Unemployment is a Deliberate Choice - YouTube

Unemployment is a Deliberate Choice.

Not by the people who are unemployed, but by governments the world over.

It is their intention that a significant portion of the community are always unemployed, and

they undertake policy to specifically ensure that a large number of people who want a job

can not get one.

As part of this they choose to use a definition of 'Full Employment' that means three to six

percent unemployment.

This allows them to declare they are pursuing Full Employment while it is their policy that

if unemployment falls below 3% they should deliberately engineer job losses.

We must remember also that unemployment means people who are actively searching for work,

so people who have given up the search, or can not work are on top of this figure.

This definition of Full Employment taken by governments and Central Banks comes from a

concept called the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment, or NAIRU.

The idea is that if we don't keep a large pool of people unemployed at all times then

inflation will increase.

The story runs that if every single individual was employed, any new jobs will have to offer

higher wages to entice any workers away from their existing employment.

Company A needs a new worker, but the pay they offer at the market rate means no one

is willing to leave their existing employment for no greater financial benefit.

So they advertise for the job at a higher rate of pay.

Now company B, where the employee currently works will lose that worker.

Company B knows that they will also struggle to replace this worker, so they offer the

worker a higher salary again to retain them.

Company A now has to raise their offer once more, until whichever of the two is unable

to afford the increased rate of pay.

The model says that when this happens frequently across the entire economy it creates a chain

reaction where wages are constantly increasing.

When there are workers available who do not currently have employment then this inflation

doesn’t occur because they are willing to take employment at whatever the market rate

is.

The problem is that NAIRU has never been shown to exist in the real world.

As unemployment rates fall the constant warning of inflation gets louder, but even during

times of record employment the inflation never materialises.

Central bank officials have even had to testify under oath that NAIRU is not reflected in

reality.

But this doesn't stop politicians and officials using it to justify austerity to fit with

their ideology when they know they won't be prosecuted for deliberately lying.

Something that adopting NAIRU definitely does achieve in the real world is helping to keep

wages low by always having a large pool of people who are desperate for work and are

therefore more likely to accept poorer wages and conditions.

There are people in society who benefit immensely from this for their own personal fortunes.

Keeping this deliberate unemployment quiet is very useful for people who want to declare

that unemployment is the result of laziness and bad choices by the people it affects,

and to justify subjecting them to poverty and demeaning measures.

Most unemployed people don't lack a job because of their own failings, even during the peaks

of economic booms, the level of job seekers always exceeds the level of job vacancies.

People lack employment because the government made sure they can't have employment.

Unemployment is a failure of government to the people it is supposed to serve.

Unemployment is a scourge on society.

It erodes people's health, causes societal degradation and by decreasing the money available

to people in the category most inclined to spend rather than save, it weakens the overall

economy.

No resource in any human society ever has been more valuable and useful than what human

labour can achieve.

Ensuring unemployment, is to deliberately waste this resource and the copious real world

value it could deliver to the people in a community.