Bernie's not like a rolling stone

Jesse Myerson, in his article in Rolling Stone, "Why Doesn't Bernie Sanders Run on a Truly Socialist Platform?", mentions some interesting policies Sanders ought to be running on, including the Employer of Last Resort (ELR), linking to two policy notes by my fellow Levy Economics Institute scholar Pavlina Tcherneva. Myerson ironically points out that Sanders hired Stephanie Kelton, another Levy associate, to be chief economist for the Democratic staff of the Senate Budget Committee. Kelton is a proponent of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which supports the idea of the government as employer of last resort. The basic idea behind ELR is that the government would guarantee a job to anyone who can't find one in the labor market. The alphabet-soup programs of the New Deal era were a step in this direction. This is not a popular idea with the Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Manufacturers because it gives workers a decent fallback if they (the private employers) don't offer decent working conditions and pay. Workers might get a little uppity if that were the case. Profits might fall slightly (if you ignore the increased income flowing into workers' pockets that they would tend to spend on the things that those employers make). Anyway, I second that motion: Bernie add this to your platform!