AltBank at Left Forum 2017

Occupy's Alternative Banking Group (AltBank) is hosting a panel Universal Basic Income or Jobs Guarantee: a debate on the future of labor at the Left Forum. We'll be taking a critical look at both programs. We are lucky to have as our guest panelist economist Pavlina Tcherneva, who has become the go-to advocate and analyst of jobs guarantee. She's a prominent proponent of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a radical Keynesian macro-economic theory.

Left Forum: John Jay College, 59th Street btwn 10th and 11th Avenues

Our panel: room 1.119

Sunday, June 4th Session 7: 3:40pm - 5:40pm

Abstract: 

Facing the robotization of the economy, many on both the left and right have taken an interest in universal basic income proposals. Occupy's Alternative Banking Group has been weighing the consequences both positive and negative of UBI over a jobs guarantee as well as other means of expanding the welfare net to create a more just and more broadly rewarding and flourishing society. At this panel, we will debate these proposals to better understand their economic and human significance for the future.

Panelists:

Pavlina Tcherneva: Assoc. Prof. and Chair, Dept of Economics, Bard College; Research Assoc. at the Levy Economics Institute; Senior Research Scholar the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability.
Tcherneva most recently consulted for Bernie Sanders' 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign. She has also worked with economists and policymakers from around the world, including Argentina, Canada, China, England, Italy and others, on developing and evaluating direct job creation schemes. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters and her 2004 book Full Employment and Price Stability: The Macroeconomic Vision of William S. Vickrey (with Forstater, eds.) is a rare collection of the lesser known works by the late Nobel Prize-winning economist. ​ During Summer 2006, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy, U.K., where she immersed herself in Keynes’s collected writings and personal papers. She developed an interpretation of Keynes’s policy approach to full employment for which she was recognized by the Association for Social Economics with the Hellen Potter Prize (2012). ​ She is a two-time grantee from the Institute for New Economic Thinking for her work on rethinking fiscal policy.

Gerald Adams: active in Occupy's AltBank Group

Dan Moore: active in Occupy's AltBank Group

Facilitator: 

Rob Hollander: a member of the OWS AltBank Group, teaches anthropology and linguistics at John Jay College, publishes on urban history and policy, and is active in Lower East Side/Chinatown community planning struggles.