The American Jobs Machine: One of the measures of the quality of the ‘new economy’ can be found in a closer examination of the nature of the jobs it creates. The authors, University of Wisconsin sociologists, find a pattern of “low road capitalism” with racialized job polarization and expansion of the “working poor.” They argue that “the pattern of job expansion is not some “natural” result of the
operation of efficient markets, but the inevitable result of all sorts of public
policies: the nature of the tax code, the institutions of skill formation, the
regulation of the employment contract and working conditions, the minimum
wage, and laws regulating unions. The task of government is to design such
policies in such a way as to rebuild social mobility and expand job
opportunities in the middle of the employment structure.” In particular, they suggest that, for the first time since the New Deal, expansion of jobs in the public works sector, considered increasingly necessary with the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and increasingly economically feasible with growing budget surpluses, may be a politically and socially useful direction to consider. Public policy decisions can also “close off the low road and pave the high road”, they argue. Boston Review