Morning Must-Read: John Quiggin: Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren–and For Us

John Quiggin: Work and Beyond: “Ross Douthat… link[ed] to… [my] reflecting on Keynes ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’….

Now he’s addressed the topic in the New York Times…. There’s some interesting food for thought… mixed up with some silly stuff reflecting his job as the NY Times token Republican…. He has to do some damage control over the… Repub lie… Obamacare will cost 2.5 million jobs. As Douthat delicately puts it ‘this is not exactly right’. But, although his heart clearly isn’t it, he tries to construct a narrative in which the Repubs might be right for the wrong reasons…. More interesting though, is Douthat’s discussion comparing idealised hopes for a post-work society with the reality in which well-educated professionals are working longer hours than ever, while… poorer men have withdrawn from the formal labour force….

One possible solution to this problem, is simply to give the poor more money…. Douthat isn’t too happy about this….

Both “rugged individualist” right-wingers and more communitarian conservatives tend to see work as essential to dignity, mobility and social equality, and see its decline as something to be fiercely resisted….

First, while work may be necessary to “dignity, mobility and social equality” in a market society, it certainly isn’t sufficient…. Market work isn’t the only kind of work people can do, and certainly not the most valuable. Most obviously, there’s the raising of children…. The idea that the ‘rugged individualists’ who block any improvements to these conditions actually care about the dignity of the working class is simply laughable. I don’t need to tell Douthat any of this. It’s all in his book Grand New Party with Reihan Salam, notably including a proposal for a full year of paid parental leave. The book received cautiously respectful reviews from many in the centre and centre-left, but fell entirely flat with its intended audience in the Republican Party….

Finally, coming back to the argument about Obamacare. Whatever your views on work and incentives, it’s ludicrous to regard as beneficial a system that ties people to their current jobs through the fear of losing health insurance…. The employer-based health insurance system was (like Obamacare in many ways) a kludge adopted1 because it was better than nothing, and because a sensible single-payer system couldn’t get through Congress…. Again, Douthat is clearly aware of all this, but can’t say so in his current position. I’m still expecting him to jump ship before too long, and I hope he doesn’t go through too many more exercises like this in the process.