One thing I keep wondering about is the question of “What’s going to happen in the next economic downturn?“ We’re almost 10 years from the last one, and there are all sorts of possible ways the next one could happen. Given that we haven’t really recovered from the last one, what’s going to happen after that? I think it’s in the crisis that the policy for the next economic era is going to made, so what’s it going to be?
mitigatedchaos: Good question. That’s why I keep chanting “wage subsidies” at all of you.
Yes, the unemployed will be very grateful for wage subsidies.
Combined with a much lower minimum wage, it moves a lot of people from “unemployable” to “employable and making enough money to live off of”.
Others should be covered by some sort of disability scheme (which won’t eliminate eligibility for the wage subsidies). Children, of course, are to be supported by their parents and the various other child protection systems we need.
At a low enough minimum wage, but with subsidies so the pay is actually reasonable, the economy will find work for these people to do that isn’t digging holes and filling them back up again.
If we get a wage subsidy, I’m totally doing Matt Bruenig’s idea where I create the Institute for Full Communism and get employees to kick back their salary.
There are ways out of that, but part of why I’m in favor of wage subsidies as a plan is that it can be rolled out and tested gradually to measure the load on the economy of plans like yours. All your kickbackers would be making more money if they did something actually economically productive. The question is how much pressure is necessary. We can test this empirically, and I believe that we should.