Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

Of course students should have their fees paid and receive a JG wage for the hours doing their university work. If they were doing an apprenticeship they would be paid for their training. I don’t see why it has to be any different for a university place. It’s just a different form of traing.

I see no reason for a qualification period. It should just be seen as useful work done, for which you get paid at the living wage.

If people want to take a gap year on the JG, then why not. It would be a useful break for those that want it. But there is no reason for it to be compulsory — particularly in structured fields like medicine.

The living wage is the floor for the JG because that’s what you need to live on. Private companies (and the ordinary public sector) then have to pay more than that, or offer more goodies to get people to move back across.

Once JG is in place, then pensions really need to be paid to whoever is a resident of the country at the time they reach retirement age. I don’t think it should be linked to work record, and even years resident is somewhat superfluous. You can hardly let the old starve.

The interest rate can be zero and is always effectively net zero whatever the nominal rate. In this example it is set as it is because the article is a challenge to mainstream beliefs.

There is no need to drain reserves. We have lots of reserves in the system at the moment and nothing much is happening even though they haven’t been drained. Why pay some rich saver interest when they are doing nothing of value in return?

Hope that answers some of your queries.