Rob Ashton zielt mit Arbeitsplatzgarantieplan auf „manipulierte“ Wirtschaft ab | der tiefe Tauchgang

The way that Ashton proposes this comes across as a bit naïve/unachievable since his proposal as a „jobs for everyone“ plan promises net-zero to near zero unemployment by ensuring employment for everyone that wants a job. For one thing full employment is basically an unenforceable system going off both economics and economic history. Even in countries like the Soviet Union where unemployment was illegal, they still had an unofficial baseline 1-2% unemployment rate that the country wouldn’t fall below.

Beyond that mandatory employment/zero-to-near-zero unemployment policies generally have a negative policy impact on both productivity & monetary policy. This isn’t to say that well designed government employment programs in key sectors couldn’t significantly reduce unemployment rates overall if implemented correctly, but that’s different to what Ashton’s talking about here, which is jobs for everyone that wants them. Keep in mind that even countries with higher degrees of public employment than Canada like France or the Scandinavian countries don’t have perpetual 1-2% unemployment rates and on average Scandinavian countries have had an average unemployment rate of above 5%, with the exception of Norway while France has actually had historically higher unemployment rates than Canada etc. So while expanding public sector jobs in the right way could significantly reduce long term unemployment, it would be nowhere close to the degree Ashton is arguing here.

There’s plenty of social democratic policies/programs supported by economists and hard data that have a proven track record at either reducing unemployment or inequality while boosting social mobility and those would generally be more worthwhile for the NDP to pursue than the more impractical ‚pie in the sky“ proposals that Ashton is proposing here. If anything this is demonstrating that Ashton likely is not suited for party leadership.

In other news, the NDP leadership hopeful is out here pulling unachievable, unviable, completely unrealistic ideas out of thin air and calling them “policy.” Ron Ashton’s latest masterpiece is a “job guarantee,” which might be the purest form of political hopium I’ve seen in years.

How exactly does he plan to enforce mandatory employment? Is he going to personally drag people to work? Draft half the country into a government-funded arts-and-crafts bureau? It’s amazing how easy policymaking becomes when you know you’ll never actually have to govern anything.

Must be nice to live in a world where you can be that delusional and that unaccountable, while pretending you’re offering solutions instead of writing fanfiction.