Abstract
The job guarantee was designed to address the problems of unemployment. However, in light of the environmental crisis, it is important to recognize the ways in which this policy proposal may be harnessed to cope with broader issues of social justice and ecological sustainability . This chapter looks specifically at how the vision of a job guarantee program aligns with and promotes the burgeoning movement of degrowth. In this respect, the most important feature of the job guarantee is that it eliminates the profit constraint on employment. With a job guarantee in place, the working class will not be hostage to profit-driven economic growth to secure an income. Under the existing paradigm of global capitalism, the world population faces a trade-off between ecological and economic prosperity. By severing the link between aggregate demand and employment, a job guarantee offers possibilities for an ecologically sustainable future without unemployment. In other words, a job guarantee decouples employment from economic growth and establishes a path for the reconciliation of economic and environmental goals. This chapter discusses the ways in which a job guarantee may be utilized to buttress the social justice and environmental aspirations of degrowth.
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Notes
- 1.
Degrowth is not easy to define. At its core is a rejection of economic growth as a social objective. The idea first emerged in the 1970s alongside The Club of Rome’s, Limits to Growth (1972) and Georgescu-Rogen’s, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971). In 1972, Andre Gorz, who is credited with coining the French term for degrowth “decroissance” posed a seminal question: “Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth —or even degrowth—of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of capitalism ?” (D’Alisa et al. 2015, p. 1). Today, degrowth is an international social, political and economic movement calling on academics and activists of diverse backgrounds to radically reimagine an economic future that is not premised on economic growth. A catalyst for the movement is growing frustration with half-hearted, empty or naïve proposals for “green growth,” “sustainable development ” or “green capitalism.” Such win-win slogans fail to acknowledge the systemic causes of environmental decline and perpetuate the myth that we can address the issue without making fundamental changes to our way of life. By contrast, degrowth has roots in ecological realism and recognizes that any serious response to a problem driven by overuse of the planet must include a decrease in production and consumption .
While exploring ways to produce and consume less is central to degrowth , the movement is about much more than a quantitative reduction of material throughput . Degrowth recognizes that significant qualitative changes to existing forms of social and economic organization are necessary to create a future, wherein both humans and the planet can flourish. From this perspective, the necessity for change imposed by environmental limits is viewed as an opportunity to address long-standing social problems associated with capitalism including poverty , inequality , unemployment , exploitation, alienation and the erosion of community (ibid.).
- 2.
It is important to note that Boulding ’s concept of consumption is not the same as Keynes ’s idea of household expenditure. Consumption in the Keynesian sense actually describes an asset transfer from businesses to households . Boulding uses consumption in the classical sense to describe the destruction of assets.
- 3.
In terms of practical application, the bathtub theorem suffers an obvious setback. Because it is stated in physical terms, we cannot plug in actual values for P, C and A in a world of heterogeneous goods. Nonetheless, the theorem remains true as a matter of identity, and as such serves as a useful heuristic for thinking about physical stocks and flows.
- 4.
Overproduction and underconsumption may be thought of as two sides of the same coin. Both are relative terms defined in relation to one another, and to this extent, they are interchangeable. However, there is a danger in thinking this way. While a given situation may be described by either term, the two terms point in opposing directions toward differing solutions. In an economy that produces more than enough output to meet human needs, it is misleading to describe crises in terms of underconsumption. Indeed, with respect to ecological limits, overproduction and overconsumption currently coexist.
- 5.
This clearly indicates a problem of distribution , not growth . The long-standing tradition in economics of viewing growth as the remedy to all problems must in part be explained by a political unwillingness to seriously entertain discussion of redistribution.
- 6.
Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) demonstrate that key indicators of mental and physical well-being are not correlated with aggregate income in the industrialized North. Degrowth advocates argue that the North needs to degrow in order to provide the ecological space for the South to grow (Kerschner 2010; Latouche 2010; O’neil 2011).
- 7.
Kalecki ’s profit equation captures this relationship (Kalecki 1965, pp. 45–52). In a simplified economy with no government or foreign sector, assuming that workers do not save and capitalists do not consume, profits are determined by investment . Thus, to realize profits, capitalists must invest, meaning the economy must grow.
- 8.
In his critique of the JG, Sawyer concedes this weakness of the demand gap approach, “the attraction of ELR schemes appears to be their ability to guarantee full employment . Variations in mainline public sector jobs or taxation may aim to provide full employment , but that cannot be guaranteed through forecasting errors and implementation delays” (2003, p. 890).
- 9.
- 10.
Compared to levels that would exist with no policies in place to mitigate the decline in production .
- 11.
In fact, JG workers can do anything society deems worthwhile. This might include going to school, producing works of art, planting community gardens, taking care of the elderly, raising children, habitat restoration and so on.
- 12.
In this context, “reducing productivity ” refers to increasing employment per unit of output and/or decreasing output per unit of time . This goal stems from the assumption that in the aggregate, output is a good proxy for throughput based on the historical correlation of GDP and throughput (Jackson 2009; Kallis 2011). Obviously, reducing productivity in this sense is not desirable in all fields of production . In any field where socially useful goods and services are produced sustainably high productivity may be desirable. Additionally, high productivity may be desirable in any case where it serves to reduce the time required to complete an onerous task without necessitating an increase in output. Finally, reducing productivity does not require the abandonment of any particular technology or technique of production. It can be achieved in any existing line of production by merely reducing the pace of production or the length of the working day.
- 13.
- 14.
Boulding points out that we obtain satisfaction from using existing goods and from using them up. In other words, he distinguishes between use, which yields satisfaction and consumption , which involves the destruction of some element of the capital stock. For example, we derive satisfaction from the use of a coat, but not from using up (destroying) the coat.
- 15.
Daly makes an analogous argument using the following identity: (service/throughput ) = (service/stock) × (stock/throughput).
“Growth” is defined as an increase in throughput holding the right-hand ratios constant. By contrast, sustainable “development ” involves increasing the two right-hand ratios holding throughput constant (Daly 1996, p. 68).
- 16.
Assuming workers in both sectors spend what they get.
- 17.
Note, however, that the stimulus to growth from the jog guarantee (JG) is less than that which would result from a successful demand gap policy. This follows from the fact that the demand gap approach seeks to preempt the recession such that there is no fall in output or demand. This may be unrealistic, but it is nevertheless the objective of the demand management policy.
- 18.
Technological optimists argue that economic growth will solve all the problems it creates and the current trajectory of the economy is toward “dematerialization” and a decoupling of GDP from throughput (for a discussion of dematerialization, see Lorek 2015). However, “expectations of win-win, sustainable growth through technological and efficiency improvements have not been fulfilled” (Schneider et al. 2010). There has been historically and there remains today a strong correlation between GDP and throughput (Jackson 2009; Kallis 2011; Lorek 2015). Even if the future is uncertain, it would be wise to opt for a precautionary approach rather than to bank on the prophesized but unrealized dematerialization of GDP.
- 19.
The JG was originally conceived as an elaboration of Keynes ’s solution to the problem of unemployment . As such, it was designed to guarantee full employment , stabilize prices and promote economic growth . Environmental limits did not factor into its conception. The JG/Green Jobs proposal seeks to address sustainability , but its aim is limited to minimizing the environmental effects of full employment . The goal here is to place sustainability and employment on an equal footing.
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Unti, B.J. (2018). The Job Guarantee and Transformational Degrowth. In: Murray, M., Forstater, M. (eds) Full Employment and Social Justice. Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66376-0_3
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