Is zero unemployment possible?

as we are members of the EU the work force can expand beyond the local labour markets ability to create employment. In fact low UK unemployment will attract more EU nationals as jobs are arguably easy to find in such a senario.

so in answer to the original question is no it’s not possible.

The point on options misses one key aspect of what’s wrong with the curret benefits system. Work is an exchange time and effort for money, for those on benefits there is no exchange and hence there is no value given to those people’s time. The hard part is creating a valid exchange of their time for benefit in a manner that assists the claimant and also the government (state, everybody) who provides the benefit money. The current system provides for a large number of people who will probably never enter “work” as most know it during their nominal “working lives”. Tacklng this is a difficult and expensive issue (as every potential benefit to work convert is competing against the existing job market including non UK EU nationals). 13 years of labour saw a failure to tackle the underlying problem, can the the current incumbents sort it in <5 years?

there will always be the question of why pay a banker millions and a cleaner thousands per annum, which is the more valuable job?

Id recommend the Road to Wigan Pier too.

If only you were as widely read as the Zulu and I, eh TJ?

there will always be the question of why pay a banker millions and a cleaner thousands per annum, which is the more valuable job?

It ought to be a moot question.

If we could get to an equality of opportunity true bargaining would set the wage rate according to demand (for bankers and cleaners) and supply (of those jobs).

Churn will always create a level of unemployment – I seem to remember reading half a million in the UK.

As for giving everyone £80 regardless, I’m not sure. It could be cheaper than administering the benefits system, or it could result in unintended consequences. Either way, giving people on way above average incomes handouts would probably be political suicide.

Slums/shanty towns or whatever you want to call them have full employment.

Perhaps we should remove all benefits and public services.

Heh, it’s better than Stalin/Hitler.

And no, I don’t really think removing benefits is a good idea before you all start… Just indicating it’s possible.

If we could get to an equality of opportunity true bargaining would set the wage rate according to demand (for bankers and cleaners) and supply (of those jobs).

which, sadly, i think will never be the reality. Those with money and power will always work to protect their position, why else do we tolerate a bunch of inbred germans? Although the alternative, president Blair……

Slums/shanty towns or whatever you want to call them have full employment.

knowing someone from Brazil, they said slums make you think, it is something you work to avoid at all costs.

Something you work to avoid? I don’t understand. I’m interested in your friend’s opinion – as a Geog teacher I teach about slums and the issues within them and first hand comments always help to illustrate the reality beyond the text book.

president Blair

*tinglyspine*

Gee, basically, she is not from a poor background is the first thing to understand, but she is certainly not rich.

The conversation began with a discussion of single mums and how you got single parents with large families in the UK, and she was saying that in Brazil there is no social security so you would have to bring the kids up and rely on family and what you could do to make ends meet. For someone from a reasonable financial background such as herself the sacrifices would be huge. ie total.

But the result of this is when she came to the UK she did whatever job she could to fund herself there was some support from her family but not alot. She was working as a care worker when i met her to pay for her degree, she had no social life it was just work and study, and she is now a qualified Accountant. There was never any intention of relying on others to help pay her way,

Some people are unemployable. Some jobs are un-doable (for long).

Some people are unemployable. Some jobs are un-doable (for long).

two questions, why are some people unemployable? because they don’t want to work or because they are incapable through physical or mental incapacity to do so.

and un-doable jobs, why, because you find them unstimulating?

Remember the shocking fact that 50% of people are of below average intelligence. you don’t need to be clever to sweep streets, you need good co-ordination to be a surgeon. etc.

you might not need to be intelligent but you do need a work ethic. A respect for your job and colleagues. Some people really just dont have that. In fact I should think most street sweepers have very good work ethics and personal skills making them more employable than others at the bottom of a theoretical pile.

Some people (that I know) have such deep seated character flaws that they always get fired form their jobs. Either they can’t cope with it or their employers can’t cope with them. They are intelligent and want to work, but just can’t make it work out.

Un-doable jobs are ones that exploit and abuse people so much that anyone who can leave does.

Stoner – Member

If you ask Ernie, Junkyard or TJ, they’ll say yes out of misguided socialist myopia and ignore the fact that with full employment might come rabid inflation and in order to achieve full employment you’d need massive state intervention to the point of oppression. q.v. Stalin, Hitler etc.

😀 LOL ! This place is sooooh predictable !

Stalin and Hitler eh ? The two “20th Century Monsters” well that must mean that full employment is the work of the Devil…..it is indisputably evil ! Long live unemployment ! 😀

Of course no one mentions the name of the 1st Earl of Stockton and former Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, (AKA the Council House Builder) despite the fact that we are talking about full employment in the UK. Well it wouldn’t do to talk of Stalin, Hitler, and Macmillan, now would it ?

Note also that only Stalin’s name is ever used when describing full employment in the Soviet Union. Because whilst there was also full employment under Kruschev and Brezhnev, their names don’t somehow quite conjure up the same level of “evilness” and therefore doesn’t reinforce just how satanic full employment is.

And of course the small detail that Hitler didn’t actually achieve full employment, is very conveniently ignored. Under the Third Reich only Aryan men were counted as unemployed, Jews, Gypsies, women, etc, were not counted as they had no right to work.

Under Hitler the amount of people looking for work did fall (although there were still a third of a million when Germany went to war) but this was in part because the unemployed were put to work on construction projects for which they received no wages – just food, a place in a work camp, and a little pocket money. So not actually employment as we know it then.

Hitler also drafted over one and a half million into the armed forces. So if we are going to use that criteria, then we also need to include Winston Churchill as someone who achieved full employment. Specially as again, it’s more applicable to Britain. So maybe Hitler, Stalin and Churchill ? Or does that also rob full employment of its “satanic” connotations ?

But of course as we all know from Thatcher and Stoner, inflation is the greatest evil known to man.
Why ? ……. because it robs the idle rich of their unearned accumulative wealth ! And what causes inflation ? Well we all know that it’s caused by ordinary working people having too much money to spend. It has nothing at all to do with money-grabbing profiteers pushing prices up !

And as Stoner so correctly identifies, what better way to stop ordinary working people having too much money to spend than to have high levels of unemployment. Unemployment keeps ordinary working people disciplined, and in the knowledge that they should be grateful for the little that they have. It is not for them to be greedy, that is a special right and privilege which is uniquely reserved for the wealthy.

Of course when the greed driven incompetence of the wealthy few eventually causes the shit to hit the fan, then ordinary working people will come to their rescue by tightening their belts even further, and of course accepting even higher levels of unemployment. Well you wouldn’t want the wealthy and privileged to do that now would you, I mean, it’s against “human nature” is it not ?

Besides, the wealthy and privileged of course control broadcasting, education, newspapers, etc, and can therefore do an excellent job of convincing most ordinary people, from cradle to grave, that it’s all their fault.

.

trailmonkey – Member

Given that our two main political parties are commited to economic liberalism and that the third party will just do whatever they are told, then no, zero unemployment will never be possible as it is not a political goal that a UK govt. will ever strive towards.

You’re right trailmonkey, full employment is not a political goal which UK governments any longer strive for, but only because they have convinced most ordinary people of TINA. Quite an impressive achievement and not least, because of economic liberalism’s catastrophic failures in recent times.

This wasn’t of course always the case. Thatcher won the 1979 general election on a promise of abolishing mass unemployment. In fact, it was the central pillar of her entire election campaign. This being the election poster which was predominately used throughout the entire campaign :

Unemployment was “only” one and a half million during that election, but Thatcher only ever managed to push it up even further after she took power. She managed to get away with it for two reasons. Firstly, she convinced many people that it wasn’t her fault, in exactly the same way as the present Tory government is doing so today.

And secondly, even with over 3 million unemployed it still means that the overwhelming majority of the electorate are employed. This leaves many people under the completely mistaken belief that unemployment doesn’t affect them – it always does, whether it’s because of lower wages, higher taxes, etc. In fact many people who still have jobs feel “lucky”………which is of course very good news for any government.

Im too employed to read all that 🙂

LOL ! This place is sooooh predictable !

Happy to oblige 😉

A fine piece of work there ernie.