Public employment and environmental sustainability

Abstract

This paper suggests that a public service employment (PSE) or job guarantee (JG) program run on the principles of functional finance can be designed to promote environmental sustainability. Unregulated or poorly regulated capitalist economies are both macroeconomically unsatisfactory (here focusing on unemployment, but also including price stability) and environmentally unsustainable. Traditional approaches addressing either unemployment or environmental degradation are insufficient to achieve full employment or environmental sustainability, and often proposals to attain one of these goals appear inconsistent with the other. A PSE program based on functional finance can achieve full employment, and may also present opportunities to promote environmental sustainability. A functional finance approach to ecological tax reform presents an opportunity to promote both macroeconomic and environmental goals. The flexibility of a PSE system also can be utilized to promote sustainability in a number of ways. PSE workers may also perform an array of environmental services, including monitoring, clean up, recycling, education, and more.