By: John Golden Many young people consider jobs to be rights and believe jobs should be guaranteed by the state. Much of the American public believes that any unemployment whatsoever is unhelpful. This movement is so strong that even Frank Underwood from the popular show “House of Cards” produced a program called "America Works" as a means of guaranteeing employment to unemployed individuals. However, programs like these should not leave the fictional realm of Netflix’s silver screen and have disastrous results when used in real life. In 2005, India attempted to implement a program to generate jobs called NREGA, a program discussed in Chapter 14 of “Why Growth Matters” by Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya. The two economists find many flaws NREGA. The program works to guarantee a job for 100 days to any worker going more than 14 days without employment at a wage rate of no less than 100 rupees per day (1.569 dollars). The workers would work in public works or other government programs. The economists find that though the program creates jobs, it takes away jobs from the market by providing artificially high wages that stop workers from looking for work in the private sector. This deprives the private sector of much needed workers and India of much needed growth. The money, which the Indian government takes from tax revenues, could have been used much more effectively by individuals and businesses to create long term infrastructure to benefit India. One of the biggest issues with the NREGA was that it is not a means-tested social program which means that it often leads individuals who have resources and do not need the jobs to provide for families receive jobs anyways and in many cases
What’s worse, the jobs often did nothing to actually benefit the rural population of India and without the education the population could have received without the program, the individual’s efforts often lead to disastrous results. According to Sharma in 2009, “Ponds were dug in a drought-prone area with scanty rainfall, soil was sandy and had no water retention power and others were without water.” The products were not helpful to India, and as the program resided on regional leaders to provide projects, often projects were invented simply to receive project money even when unnecessary. I apologize to Frank Underwood, arguably America’s second best president at killing people behind only Andrew Jackson, but modern public works programs simply do not work, and NREGA shows that government fails to solve the problem of unemployment by simply giving jobs. The book can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Growth-Matters-Developing-Countries/dp/1610393732
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