Economically it has to be the case that the currency issuer is responsible for the level of unemployment in the economy.

When Europeans first wished to colonise in Africa they were faced with the problem that the local people had managed quite well without them for many thousands of years. So how to introduce them to the idea that they should work for their new European masters? The idea was simple. The Europeans would introduce a hut tax and require the Africans to seek employment to receive wages in order to pay the tax.

Anyone who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, pay would have their huts burnt down. Naturally, the object of the exercise wasn’t to burn down huts, and neither was it to obtain the taxes. The Europeans provided the money to pay the wages which in turn paid the taxes but they only got back some of the money they started with and which they had created from nothing anyway! They wanted the labour power of the local people.

The situation in modern economies looks less clear cut, but the purpose of currencies and taxation is precisely the same. That is: to secure the labour power of the working classes which, together with the essential contribution of nature, are the sources of all wealth. The present day powers-that-be don’t want, or need, tax money any more than did the colonialists. We know that houses and huts are no longer burned for non payment of taxes but there are other very real punishments imposed on everyone who is unemployed under our current system.

Just as it wouldn’t have made any sense for colonialists to impose a hut tax on an occupied population and then deny them the opportunity of work, by issuing insufficient currency, neither does it make sense to penalise anyone in a modern economy who is unable to find work for the simple reason that there aren’t enough jobs to go around. It is government’s responsibility, as a currency issuer, to issue enough to create those jobs either through the normal workings of the economy, or in the form of a Job Guarantee, which would not be at all the same thing as work-for-the-dole.

Warren Mosler on the same theme (26 minute mark):