Water, Money, and the Job Guarantee

Abstract

This chapter discusses the conditions under which societies use money as a public good or allow money creation to become a for-profit business. It turns to eighteenth-century New York City, where policymakers issued public currency to pay for a high-tech steam pump and a system of wooden pipes. This currency was a public good, and money users understood it as such. During the war, British soldiers destroyed the steam pump. Decades later, the New York State Assembly chartered a corporation that was charged with improving access to water. But most lawmakers did not realize they had chartered a bank that saw water provisioning as a side business. Money was no longer a transparent public good that mobilized resources for water provisioning. Instead, water had become a pretext for corporate money creation. The chapter ends with observations about how to reclaim money as a public good through a Job Guarantee.