Title: Funding a Job Guarantee

Authors: Philip Harvey

Addresses: Rutgers School of Law – Camden, 217 North Fifth Street, Camden, NJ 08102, USA

Abstract: Adopting a conventional view of the need for governments to raise the funds they spend, I have argued that a well-designed Job Guarantee (JG) programme could be funded entirely from the savings and additional revenues it would generate (Harvey, 1989; 1995). In contrast, JG advocates working in the Post Keynesian tradition have grounded their proposal for funding such a programme on a more expansive view of the fiscal capacities of currency-issuing governments. Based on that view, they have argued that a JG programme could be funded without relying on any of the funding sources identified in my analysis of the issue (Mitchell and Wray, 2005; Tcherneva and Wray, 2005; Mitchell and Watts, 2005). This article argues that these two approaches to the funding issue are not inconsistent with one another and that they jointly reinforce the conclusion that a JG programme could achieve full employment without generating unacceptable levels of inflation.

Keywords: full employment; job guarantees; right to work; employment guarantees; inflation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEWE.2006.009360

International Journal of Environment, Workplace and Employment, 2006 Vol.2 No.1, pp.114 - 132

Published online: 22 Mar 2006 *

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