The Job Guarantee, and the need for a goverment
to issue its own currency
On this web
page I have placed two audio interviews. They are with professor of economics Bill Mitchell,
director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE)
at
The first
interview is about the Job Guarantee (JG), a reform that enables any market
(capitalist) economy to employ everyone that wants paid work, immediately, as
long as they want, and in the community where they live. To some degree this
interview also goes into the issue of whether a JG system will create
inflation.
The second
interview goes deeper into the financial side of the JG. It explains why
governments should and can run budget deficits, and why this is not necessarily
inflationary as many skeptics would argue. It discusses why the
"independence" of the Central Bank from the government is a complety artificial and dangerous construct. It explains
the supreme importance of a country's government being the issuer of the
currency in circulation (as opposed to countries adopting the U.S. dollar as
their national currency, or European countries rescinding their own currency
for the Euro). It explains why any country and even a very poor one can lift
itself by its own bootstraps if the government implements a JG system, paid by
own-issued currency.
Both these
interviews were done in June 2004 by Trond Andresen,
who is a Norwegian academic -- on a sabbatical at CofFEE
at the time.
Technical
note: It is recommended that you download the interview(s) to your own machine,
and then listen. Right-click with the
mouse and follow instructions. Both interviews are strongly compressed
MP3. Hopefully the audio quality is still acceptable.
First interview (5.4 Mb, 46:04 min.):
http//www.itk.ntnu.no/ansatte/Andresen_Trond/dwnld/JG1.mp3
Second interview (5.75 Mb, 40:35 min.):
http//www.itk.ntnu.no/ansatte/Andresen_Trond/dwnld/JG2.mp3
Any feedback
is welcome!