{"id":33530,"date":"2018-04-26T05:45:55","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T09:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=33530"},"modified":"2018-04-25T21:30:40","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T01:30:40","slug":"ending-unemployment-with-15-per-hour-government-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2018\/04\/ending-unemployment-with-15-per-hour-government-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Ending Unemployment with $15 Per Hour Government Jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Unemployment would be completely ended with a program that would give every America who wanted a job employment with the federal government, which would pay $15 per hour, plus health care benefits.<\/p>\n

That is the proposal of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt).\u00a0 Two other potential Democratic presidential nominees, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), also came out for federally-guaranteed jobs.<\/p>\n

Under Sen. Sanders\u2019 plan, the Americans thus employed by the federal government would work to rebuild the national infrastructure, offer daycare for children, improve the environment, and help teachers in schools.\u00a0 The program would include job training.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe goal is to\u00a0eliminate working poverty and involuntary unemployment altogether,\u201d said leftist economist Darrick Hamilton.\u00a0 \u201cThis\u00a0is an opportunity for something transformative, beyond the tinkering we\u2019ve been doing for the last 40 years, where all the productivity gains have gone to the elite of society.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Sen. Sander\u2019s office said that the cost of the program and plans for funding it had yet to be determined.<\/p>\n

See Bernie Sanders to announce plan to guarantee every American a job<\/a>\u00a0in the Washington Post.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s think about this.\u00a0 Here in rural Oklahoma, there aren\u2019t many hourly jobs that pay as much as $15 per hour.\u00a0 That includes our factories, warehouses, and service industries. Amazon<\/a> starts off its distribution center workers at $11.50 an hour in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and $13.75 an hour in Kent, Washington, near its headquarters.\u00a0 The starting wage at Costco<\/a>, considered a good employer, is $13.50.<\/p>\n

So if the government is offering $15, that would drain off workers from the private sphere.\u00a0 Indeed, the plan is intended<\/a> to force private employers to match or exceed the $15 rate, thus, in effect, raising the minimum wage to that level.<\/p>\n

Amazon and other big corporations could probably absorb that, though such a spike in labor expenses would probably accelerate their automation plans, resulting in job cuts that would add to the numbers in the government program.\u00a0 But many small businesses, especially in small town, would go under.<\/p>\n

Also, what will it mean if the government is going to use its massive pool of labor to rebuild our national infrastructure?\u00a0 We aren\u2019t going to contract the work out to private companies?\u00a0 That would mean the government would need to invest vast sums in heavy equipment and engineering professionals (who command much more than $15 per hour).\u00a0 And steel workers, heavy equipment operators, and other specialized construction trades are among the hourly workers who also make more than $15 per hour.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t easy to build bridges or grade roads.\u00a0 Or, for that matter, teach in classrooms or clean up the environment.\u00a0 Most of the chronically unemployed whom this program would target have low skills.\u00a0 Plans for the program indicate that they will be paid to take job training classes\u2013another expensive undertaking to staff and operate nationwide\u2013but some people just do not function very well in the classroom.<\/p>\n

As far as how to pay for this, especially on top of all of the other programs<\/a> Democrats are proposing, is a rather important question.\u00a0 I suspect that taxing the rich, the Democrats\u2019 solution for everything, is not going to be enough, even if you confiscate everything they have.<\/p>\n

Private companies pay workers for their productivity.\u00a0 They make products or offer services that earn the company money, which is where the money comes to pay for the workers.\u00a0 Labor costs are set by supply and demand.<\/p>\n

Paying workers a set rate apart from any<\/em> consideration of productivity, where the labor expense is a net cost to the government, with no sales of goods or services to cover the expense, seems economically impossible.<\/p>\n

I know that Sen. Sanders is a socialist, but even socialists have to work in terms of the economic laws.\u00a0 In the Soviet Union, the state took over ownership of the means of production, so that workers continued to manufacture products in government-owned factories.\u00a0 Sen. Sanders has said he wants to emulate the social democracy of the Scandinavian countries,<\/a> but all of them depend on private companies to provide employment for their citizens and they pursue policies to help them do so.<\/p>\n

And this universal job program at wages higher than the private sector goes far beyond the W.P.A. program<\/a> during the Depression, which I\u2019m sure Democrats will compare it to.\u00a0 The W.P.A. was temporary by nature and was phased out when the labor demands of the private sector during World War II made it superfluous.<\/p>\n

Am I missing something?\u00a0 How could Democrats seriously consider a program like this?<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>

Photo: W.P.A. Construction Workers, being sketched by\u00a0 Alfred Castagne, a W.P.A artist, by W.P.A. photographer,\u00a0 Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=355590<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unemployment would be completely ended with a program that would give every America who wanted a job employment with the federal government, which would pay $15 per hour, plus health care benefits. That is the proposal of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt).\u00a0 Two other potential Democratic presidential nominees, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":33548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19,36],"tags":[6749,6752,6746,2280],"class_list":["post-33530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-politics","tag-government-employment-programs","tag-labor-market","tag-sanders-guaranteed-employment-plan","tag-unemployment"],"yoast_head":"\nEnding Unemployment with $15 Per Hour Government Jobs<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sen. 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