Jonathan Chait Is Wrong Again (This Time About Job Guarantees)

While I didn’t want to step on Erik’s big moment, last week’s massive flood of articles on the idea of a job guarantee absolutely attracted my interest, as someone who’s just finished a book about the history of job creation programs (more on that soon, once I hear back from UPenn Press on the publication date).

Amidst the flood of articles that spanned the gamut between interesting enough to assign to my students for an upcoming class on future directions in economic policy to rather banal, one take stood out as bad enough to inspire me to write a 17-part tweet-thread:

So as an expert on the history Jonathan Chait is talking about, let me set the record straight. (THREAD)

— Steven Attewell (@StevenAttewell) April 25, 2018

This in turn caught the attention of some folks from the MMT side of Twitter, so this morning I found myself on Netroots Radio talking about the history of job guarantees. So if you’d like to hear more about the very specific ways in which Jonathan Chait is wrong, have a listen!