Ending the Crisis With Guaranteed Employment and Retraining

Jon Wisman and Aaron Pacitti

No 2013-12, Working Papers from American University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Since 2008, the U.S. economy has been mired in the second worst economic crisis in its history. Conceivably, massive government spending could bring the economy out of this slump as massive war spending ultimately ended the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, a far superior strategy exists: Guaranteeing employment accompanied by retraining to enable all unemployed workers to become absorbed into the regular work force. Beyond ending the crisis, the superiority of this strategy is that it would institutionalize a procedure for insuring that, in an increasingly technologically dynamic and open economy, workers would possess the necessary skills for available jobs. Guaranteeing employment would also eliminate the ecological costs associated with the need to seek growth to generate employment at practically any cost. Finally, it would establish a new moral social contract whereby everyone is granted the dignity that accompanies being a productive member of society. Welfare for those able to work could disappear, along with the degradation and humiliation that accompanies it.

Keywords: employer of last result; inequality; unemployment; inadequate demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 H10 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-mac and nep-spo
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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