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Showing Original Post only (View all)Your Government Owes You a Job [View all]
http://www.thenation.com/article/179476/your-government-owes-you-job?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaignInvoluntary unemployment is barbaric. In the wealthiest country in history, almost 30 million people wish they had full-time work. But, as always, there arent enough jobs. And because economic security requires decent work, its unsurprising that 50 million people are poverty-stricken and 16 million children are hungry.
This is a disgrace and an economic error: the US government can easily afford a Job guarantee (JG) program, becoming our employer of last resort.
A right to a job may sound outlandish, but its common sense. You need dollars to eat, and unless you steal the dollars, you generally have to earn them. If the government wants to protect property with cops, courts, and prisons, issue a single, common currency, and tax and fine us in it, it should at least guarantee we can work for our own dollars. Politicians ramble about equality of opportunity and the dignity of work, but to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we need boots. And lest our boots stomp each others necks in senseless competition for too few jobs, we need a job guarantee.
A job guarantee isnt that radical. Thomas Paine proposed one in 1791. In 1944, FDR included the right to a living wage job in his Second Bill of Rights and his Republican opponent promised state-ensured employment. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrined the right to work and philosophers Rawls and Dewey advocated government provide enough work. LBJ deliberated a JG and Martin Luther King Jr., demanded one.
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I absolutely agree. Unfortunately people have to seriously adjust their thinking to accept this.
mattclearing
Apr 2014
#1
Yes, this was one of the main principles of the postwar consensus in the UK..
LeftishBrit
Apr 2014
#2
Iraq was about oil, war profiteering and making Bush the Lesser a war president.
Enthusiast
Apr 2014
#19
Iraq was also about pointing to the Democrats as not only weak on national security but TRAITORS....
Spitfire of ATJ
Apr 2014
#22
I was about to say the same thing but backed out of the posting page to see if anyone
ChisolmTrailDem
Apr 2014
#12
Geothermal at Yellowstone could even be done outside the eyes of the public.
Enthusiast
Apr 2014
#20
The way they generate power at a plant is to boil water into steam to drive a turbine....
Spitfire of ATJ
Apr 2014
#21