Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 5

This is Part 5 in the mini-series discussing the relative merits of the basic income guarantee proposal and the Job Guarantee proposal. It finishes this part of our discussion. Today, I consider how society establishes a fair transition environment to cope with climate change and the impacts of computerisation etc. I outline a coherent adjustment framework to allow these transitions to occur equitably and where they are not possible (due to limits on worker capacity) alternative visions of productive work are developed? I argue that while work, in general, is coercive under capitalism, the provision of employment guarantees is a more equitable approach than relying as the basic income advocates envision on the exploitation of some to provide the freedom for others. Further, I argue that the Job Guarantee is a better vehicle for creating new forms of productive work. Adopting a basic income guarantee in this context just amounts to surrender. Our manuscript is nearly finished and we hope to complete the hard edits in the next month or so and have the book available for sale by the end of this year. More information on that later.

Just Transition Framework

The Just Transition Framework first entered the public debate in the 1990s as a result of the pioneering work of Canadian trade unionist Brian Kohler who emphasised that environmental preservation and employment were not trade-offs.

In a 1996 Op Ed, Brian Kohler wrote (Kohler, 1996):

The real choice is not jobs or environment. It is both or neither.

[Reference: (1996) ‘Sustainable development: a labor view’, San Diego Earth Times, May 1997, Based on presentation at the Persistent Organic Pollutants Conference, Chicago, December 5, 1996. LINK.]

This insight was formalised in his 1998 article – Just Transition – A labour view of Sustainable Development – and was adopted by the Canadian trade union movement in 2000 (CLC, 2000).

[Reference: Kohler, B. (1998), ‘Just Transition – A labour view of Sustainable Development’, CEP Journal on-line, Summer, 6(2).]

[Reference: Canadian Labour Congress (2000) Just Transition for Workers During Environmental Change, LINK.]

The initiative was in relation to the challenges that climate change was presenting for unions who were keen to promote the growth of so-called ‘green jobs’ on the one hand, but knew full well that “when we create Green Jobs, there will be an industrial transition – this means that workers in traditional industries must be protected” (CLC, 2000).

The idea of a Just Transition is that it allows the benefits of new green technologies to be introduced but, at the same time, provides a “safeguard” for people who “work in jobs that will become obsolete” as a result of “unsustainable production” processes (CLC, 2000).

The International Labour Organisation (ILO, 2010: 141) note that the “definition, boundaries and scope” of the Just Transition concept “has evolved” since the initial idea was floated by the Canadian union movement.

The ILO (2010: 141) offered this definition of a “Just Transition”:

can be understood as the conceptual framework in which the labour movement captures the complexities of the transition towards a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy, highlighting public policy needs and aiming to maximize benefits and minimize hardships for workers and their communities in this transformation.

It is not a blocking framework – but rather “a supporting mechanism of climate action, and not inaction” (ILO, 2010: 141).

[Reference: International Labour Organisation (2010) ‘Climate Change and Labour: the need for a “just transition”‘, International Journal of Labour Research, 2(2), Geneva, International Labour Office.]

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Cooling et al., 2015: 5) introduced a distributional focus by stating that:

Underlying the concept of just transition is the principle that the costs of environmental adjustments should be shared across society rather than shouldered alone by those most affected by them.

[Reference: Cooling, K., Lee, K., Daub, S. and Singer, J. (2015) ‘Just Transition: Creating a green social constrat for BC’s resource workers’, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canadian Justice Project, January]

Whether the source of disruption is climate change or the march of robots, economic restructuring is a painful process and is, typically, spatially concentrated, which raises significant issues for the social settlement (where people live).

It is the responsibility of the state to put in place a framework that minimises the impact of these disruptions on people and regions that are affected by them.

A progressive vision should ensure that these impacts are not only minimised but also shared across the nation.

Is the provision of a basic income sufficient to absorb these negative impacts on people of the loss of jobs that follow the accelerated introduction of robots?

The answer is clearly not.

A better response is to provide new opportunities to work for workers who, in the interests of Society in general have to give up work as a result of climate change or who are displaced by the manifestations of the ‘second machine age’.

A ‘just transition’ ensures that the costs of economic restructuring and the shift to sustainability do not fall on workers in targeted industries and their communities. It would also help manage the impacts of the second machine age.

A just transition in any threatened region or sector requires government intervention and community partnerships to create the regulatory framework, infrastructure and market incentives for the creation of well-paid, secure, healthy, satisfying environmentally-friendly jobs with particular attention to appropriately meeting the needs of affected workers and their communities.

Government support in a progressive world must include:

• Assistance for both displaced workers and for contractors;
• Adequate notice of workplace change and closures;
• Consultation with and full engagement of relevant unions;
• Support for innovation and partnerships for new local industries, research and development and infrastructure investments;
• Training and alternative employment tailored to local and individual needs and opportunities;
• Special targeted support for older, disabled and less educated workers;
• Relocation assistance for displaced workers;
• Income maintenance, redundancy entitlements and retraining allowances;
• Cheap loans and subsidies for new industries and employers;
• Compensation and equipment buy-outs for contractors;
• Assistance programs extended to workers employed by contractors;
• A just transition requires investment in training programs and apprenticeships to create a highly trained ‘green’ workforce;
• The introduction of a Job Guarantee to provide continuous employment for all those without work.

These support elements go well beyond the conceptualisation of the individual as merely needing income security to maintain current consumption levels.

The Just Transition framework provides a dynamic environment to allow an individual, their families, their regions to make adjustments that will enhance their future prospects.

Among other things, the Framework values jobs and require that all people have access to decent work wherever they choose to live.

If the private sector is unable to create sufficient job opportunities then the public sector has to stand ready to provide the vital employment.

That is the basis of the Job Guarantee, which is one plank in a broad adjustment environment described above.

The ‘freedom’ of a basic income guarantee against the ‘enslavement’ of an employment guarantee

While many opponents of employment guarantees seem to believe they are just schemes to enslave workers in pointless work (the ‘boondoggling’ critique), the Job Guarantee should, in fact, be an essential part of a progressive liberal and radical agenda to transform the way we use the economy to advance a very broad and egalitarian conception of public purpose.

Basic income proponents do not seem to be able to grasp why this is so.

They cannot seem to get beyond a construction of the Job Guarantee as being a vehicle for defending the industrial capital status quo.

The Job Guarantee can help society rebuild notions of collective will and reject the neo-liberal emphasis on individualism and see the economy as delivering benefits to the planet and the people who occupy it.

That is quite a different conception that the basic income guarantee proposal.

As discussed earlier, work is intrinsic to human existence. We seek to transform nature to live.

Certainly, history has evolved to the stage where the organisation of that effort – Capitalism – is oppressive and the anathema of liberation, despite the wage form making it look as though we have freedom to choose.

But we need to separate the specific form of work organisation from the intrinsic meaning of work for people. People will still seek ways to ‘work’ and will have to continue working, even if we liberate ourselves from the specific yoke of Capitalism.

Basic income seems to construct humans as meagre consumption units where a small stipend, of sufficient amount such that the person can continue to consume at survival levels is provided.

Individuals are then allegedly going to ‘work’ at play while an unprepared society applauds their inventiveness. The reality would be quite different.

Basic income proponents like to construct what for them is a meaningful dichotomy, which contrasts the so-called ‘freedom’ that the provision of a basic income provides individuals with the ‘enslavement’ that an employment guarantee offers.

However, if the ‘freedom’ of non-work runs counter with social attitudes towards work and non-work and or doesn’t provide sufficient ‘income’ under the basic income guarantee in recognition of the fact that consumption of leisure requires monetary resources, then the appeal might be hollow.

Further, as we have seen earlier in this mini-series, there is a growing recognition that work plays a much more significant role in society and in the lives of individuals than merely providing an income. We are not just ‘consumption units’.

Until we change social values as they pertain to the concept of productive endeavour and broaden what is considered to be meaningful work, we have to design solution that recognise these values.

In this context, the case made for the Job Guarantee leaves two outstanding and important issues to be discussed:

• Is a compulsory Job Guarantee overly-coercive; and
• Does the BI model introduce dynamics that can take us beyond the oppressive reliance on work for income security?

We deal with the first point in this section and the second point in the following section.

We should start by noting that a Society can choose to have whatever transfer system its sees fit (including the provision of unemployment benefits) running parallel with the introduction of a Job Guarantee.

The latter does not demand a total abandonment of the existing income support schemes.

But a strong case can be made that individuals in any coherent society have an obligation to give back to the community that is guaranteeing them a job and the broad benefits that accompany that guarantee.

Most societies are not yet ready to create a class of individuals of working age and amenable health to draw a living income without directly contributing something back to society (output).

That starting point conditions the way we might think about coercion with in the context of a Job Guarantee

Is a compulsory Job Guarantee overly-coercive? One of the essential criteria for a sustainable full employment policy is that it not violate the current social attitudes towards work and non-work.

Robert Van der Veen and Philippe Van Parijs (1987: 642) argued that that the introduction of a universal income guarantee can provide a “capitalist road to communism”, which relates to the need to move beyond the oppression of the capitalist workplace and “to move toward distribution according to needs”.

[Reference: Van der Veen, R. and Van Parijs, P. (1987) ‘A capitalist road to communism’, Theory and Society, 15(5), 635-655. LINK]

However, they qualify that notion by noting that there is a “constraint on the maximization of the relative share of society’s total product distributed according to needs” (pp.644-45) and that “some economies are unable to meet this constraint” (p.645), which means the basic income guarantee is not a general path to a better future for all.

Their appeal to Marxist concepts of the freedom of a communist era is partial, however.

In 1851, the French socialist politician and historian Louis Blanc laid out a scheme whereby cooperative workshops under worker control would be supported by the state to provide guaranteed employment for the impoverished citizens in French cities.

Blanc (1851: 92) discussed whether the system would be practical (“Le système proposé est-il practiable?”). He wrote that we had to go beyond hysteria and construct such arguments based on what we considered the fundamental principles for a future society might be.

As part of his view of the role of the state and the responsibilities of individuals in this regard he said the ‘base fondamentale de las société future, pierre angulaire du Monde nouveau” was (Blanc, 1851: 92):

De chacun selon ses facultés, à chacun selon ses besoins

[Reference: Blanc, L.J.J. (1851) Plus de Girondins, Paris, Charles Joubert. LINK]

Which translates to the famous (gender neutral):

From each according to his/her abilities, to each according to their needs.

See this for more Detail.

Somewhere along the way our basic income champions dropped the “each according to ability” bit (the give option) and only presented a take option. We do not consider that to be the basis of a healthy society based on reciprocity.

Marx also incorporated that fundamental principle in Part I of his Critique of the Gotha Program (Marx, 1875).

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

[Reference: Marx, K. (1875) Critique of the Gotha Program, Moscow, Progress Publishers. LINK]

So the basic income “capitalist road to communism”, which abandons the principle that individuals who can work and have the ability to work, should do so for the benefit of all, would appear to be a very partial interpretation of the concept of a communist society where workers are ‘free’.

There has been considerable research done by social scientists which suggests that people still consider work to be a central aspect of life and there are deep-seated views about deservingness and responsibility for one’s circumstances.

These views translate into very firm attitudes about mutual obligation (reciprocity) and how much support should be provided to the unemployed.

While these attitudes are at times expressed in an ugly way and are exploited by right wingers to divide-and-conquer the working class, the fact remains that they are ingrained and will take time to shift.

Further, most unemployed workers indicate in surveys that they prefer to work rather than be provided with income support.

By creating circumstances in which an individual’s opportunity to engage in paid employment and earn a living wage is guaranteed, the Job Guarantee would support current social attitudes towards work and non-work; and as a policy mechanism would dampen any resentment felt towards that proportion of unemployed persons who are currently perceived as undeserving of state support and assistance.

The Job Guarantee approach overrides the free-rider option that is available under an unconditional basic income.

In a society which accords value to the notion of reciprocity, the guaranteed work model ensures that no social group is considered to be solely viewed as ‘consumption units’ – to be fed and clothed by the State but ignored in terms of their social needs for work and human interaction within the work place.

If the vast majority of workers prefer to work then the systemic failure to provide a sufficient quantum of jobs imposes harsh costs that can be alleviated by the introduction of a Job Guarantee.

In this regard, the Job Guarantee is a source of freedom – the capitalist property relations notwithstanding.

But it is entirely possible that some people do not value work in any intrinsic sense and if confronted with the choice between the Job Guarantee and a basic income guarantee would take the latter option every time. A blanket Job Guarantee is thus coercive in its impact on this particular group.

The basic income advocates would likely recommend a simple modification that would ‘merely’ make the Job Guarantee voluntary within the context of a universal basic income guarantee.

To understand this criticism of the Job Guarantee I note that the underlying unit of analysis in the basic income literature is an individual who appears to resemble McGregor’s (1960) theory X person.

Theory X people are found in mainstream microeconomics textbooks and are constructed as self-centred, rational maximisers.

Lester Thurow (1983: 216) said that this neo-liberal conception of the X persion considered that “man is basically a grasshopper with a limited, short-time horizon who, liking leisure must be forced to work and save enticed by rewards much greater than those he gets from leisure.”

[Reference: Thurow, L. (1983) Dangerous Currents, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.]

Reinforcing this conception of human behaviour is a libertarian concept of freedom. Optimal outcomes require an individual to have free choice and basic income proponents see a decoupling of income from work as an essential step towards increasing choice and freedom.

So by permitting individualism at this level – for the state to support individuals in their consumption but not require any reciprocation limits the possibilities for social change and community engagement.

Progressives should, rather, be at the forefront of collective engagement rather than advocating policies that smack of individualism.

Of-course, provision of a basic income guarantee doesn’t preclude community action. Individuals may adopt a whole range of campaigns and activist agendas while being supported on the barest income guarantee.

A characteristic of the neo-liberal era has been the elevation of ‘volunteerism’ to some virtuous heights. The morality runs deep through neo-liberal narratives when it works to reinforce the redistribution of income towards the top.

The reality is that the functions that are now considered to be the ambit of the volunteers were previously, in many cases, paid jobs.

So if the basic income recipients are engaged in these agendas then why wouldn’t they want to be paid for their work?

The Job Guarantee would replace the neo-liberal agenda to reduce the size of the public sector contained within the so-called ‘volunteerism’ crusade.

It would also highlight how many previous jobs have become voluntary activities despite their value to society.

Further, from a Marxist perspective, a basic income guarantee offers the hope of separating an individual’s subsistence from any necessity that they produce surplus value.

Accordingly, proposals like the Job Guarantee are met with derision because they represent the antithesis of individual freedom. Even if the vast majority of individuals desire to be employed, a flexible system would also permit those who did not want to work to enjoy life on the income guarantee.

By denying citizens the opportunity to choose between the Job Guarantee and the non-work alternative of the basic income guarantee, it is alleged that the Job Guarantee becomes an unnecessarily coercive and harsh system.

However, most basic income guarantee proponents also consider that the national government faces a fiscal constraint – which makes their macroeconomic conception indistinguishable from that touted by the neo-liberals.

By taking the orthodox government budget constraint version of the basic income guarantee at face value, its proponents are confronted with a major dilemma.

To ‘finance’ the scheme some people have to work and thus, create surplus value. It is difficult to believe that all those who are working are choosing to work in preference to not working. However, under capitalist property relations, workers in general have to work to survive.

Leading basic income guarantee proponent Phillipe Van Parijs (1993: 179) is representative when he asks:

… what is ‘unfair’ about living off the labour of others when everyone is given the same possibility? Facing this possibility, some will choose to do no or little paid work. Others will want to work a lot, whether for the additional money or for the fun of working, and thereby finance the universal grant. If the latter envy the former’s idleness, why don’t they follow suit?

[Reference: Van Parijs, P. (1993) Marxism Recycled, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.]

Operating under the flawed assumption adopted by Van Parijs and others that there is a binding financial constraint on governments, Cowling, Mitchell and Watts (2003: 19) articulate a number of problems with this conception of a free and fair system. First, our lives do not all begin at the time of the inception of the basic income guarantee. Individuals who, under different circumstances, may have taken the no-work option have entered into commitments, like having children. In that sense, prior constraints prevent them from ‘enjoying’ the freedom.

Second, the ‘financing’ logic fails due to the inherent fallacy of composition. The basic income guarantee system becomes undefined (that is, there would be no production or income) if everyone chose to take the non-work option. So we are left with the uncomfortable conclusion that under the basic income guarantee the ‘coercion of work’ is neatly transferred to those who do not take the basic income guarantee, while under the Job Guarantee the ‘coercion of work’ is shared by all.

[Reference: Cowling, S., Mitchell, W.F. and Watts, M.J. (2003) ‘The right to work versus the right to income’, Working Paper No 03-08, Centre of Full Employment and Equity, Australia.]

More generally, no form of wage labour is non-coercive under capitalism. The question is what forms of coercion are most likely to lead to changes in the mode of production over time. The importance of the work ethic in reinforcing capitalist social relations cannot be underestimated.

Sharon Beder (2000: 2) observed that the problem is that work remains at the:

… heart of capitalist culture … and is seen as an essential characteristic of being human. No matter how tedious it is, any work is generally considered to be better than no work.

[Reference: Beder, S. (2000) Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR, Scribe Publications, Carlton North.]

Further, many capitalist economies now suffer the dual wastage – entrenched unemployment and increasing time-related underemployment (with implied inadequacy of employment situations).

It is highly likely that the introduction of the Job Guarantee will place pressure on private employers, particularly in the low-skill service sectors to restructure their workplaces to overcome the discontent that their underemployed workers feel.

A full-time Job Guarantee position at wages not significantly different from the low pay in the private sector service industries would appear attractive relative to a private job that rations the worker hours.

In this regard, the Job Guarantee would offer flexibility to workers. Some would prefer part-time jobs while others would require full-time jobs within the Job Guarantee.

It should be obvious this flexibility can accommodate virtually any requirement of workers. Further, it is very easy to design the program in such a way that child care services will be provided by Job Guarantee workers, to accommodate parental needs.

A transformative and radical framework for an inclusive society

The basic income guarantee proponents argue that the introduction of an income guarantee “moves us closer (ceteris paribus) to communism, as defined by distribution according to needs” (Van Parijs, 1993: 162).

In other words, the basic income guarantee approach contains a dynamic that can steer society away from capitalism towards a communist state. Marxist supporters of the basic income guarantee see this as a major advantage, a palliative under capitalism but also the seed to its end.

What is the validity of this claim?

Around the world there are several trends that challenge the traditional notions of work and income:

• There rise in part-time and precarious employment.
• Elevated and persistent levels of unemployment.
• Growing and significant underemployment.
• Increasing polarisation of income distributions and rising income and wealth inequality.
• The impacts of the ‘second machine age’.

The traditional moral views about the virtues of work – which are exploited by the capitalist class – clearly need to be recast.

A progressive vision cannot embrace a capitalist labour market where a rising number and proportion of workers are finding it difficult to get sufficient work and/or pay rises in line with productivity.

In many countries, real wages growth has been flat or going backwards for a few decades now as the top-end-of-town capture an increasing proportion of the real income produced.

Something has to give. Our Progressive Manifesto seeks ways to make the transition away from the destructive dynamics that characterise the neo-liberal labour market.

Clearly, social policy can play a part in engendering this debate and help establish transition dynamics. However, it is likely that a non-capitalist system of work and income generation is needed before the yoke of the work ethic and the stigmatisation of non-work is fully expunged.

The question is how to make this transition in light of the constraints that capital places on the working class and the State.

Basic income guarantee advocates consider their approach provides workers with the necessary options to reject the capitalist ‘gainful’ worker approach by breaking the nexus between surplus value creation and income receipt at the individual level.

But, Job Guarantee proponents argue that there is a need to embrace a broader concept of work in the first phase of decoupling work and income.

However, they argue that trying to impose this new culture of non-work on to society as it currently exists is unlikely to be a constructive approach. The patent resentment of the unemployed will only be transferred to the “surfers on Malibu” (using Van Parijs’ conception of life on basic income!

The Job Guarantee provides a superior vehicle to establish a new employment paradigm where community development jobs become valued.

Over time and within this new Job Guarantee employment paradigm, public debate and education can help broaden the concept of valuable work until activities which we might construe today as being ‘leisure’ (non-work) would eventually be considered to be productive employment.

For example, imagine we allow struggling musicians, artists, surfers, Thespians, and the like to be able to be employed within the Job Guarantee.

In return for the income security, the surfer might be required to conduct water safety awareness for school children; and musicians might be required to rehearse some days a week in school and thus impart knowledge about band dynamics and increase the appreciation of music to interested children.

Reciprocity is clear in these cases. The surfer receives income security because he/she is employed to surf but is productive because they also provide value to society beyond their own hapiness. Win-win.

A surfer who has no reciprocal responsibilities under a basic income guarantee provides nothing to society in general.

Further, basic income advocates like to hold out community activism as something that would increase under a basic income guarantee.

But why not declare these activities to be a Job Guarantee job. For example, organising and managing a community garden to provide food for the poor could be classified as a paid job. We would see more of that activity if it was rewarded in this way. What might be a selfish activity under basic income could become a society-enriching and productive activity if the gardeners were required to redistribute their produce.

By gradually re-defining the concept of productive work well beyond the realms of “gainful work” which specifically related to activities that generated private profits for firms, a Job Guarantee sets us up for the future.

The conception of productivity (and efficiency) as a social, shared, and public outcome is then only limited by one’s imagination.

In this way, the Job Guarantee becomes an evolutionary force – providing income security to those who want it but also the platform for wider definitions of what we mean by work!

Social attitudes take time to evolve and are best reinforced by changes in the educational system. The social fabric must be rebuilt over time.

The change in the mode of production through evolutionary means will not happen overnight, and concepts of community wealth and civic responsibility that have been eroded over time, by the divide and conquer individualism of the neo-liberal era, have to be restored.

The Job Guarantee provides a strong evolutionary dynamic in terms of establishing broader historical transitions away from the unemployment (and income insecurity) that is intrinsic to the capitalist mode of production. The Job Guarantee provides a short-run palliative and a longer-term force for historical change.

The basic income guarantee is found lacking in this regard on all counts.

Conclusion

We have outlined many reasons for opposing the introduction of a basic income guarantee. We believe it entrenches the notion of a dependency on passive welfare payments.

Given current social values towards work and non-work, a basic income guarantee creates a stigmatised cohort.

It does not provide any inflation buffer. Either the scheme is mean-spirited (low stipend) and thus self-defeating or it provides a decent living income but then blows up as a result of its inflationary bias.

Many people argue that the non-work of basic income recipients is equivalent to the unproductive work of a Job Guarantee workers (using narrow conceptions of productivity).

Whether the Job Guarantee workers add to the productive capacity of the economy that can absorb growth in nominal demand or not is moot.

The Job Guarantee pool will be small when the economy is operating at high pressure and large when private demand is weak. It works in a counter-cyclical fashion (as an automatic stabiliser) so even if the workers are adding nothing productive to the array of goods and services for sale demand is also weak.

The basic income recipients add nothing productive to society (in the same sense we are using the term here) but receive the same income irrespective of the state of the cycle. That introduces the inflationary bias.

Further, the basic income guarantee does not provide an architecture for individual capacity building. A basic income guarantee treats people who are unable to find adequate market-based work as ‘consumption’ entities and attempts to meet their consumption needs.

The provision of a basic income guarantee provides no additional training or support structures for individual advancement. Some recipients might be individually motivated enough to advance their skills. Other will not unless there is formal support mechansims.

Essentially, the basic income approach ignores the intrinsic social and capacity building role of participating in paid work.

It is sometimes said that beyond all the benefits in terms of self-esteem, social inclusion, confidence-building, skill augmentation and the like, a priceless benefit of creating full employment is that the ‘children see at least one parent going to work each morning’.

In other words, it creates an intergenerational stimulus that the basic income guarantee approach can never create.

Unlike the basic income guarantee model, the Job Guarantee model meets these conditions within the constraints of a monetary capitalist system.

The Job Guarantee is a far better vehicle to rebuild a sense of community and the purposeful nature of work. It is the only real alternative if intergenerational disadvantage is to be avoided.

It also provides the framework whereby the concept of work itself can be broadened to include activities that many would currently dismiss as being leisure, which is consistent with the aspirations of some basic income advocates.

The point is that over time, activities that basic income advocates think represent freedom (surfing) would become jobs under the Job Guarantee as out attitudes to work evolve in a progressive way.

The series so far

This is a further part of a series I am writing as background to my next book on globalisation and the capacities of the nation-state. More instalments will come as the research process unfolds.

The series so far:

1. Friday lay day – The Stability Pact didn’t mean much anyway, did it?

2. European Left face a Dystopia of their own making

3. The Eurozone Groupthink and Denial continues …

4. Mitterrand’s turn to austerity was an ideological choice not an inevitability

5. The origins of the ‘leftist’ failure to oppose austerity

6. The European Project is dead

7. The Italian left should hang their heads in shame

8. On the trail of inflation and the fears of the same ….

9. Globalisation and currency arrangements

10. The co-option of government by transnational organisations

11. The Modigliani controversy – the break with Keynesian thinking

12. The capacity of the state and the open economy – Part 1

13. Is exchange rate depreciation inflationary?

14. Balance of payments constraints

15. Ultimately, real resource availability constrains prosperity

16. The impossibility theorem that beguiles the Left.

17. The British Monetarist infestation.

18. The Monetarism Trap snares the second Wilson Labour Government.

19. The Heath government was not Monetarist – that was left to the Labour Party.

20. Britain and the 1970s oil shocks – the failure of Monetarism.

21. The right-wing counter attack – 1971.

22. British trade unions in the early 1970s.

23. Distributional conflict and inflation – Britain in the early 1970s.

24. Rising urban inequality and segregation and the role of the state.

25. The British Labour Party path to Monetarism.

26. Britain approaches the 1976 currency crisis.

27. The 1976 currency crisis.

28. The Left confuses globalisation with neo-liberalism and gets lost.

29. The metamorphosis of the IMF as a neo-liberal attack dog.

30. The Wall Street-US Treasury Complex.

31. The Bacon-Eltis intervention – Britain 1976.

32. British Left reject fiscal strategy – speculation mounts, March 1976.

33. The US government view of the 1976 sterling crisis.

34. Iceland proves the nation state is alive and well.

35. The British Cabinet divides over the IMF negotiations in 1976.

36. The conspiracy to bring British Labour to heel 1976.

37. The 1976 British austerity shift – a triumph of perception over reality.

38. The British Left is usurped and IMF austerity begins 1976.

39. Why capital controls should be part of a progressive policy.

40. Brexit signals that a new policy paradigm is required including re-nationalisation.

41. Towards a progressive concept of efficiency – Part 1.

42. Towards a progressive concept of efficiency – Part 2.

43. The case for re-nationalisation – Part 2.

44. Brainbelts – only a part of a progressive future.

45. Reforming the international institutional framework – Part 1.

46. Reforming the international institutional framework – Part 2.

47. Reducing income inequality.

48. The struggle to establish a coherent progressive position continues.

49. Work is important for human well-being.

50. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 1.

51. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 2.

52. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 3.

53. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 4 – robot edition.

54. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 5.

The blogs in these series should be considered working notes rather than self-contained topics. Ultimately, they will be edited into the final manuscript of my next book due later in 2016.

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2016 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.