David's Snippets, Part One
The unemployment rate is kept artificially high by the ruling class in order to encourage job insecurity. They then turn around and call poor an unemployed people lazy, and lament that they should get a job.
Reality is truly stranger than fiction.
Reality is truly stranger than fiction.
posted by Denial so Fragile it Fractures at 3:26 PM
2 Comments:
And who exactly is this ruling class that orchestrates these grand plans? And how, exactly, do they implement this? I suppose youre implying that they encourage job insecurity to heighten productivity...but I would think unemployment is a systemic problem, not a conscious conspiracy. And also, the people who constitute that unemployment rate aren't the same people every month; most of it is people in transition or looking for jobs, who will have found employment in the next few months. The constantly unemployed percentage is quite small; most of these people have some debilititing circumstances, mental, social or physical. and that is where social security should be improved. Unemployment is an odd topic, because more socially conscious or socialist societies--with far stronger social security laws such as nationalized healthcare which would theoretically imply greater egalitrianism and job security and thus lower unemployment--like France, UK, Sweden, Canada, the scandinavian countires, have higher unemployment rates than the US. this has partly to do, one might argue, with the "moral hazard" of social security. anyways thats another complex story but my point is this.
1) I don't buy the conspiracy theories about ruling classes and capitalist social designs. There are certainly social biases and income inequality, but I think that is systemic--not a matter of classes. I think capitalism is something that has been embraced at all levels, not top down. Here is a paradox for you then: why, in modern america for example, do the poor often vote for politicans who will do the least to alleviate their poverty or implement greater social security? If you go with the "they're brainwashed" answer, youre implying a certain elitism and denial of their political free will by arguing that they need a system that will decide politics for them...
2) Unemployment rates sound worse than they are, because only a very small demographic stays there for long.
3) Unemployment is a bad measure of "ruling class" aka capitalist motivation or strenth. If anything, it depends on rates of consumption and production. I would actually argue the opposite, that looking comparitively within the set of deveveloped nations, or within the set of developing nations, the countires with lowest unemployment rates could be classified as the most capitalistic/economically libertarian in nature.
4) So what do i belive? I think we can safely say there is an income threshhold which no sane person would choose to exist at. This should be the minimum unemployment check level; because, anyone living below that income suffers from some disadvantage cirucmstatntial or of insanity (by definition) and thus deserves some government help. This also eliminates the concept of moral hazard. I also believe, and I have a rationale for this which ill explain later, that healthcare should be nationalized.
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