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“More than any other piece of public policy, the Job Guarantee can help us build a more equitable economy and just society. Pavlina Tcherneva has written the perfect primer for anyone interested in understanding why and how the Job Guarantee can do so much good.”
Ady Barkan, activist, organizer and author of Eyes to the Wind
“Many are coming to understand that the socioeconomic system in which we live – or endure – is broken, badly. There are solutions. The ideas in this valuable work point the way to a more civilized, indeed survivable, social order.”
Noam Chomsky
“The Job Guarantee is the next big, common-sense idea for economic reform. Over years of dedicated work, Pavlina Tcherneva has developed and advanced the plan, and today it stands poised to complement the Green New Deal and Medicare for All as a fundamental pillar of the progressive agenda. Read about it here … and go out to help make it happen.”
James K. Galbraith, The University of Texas at Austin
“Tcherneva lays out the case for how we can raise the roof by lifting the floor, as we transition away from a failed and cruel economy based on an assumed percentage of unemployment. She demonstrates how a jobs guarantee can help address some of our biggest challenges, including bridging the gap to a Green New Deal and the critical conversion from a fossil-fuel economy to a sustainable future. Through her book we can see a world where everyone who wants to claim the dignity of work as their own has that right.”
Sara Nelson, International President, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO
“Pavlina Tcherneva offers an eloquent and convincing argument for a public sector job guarantee as an economic shock absorber. Particularly valuable is her demonstration of how such a program can revitalise local communities. Beyond this, her book is an indispensable primer for advocates of a Green New Deal.”
Lord Robert Skidelsky, author of Keynes: The Return of the Master
Dedication
For my daughter Yvette –
May you live in a world that is green and just.
The Case For series
Sam Pizzigati, The Case for a Maximum Wage
Louise Haagh,
The Case for Universal Basic Income
James K. Boyce, The Case for Carbon Dividends
Frances Coppola,
The Case for People’s Quantitative Easing
Joe Guinan & Martin O’Neill,
The Case for Community Wealth Building
Anna Coote & Andrew Percy,
The Case for Universal Basic Services
Gerald Friedman, The Case for Medicare for All
Andrew Cumbers, The Case for
Economic Democracy
Pavlina R. Tcherneva, The Case for a Job Guarantee
The Case for a Job Guarantee
Pavlina R. Tcherneva
polity
Copyright © Pavlina R. Tcherneva 2020
The right of Pavlina R. Tcherneva to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2020 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4211-6
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Acknowledgments
When I first began working on the Job Guarantee in the late 1990s, the consensus was that the US had reached full employment and the Goldilocks economy was here to stay. The argument made little sense but it convinced me that researching unemployment would be a solitary experience. Happily, I was wrong.
My journey began with