Expanding state-funded medical care, free higher education, student debt relief and increase in minimum wages were some of the issues that fuelled the populist revolt on the Left ahead of the 2016 election in the U.S., while on the Right of the political spectrum, populism rode a nativist and racist wave.

As potential candidates brush up their credentials ahead of the 2020 primaries, one issue appears to be firing up the imagination of the American people — a job guarantee programme funded by the federal government, on the lines of India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. More than 50% of Americans are in support of the proposal and potential claimants for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 are warming up to the idea.

America had a job creation programme between 1935 and 1943. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was part of President F.D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The WPA put roughly 8.5 million Americans to work, and created public assets and infrastructure. A lesser-known component of the WPA funded art and literature, employing tens of thousands of actors, musicians and writers.

A proposal that Senator Bernie Sanders is endorsing is designed by five economists at the Levy Economics Institute, and they call it the Public Service Employment (PSE) programme. The idea is a component in a broader plan to restructure the principles of neoliberalism, a paper written by these scholars recently argued.

“The PSE programme would play a complementary role by offering paid work at a living wage of $15 per hour with a basic package of benefits that would include health care provided through an expansion of Medicare. It would ensure full employment in the sense that the programme would supply a job to anyone ready and willing to work,” they wrote.

Unpleasant truths

Official unemployment rate in America is in the 4% range, which is considered full employment statistically. But this impressive number hides many unpleasant truths about American workforce. About 44% of the country’s homeless actually have a job. In 2016, nearly 7.5 million people in families with a full-time worker lived in poverty, according the Levy scholars. The increasing tendency of ‘flex work’ aided by technology, characterised by low wages and devoid of any benefits, is the main reason for the situation. It is estimated that approximately 4.5 million people are currently counted among those out of the workforce due to a discouraging incentive structure in the U.S. Almost 6.7 million are counted as unemployed and about 4.5 million are involuntarily underemployed, working fewer hours than they would like.

The increasing tendency of ‘flex work’ aided by technology, characterised by low wages and devoid of any benefits, is the main reason for poverty in the U.S. despite low joblessness

This adds to approximately 15 million potential workers who would be likely to join the PSE. The scholars estimate that at $15 per hour, “one full-time worker could lift a family of up to five out of poverty; with one full-time and one part-time worker, a family of eight could rise out of poverty”.

American conservatives always seek to tie any welfare to the willingness of the recipient to work, and the proposal of universal employment turns the debate on its head. Conservatives also try to justify continuing tax cuts and state support to corporations in the name of creating jobs. Supporters of a universal basic income oppose the job guarantee programme from the Left. Opponents on the Right believe this could be be the beginning of America’s fall to a socialist abyss.

Varghese K. George works for The Hindu and is based in Washington