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:
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!