policy Archives – Page 3 of 3

The Basic Income and Job Guarantees are Complementary, not Opposing Policies.

It’s disappointing to see debates between proponents of the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) and the Job Guarantee (JG). These discussions detract from the fact that both of these ideal policies are distant from the policies we currently have in place. Supporters of either of these policies should be working together to get either one implemented, and we can debate adding the other later. Today, we need to move beyond our current disjointed welfare system to one that will help Americans, and either policy (or both!) seems like a step in the right direction.

If we look at the current system, the three largest welfare programs we have are Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Medicaid was limited to certain low-income individuals, but the ACA expanded this program so that all adults with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line are eligible. For FY 2015 Medicaid cost $532 billion to cover 73 million individuals. EITC provides additional income to low wage workers, and in 2014 paid out $67 billion to 27.5 million tax filers. Finally, SNAP guarantees an income to buy certain necessary items, and paid out $69 billion to 22 million households in 2015.

Then beyond those three largest programs, we have a smattering of additional programs that help the poor in this country. There’s a housing assistance program, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for the elderly, Pell Grants for college tuition, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families(TANF) program, the Child Nutrition Program, the Head Start preschool program, various Job Training programs (like AmeriCorps and Job Corps) under the Workforce Investment Act, Unemployment Insurance, the Child Tax Credit, Supplemental Nutrition for Women, Infants, and Children(WIC), and then theres others I’m sure I missed (oh yeah, the Obama phone!) along with various state and local programs. The amount of overlap, overhead, and bureaucracy involved with running all of these programs surely diminishes their effectiveness.

All of these programs provide support by doling out income or necessities, with or without a requirement that the recipient be working. BIG and JG would both be ways to consolidate all of these programs, and then the debate becomes how much does someone have to work in order to receive assistance. A lot of people who advocate for BIG think that our current system has a lot of pointless jobs, and BIG would be away to allow those people to pursue something more creative. Considering that most entrepreneurs have one thing in common — access to capital — that may not be too far off. Then there are JG proponents who probably agree with that point, but think we can use the policy to help organize jobs that need to be done (liking cleaning up our environment, or building our infrastructure). Most people who support BIG worry that a JG would create “make-work”, quoting Keynes famous “bury bank notes and dig them back up” line. To them, just giving people the bank notes makes more sense. On the other hand, JG proponents worry about losing the social utility of work. People want to contribute to society, and they see work that needs to be done. Both policies seem hard to pass in todays political climate.

I think proponents of both the BIG and JG are disappointed with a U6 unemployment rate of 9.5%, current companies lack of interest in maintaining our environment, and over 45 million Americans living in poverty. Call it whatever you want, let’s guarantee every American access to the necessities: healthy food, shelter, and healthcare. Clearly this is going to require some people to do some work, so let’s make sure that work gets done with our social structure as well. Calling it a BIG or a Basic Necessities Guarantee (BNG) or a JG doesn’t matter so much to me.

In fact, I’d probably start with calling it the EITC. Get rid of the minimum income phase in, and we instantly have a “BIG”, with all the infrastructure already in place. It would only go to unemployed or low income citizens, since the EITC phases out, which helps it be a progressive policy. So that it can cover the housing benefits and others, we could expand the credit a bit too. How do we pay for this? It’s simple. Scrap the other welfare programs (keep Medicaid, that one’s complicated). The overhead of having all of these programs is gross. How feasible is this plan? Honestly, no clue. I’ve never made a policy. I’ve barely met anyone who even makes policy. It seems like the closest option there is, however. I can see the complaints already though. These ungrateful welfare abusers will buy alcohol and drugs with their new found income! Somehow it’s not OK to drink and do drugs if you’re poor, but if you’re rich, go for it, right? If you get rid of SNAP, people won’t buy food for themselves! Well surprise, there’s already a way to trade SNAP benefits for cash — it’s called craigslist.

Then there’s the other major complaint this would cause — now there is no incentive to work. We have to keep abject poverty as a social option so that people keep working at McDonalds making the McObese, and keep stocking the Wal-Mart shelves so that Wal-Mart can pay starvation wages which allow people to be eligible for the EITC in the first place. I’m not really sure those are the jobs that need to be done. If our low wage workers were working on local farms producing fruits and vegetables, I’d probably agree… someone has to do those things (or make robots to do them!). Yet I haven’t seen any proof an income stops people from working. It’s all speculation. I bet people still do things. Here I am, incomeless, and I’m doing something. I’m writing. I’m volunteering. I’m applying to jobs that I want to do and think will have a positive benefit. Getting rejected, but still, I’m trying.

Let’s see what happens when everyone has some cash on hand. If we start starving and need the government to force us to produce food, we’ll do it then. Yet from the friends I’ve talked to, boredom is a very potent driver of change. I know my fellow millennials and I have dreams of growing our own food in our parents backyards, or the empty lot across the street, or the empty K-Mart, or the empty mall. If only they’d let us. If only we had a little income, a little land, and some water to give it a try. If only the police weren’t killing and hurting us. If only Nestle wasn’t pumping out water from government land for free and forcing us to spend money on it. A lot of us worked our asses off at school, and what did we get? The choice between huge corporations who we see as destroying the environment, or low incomes working retail living with our family and friends. Meh. My friends and I want something different. I choose believing there’s something better than choosing between two evils.

Remember when the public hated huge corporations for destroying small business, not each others’ identities? Do we remember The High Cost of Low Price? BIG and JG proponents, let’s not quibble. We’re on the same side. There’s work to be done. Get organized. Make it happen.

Originally published on Medium

Using Minsky to Better Understand Economic Development – Part 2

The work of Hyman Minsky highlighted the essential role of finance in the capital development of an economy. The greater a nation’s reliance on debt relative to internal funds, the more “fragile” the economy becomes. The first part of this post used these insights to uncover the weaknesses of today’s global economy. This part will discuss an alternative international structure that could address these issues.

Minsky defines our current economic system as “money manager capitalism,” a structure composed of huge pools of highly leveraged private debt. He explains that this system originated in the US following the end of Bretton Woods, and has since been expanded with the help of financial innovations and a series of economic and institutional reforms. Observing how this system gave rise to fragile economies, Minsky looked to the work of John Maynard Keynes as a start point for an alternative.

In the original discussions of the post-war Bretton Woods, Keynes proposed the creation of a stable financial system in which credits and debits between countries would clear off through an international clearing union (see Keynes’s collected writings, 1980).

This idea can be put in reasonably simple terms: countries would hold accounts in an International Clearing Union (ICU) that works like a “bank.” These accounts are denominated in a notional unit of account to which nation’s own currencies have a previously agreed to an exchange rate. The notional unit of account – Keynes called it the bancor – then serves to clear the trade imbalances between member countries. Nations would have a yearly adjusted quota of credits and debts that could be accumulated based on previous results of their trade balance. If this quota is surpassed, an “incentive” – e.g. taxes or interest charges – is applied. If the imbalances are more than a defined amount of the quota, further adjustments might be required, such as exchange, fiscal, and monetary policies.

The most interesting feature of this plan is the symmetric adjustment to both debtors and creditors. Instead of having the burden being placed only on the weakest party, surplus countries would also have to adapt their economies to meet the balance requirement. That means they would have to increase the monetary and fiscal stimulus to their domestic economies in order to raise the demand for foreign goods. Unlike a pro-cyclical contractionist policy forced onto debtor countries, the ICU system would act counter-cyclically by stimulating demand.

Because the bancor cannot be exchanged or accumulated, it would operate without a freely convertible international standard (which today is the dollar). This way, the system’s deflationary bias would be mitigated. Developing countries would no longer accumulate foreign reserves to counter potential balance-of-payment crises. Capital flows would also be controlled since no speculation or flow to finance excessive deficits would be required. Current accounts would be balanced by increasing trade rather than capital flows. Moreover, the ICU would be able to act as an international lender of last resort, providing liquidity in times of stress by crediting countries’ accounts.

Such a system would support international trade and domestic demand, countercyclical policies, and financial stability. It would pave the way not only for development in emerging economies (who would completely free their domestic policies from the boom-bust cycle of capital flows) but also for job creation in the developed world. Instead of curbing fiscal expansion and foreign trade, it would stimulate them – as it is much needed to take the world economy off the current low growth trap.

It should be noted that a balanced current account is not well suited for two common development strategies. The first is import substitution industrialization, which involves running a current account deficit. The second is export-led development, which involves a current account surplus. However, the ICU removes much of the need for such approaches to development. Since all payments would be expressed in the nation’s own currency, every country, regardless it’s size or economic power, would have the necessary policy space to fully mobilize its domestic resources while sustaining its hedge profile and monetary sovereignty.

Minsky showed that capable international institutions are crucial to creating the conditions for capital development. Thus far, our international institutions have failed in this respect, and we are due for a reform.

Undeniably, some measures towards a structural change have already been taken in the past decade. The IMF, for example, now has less power over emerging economies than before. But this is not sufficient, and it is up to the emerging economies to push for more. Unfortunately, the ICU system requires an international cooperation of a level that will be hard to accomplish. Aiming for a second-best solution is tempting. But let’s keep in mind that Brexit and Trump were improbable too. So why not consider that the next unlikely thing could be a positive one?

Paid Leave and Daycare: Luxuries of the Wealthy

The U.S. trails the rest of the world in benefits available to families. Currently, the only industrialized country that does not guarantee paid maternity leave for new mothers is the United States. While other countries offer generous paid parental leave and some form of childcare subsidies, the U.S. does not. This lack of policies to support working families widens economic inequality and limits opportunities of children not born in wealthy households.

Deficit hawks often use their concern for future generations as a basis to argue in favor of cutting entitlement programs such as Social Security. Instead of talking about cutting entitlements, the story should be about expanding them with programs that will actually help children, such as providing paid family leave for parents and addressing the rising costs of childcare. If our children are so important to deficit hawks, then why do they oppose policies that would actually have a positive impact on their future?

Various studies have pointed out the positive impact of paid parental leave on both the child and family’s health. Some of the known benefits are lower child mortality, lower rates of post-natal depression in mothers, and a greater likelihood that mothers will return to work. Particularly interesting is a study that points to higher educational attainments and incomes for children whose mothers had taken maternity leave.

In the United States, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) offers 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave to eligible employees. To qualify for unpaid leave under the FMLA, an employee needs to have been working for over 12 months for a company that hires at least 50 people. While this might be a start, it leaves about half of the workers uncovered. Even for those who are covered by the FMLA, they must afford giving up their paychecks for those 12 weeks. The act does little to help those who are left out or cannot afford to renounce their paychecks. This adds pressure on people at the lower end of the income distribution that might be pushed below the poverty line if forced to give up their incomes.

California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island are the only three states that offer paid family leave by building onto existing disabilities programs. These states labeled pregnancy as a “temporary disability,” which offered a path to receiving a wage replacement for up to 6 weeks. An extensive study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that introducing the policy had a positive or no noticeable effect on 89 percent of the businesses surveyed. However, these policies are very modest compared to the rest of the world, with countries sometimes offering more than 50 weeks of paid leave.

Despite the lack of a federal mandate, some employers voluntarily provide paid family leave. While prestigious companies boast generous leave policies, they are usually only available to highly skilled and highly paid workers. The BLS estimates that about 13 percent of all workers in the US have access to paid family leave. However, there are very large discrepancies between types of workers. Twenty-five percent of those working in the management, business, and financial sector benefit from paid family leave, compared to only 7 percent of those working in the service industry.

The above figure shows the striking differences in access to paid leave by wage level. Top-earners are more than 4 times likelier than those at the lower end to be offered paid family leave by their employer. The data illustrate how mandating paid leave would help those who need it the most and are least likely to afford to take unpaid leave.

Another issue that disproportionately affects lower-income families is the cost of childcare. The Economic Policy Institute found that minimum wage workers would have to spend most of their income on childcare. Another shocking finding is that in 33 states the cost of infant care exceeds average tuition at a public 4-year university. While conversations about college affordability and the debt some students have to incur to cover the costs are common, the issue of daycare affordability is discussed much less. The quality of daycare affects the future outcomes for children, putting those whose parents cannot afford high-quality childcare at a clear disadvantage.

It is fairly common practice in many other countries for the government to subsidize childcare. The generous leave policies, along with childcare subsidies seem to be working for other countries that are catching up with the US in terms of female labor force participation. Surprisingly enough, at some point in its history, the US had a government funded universal childcare program. During World War II, the Lanham Act provided funds to enable women to participate more actively in the labor market. Despite the positive impact the program had, it was abandoned once the war ended and the men who returned took back their jobs. If such a program was possible then, it is most certainly possible now, when a high percentage of women are in the labor market.

With childcare costs outpacing overall inflation, while wages not at the top of the distribution have been stagnating, the burden of raising children falls disproportionately on families that are not wealthy. Paid leave and affordable daycare would help children grow up to their full potential. By lowering financial strain on the parents and improving outcomes for the children, these policies would also tackle the growing income inequality. Instead of focusing on reducing the deficit, which would actually hurt future generations, the U.S should expand entitlements to children to show it is really concerned with their future.

Brazil May Be About to Give Up its Financial Sovereingty

These are strange times. For those who have been drowning in the craziness milk-shake that is the United States presidential campaign and have not been able to follow other world events (we do not blame you), it should come with some assurance to know that the rest of the world is not doing much better. Case and point is that the acting president of Brasil, Michel Temer, who came to power for being the VP of impeached president Dilma Rousseff, is trying to make Brazil the least financially autonomous nation in the world.

Temer and his cabinet, who have been working towards the implementation of austerity measures in Brazil since they came to power, have proposed a constitutional amendment that will severely limit Brazil’s flexibility in government spending. It would be the 93rd amendment to Brazil’s ‘young’ 1988 constitution. In short, the Constitutional Amendment Proposal 241* (PEC 241 in Portuguese), would create an artificial limit to government spending, which would become pegged to the previous year’s inflation.

The Brazilian economy is facing a dire recession even though the Bovespa stock index and real currency BRBY rank among the world’s best-performing assets this year. The pressure towards austerity is coming from both internal and external players, and the financial markets have rallied well to the prognostic of the amendment’s approval. Despite its failure to produce meaningfully positive results elsewhere, austerity is still seen positively by international financial markets.

The amendment makes Brazilian fiscal policy hostage to inflation, thus inverting the hierarchy of economic policy in the country; instead of using of its taxes and spending to control inflation, inflation would control Brazilian economic policy. On one hand it makes the job of lawmakers and policymakers a lot easier, on another it takes away powers granted by the constitution to the Brazilian congress and it is, as put by Brazil’s Attorney General, unconstitutional.

The amendment has been approved by a special commission in Brazil’s lower house on the 6th, and four days later was approved by the lower house as a whole. It comes as a victory to Temer’s austere aspirations for austerity measures had been failing to be implemented in Brazil even during the final days of the previous government. Temer’s own efforts had been facing serious challenges until now.

It is not to say that it all good sailing weather for PRC 241. Portions of the public have come out against the measure. Notably, economists have argued that the debt problem in Brazil is caused by a fall in tax revenue and not because of overspending. Indeed, the high unemployment rates combined with high inflation – among other factors – have caused a real decline in revenue of 2.5%. Meanwhile small business owners in retail have experienced decreases of as high as 30% to their revenue streams.

For those versed in Functional Finance and Modern Monetary Theory this will seem as completely nonsensical. Brazil, currently, is a financially sovereign nation to a good extent. It prints its own currency and taxes on that currency. It, however, has emitted debt in foreign currency, namely the dollar. The amendment would limit this sovereignty, making the Brazilian economy work only within the limits set by the (interior and exterior) factors that affect inflation.

If you have followed our posts for a while, you have read some strong arguments on why austerity is not the remedy for countries facing as recession and that smart fiscal stimulus is much more likely to succeed.

*Some of the sources for this article are in Portuguese.

*This post was written by Carlos Maciel

Italy is Hungry for Expansionary Fiscal Policy

In a meeting with Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande on August 22, the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi proudly announced that Italy has the lowest public deficit of the last 10 years, and will continue with structural reforms to reduce it further. Monti has long aimed to “restore credibility” by cutting the public deficit, and now the Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan enjoys praise on his achievement of a deficit as small as 2.4% of GDP. The FED (Financial and Economic Document) goes so far as say this makes Italy “among the most virtuous countries in the Eurozone.”

A closer look at Italy’s economy, however, shows this “virtuosity” has no basis in reality. In 2015, 1.5 million households lived in absolute poverty. Another 4.5 million individuals saw stagnant incomes. The situation has not been this bad since 2005. In addition, the Migrantes foundation informs us that there has been a boom of italians who go abroad, 107,000 in 2015 (+6,2%). Especially youth from 18 to 34 years old (36,7%).
Source: [Ansa.it “Rapporto fondazione Migrantes”]

The percentage of serious material deprivation index is 11,5% for total households members. Official unemployment rate is at 11,9% whereas the real unemployment rate is well above the 20%. The inactivity rate is at 36,0 % and the fixed capital investment ratio is stuck well below the pre-crises (2007-08) levels.
Source: [“Rapporto annuale Istat, 2016”]

It is clear that Italy is stuck in a deep depression. And it’s not alone. Many other euro countries are suffering the same fate. Cutting public spending cannot help them recover. We turn to Keynes to see why it cannot, and consult the work of Minsky and Wynne Godley to see what can.

Keynes and Aggregate Demand

In The General Theory, J.M. Keynes explains the challenges blocking achieving and maintaining full employment in a market economy. He argues that the booms and busts associated with capitalism make this state of equilibrium very difficult to reach. When a bust occurs, and businesses expect their profits to fall, there’s no reason to expect a magical market-force to step in and fix employment while costs are being cut.

This applies to Italy, too. After years of austerity and a Global Financial Crises, aggregate demand levels have declined sharply most people feel uncertain about the future. Additional demand for labor is close to zero and the private sector is pessimistic. Investment and spending is not sufficient to employ the unemployed. Cutting down government expenditure is not going to to help. It will simply make it worse.

Minsky and Fiscal Policy

A follower of Keynes, Hyman Minsky explained how any analysis of a monetary capitalist economy must start from the analysis of balance sheets and its relative financial interrelations ‘measured’ in of cash flows. If balance sheets and especially the relative financial relations are not taken into account within an analysis of an essentially financial and monetary economy, that analysis fails to reflect the full reality.

Minsky’s alternative analysis shows that in case of crisis, a nation needs a “Big Government” (The Treasury Department) and a “Big Bank” (The Central Bank) to step up. These institutions must focus on serving as an “Employer of Last Resort” and a “Lender of Last Resort”, respectively. This way, they can prevent wages and asset prices from dropping further, and tame the market economy. In the Euro-zone, this has not been realized. The Treasury Department is constrained, leaving them unable to reach full employment. Meanwhile, citizens continue suffer under austerity.

Wynne Godley and the Government Budget

Wynne Godley’s sectoral balance approach sheds more light on this Minskyian alternative. He shows the economy consists of two sectors: The government sector, and the private sector (all households and businesses).** The private sector can accumulate net financial assets only if the other sector, government, runs a budget deficit. That is, only if the flows of the government spends more than it receives in taxes. It is impossible for both sectors to run a surplus at the same time.

And as a simple matter of macro-accounting, for aggregate output to be sold, total spending must equal the total income generated in the production process. So given households’ decisions to consume and given firms’ decisions to invest, there will be involuntarily idle labour for sale with no buyers at current wages, if the government deficit spending is too small to accommodate the net desire to save of the private sector.

What Renzi and Padoan are Really Saying

We can now see what Renzi and Padoan are really congratulating themselves for. Having done nothing to lift a struggling private sector out of the recession, they patting themselves on the back for worsening it’s social and economic situation. Renzi may claim he will go to Brussels to “sbattere i pugni sul tavolo”, but his executives continue to respect the Stability and Growth pact regime, and decrease the deficit further.

From Wynne Godley, we know that further decreasing the government deficit corresponds to further deterioration the private sector surplus. So when the officials say they “need to put public accounts in order,” they are actually saying they will put households and business accounts in dis-order. So when they say that Italy has the lowest budget deficit of the last 10 years, they are actually stating that the government is draining more financial assets from the private sector than it has in a decade.

When they call Italy virtuous for keeping a smallest deficit, they assign virtue to the nation that most effectively perpetuates poverty and social disarray. When Renzi says that his non elected executive “will continue […] the reduction of the deficit for our children and grandchildren”, he is instead telling us that his government is going to reduce the net desire to save of the current population, to keep involuntary unemployment and part-time working levels high and to firmly deteriorate the (net) financial and real wealth of the future generations.

Unless Italy changes its approach and adopts expansionary fiscal policy, it will not serve the well-being of the society and its economy. The main goal of full employment will never be attained and maintained. Work will lack moral and economic dignity, public sector goods will fall short in quantity and quality, and basic human rights will be violated. Not only will policy goals fail to be achieved, they will be even farther out of reach. One thing is certain: either Renzi and his ministers don’t know what they’re doing, or they are doing it in bad faith. I am afraid of it may be both.

* To be as precise as possible, Italian public budget deficit has been systematically reduced from 1991, that is the year when the Treaty of Maastricht was ratified which, among other things, established the respect of the parameter of the 3% to the public deficit and 60% to the (flawed) public debt/gdp ratio.
** I do not take into account the foreign sector balance sheet, because the substance of my brief argument won’t be undermined.