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Why Has Labor Not Demanded Guaranteed Employment?

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  • Jon D. Wisman
  • Michael Cauvel

Abstract

Unemployment has almost always been traumatic for its victims. In earlier times, it threatened extreme privation, if not starvation. Still today, it dramatically decreases its victims' standard of living, human capital, social standing, and self-respect. It is associated with poorer health, family dissolution, and suicide. Unemployment also entails considerable costs to society such as lost output, increased crime, decayed neighborhoods, and when extreme, political unrest. Why, then, is it tolerated? Why, especially, have workers and their advocates not demanded that employment be guaranteed to all? This article explores why what has always been foremost to workers' interests – security of employment – has only rarely resulted in a demand for guaranteed employment. The primary reason has been the overpoweringly seductive ideology serving the interests of the owners of the means of production. Capitalist ideology has blamed the unemployed for their fate, creating hostility to the very idea of guaranteed employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Jon D. Wisman & Michael Cauvel, 2017. "Why Has Labor Not Demanded Guaranteed Employment?," Working Papers 2017-09, American University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:amu:wpaper:2017-09
    DOI: 10.17606/m09p-ae18
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Why not full employment?
      by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2016-04-23 17:03:57

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    right to employment; employer of last resort; unemployment; worker struggles; ideology;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • H10 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - General
    • N30 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - General, International, or Comparative

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