Unemployment

She wants the last beer, grabs
it from his hand, slaps his face,
and kicks him in the groin.

I am not an economist. I have never studied economics. I have always believed it is truly “the dismal science.” Therefore, you should never take seriously anything I have to say about economical matters, like unemployment. It does seem fundamentally simple to me. There are not enough jobs for the number of people who want and need them. A capitalistic economy cannot create jobs for everyone unless it can constantly expand production, demand, and consumption. To constantly expand production, demand and consumption requires unlimited resources in the form of land and the products of the land, timber, minerals, water, plants, etc. Under capitalism these resources have to be managed solely for profit. The only way to insure profit is by exploiting resources, including labor. In a capitalistic economy labor has to be a commodity like everything else. If you had a constantly expanding economy, with unlimited resources and unlimited demand, you might approximate full employment, or at least everyone would have a niche of some kind, be it serf, peasant, slave, landowner, businessman, or whatever. When the earth was regarded as having unlimited resources and young men could still go west, and life was much simpler, unemployment was not a serious problem, although there was, of course, some poverty. But as the earth has shrunk, and the human population has expanded, we have a surplus of labor. While this is good for business it is terrible for the general population as it means there will be many unemployed persons. Corporations get cheap labor while the unemployed suffer. As the earth and its resources have been shamelessly exploited for so long, and as the population has inevitably expanded, we are faced with the problem of the unemployed, both temporary and permanent. If businesses were formed to hire as many people as possible, rather than to make profits, there would not be so much unemployment, but they are not. The only ways to solve this problem are to ignore the poor and just let them starve or to somehow provide employment for them, some form of what is usually called socialism. Many European nations have done this and are social democracies of one kind or another. They provide at least minimum support for most everyone, universal health care, relatively inexpensive education, require fewer hours of work per person, take longer vacations, and so on, in order to provide as much as possible for everyone. Here in the U.S., where we still live by a form of primitive social Darwinism coupled with a seemingly untouchable belief in “free market capitalism,” we are unable to deal with the problem of unemployment. We dabble around the edges of socialism, like food stamps, free elementary schools, unemployment insurance, subsidies of one kind or another, but pretend this is not truly the “horror” of socialism. Even so-called “primitive “societies take care of their citizens, when one eats, all eat, success and hunger are shared. Indeed, it is not unknown for people to sometimes sacrifice themselves for the good of all. Not so here, where the credo is more, “I have mine, you get yours.” We have our priorities, they are quite clear, billions for fighting unnecessary “wars,” but not another cent for the unemployed or other serious problems here at home. It is, I fear, the American way.

LKBIQ:
More people out of work leads to higher unemployment.`
Calvin Coolidge

TILT:
There are three bat species that feed on blood, all found in the Southern Americas.