Thread by @KirstiMiller30

Full employment is not only possible in Australia, it's a moral imperative. Anyone who wants a job should have one.

Australia must prioritise genuine full employment and governments should spend whatever is necessary to achieve it,
no matter the debt or deficit.

The federal government should run a permanent "Job Guarantee" (JG) program to provide a job to everyone who wants one.
It it could be linked to other economic and social programs, climate change and infrastructure projects.

unemployment is socially destructive and wasteful. Full employment" should be a national priority, like it used to be in Australia: between 1945 and 1975,

full employment was an official part of Australia's national economic program, and the Federal Government felt obliged to ensure it.

Full employment was abandoned in the mid-1970s. It was replaced by an acceptance of the so-called "natural rate" of unemployment, which is assumed to be around 4 or 5 per cent unemployment which in reality is about 15% these days.

The idea of a job guarantee is not radical. The basic human right to a job. A job guarantee program would play the role of an "automatic stabiliser" in the economy by employing more people during downturns and fewer people during boom times.

In downturns, like we are seeing in this pandemic a A job guarantee program it would provide jobs for whoever wanted one — soaking up surplus workers who had lost their jobs — helping to prevent incomes falling below a living wage.

A Job Guarantee program would give rise to a "Buffer Employment Ratio (BER)," which is the ratio of Job Guarantee employment to total employment, which economists could use to track inflationary pressures and keep their eye on the capacity of the economy.

The job guarantee program should be federally funded, but administered at the local level by municipal governments, non-profits and social enterprises.