Education and full employment in the Capitalocene: Political possibilities, ecological imperatives

Abstract

Imagine what education would look like if upon completion every graduate was guaranteed a job paying a living wage, democratically created, doing meaningful work… This is a political possibility in most countries in the world today: Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) demonstrates that, provided a country has sovereignty over its currency, which most now do, it faces no nominal constraints on spending and can always choose to guarantee jobs and maintain full employment. Yet a pervasive feature of the neoliberal phase of the Capitalocene has been precisely the opposite: high and rising rates of un- and underemployment. This article examines the reasons for this trend and argues that its impact on education has been both unnecessary and detrimental. Finally, it suggests a strategy for educators to reverse this trend and the associated policy of economic growth, and, with reference to history, imagines what the effects such a reversal might have.

Keywords:

• school-to-work transition
• Modern Monetary Theory
• full employment
• Job Guarantee
• education
• neoliberalism

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Richard Hil and Pasi Sahlberg for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Disclosure statement

The author reports no potential conflict of interest.