Likely 2020 Democratic Candidates Want To Guarantee A Job To Every American
The 2018 midterm primary season is really heating up this week, which means it's time to think about elections — like the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.
No major candidates have declared that they're preparing a run against Donald Trump in two years, but whispers are already building around potential candidates. A few of them have coalesced around a seriously ambitious policy idea — guaranteeing a job for every American who wants one.
If enacted, such a program could be big or small; it could create massive reverberations in the private sector; and it could reshape monetary policy. One thing that's more certain is that Americans will be hearing about the idea of job guarantees for the next few years.
But why now?
"My impression is it may have been the shock effect of Trump's election and the recognition that there are a host of policies, projects, that we previously didn't think were imaginable or reasonable that are being considered on the other end of the political spectrum," said William Darity, an economist at Duke University and a proponent of job guarantee programs.
On top of that, even before Trump won the presidency, Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who proposed massive, progressive policy overhauls that opponents also derided as being unfeasible.
