A federal job guarantee would reinvigorate American infrastructure and ensure that no workers go home in poverty.

Interesting read and it appears that we already have a mandate to provide such a thing:

The creation of such a program would allow the nation, finally, to meet its obligation under the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 (popularly known as the Humphrey-Hawkins Act). The Act mandated the government target a zero percent unemployment rate by 1988. And the political support? A 2016 study by the Kinder Institute at Rice University found that 76 percent of people thought “[t]he government should see to it that everyone who wants to work can find a job.” Seems that most folks agree with the “right to work” in the most judicious sense of the phrase.

And by basing the minimum salary at the poverty level, meaning the bare minimum a person needs to survive, that will provide competition to other jobs out there and it will bring the overall minimum wages up as a result, since no one will be forced to accept a job that pays below the poverty level.

Source: Washington Monthly | Forget a Higher Minimum Wage—Here’s a Better Way to Help American Workers