Why we should put full employment back on the national agenda and how we can summon the political will to achieve it.
Full employment used to be an explicit goal of economic policy in most of the industrialized world. Some countries even achieved it. In Back to Full Employment, economist Robert Pollin argues that the United States―today faced with its highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression―should put full employment back on the agenda.
There are good reasons to seek full employment, Pollin writes. Full employment will help individuals, families, and the economy as a whole, while promoting equality and social stability. Equally important, creating a full-employment economy can be joined effectively with two other fundamental policy aims: ending our dependence on fossil fuels and creating an economy powered by clean energy.
Explaining views on full employment in macroeconomic theory from Marx to Keynes to Friedman, Pollin argues that the policy was abandoned in the United States in the 1970s for the wrong reasons, and he shows how it can be achieved today despite the serious challenges of inflation and globalization.
Pollin believes the biggest obstacle to creating a full-employment economy is politics. Putting an end to the prevailing neoliberal opposition to full employment will require nothing less than an epoch-defining reallocation of political power away from the interests of big business and Wall Street and toward the middle class, working people, and the poor, while mounting a strong defense of the environment. In the end, achieving full employment will be a matter of political will: Can the United States make having a decent job a fundamental right?

Back to Full Employment (Boston Review Book)

Business & Money

Pollin, Robert

Economics

Mit Pr

A program for building a global clean energy economy while expanding job opportunities and economic well-being.
In order to control climate change, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that greenhouse gas emissions will need to fall by about forty percent by 2030. 
Achieving the target goals will be highly challenging. Yet in Greening the Global Economy, economist Robert Pollin shows that they are attainable through steady, large-scale investments―totaling about 1.5 percent of global GDP on an annual basis―in both energy efficiency and clean renewable energy sources. Not only that: Pollin argues that with the right investments, these efforts will expand employment and drive economic growth.
Drawing on years of research, Pollin explores all aspects of the problem: how much energy will be needed in a range of industrialized and developing economies; what efficiency targets should be; and what kinds of industrial policy will maximize investment and support private and public partnerships in green growth so that a clean energy transformation can unfold without broad subsidies. 
All too frequently, inaction on climate change is blamed on its potential harm to the economy. Pollin shows greening the economy is not only possible but necessary: global economic growth depends on it.

Greening the Global Economy (Boston Review Originals)

The MIT Press

In early 2007, there were approximately 140 living wage ordinances in place throughout the United States. Communities around the country frequently debate new proposals of this sort. Additionally, as a result of ballot initiatives, twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia, representing nearly 70 percent of the total U.S. population, maintain minimum wage standards above those set by the federal minimum wage.
In A Measure of Fairness, Robert Pollin, Mark Brenner, Jeannette Wicks-Lim, and Stephanie Luce assess how well living wage and minimum wage regulations in the United States serve the workers they are intended to help. Opponents of such measures assert that when faced with mandated increases in labor costs, businesses will either lay off workers, hire fewer low-wage employees in the future, replace low-credentialed workers with those having better qualifications or, finally, even relocate to avoid facing the increased costs being imposed on them.
The authors give an overview of living wage and minimum wage implementation in Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and Connecticut to show how these policies play out in the paychecks of workers, in the halls of legislature, and in business ledgers. Based on a decade of research, this volume concludes that living wage laws and minimum wage increases have been effective policy interventions capable of bringing significant, if modest, benefits to the people they were intended to help.

A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States

Luce, Stephanie

Brenner, Mark

Wicks-Lim, Jeannette

ILR PRESS

Deeper in Debt: The Changing Financial Conditions of U.S. Households

Economic Policy Inst

Transforming the U.S. Financial System: An Equitable and Efficient Structure for the 21st Century (Economic Policy Institute)

This work challenges the conventional understanding of Hong Kong's political culture as one of indifference. It takes a historical look at political participation in the former colony and includes an in-depth analysis of 13 selected cases.

Transforming the U.S. Financial System: An Equitable and Efficient Structure for the 21st Century: An Equitable and Efficient Structure for the 21st Century (Economic Policy Institute)

Epstein, Gerald

Dymski, Gary

Routledge

With campaigns for a living wage sweeping the country, here is an accessible and provocative argument for a national “living wage.” Hailed as “the bible of the living wage movement,” The Living Wage shows how living-wage proposals are affordable for both cities and employers, and reveals how they can play an important role in reversing the twenty-five-year decline in wages experienced by most working people in America. Written by leading experts, The Living Wage is a realistic and accessible examination of this vital—and growing—movement for economic justice in the United States.

The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy

The New Press

The first comprehensive examination of the economic concept now being implemented across the nation with dramatic results.

New Press, The

Climate change: watershed or endgame? In this compelling new book, Noam Chomsky, the world's leading public intellectual, and Robert Pollin, a renowned progressive economist, map out the catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change--and present a realistic blueprint for change: the Green New Deal. Together, Chomsky and Pollin show how the forecasts for a hotter planet strain the imagination: vast stretches of the Earth will become uninhabitable, plagued by extreme weather, drought, rising seas, and crop failure. Arguing against the misplaced fear of economic disaster and unemployment arising from the transition to a green economy, they show how this bogus concern encourages climate denialism. Humanity must stop burning fossil fuels within the next thirty years and do so in a way that improves living standards and opportunities for working people. This is the goal of the Green New Deal and, as the authors make clear, it is entirely feasible. Climate change is an emergency that cannot be ignored. This book shows how it can be overcome both politically and economically.

Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet

CHOMSKY, Noam.

Verso

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pollin, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pollin, Robert

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pollin, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Back to Full Employment (Boston Review Book)

Greening the Global Economy (Boston Review Originals)

A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States

A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States

Deeper in Debt: The Changing Financial Conditions of U.S. Households

Transforming the U.S. Financial System: An Equitable and Efficient Structure for the 21st Century: An Equitable and Efficient Structure for the 21st Century (Economic Policy Institute)

Transforming the U.S. Financial System: An Equitable and Efficient Structure for the 21st Century (Economic Policy Institute)

The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy

The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy

Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet