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THE UNEMPLOYMENT MYTH
People have been conned for years into believing that unemployment
is the inevitable result of a shortage of work and money, but
the reality is that there is plenty of both to employ every person
who is willing and able to work.
For most people work is the only means of earning enough money
to pay for life's necessities and--if possible--for a few luxuries
as well. When a person's income is sharply reduced or ends altogether,
the results can be devastating whether it involves a grocery
bag-boy or a six-figure executive. Most people don't have enough
savings to carry them through a no-income period for more than
a month or two. Hence unemployment can lead to the loss of personal
property, divorce or in extreme cases, suicide.
Most of those who are employed would not go to their place of
employment tomorrow if they didn't need the money today. When
one realizes the extent of job dissatisfaction and the devastating
effects of losing one's income as companies go through a phase
of "restructuring" by dumping employees like yesterday's
garbage, one will begin to understand the causes of complex behavioural
issues such as substance abuse, violence, crime and family disintegration.
Only the privileged few enjoy their work thoroughly and are well
paid for it.
In the '60s, computerized technology promised for the first time
in history to eliminate mind-debilitating jobs and economic bondage.
The challenge of the future--as seen then--was how to keep the
masses happy with a three-day week for working people and a guaranteed
annual income for all others. All that free time worried sociologists
and criminologists who predicted that the resultant mass idleness
and boredom would create crime and other forms of anti-social
behaviour. In response to these dire predictions adult education
and recreation courses sprang up like mushrooms after a downpour
to prepare people for all that extra leisure time that supposedly
lay just ahead.
The cliché of the day was automation--a word long since
fallen into disuse. The expectation was that smart machines would
soon do all the boring jobs, from counting bank notes to issuing
speeding tickets. In fact, today automation has taken over many
boring as well as complex jobs, but most of the benefits have
accrued to large corporations in the form of increased profits.
Automation has not produced a shorter work week, full employment,
better health, free education and more recreation time. Quite
the opposite: many people today work longer hours than in the
sixties, sometimes holding on to two part-time jobs with minimum
pay, few if any benefits and without any job security. As any
doctor can tell you, current stress levels and depression rates
are at an all-time high.
A shorter workweek for most would have created full employment
for all. Reducing wages and laying off employees may look good
on a corporate balance sheet, but it seriously weakens the economy
and creates major social problems. Somehow it is overlooked in
the corporate world that when people are deprived of their income
they cannot buy the goods and services companies provide, thus
reducing business income and profits. In other words, mass layoffs
hurts both employees and the general economy.
There is no justification for unemployment, because there is
no shortage of work. We are living on a dying planet. Millions
of people are urgently needed right now for major environmental
remedial actions from large-scale recycling programs to replanting
the clear-cut areas that scar the global landscape. The quality
of health care and public education is rapidly deteriorating.
We need many more qualified people for both. The list of work
projects is endless. In a world where more than a billion people
are hungry, millions are homeless, illiterate or ill, there is
an acute shortage of workers--not a shortage of work. Nor is
there a shortage of money to pay for all the work that needs
to be done. Remember, whether the unemployment rate changes from
five to ten or fifteen per cent, the amount of money in existence
does not change. What does change when there is a recession is
that much of the existing money supply is not released by those
who control it. No matter how depressed the economy might be,
if there were a major war tomorrow the necessary money would
appear as magically as it seems to disappear during a recession.
Moreover, the end of the Cold War was supposed to be the beginning
of switching billions of dollars from military to civilian use
such as low-cost housing, education and improved health care.
But these so-called "peace dividends" never materialized.
Some military budgets, including the Pentagon's, are bigger now
than during the Cold War, while education and health care are
close to fiscal collapse.
It is important to understand that the economy is controlled
jointly by the federal government and big business. The government
prints money, sets interest rates, pegs the dollar, collects
taxes and is mainly responsible for the rate on inflation. Big
business which, of course, includes financial institutions such
as banks, largely controls the size and working conditions of
the active labour force. Collectively corporations can fine-tune
the unemployment rate to within a percentage point to serve their
interests. Business leaders learned a long time ago that when
unemployment is low, demands for pay hikes and social benefits
are high. Conversely, a high unemployment rate means employers
can hire the best at bargain wages. Many people with a college
or even a university degree are employed far below their degree
of expertise, sometimes earning little more than the minimum
wage. By hiring more and more part-time employees and fewer and
fewer full-time ones, companies get away with paying bottom wages
and few if any benefits.
It is also important to understand that in employer-employee
relationships the employee is always disadvantaged. That is because
the most valuable asset anyone has in this life apart from one's
health is time. To work means trading one's time and often risking
one's health in exchange for money. This in turn means employees
always lose, because money is replaceable and time is not. The
common saying in North America is that "time is money."
It is not. Nobody can buy time. A person who has wrongfully been
sentenced to prison can NEVER be compensated for the time lost.
As Latin Americans often point out: "time is not money:
time is life."
Since there is neither a shortage of money nor of work, there
is no justification for unemployment. Thus it should be clear
that the real problem is not unemployment, but the unfair sharing
of our collective wealth, political power and social responsibilities.
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