“Are More Jobs the Answer? The ‘BIG’ Bait and Switch” and “How BIG is BIG Enough: Would The Basic Income Guarantee Satisfy The Unemployed?”

L. Randall Wray's "Great Leap Forward"

L. Randall Wray's "Great Leap Forward"

In two articles, L. Randall Wray compares the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) to the Job Guarantee / Employer of

Last Resort (JG/ELR). A Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, NY, Wray has been writing about the benefits of the JG/ELR approach since the 1990s. He is one of the leading scholars of what is now called “modern monetary theory,” which stresses the need to prevent inflation by using a JG/ELR as an anchor for the currency.

Wray opposes the BIG mostly because he believes it will cause inflation. He simply believes that some of the goals of BIG are unsustainable: attempts to provide everyone with a descent income without requiring them to work will, according to Wray, necessarily cause an inflation spiral. He also argues that many of the goals of BIG are good and sustainable, but that they can be achieved better through a JG/ELR than through BIG.

Wray’s starting point is a response to a recent editorial by Al Sheahen (author of the recent book, Basic Income Guarantee: Your Right to Economic Security), but he cites a wide range of BIG authors including Philippe Van Parijs, Guy Standing, Charles M.A. Clark and others.

L. Randall Wray, “Are More Jobs the Answer? The ‘BIG’ Bait and Switch,” Economonitor, June 25th, 2013
L. Randall Wray, “How BIG is BIG Enough: Would The Basic Income Guarantee Satisfy The Unemployed?,” Economonitor, July 9th, 2013

L. Randall Wray's "Great Leap Forward"

L. Randall Wray's "Great Leap Forward"