Economics for the Clueless Scientist 3 – Inequality and Employment with Pavlina Tcherneva

Professor Pavlina Tcherneva joins PSPDG for the third session of Economics for the Clueless Scientist, a crash course in cutting edge economics.

For the last 40 years, income inequality has soared, with each recovery from an economic downturn leading to more gains at the top, and more precarity at the bottom. As the U.S. economy recovers from the latest pandemic-induced downturn, many pundits and economists have claimed that the labor market is “too hot” and is leading to higher inflation, even though more than 6 million Americans who want a job remain without one.

In this event, Prof. Pavlina Tcherneva describes the state of income inequality and labor market policies in the United States, and challenges the conventional argument that unemployment, with all its negative health and social effects, is both inevitable and necessary to maintain price stability. She proposes a “Job Guarantee” program as a tool to end involuntary unemployment, reduce income inequality, improve psychological and physical health, and restore the vitality of many low-income and minority communities across the United States.
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Dr. Pavlina Tcherneva is Director of the Open Society University Network's Economic Democracy Initiative. She is also Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College and Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute. Her research areas include modern money theory, macroeconomic theory and policy; employment policy; Institutional and Post Keynesian theory; and the effects of pro-employment policies on health, social, and gender outcomes. She is the author, most recently, of “The Case for a Job Guarantee”, which was listed in the Financial Times 2020 Economics Summer books.