Fiscal sustainability 101 – Part 1

Greetings from Amsterdam where I am spending the next few days talking about what drives spatial changes in unemployment at a Tinbergen Institute regional science workshop. The spatial econometric work that I am outlining tomorrow provides the conceptual framework for the construction of the Employment Vulnerability Index, which received a lot of press earlier in the year. But while I was flying over here I thought about the concept of fiscal sustainability which is now getting a lot of press. So this is the first of a multi-part series on what constitutes a sustainable fiscal policy. Its that time again. Time to debrief!

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W comes before V

The talk at present is that while we are hoping for a V we might have to accept a W. Its all about shape. The shape of the future. The shape of the recovery! In Post-Lehman World Will Mean W-Shaped Recoveries we read that Japan’s former economic and fiscal policy minister, Hiroko Ota said that “The worst is over but I can’t say the economy is heading for a recovery at all”, Japan’s recovery may be W-shaped instead of V-shaped. There are some very real reasons why W might rule over V. They all relate to the lack of understanding of the characteristics of a fiat monetary system and the opportunities that such a system presents the sovereign government. Unfortunately, the ignorance (or wilful neglect) among policy makers may force millions of people to endure unnecessary hardship.

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Today’s mantra – 13.4 per cent wasted labour

Today’s ABS Labour Force data confirms one thing. Whatever else the commentators say about the figures are not as bad as expected or that employment is still growing or whatever – there are 13.4 per cent of the willing and available labour resources not being fully utilised by this economy. Around 657 thousand have no jobs at all and another 866 thousand have a job but want more hours and cannot find the work. 1.5 million wasted workers is an appalling state that demands urgent action – like direct public sector job creation. Each day that we waste the capacity of those workers is another day of income and opportunity lost down the drain. It should be the absolute number one policy priority. And what it tells me is that the budget deficit is way to low as a percentage of GDP at present.

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A holiday pot pourri – unions, jobs and education

I saw this in The Australian (on-line) front-page today – “POLL: Do unions have too much power?” So the campaigns are emerging: deficits, debt and union power. Seems like we are back in the 1970s when the conservatives last ran the union power campaign. The topic is apposite given the Government’s reaction last week to union requests to eliminate some of the nasty elements that remain from Work Choices. I laughed when I saw the poll – who are they trying to kid. Anyway, the current Government is playing hard cop with the union movement exploiting the lack of capacity of the latter to fight back.

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R we or R we not …

Today the ABS released the March quarter National Accounts data which showed that the Australian economy is actually resisting the global slowdown although barely. The results allowed all and sundry to pronounce that Australia had escaped recession, despite there being no acceptable definition of what actually constitutes a recession. For now then we do not have a recession based on the national accounts benchmark – two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. But I hardly think this is the end of it. And if we take a labour market definition of recession which researchers such as me think is a better approach because unemployment is a personal experience that allow us to feel the movements in the cycle – then we are already in recession. That is what this blog is about – R we or R we not!

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Employment guarantees enter the social inclusion debate

The Social Inclusion Research Paper series are slowly emerging. Professor Tony Vinson (Sydney University) was commissioned to write six papers on the topic and they are available HERE. In the paper on Jobless Families in Australia, he considers a range of strategies which have been advanced to reduce chronic joblessness which has wrecked families across Australia since the neo-liberal attack on full employment began in the mid-1970s. I was pleased to see him mention the Job Guarantee. This is what he said.

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Social inclusion principles – another failed vision

The Australian Government has now released its so-called Social inclusion principles which are apparently intended “to guide individuals, business and community organisations, and government on how to take a socially inclusive approach to their activities”. I couldn’t find a commitment to full employment among the principles. Pity about that. Another strategy that is rich in rhetoric but squibs the essential nature of the problem. My advice: scrap the plan and start again.

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Neo-liberals invade The Greens!

Some readers have asked me to comment on the economic policy of The Australian Greens and how it sits with the other major political parties. I base this assessment on what appears to be the policy statement which was current as at November 2008. There is not a single reference to employment, unemployment or full employment as key economic goals. Moreover, there is as much neo-liberal macroeconomics in the document as you would find in the papers espousing the approach of the main parties. And worse still … if The Greens actually tried to implement some of their macroeconomics principles then they would undermine most of their other major policy goals. So there is no joy to be found in this place for a progressive who understands how the modern monetary system operates.

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Democracy, accountability and more intergenerational nonsense

Since last week’s Federal Budget was released there has been an hysterical response from the Opposition, the media and the Government in reply. Claims of forecast errors, forecast manipulation and more have been in our faces every day. The temporary Opposition Leader even suggested that we need a new independent body – the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) to discipline government and stop it lying about the medium term forecasts and its economic policies. The comical side of this very sad week has been provided by the Shadow Treasurer’s struggle with averages. It was so hilarious that I am actually enjoying his attempts to sound as if he knows anything about macroeconomics. He doesn’t but that doesn’t stop him. But overall, once again I think the debate reflects a poor understanding of how the economy works.

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Treasury boss defending the wrong thing!

Yesterday we had the rather unusual situation of the Treasury Head presenting a robust defence of his Department’s work after various commentators have suggested the forward estimates were flaky to say the least. Overall, it is an amazing exercise given that the issue is about how quickly the federal budget balance will return to surplus. So instead of a robust debate about why the Government is allowing unemployment to blow out and long-term unemployment to become entrenched again, all the hot air is about how quickly the federal government can start trashing the saving capacity of the private sector again. You get some feel for how low brow the debate actually is out there in expert media commentary and interview land by reading the ABC 7.30 Report transcript from last night when the presenter tried to question the Opposition Treasury spokesperson. It was as bad as it gets.

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A sad place – a $58 billion deficit and soaring unemployment!

I must have just woken from a bad dream. Did I read this week that the Australian Government will record a deficit of $A58 billion or 4.9 per cent of GDP but are forecasting unemployment will rise from its present parlous level of 5.4 per cent to 8.5 per cent by the middle of 2012? It must be a joke. If it is serious then this lot deserve to be a one-term government not that I have any hope that the alternative (conservative or green) would do any better. They are all caught up in this neo-liberal straitjacket which has been increasingly tightened over the last 30 years and now ensures that our national government will not use its economic policy capacity responsibly. Our current Federal Government not only continues to abandon full employment but is also abandoning the unemployed. What a place!

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The deficit and debt debate

The ABC News Online business reporter Michael Janda ran this Opinion piece – Economists tackle the deficit and debt debate today. He interviews three economists – myself, Steve Keen (University of Western Sydney) and Stephen Kirchner (Centre of Independent Studies). The discussion is interesting because it demonstrates how the journalists modify what you say to mean something slightly different (no accusation here that it was designed to skew meaning though) and generates the statistic that two out of three economists do not understand how the modern monetary economy works.

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The Budget (what else) and a parrot or two

Tonight is federal budget night – which presents the most comprehensive picture of where the Government is going with fiscal policy and the Treasury’s estimate of how the economy is travelling. So for a macroeconomist like me it is a biggest night in the annual calendar. But I am more interested in parrots and spotted owls at the moment. What? Yes, I guess it is escapism … to avoid the hysterical public debate that has surrounded this budget. The economic falsehoods, the outright lies, the duplicity and the all of that. But I cannot escape it because I have a newspaper opinion piece to write on the Budget by 20:00 tonight. So, given that, here is my take on the budget and then …. I can get back to the birds!

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Participation rate puzzles …

Labour market researchers are concentrating their minds at present on how fast the unemployment rate is rising. While that is what the main game is clearly about, there are also interesting trends happening with respect to labour force participation rates. I have been tinkering around with various aspects of this behaviour because I am interested in this notion that there might be wealth effects operating to reverse the usual falls in participation during a downturn. I am also interested in estimating what is happening to hidden unemployment. So here is a brief report on some work to date.

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Training does not equal jobs!

There is a parable that the Australian Government still doesn’t understand – its the 100 dogs and 95 bones story that all children should be told at an early age. I will tell the story presently. I mention the parable because once again it seems that a major Government initiative designed to reduce disadvantage arising from unemployment will be poorly conceived and constrained by a reluctance of the Government to jettison the destructive neo-liberal approach that has dominated labour market policy for the last few decades. I am referring to today’s announcement from the Government that our youth will all be working, studying or training or face a loss of income support.

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The OECD is at it again!

Today, the right-wing media that we are blessed with have wheeled out another one of their favourite little hobby-horses which they repeatedly use to promote the deregulation of the wages system. They are attacking the Government’s roll-back of Work Choices, which is aimed at restoring appropriate wages and conditions for non-standard work. In this specific case, two opinion columnists from the two major publishing houses are claiming that the Government is undermining the future employment prospects of our youth. Well if they had anything new to add by way of evidence it would be good for debate. As it is they both merely recite the dogma from the latest OECD report Jobs for Youth: Australia – and I don’t need to remind readers that that organisation has form. Its reputation in the area of labour market research is somewhat dubious after a series of recants over the last few years when confronted with solid evidence to the contrary. Anyway, here we go again.

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How large should the deficit be?

Today I am in Melbourne (my home town) presenting a workshop on skills development for the new green jobs economy which is a joint Victorian Government/Brotherhood of St Laurence show. But that is not what I am writing about here. Regular readers of billy blog will know that when I talk about budget deficits I typically stress two points: (a) that the Government is not financially constrained and therefore all the hoopla about debt and future tax burdens are just a waste of time. But just because the Government can buy whatever is for sale by crediting relevant bank accounts doesn’t mean they should not place limits on the size of the deficit; and so (b) given the federal deficit “finances” private saving, it should therefore be aim to “fill” the spending gap left by the private desire to save. If the Government does that then it can maintain full employment and price stability and move towards a more equitable society. So it is of importance that we have some idea of the size of this spending (or output) gap.

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Boondoggling and leaf-raking …

There was a story in The Australian newspaper today entitled RED schemes are good written by a former minister in the Whitlam government in the early 1970s. He was extolling the virtues of the old Regional Employment Development scheme, which was a public works direct job creation scheme. He was suggesting such schemes may again find favour as the recession deepens. The RED scheme was a less generous version of the Job Guarantee and suffered as a result of its modesty. It was never based on any fundamental understanding of a modern monetary economy as as such was always a “defensive” program. Defending itself continually from the conservative, soon-to-be, neo-liberal critics. That made me recall my favourite conservative “put down” term – boondoggling and raking – which is used whenever direct public job creation is mentioned as a possibility. Then I recalled a letter that was written by the previous Federal Employment Minister explaining in 2004 why my Job Guarantee proposal was a crock. One thing followed another …

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When is a job guarantee a Job Guarantee?

In the current edition of the German weekly Magazine Der Spiegel (“The Mirror”) there is an article about a “new idea to keep unemployment down” entitled Germany Mulls ‘Parking’ Unwanted Labor in New State-Funded Firms. The thrust of the proposal is that Germany is now examining a proposal to set up government-funded “transfer companies” for workers who lose their jobs as a means of keeping unemployment in check. A reader wrote to me saying that it sounds a bit like the Job Guarantee that I have been advocating for years! Closer examination suggests that while the Germans are starting to come to terms with how bad their economic situation is, they are still a long way off understanding how to get out of it. In that respect, they share the ignorance with most governments. However, being a Euro zone member, the German government has voluntarily lumbered itself with even more constraints that will make it harder to insulate its people from the ravages of the recession.

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Working less hours is not the answer!

I did an extended interview the other day for BTalk which is a CBS on-line business news site on whether working less hours was the solution the rising unemployment. You will guess right that I thought that it was not an answer and only disadvantaged workers further.

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