General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to guarantee every American a job [View all]CarlitosMMT
(53 posts)Dear politicaljunkie41910 ,
One of Bernie's chief econ advisers is Dr Stephanie Kelton and you can find a video with her talking about the JG with Jane Sanders in the comments here.
She is one of the chief advocates of the Job Guarantee and a school of thought known as Modern Monetary Theory.
As MMT explains, the federal government is not a household that has to earn income or even borrow to spend.
It's a currency issuer, and akin to a scorekeeper. The US is not Portugal, Italy, Greece, or Spain, or like a US state or city/local government. It's a monetarily sovereign currency issuer. It has no financial solvency constraint like you or I, or the above states do.
All federal government spending is done by marking up accounts in the banking system, and there is literally no other way to do it. All government spending is literally done this way. Taxation marks down accounts in the banking system and the main purpose of taxation is to regulate inflation, or other public policy objectives such as to influence certain behaviors, but not to raise revenue for government to spend. The funds we have to pay to taxes or purchase government securities comes from government spending or government lending.
You have a lot of questions about a JG and I'm not going to address them all. But the "how is it going to be paid for" line of questioning is very simple to answer.