The Job Guarantee and contributory unemployment benefits systems

The unemployment rate in Finland is climbing steadily and in October 2015 was 9.6 per cent (seasonally adjusted) and the employment to population ratio stood at 60.1 per cent and was trending down. Finland is fast becoming the next basket case of the Eurozone. What was once a highly supportive society is steadily being turned into a austerity-ridden backwater. The latest news, however, that the Finnish government is due to debate a proposal to provide every citizen with a basic income of €800 a month has excited the progressives – unfortunately. The proposal currently being prepared by the national agency that administers the Finnish welfare system (KELA) would offer this basic allowance in lieu of all other existing benefit payments. It would be paid regardless of whether the person received income from any other source. I have been considering the Finnish welfare system over the last month or so since my visit there in October. This is in relation to a series of queries I had from activists there who were keen on the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Job Guarantee proposal but were wondering how it would situate itself within the existing system of unemployment benefits in Finland. This blog captures my thoughts on both of those topics.

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Recessions are always a problem and can always be avoided

There was an article in the Fairfax press this morning (December 1, 2015) – ‘Australia headed for recession’: Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister – which featured the erstwhile finance minister stating the obvious. Last week’s investment data, which I analysed in this blog – Australia – investment spending contracts sharply, recession looming – makes it clear that unless is a substantial shift in the austerity mindset of the fiscal policy makers then the continued and accelerating contraction in private capital formation will drive the economy into recession. That conclusion is not rocket science – it is staring us in the face. When tomorrow’s National Accounts data is released we’ll know more about the trajectory of the economy in the September-quarter. But it is clear that real GDP growth is declining, and the non-mining sector of the economy is not taking up the slack that has been created by the end of the commodity prices boom which drove the mining sector strongly for several years. What was objectionable about the Fairfax article was the assertion by the erstwhile finance minister that “the recession itself would not be the problem … because some recessions are necessary”. No recession is necessary and they are always extremely damaging especially to those who disproportionately bear the consequences – aka the most disadvantaged citizens in the society.

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The massive Eurozone real income losses continue to mount

Eurostat released the third quarter National Accounts data for Europe on Friday (November 13, 2015) – GDP up by 0.3% in the euro area and by 0.4% in the EU28 – which showed real GDP growth slowing in the Eurozone (down from the slug-like 0.4 per cent) and nations such as Finland and Estonia (one of the previous ‘poster children’ for austerity) heading into basket-case territory. Finland contracted by a sharp -0.6 per cent in the Third-quarter 2015 and has been in recession since the Estonia contracted by 0.5 per cent as did the beleaguered Greece. Portugal stagnated at zero growth. The so-called European recovery is looking distinctly wan! As at the third-quarter 2015, the Eurozone as a whole as still not reached real GDP levels equal to the peak in the March-quarter 2008. The overall 19 economy monetary union is still smaller than it was before the crisis began some 7.5 years ago. But to envisage how large the losses are of the failure of the policy makers to quickly restore growth, we have to also estimate where the Eurozone economy would have been had the GFC not occurred and pre-GFC growth rates were maintained. Then we have staggering losses of national income to consider across the failed monetary union. A very damaging folly has been inflicted on the people of Europe as a result of the neo-liberal Groupthink that dominates policy making.

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Friday lay day – the tide is turning but there is a long way to travel yet

Its my Friday lay day so less blog more other things. I noted yesterday that I can sense that the tide is turning in the policy debate. There is now increased commentary that talks up the need for larger deficits and claiming we should not be worried about debt ratios and all the rest of the irrelevant financial ratios that blight the political capacity of governments to maintain high levels of employment and growth. The IMF and the OECD is increasingly urging governments to spend more on infrastructure even though they retain their blighted (and wrong) notion of ‘fiscal space’. Just a few years ago these organisations led the charge for austerity. The evidence has not supported their previous zeal. While those who desire a more evidence-based and theoretically consistent macroeconomics debate applaud the shift in rhetoric and sentiment, there is still the danger that the debates will be based on erroneous principles or blurred reasoning. It is good that the tools and arguments of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) are being use in the mainstream media to analyse important economic issues. But we also have to be careful to make sure our stories that accompany those tools and concepts don’t just create more fog – and resistance. The evidence suggests that there is still a long way to travel yet … but the tide is slowly turning. I will just keep at it!

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Rising income and wealth inequality – 1% owns more than bottom 99%

This week is – Anti Poverty Week 2015 – in Australia and there are many events and happenings on to mark the time and to highlight the issue of poverty. I will be appearing on a panel on Wednesday afternoon in Newcastle (see below). I was thinking about what I might say in my short presentation next week as I read a report in the UK Guardian (October 17, 2015) – Wealth therapy tackles woes of the rich: ‘It’s really isolating to have lots of money’ – that appealed for sympathy from the rest of us for the top-end-of-town, who have to undergo psychological counselling because they are stressed out being wealthy. Apparently, they also have to engage in “stealth wealth” which means they “are hiding their wealth because they are concerned about negative judgment”. I immediately felt bad for them. Oh, the pain the top 1 per cent feel owning around 50 per cent of all the assets in the world! What a shocking plight they face. In the context of this week’s focus on Anti-Poverty, I couldn’t quite rouse the sympathy the story was seeking to elicit. Sorry!

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The non-austerity British Labour party and reality – Part 2

In Part 1 of this two-part blog I laid out a general analytical framework for considering fiscal rules that might allow governments to borrow for infrastructure as long as all current expenditure is at least matched by taxation and other current receipts. This is more or less the rule that the British ‘Charter of Budget Responsibility’ imposes and the approach that the new (previously called radical left) British Labour Party leadership aspires to obey. I use previously called ‘radical left’ advisedly because as the days pass the utterances of the economic leadership make it difficult to differentiate between Labour and the Tories. The main difference appears to be the worn out “we will tax the rich and the crafty tax dodgers to balance the budget”. A nonsensical stance for a progressive political force and verges on Game Over syndrome. John McDonnell’s presentation to the National Labour Conference yesterday was a further walk into obscurity. By claiming they are not “deficit deniers” and will close the deficit as a priority they have walked right through the Tory framing door. Not lingered on the doorstep and then sought more salubrious premises. But they are right inside – trapped into the same mantra – yes, they will cut the deficit but it will be a fairer cutting. The rich will pay. And pigs might fly.

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Monetary liquidity operations and fiscal policy interventions

Today, is the official launch of my new book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale – in Maastricht, which is an appropriate geographic location given the book proposes to dismantle the Eurozone. It just happens to be the place (Maastricht University), where we established CofFEE-Europe (a sister centre to my research centre in Australia). There are two excellent guest speakers (see below) and I am very grateful that they agreed to accept the invitations. The upshot is that I haven’t all that much time today. Over the next few days I will address some points that were raised in question time or at the reception (aka cup of tea and cakes) after the event in London last Thursday evening. There is still work to be done if the progressive side of politics is to fully understand Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the implications of it for policy development and choice.

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US labour market weakening

The Federal Reserve Bank of America has been publishing a new indicator – the Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI) – which is derived from a statistical analysis of 19 individual labour market measures since October 2014. It is now being watched by those who want to be the first to predict a rise in US official interest rates. If the latest data from the LMCI is a guide to potential interest rate movements then they won’t be rising any time soon. I updated my gross flows database today and also the job openings and quits database. The gross flows analysis suggests that while there has been improvement in the US labour market in the last year, in recent months that improvement is slowing.

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Australian coal sector being undermined by responsible Chinese policy

Earlier this week, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published its – Global Summary Information – June 2015 – which reported that in the period January to June 2015, the globally-averaged land and sea surface temperatures were the highest for those months since the data was first collected in 1880 (135 years). I am not a climate change expert but the array of data that I have looked at from a statistical perspective tells me that what the experts are saying with respect to global warming and climate change is probably correct – it is happening and it is happening relatively quickly. The conservative Australian government remains in denial of the global trends with respect to climate change. It is introduced various policies that have made us a national disgrace – such as, abandoning the mining and cut taxes introduced by the previous government, defunding a research institute set up to provide information about climate change, and instructing a public ‘Green Bank’ to not fund wind or solar projects. This week, the government has been castigated by a British Tory MP, who said that its approach to climate change was not that of a ‘conservative government’ and bordered on delusion. But the most important piece of data this week has been the latest figures from China that show that dramatic restructuring away from coal consumption is rapidly taking place which will undermine the viability of the Australian coal sector in the coming decade. So the ‘market’ is going to force change in Australia when it would be much better for government to plan an orderly transition away from coal.

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Friday lay day – Australia heading for recession

Its the Friday lay day blog, which means very little as it turns out. Today, though it means a short insight into the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics – Private New Capital Expenditure and Expected Expenditure – data for the March-quarter yesterday, which showed that Australia is heading for recession-level private capital formation rates. The data also suggests that the Australian government’s fiscal strategy outlined earlier in May is based on deeply flawed forecasts of private spending and if the investment plans signalled in this data release are realised then the economy will slow substantially over the next 12 months. The fiscal stance in the most recent statement is towards contraction (austerity). In the light of the latest investment expectations revealed in the ABS data release, the Government should abandon their fiscal strategy immediately and announce a significant stimulus package. Unemployment is already rising and will rise further under the current trends. This is another case of neo-liberal austerity white-anting the capacity of the economy to deliver prosperity for all.

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Mixed metaphors, same old fiscal myths

The ABC news report (May 4, 2015) – Budget figures likened to Stephen King novel as Deloitte predicts $14.1 billion blowout for 2015-2016 – is one of the worst pieces of journalism you will ever read. There is no critical scrutiny in this report at all. It clearly just takes the press release from the private consulting firm and summarises it for public consumption. That is not balanced reporting or good journalism. The ABC is our national broadcaster, funded from the public purse and reaches all the population. It is also a free resource so there are no barriers to entry to consumption. It therefore has a responsibility to provide balanced reporting and should never become partisan. The problem is that on economics matters it has become a neo-liberal mouthpiece and continually gives headline space to mainstream economics organisations who make money from selling spurious advice about the economy. The only reasonable thing that this ABC Report is that the headline likens the fiscal analysis of Deloitte Access Economics, a Canberra-based economic consultancy firm, to fictional prose, which I think is an accurate assessment.

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Friday lay day – worst sustained British productivity performance since 1948

Its the Friday lay day blog and a public holiday to boot. So not much today. I wrote earlier in the week a blog about the latest British employment data – Employment growth in the UK but of dubious quality. It was part of a series of blogs I have written documenting the gap between the political hubris coming from the Conservatives about how successful their austerity strategy has been and the reality on the ground. Yes, Britain is growing in the sense that real GDP growth is no longer negative. But in this environment of weak growth the essential conditions for longer term prosperity are being eroded. On Wednesday this week, more information came out to support this hypothesis. The British Office of National Statistics (ONS) published the latest – Labour Productivity, Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2014 – Release – which showed that “labour productivity fell by 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2014” and is the worst sustained performance since 1948 (no growth in the last seven years). Some claim to success. I remind readers that rising material standards of living in any nation rely on productivity growth. Without it societies with ageing populations are headed for mediocrity or worse.

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ECB should start funding government infrastructure and cash handouts

I was a signatory to a letter published in the Financial Times on Thursday (March 26, 2015) – Better ways to boost eurozone economy and employment – which called for a major fiscal stimulus from the European Central Bank (given it is the only body in the Eurozone that can introduce such a stimulus). The fiscal stimulus would take the form of a cash injection using the ECB’s currency monopoly powers. A co-signatory was Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor, Warwick University, renowned Keynesian historian and Keynes’ biographer. Amazingly, Skidelsky wrote an article in the UK Guardian two days before the FT Letter was published (March 24, 2015) – Fiscal virtue and fiscal vice – macroeconomics at a crossroads – which would appear to contradict the policy proposal we advocated in the FT Letter. The Guardian article is surrender-monkey territory and I disagree with most of it. It puts the progressive case on the back foot. What the hell is going on?

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Australia – the Fourth Intergenerational Myth Report

The Australian government will release the Fourth Intergenerational Report today with much fanfare, scaremongering and lies. Our boofhead Treasurer has been doing the rounds of the media outlets giving his evangelical sales pitch on how scary the future is unless we cut the fiscal deficit now and get the balance back in surplus as soon as possible. These intergenerational reports are really a confection of lies, half-truths interspersed with irrelevancies and sometimes some interesting facts. There is very little economics in these reports. What parades as economic analysis is just the usual neo-liberal mainstream nonsense that currency-issuing governments have run out of money and fiscal deficits are dangerous. The Treasurer is selling the Report on the grounds of “intergenerational theft” (the classic anti-fiscal deficit argument about mortgaging our future grand children’s future). Apparently, this justifies large cuts to the fiscal deficit now in order to turn it into a surplus so that our future generations are left with no debt. The real intergenerational theft though is embodied in a current fiscal strategy that leaves around 45 per cent of our teenagers unemployed, underemployed or NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) and hacks into public infrastructure provision as a strategy to create fiscal surpluses now. With private spending subdued at present and the external sector also draining expenditure from the economy relative to its income, trying to impose fiscal austerity now in the name of defending future prosperity is a grand lie and will ensure that the future prosperity is undermined.

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Friday lay day – The superiority of economists!

Its the Friday lay day blog and today I briefly discuss economists. What a topic! There is an interesting article just published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that examines the way economists think of themselves and other social science disciplines. It is a horror story really. Having been immersed in the profession for many years now, I sometimes forget how bad it is. Here is what the study found. The title is a deliberate double entendre. It is more about the way economists think they are superior rather than any absolute finding of superiority.

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National income continues to be redistributed from wages to profits in Australia

One of the salient features of the neo-liberal era has been the on-going redistribution of national income to profits away from wages. This feature is present in many nations. As I noted in yesterday’s blog – Employer group demands free labour from Government – employer groups in Australia are upping the ante and demanding that the Government provide them with free labour. It goes like this – the government runs a fiscal austerity campaign, which creates rising unemployment. They then harass the unemployed for daring to apply for the below poverty line income support. If that is not enough, then the private sector demands the Government hand these unemployed workers over to them for free to “make coffee” and other tasks. Its a lovely world that we are living in. Meanwhile there is growing pressure on Australia’s wage setting tribunals to scrap penalty and overtime rates, allegedly because they damage employment and firms are just busting to put more workers on as long as wages drop. The Australian Bureau of Statistics published the latest – Wage Price Index, Australia – for the December-quarter today and we learn that the annual growth in wages is now at the lowest level since the data series began in the June-quarter 1997. The annual hourly wage inflation is now down to 2.5 per cent overall and 2.4 per cent in the private sector. With productivity growth running slightly slower and the annual inflation rate dropping sharply in recent quarters as the overall economy slows down (and oil prices fall), the shift to profits slowed marginally in the December-quarter. But Real Unit Labour Costs (RULC) continued to fall. Further, the long-term trends are still alarming with employment growth flat or negative and unemployment rising.

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Employer group demands free labour from Government

Last week, the peak body representing small business in Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) called on the Federal Government to hand over free labour under the guise that “making coffee” will enhance the skills of the workers. The free labour they want to get their hands on are the unemployed on income support. They want the Government to continue to pay the below-poverty income support but force the recipients to work in small and medium-size businesses “making coffee or serving customers” as a solution to youth unemployment. This is the same group that thinks the pay of the lowest-paid workers (like kitchen hands, cleaners etc) should be cut. They also claim that rising unemployment in Australia is being caused by structural rigidities in the workplace (job protection, occupational health requirements etc). There is a wide-ranging attack on workers going on at the moment. This is just one aspect of this attack. Austerity is forcing more onto the unemployment pile. Once there they are being increasingly subjected to pernicious policy requirements (see yesterday’s blog – Job Services Australia – ineffective and rife with corruption – scrap it!). Then employer groups lobby government to cut wages and conditions and scrap regulative environments that protect workers. It is an important era for social democrats. Either we regain some political equanimity and coherence or we continue to call parties Socialist that impose austerity and talk about being ‘pro-business’, while attacking pensions, wages, and employment.

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Recessions can always be avoided and should be

Recessions are very costly events. The income losses come quickly and sustain for several periods after the worst has occurred. Unemployment rises sharply and if government doesn’t take appropriate action (job creation), it takes a very long time to return to previous levels. The losses of income are huge and are lost forever. The related pathologies such as increased rates of family breakdown, increased crime rates, increased alcohol and substance abuse, increased suicide rates, increased incidence of mental and physical problems, the lost opportunities for skill development and work experience among the young, make the costs of enduring recession very high. These costs dwarf any of the estimated costs of so-called structural rigidities (micro imbalances) that have been produced by researchers over the years. Mass unemployment is the single greatest source of income loss. It is amazing therefore that policy makers do not prioritise the avoidance of recession yet expend vast energy talking about structural reforms etc. The fact is that recessions can always be avoided and should be. Governments can always adjust fiscal policy settings to ensure there is sufficient total spending in the economy to avoid recession, irrespective of what the private sector spending patterns are.

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Friday lay day – more snake oil from Brussels

Its my Friday lay day blog. I am in Sri Lanka at present and will have some reports about that over the next 14 odd days. I was amazed overnight by the comments from IMF boss Lagarde who made overt political statements in an upcoming election year by claiming that David Cameron had shown “eloquent and convincing” leadership in the global recovery. She said they were a model for the European Union. When asked why the IMF had criticised Britain in 2012 for “playing with fire” by invoking fiscal austerity, she said the IMF had “got it wrong” (Source). Hmm. No recognition that Britain cannot be a model for most of the EU nations, given the latter surrendered their currency sovereignty, imposed fiscal rules that prevent growth, and have a central bank that will not act as a responsible currency issuer. Further, it was a false admission of failure. In fact, the IMF got it right and Britain didn’t implement the austerity that it had initially planned and has kept a relative large fiscal deficit that has helped support growth.

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Friday lay day – unemployment is a pernicious state

Its my Friday lay day blog and today I have been working on social psychology and group dynamics today. I am trying to dig into how economic ideas forms and how they are reinforced by language, media, and the educational system. Many people have researched topics like this but we are aiming to bring it all together into a coherent framework with the added aim of developing a progressive language guide to advance the conceptual ideas that I research and write about. The events in the last few days in Paris have also given me cause for thought within this overall research agenda, given the obvious link with a particularly zealous interpretation of a religious script and the role of economic disadvantage and austerity in fostering what some might call medieval, at best, behaviour. The role of language and conceptualisation is also implicated. I don’t intend to write about the events though. I am not professionally qualified to provide any meaningful input and as an individual I have mixed views on it. I certainly wouldn’t be perpetuating the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ campaign but that doesn’t mean I excuse the behaviour of the barbarians. But barbarism has many forms as does terrorism, and one could easily argue that the sort of austerity that has been inflicted on nations like Greece and France has created a responsive form of terrorism that is more random and very dangerous.

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