IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/blkpoe/v39y2012i1p63-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Jobs and Freedom Now! Functional Finance, Full Employment, and the Freedom Budget

Author

Listed:
  • Mathew Forstater

Abstract

Forty-five years ago, the A. Philip Randolph Institute issued “The Freedom Budget,” in which a program for economic transformation was proposed that included a job guarantee for everyone ready and willing to work, a guaranteed income for those unable to work or those who should not be working, and a living wage to lift the working poor out of poverty. Such policies were supported by a host of scholars, civic leaders, and institutions, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; indeed, they provided the cornerstones for King’s “Poor Peoples’ Campaign” and “economic bill of rights.” This paper proposes a “New Freedom Budget” for full employment based on the principles of functional finance. To counter a major obstacle to such a policy program, the paper includes a “primer” on three paradigms for understanding government budget deficits and the national debt: the deficit hawk, deficit dove, and functional finance perspectives. Finally, some of the benefits of the job guarantee are outlined, including the ways in which the program may serve as a vehicle for a variety of social policies. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Mathew Forstater, 2012. "Jobs and Freedom Now! Functional Finance, Full Employment, and the Freedom Budget," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 39(1), pages 63-78, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:blkpoe:v:39:y:2012:i:1:p:63-78
    DOI: 10.1007/s12114-011-9125-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s12114-011-9125-z
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s12114-011-9125-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leanne Ussher, 1998. "Do Budget Deficits Raise Interest Rates? A Survey of the Empirical Literature," Working Papers 0005 Classification- JEL:, Department of Economics, Queens College of the City University of New York.
    2. L. Randall Wray, 1998. "Understanding Modern Money," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1668.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Josh Ryan-Collins, 2015. "Is Monetary Financing Inflationary? A Case Study of the Canadian Economy, 1935-75," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_848, Levy Economics Institute.
    2. L. Randall Wray, 2011. "Waiting for the Next Crash: The Minskyan Lessons We Failed to Learn," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_120, Levy Economics Institute.
    3. Brett Fiebiger & Scott Fullwiler & Stephanie Kelton & L. Randall Wray, 2012. "Modern Monetary Theory: A Debate," Working Papers wp279, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    4. L. Randall Wray, 2013. "The Euro Crisis and the Job Guarantee: A Proposal for Ireland," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Michael J. Murray & Mathew Forstater (ed.), The Job Guarantee, chapter 7, pages 161-177, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Stephanie Bell, 1999. "Functional Finance: What, Why, and How?," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_287, Levy Economics Institute.
    6. L. Randall Wray, 2012. "Keynes after 75 Years: Rethinking Money as a Public Monopoly," Chapters, in: Thomas Cate (ed.), Keynes’s General Theory, chapter 15, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Pavlina R. Tcherneva, 2012. "Beyond Full Employment: The Employer of Last Resort as an Institution for Change," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_732, Levy Economics Institute.
    8. Pavlina R. Tcherneva, 2008. "The Return of Fiscal Policy: Can the New Developments in the New Economic Consensus Be Reconciled with the Post-Keynesian View?," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_539, Levy Economics Institute.
    9. Phil Armstrong, 2020. "Can Heterodox Economics Make a Difference?," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 19964.
    10. Tanweer Akram & Syed Al-Helal Uddin, 2021. "An empirical analysis of long-term Brazilian interest rates," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-20, September.
    11. Muriel Pucci & Bruno Tinel, 2010. "Réductions d'impôts et dette publique : un lien à ne pas occulter," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 10085, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    12. Yeva Nersisyan & Flavia Dantas, 2017. "Rethinking liquidity creation: Banks, shadow banks and the elasticity of finance," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(3), pages 279-299, July.
    13. Eladio Febrero & Maria-Angeles Cadarso, 2006. "Pay-As-You-Go versus funded systems. Some critical considerations," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 335-357.
    14. Scott T. Fullwiler, 2005. "Paying Interest on Reserve Balances: It’s More Significant than You Think," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(2), pages 543-550, June.
    15. Hernando Matallana, 2009. "The Struggle Over the Real Wage In the Monetary Production Economy," Documentos CEDE 5271, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    16. Philip Lawn (ed.), 2013. "Globalisation, Economic Transition and the Environment," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15053.
    17. Yeva Nersisyan & L. Randall Wray, 2022. "Is It Time for Rate Hikes? The Fed Cannot Engineer a Soft Landing but Risks Stagflation by Trying," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_157, Levy Economics Institute.
    18. Parada, Jairo & Albor, Cristina, 2011. "La Financiación del Déficit del Gobierno Central: Sus Costos Económicos y la Independencia Del Banco Central en Colombia desde 1991 [National Government Deficit Financing:Economic Costs and Central," MPRA Paper 52985, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Oct 2011.
    19. Zdravka, Todorova, 2009. "Employer of Last Resort Policy and Feminist Economics: Social Provisioning and Socialization of Investment," MPRA Paper 16240, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Marc-Andre Pigeon & L. Randall Wray, "undated". "Down and Out in the United States, An Inside Look at the Out of the Labor Force Population," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_54, Levy Economics Institute.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:blkpoe:v:39:y:2012:i:1:p:63-78. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.