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> Presumably if we had work to be done we would have open positions for it.

I don't follow the presumption. There's no shortage of work out there to be done, we just don't have the means to PAY for it under the current system. Now, you might not think MMT does either (in real terms), but the world is NOT short of work to be done.

> Now we have to magic up jobs, which means diluting jobs other people currently do

...which doesn't follow if your first point fails.

> There's no shortage of work out there to be done

Ok, I have to agree with this to a certain point as it’s an argument I find myself making in change resisting organizations. But the implication here is that there will always be no shortage of low end minimum wage work and that the best way to discover and assign that work is via a centralized means. So with a jobs guarantee we have to invent a government system that identifies and assigns jobs that need doing in an efficient manner. No one has done that yet.

> which doesn't follow if your first point fails.

I’m not sure it’s entirely failed. Because although the ideal is “there is always more work you can shift to once this job is done” that is simply not what happens in practice. People and organizations don’t behave that way. Try working in an organization facing disruption, or an old developing world government department where people rely on it for their job, etc. It is full of resistence to anything that might put at threat peoples jobs. I’ve worked at places as recently as 2010 that still had telex operators who came to work and sat their doing nothing all day because the telex systems had been decommissioned. This is what you get with jobs guarantees.

> But the implication here is that there will always be no shortage of low end minimum wage work

I'm not following how that's implied?

I think the implication is that there's no shortage of work that has positive value but less positive value than people are willing to pay for it.

Anyway, the idea is that if the economy is in good shape and most people are employed then the gov't is providing fewer jobs. If you have more slack then the number of gov't jobs goes up as the gov't spends more money (i.e. pays the people it's employing) and so the balance between spending and production doesn't change, thus keeping inflation in check.

> I'm not following how that's implied?

The proposed job guarantee talked about is a $15 per hour minimum wage job.

> how does that explain cases where countries have defaulted and other countries and their own citizens lose confidence in the currency?

Other countries cant issue dollars which is the world exchange currency. When you print out your countries cash, your currency exchange value drops and then you have to reduce your imports. Its easy for a country like argentina, for example, to keep a negative balance trade, run out of dollars and then it cant pay unless it devaluates the currency so much , outside money comes flooding in.

The US can print out its own money, but the major risk I perceive is that it wrecks its exchange rate. If the dollar loses value, first it actually adjusts the prosperty of the american people relative to imports/exports, but also risks its world-reserve status. It is often underestimated how profitable it is for the US to be financed by the entire earth on trade. If that changed..it would be a serious, irreversible economic damage.

> Probably dumb question: if debt and deficits don’t matter and a country can just print money - how does that explain cases where countries have defaulted and other countries and their own citizens lose confidence in the currency?

I think the idea is that deficits don't matter if you print money and offset any inflation (1) some sort of jobs program, (2) taxes which can take money back out of the economy and cool inflation, and maybe (3) more traditional ways of tweaking interest rates.