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... for employer of last resort programs, the cost of the wage is not charged to the activity, its charged to the general fund, so the question is, what activities are worth their on-costs?

Between environmental remediation, sustainable infrastructure provision and direct provision of increased social services, all budgeted on the basis of on-costs after labor cost and so strongly biased to be done in as labor intensive a way as practicable, employing 10% to 15% of the workforce with Job Guarantee jobs is do-able.

Of course, once a substantial fraction of the unemployed are provided with Job Guarantee jobs, there will be an increase in private employment as well, so its not as if the Job Guarantee has to employ the entire 20%.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Wed Mar 2nd, 2011 at 12:26:38 PM EST
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Under the assumptions by which Mainstream Econmics and the conventional wisdom currently operate, a US mobilization to meet the challenges posed by Germany and Japan in the late 1930s would not have been possible, nor could the Pharaohs have built the pyramids. Political power to organize the productive capabilites of society is at the heart of how societies actually operate, but is totally excluded from consideration in mainstream economic thought, which enforces a strict seperation between economics and the state, while, in the USA, being, de facto, in violation of the establishment of religion prohibition, as their economic orthodoxy has become the established state religion.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Mar 2nd, 2011 at 06:23:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]
... definitely a declaration of war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor would have had to be delayed in order to first work out if the bond markets would finance an all out war.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Thu Mar 3rd, 2011 at 10:13:58 AM EST
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Your point is well taken, as is Bruces'.
The most useful comments for me.
However, I'm  convinced this is only one of the operant processes modulating the "now" we find ourselves in. There's more going on - a lot more.
What passed for mainstream economic thought remains the superficially dominant model. But on a more fundamental level the humiliating collapse of vast sections of it's foundational doctrine has not gone unnoticed. We all know "Mainstream" is staggering.

I did my little tongue-in-cheek briefing to pose a dilemma- one I think is common today and growing more and more common. The dilemma of someone who has at least some of the levers to hand, and who gets it, but who is faced with the vast inertia of vested interests, denialists, predators, and a congress populated largely by manipulative, self-congratulatory dickheads, after a half-century of filtering out the last of the true old-style public servants.
Think Russ Feingold.
Don't know who would be comparable in Europe, but I'm sure they're there.
Whether you credit Obama with the wit to see the elephant isn't the point.

That dilemma occurs everywhere, at a time of paradigm shift, unless you see the "other" as just fools.

Who gets it?
How long ago did the light dawn?
What would be (has been) their possible courses of action?
Once the number of players who have made the transition grows beyond some critical mass, what happens? What's the range of likely outcomes?
Some of this is knowable.

My question was embodied in the title.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Fri Mar 4th, 2011 at 02:02:42 AM EST
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