criticism about the job guarantee. So, there are articles like that. And that’s a Levy paper, I believe as well, which do respond to at least some of the criticisms of the job guarantee.

So, that’s all there in the bibliography, but I can’t say whether there’s specifically one that goes down the line about common misconceptions. But hopefully the website, in some sense, does- to a critic- answer some of those questions.

[00:44:56] Grumbine: Absolutely. I’ve believed in the job guarantee, it was one of the big things that drew me into MMT. But the job guarantee had been kind of a weird thing because it’s policy, and we often say MMT is a lens. But if you understand the beginning of MMT, MMT says that taxes serve as a means of mobilizing work. And if the government didn’t complete the circuit by providing a pathway to pay the tax, that’s a cruel thing that we’re experiencing, even today.

Because capital, their job is to raise shareholder value, things have nothing to do with worrying about maintaining full employment. And so, when push comes to shove, their go-to maneuver is to lay people off.

I guess your final parting thoughts on what do you think is the next steps, in terms of taking this and making it come to fruition?

[00:46:02] Emerson: I think there’s two pieces. One is the public outreach piece, and getting this out to the public. Because I still think there are a lot of people who have never really considered the job guarantee as a realistic possibility, and it is. So, getting that out is important, but as the public polling shows, when posed the question, people are supportive of it.

I think what really needs to happen is that direct work with policymakers around the world and crafting legislation resolutions to keep building that legislative framework. And understanding in the policymaker class around the world, that the job guarantee is possible in many contexts and in different implementation models.

And having those conversations and providing that expertise. Having researchers provide that expertise and have really clear, succinct information, real world case examples. Which again, the website tries to demonstrate clearly. And I’d really just keep the conversation relevant, because I fear- like in a great depression scenario- that’s when the job guarantee gets pulled down off the shelf.

But I think what the job guarantee is so important for, is that preventative policy, structural policy. And I think- especially with many oncoming climate and social crises- having that policy put in place before things get really so dire- when the job guarantee can still be implemented and can still work- is really important.

And just to return to what you said before, capitalism and capital and corporations are- in a sense, as a conglomerate- very resilient to crises. They reshape themselves, they reimagine themselves, they pursue different models. And I think the public sector has to be innovating that way too.

And back on that preventative question, the government has to be thinking ahead because the corporations do not think ahead like that. The job guarantee is a preventative policy. I think it is so important to that. Especially when the job guarantee jobs themselves, will be so important to mitigating those social and environmental harms.

[00:48:23] Grumbine: You just said something. The idea that you’ve got an absolutely amorphous business class, that changes and shifts according to its needs. And then we have a static, never changing, rigid public space that is expected to never change. Businesses do what they must do to survive. People matter. And they’re the ones that are caught in the middle of that.

And when government doesn’t react, they’re left to the business cycle, that just simply dumps them into the streets.

[00:48:58] Emerson: I know, I think capitalism itself, can totally endure great misery among the general population. And I think government- and in this case, we’re talking about specifically the job guarantee as just such a crucial tool in saying, ‘actually, we’re not going to allow people to fall into those situations because we don’t have to.’

[00:49:21] Grumbine: I like that. I’m going to have to chew on that because I think there’s a lot more there. Tyler, as a parting here, I have three things I want to ask you. Tell us a little bit more about EDI and where we can find more information. Tell us a little bit about yourself and where we can find more information.

And lastly, whatever you want to say as the most important thing you think.

[00:49:43] Emerson: Right. The economic democracy initiatives, which is an open society university network collaborative program. You can check on our website at edi. bard. edu. And we’ve got all of our projects hosted on there. You can find the job guarantee website there. We’re a program that focuses on the structural determinants of economic insecurity, really analyzing the connections between inequality, unemployment, poverty.

And we have a curricular arm and we have research, both are really important to developing this MMT and job security perspective and theory. And then there’s more about me. You can find more about me on there. Definitely read my thesis. And if you want, if you’re more interested in the disability question, I’ll have more research coming out in the near future about labor force participation and people with disabilities from the last 40 years, which is really fascinating.

I think the most important thing to take out of this conversation is that public employment programs of enormous scale are possible. They exist right now. People are working in those programs around the world at this very moment. We have the resources around the world, but especially United States where I am, we have enormous wealth and resources, and we have lots of people who want to work and do not have access to work.

And they’re left behind. And there’s so much work to be done and we can do it and whether that’s the environmental angle, the social angle, the infrastructure angle, I would want people to take away that it’s possible and desirable.

[00:51:33] Grumbine: Very well said, Tyler. This was such a pleasure. I really appreciate it. And I want to thank you for remaining flexible. This is a tough time for me and my family. And you were open, you responded. It really was wonderful. I appreciate how much this means to you. And this conversation means a lot to me. So I appreciate you agreeing to do it and I hope everybody enjoyed it and we’ll learn something from it.

[00:51:59] Emerson: Yeah. Thank you, Steve. Thank you to the team.

[00:52:02] Grumbine: You got it. We’re all really excited and everybody hopes that we can work with you again in the future.

[00:52:08] Emerson: Yeah.

[00:52:09] Grumbine: Really appreciate this. My name is Steve Grumbine. I am the host of Macro N Cheese. We are part of Real Progressives, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. If you feel that the work we’re doing provides value, and we’ve been doing this podcast alone for five years now.

And as a organization, we’ve been in existence now for almost 10 years. It’s scary that we’re coming into our 10th year, but we’ve been every single day. So if you find value in the work we’re doing, please consider becoming a monthly donor. You can go to patreon.com/realprogressives. You can go to our website under the donate button and go to our donor box and you can become a monthly donor there as well.

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[00:53:22] End Credits: Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Andy Kennedy. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.