income for their work (Wray 1998, 124). The main goal of ELR would be to prepare the worker for work outside the ELR; the program would also seek to provide both formal and on-the-job experiential training to these workers so they would be able to get a job outside the ELR program in the public or private sectors (Wray 1998, 126-127). ELR would act as a buffer stock “store of labor” – by agreeing to hire every worker at the stated wage, ELR would end up creating an infinitely elastic demand for labor (Minsky 1986). The jobs in the ELR program would not be permanent, however – profit-motivated private and public sector companies would be able to use the ELR as a stock of trained, skilled, reserve labor to hire from when they need to expand their workforce. The size of the ELR would then fluctuate counter-cyclically, increasing to take on the recently unemployed in a recession with massive layoffs, and decreasing as the economy expands and more job opportunities are created in the public and private sectors (Wray 1998, 135). The ELR is not a “make work” program – there would be performance standards for the work being done, and the work would be designed to be meaningful, genuinely productive, and specifically designed to train and educate the person for work outside the ELR (develop transferable skills). The difference between ELR jobs and jobs offered in private and public companies is that there would not be an expectation that the work done is profitable in the monetary sense – rather ELR exists for the long-run productive benefit of the work being done, for the reduction of social costs associated with unemployment generally, and for the humanitarian reasons of ensuring people have access to a stable livelihood (Wray 1998, 124).
19