A(not so?) Radical Idea: Employment as a right instead of a privilege

[Jack Parkman]

I'm not going to give my thoughts on this until others have given their input.

What would you think if every citizen in the country was given the RIGHT to work, as in a guarantee of employment after graduation from college or a vocational school? Where YOU have the power to leave your job if you're not happy, and are guaranteed training for your next job through a vocational school. Where YOU(and your co-workers), not some suits upstairs, decided who was to run things and how? Where everyone was guaranteed a living wage and those who wanted the extra responsibility could have it and were paid accordingly, or it was rotated over a time period through everyone? Where the only stockholders of any company were the employees themselves and everyone shared in the success and failure of the business? Could it be said that this is the only way for TRUE DEMOCRACY? Flame away

[Jerksticks]

I'm not going to give my thoughts on this until others have given their input.

What would you think if every citizen in the country was given the RIGHT to work, as in a guarantee of employment after graduation from college or a vocational school? Where YOU have the power to leave your job if you're not happy, and are guaranteed training for your next job through a vocational school. Where YOU(and your co-workers), not some suits upstairs, decided who was to run things and how? Where everyone was guaranteed a living wage and those who wanted the extra responsibility could have it and were paid accordingly, or it was rotated over a time period through everyone? Where the only stockholders of any company were the employees themselves and everyone shared in the success and failure of the business? Could it be said that this is the only way for TRUE DEMOCRACY? Flame away

Oops somebody has to pay for it. Sorry Charlie

[Jerksticks]

Also this is kind of like how it currently is. Some people learn skills and write their own ticket. The rest do what they do.

[caulfield12]

This sounds a liitle like a hybrid of the Japanese system mixed with "employee-owned" stores...such as Hy-Vee Grocery.

 

Who will provide the guarantee, presumably the government, yes?

 

How could they guarantee the quality of linkage between your (vocational) studies and eventual job? Job fit appropriateness.

 

What would you do about areas like fast food and retail nobody wants to work in?

 

Minimum wage? How much?

 

What about non-performing workers? Co-workers would have a "council" to fire them? Are you sure you can prevent it from being just as arbitrary and capricious as when corporate managers lay off workers?

 

Essentially, you're forcing the government to become more entrepreneurial by risking taxpayer revenue...so who would decide what ventures would eventually be profitable enough to invest r+d budgets into?

 

How much of a salary increase in higher responsibility worth? 25%? 50%? 100%? Who decides? And shouldn't there be a higher degree of salary increase available with the jobs requiring the most training, specialized knowledge and expertise, like a doctor, lawyer, dentist, accountant or engineer?

 

Connecting the Constitutional idea of "democracy" with business/commerce/markets isn't going to be possible without rewriting it or passing amendments...

 

And what is your plan for the top 1% or 5% or even 10% to keep them involved and motivated to contribute to the economy? It sounds like your system would almost require salary caps.

 

What about music, arts, sports and entertainment, where the difference between high and low salaries is even more pronounced?

Edited February 1, 2016 by caulfield12

[Texsox]

Our current system is designed to make some people very wealthy. The idea is they will employee people. Developing a system that is designed at its core to be the best for the worker is a challenge that so far no one has successfully produced on a large scale over a long time.

[StrangeSox]

An alternative to guaranteed employment would be a Universal Basic Income. It's an idea that's been around for a long time, has support from somewhat of a wide ideological range, and has been implemented in one form or another in multiple places. Alaska's Permanent Fund is sort of like a basic income, as is the Earned Income Tax Credit (and negative income taxes in general). Canada conducted a UBI experiment in the 70's. The results were positive, but it was limited to a single city for a short period.

 

Democracy in the workplace is related but a separate concept. The John Lewis Partnership in the UK is an employee-owned-and-controlled company, unions can give some form of workplace democracy, etc.

[Jenksismyhero]

Our current system is designed to make some people very wealthy. The idea is they will employee people. Developing a system that is designed at its core to be the best for the worker is a challenge that so far no one has successfully produced on a large scale over a long time.

 

I think that's the benefit, not the design.

[LittleHurt05]

Where are all of these guaranteed jobs gonna come from?

[Jenksismyhero]

Where are all of these guaranteed jobs gonna come from?

 

The "state" takes all employment over and goes from there?

 

He's basically outlining a communist/socialist system. And ironically it would end with the same "unjust" results people have a problem with now - a select few who are insanely rich, everyone else is poor in comparison.

[bmags]

An alternative to guaranteed employment would be a Universal Basic Income. It's an idea that's been around for a long time, has support from somewhat of a wide ideological range, and has been implemented in one form or another in multiple places. Alaska's Permanent Fund is sort of like a basic income, as is the Earned Income Tax Credit (and negative income taxes in general). Canada conducted a UBI experiment in the 70's. The results were positive, but it was limited to a single city for a short period.

 

Democracy in the workplace is related but a separate concept. The John Lewis Partnership in the UK is an employee-owned-and-controlled company, unions can give some form of workplace democracy, etc.

Re: first paragraph, Denmark is doing a state level experiment on UBI. I prefer that to guaranteed full employment which just seems like an expensive and inefficient nightmare.

[caulfield12]

And if you look at Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway, they all have extremely high tax rates that wouldn't be palatable to the majority of Americans.

 

The more important lesson here perhaps is to learn from Finland how to have Top 3 mathematics education and arguably one of the best remaining K-12 public education systems in the world. For example, their teachers only come from the cream of the crops of the best universities, are treated with much more respect and are compensated more to "market value" in that society, in the sense that the future of the country rests on their hands, in a way.

 

Provide a fairer, more just education system and the need for the jobs program as described above starts to melt away. Certainly the inequality in results/access between rich and poor to the same education.

Edited February 1, 2016 by caulfield12

[bmags]

No, the important part of what Finland is doing is there is not often state run experimentation for UBI and the results will be very important which is why I mentioned it.

[cabiness42]

I'm not going to give my thoughts on this until others have given their input.

What would you think if every citizen in the country was given the RIGHT to work, as in a guarantee of employment after graduation from college or a vocational school? Where YOU have the power to leave your job if you're not happy, and are guaranteed training for your next job through a vocational school. Where YOU(and your co-workers), not some suits upstairs, decided who was to run things and how? Where everyone was guaranteed a living wage and those who wanted the extra responsibility could have it and were paid accordingly, or it was rotated over a time period through everyone? Where the only stockholders of any company were the employees themselves and everyone shared in the success and failure of the business? Could it be said that this is the only way for TRUE DEMOCRACY? Flame away

 

This seems to be along the lines of the Scandanavian socialist model. It won't work here. Scandanavia didn't have over a century of slavery followed by a century of segregation that created a massive underclass. You can't just instantly legislate social equality the way that Scandanavia has. There needs to be a lot of incremental progress in dealing with America's problems.

[Y2HH]

This seems to be along the lines of the Scandanavian socialist model. It won't work here. Scandanavia didn't have over a century of slavery followed by a century of segregation that created a massive underclass. You can't just instantly legislate social equality the way that Scandanavia has. There needs to be a lot of incremental progress in dealing with America's problems.

 

Of course not, since Scandinavia is about 95% white.

[Jerksticks]

^^^Ding Ding frickin DING!!!^^^

 

Those bulls*** Scandanavian countries also only have like 10 million people. Total. That's not even New York City. And like dude said, they're all the same race and live in the same climate. Unbelievable when people suggest copying ANYTHING those people do. It's an insult to human brains. Like that s*** would fly here. Unbelievable.

[RockRaines]

But what if you are Divergent?

[caulfield12]

^^^Ding Ding frickin DING!!!^^^

 

Those bulls*** Scandanavian countries also only have like 10 million people. Total. That's not even New York City. And like dude said, they're all the same race and live in the same climate. Unbelievable when people suggest copying ANYTHING those people do. It's an insult to human brains. Like that s*** would fly here. Unbelievable.

 

 

If you read in-depth about their teacher education system and just the amount of stress on education itself (speaking more specifically about Finland, and mathematics/science), it's a no-brainer for the US not to extrapolate some of their lessons to improve our own system for future generations.

 

Having more equality of teacher performance will eventually lead to a more equal society...with the caveat that their funding structure is not through property taxes like the US, where the inequality is built-in already based on your parents' earning power and social status.

Edited February 2, 2016 by caulfield12

[jasonxctf]

Someone's been watching house of cards on Netflix. Brought up this same topic. Check out the link

 

http://youtu.be/GRzJURUOxJo

[caulfield12]

Someone's been watching house of cards on Netflix. Brought up this same topic. Check out the link

 

http://youtu.be/GRzJURUOxJo

 

You mean the whole "America Works" program cribbed from FDR?

[cabiness42]

If you read in-depth about their teacher education system and just the amount of stress on education itself (speaking more specifically about Finland, and mathematics/science), it's a no-brainer for the US not to extrapolate some of their lessons to improve our own system for future generations.

 

Having more equality of teacher performance will eventually lead to a more equal society...with the caveat that their funding structure is not through property taxes like the US, where the inequality is built-in already based on your parents' earning power and social status.

 

There are definitely things we can learn from Scandanavia and implement, education being probably the best example, but we can't jump full steam into their socialist economic system. It just wouldn't work.