The Full Employment Train Rolls Ahead

Bernie Sanders has now announced his support of a federal job guarantee. This is also starting to freak out right-wing economists. They don’t even have an answer for it.

“It completely undercuts a lot of industries and companies,” said Brian Riedl, of the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, a think tank. “There will be pressure to introduce a higher wage or certain benefits that the private sector doesn’t offer.”

Why yes. That’s precisely what it does. And that’s why it makes sense for all of us to support it. It is a direct attack on four decades of quarterly report culture emphasizing short-term profits over job creation and training, of the capitalists capturing all the wealth creation instead of spreading it around the population, and of offshoring all work and destabilizing the American workforce, ushering in all sorts of new forms of exploitative work such as long-term temping, subcontracting, and franchising. Yes, it gives workers the opportunity to quit their crappy jobs for a government job. That would be great.