Green Jobs: Sustainable Path for Environmental Conservation and Socio-Economic Stability and Inclusion
Natália Bracarense, Paulo Afonso Bracarense Costa
Abstract
The 2008 economic crisis expanded the discussion about stabilization policies beyond its usual academic circles. Such concerns seem even more eminent now as, amidst the COVID-19, governments around the world search for solutions to the looming crisis. John Maynard Keynes, Michal Kalecki, and Hyman Minsky have long inspired those who believe that the private sector is unable to maintain long-lasting stability and, even less so, full employment. The remedy relies not in the indirect mechanisms of monetary fine-tuning, but rather on the direct means of fiscal policy. Less acknowledged, however, is that despite of their different approaches, neither of these three authors considered conventional pump-priming fiscal policy a direct policy. Considerations of this nature have, nonetheless, been pursued by a group of post-Keyensian/neo-Kaleckian economists—who argue that discussions about economic stability should be coupled with concerns related to the broader social and environmental systems. To contribute to the newly intensified push of a post-Keynesian/neo-Kaleckian ecological economics, the paper introduces a metric for green jobs, using non-dichotomous measurements as proposed by ‘fuzzy logic’, as a tool to operationalize an ecological job-guarantee program.