I can understand why in undeveloped ones, but doesn’t unemployment in a developed country mean “everything is covered we literally can’t find a job for you.”?
Shouldn’t a developed country that indeed can’t find jobs for its citizen also have the productivity to feed even the unemployed? is the problem just countries not having a system like universal basic income or is there something else going on here?
In: 1275
Yea. It’s called greed. Always wanting something more even when you have everything you “need”
Because it’s a higher burden on government spending. People who are unemployed still have to get money for bills etc. So they get unemployment money which costs the gov more money putting higher strain on its spending. A country that has a high unemployment rate is also not as productive and efficient.
How many people can be sitting at home doing nothing before its too many?
At what point do we not have the things we need because people aren’t contributing anything?
Do we want to build a society where people are useless consumers, or where we are building toward a common good?
It’s fine when the fast food worker stays home on unemployment. What about when the truck driver stays home, or the internet/cable tech? What about the firefighters, or the mechanics, or the tech support guy that fixes the internet?
Human society is built on joint cooperation. Building shit. Improving shit. Fixing shit. If we stop, what are we doing?
A good way true developed countries can fight unemployment is by reducing working hours/days.
Have 2 people share a job. Both make enough money to thrive and feel useful. Both also have more time for other non-work activity.
This works well in Scandinavia.
Wouldn’t work in the US bc you all hate each other
Australia used to have a policy of full employment but that changed in the 70s when politicians decided they could use unemployment as a means of reducing inflation. If the population has less money to spend, the cost of goods and services must come down and the dollar will be worth more. Hense, after this period the employment services were privatised and social welfare was kept below the poverty line. I’m not sure which other countries maintain this policy but I know a lot of western economists are discussing the need for 5-10% unemployment over the next 5 years to curb inflation now.
A big thing to remember is that unemployment very specifically means people who aren’t working now, but want to be working. To a certain degree, unemployment is a good thing. The most common type of unemployment in a developed country is supposed to be frictional unemployment, that is someone who is unemployed because they are in the process of changing to a new job or are entering the work force for the first time. Having this at a reasonable level is important because too little means the people have given up hope on becoming employed and too much means many people have all quit their jobs all at once, neither of which are good signs.
The other types of unemployment represent problems in society, such as structural unemployment wherein people are unemployed because while jobs are available, they aren’t in the right place. Unemployment of this type is a large driver of poverty in developed countries, most commonly due to formerly strong manufacturing bases have moved elsewhere in the world and left the workers behind – it’s not that there aren’t jobs to be filled, it’s that there is a mismatch between the skills people have and the jobs that are available to be filled. It is not unheard of for formerly major cities to have all but completely died because their jobs have moved to a different location, leaving behind a collection of workers specialized in making something that is unneeded or is more easily traded for. This forces people to have to either restart their education from scratch or move to a place that is hiring. When applied to a national level, that is a big problem.
The people voted into power want people to be happy. Nobody wants to be unemployed, that’s bad. So, we vote for people who claim to fix unemployment rates.
It’s not bad for a country to have a lot of houses on fire either, the country will be fine as long as it’s just a little fire, but we will want our country to have as little fire as possibly. Preferably.
Why do you think that developed countries would NOT have problems with unemployment? Sure, if it’s a developed country then there’s the potential for more jobs. But just because the society could set out to make sure everybody is gainfully employed, does not mean they’re sufficiently motivated to do so! People are selfish.
The definition of unemployment is **not** ‘people who aren’t working’
The definition of unemployment is ‘people who want to work but can’t find work’
Therefore unemployment is inherently a social issue rather than just a statistic.
No it definitely doesn’t mean “everything is covered we literally can’t find a job for you.”
In a well functioning economy, unemployment is not that much of a problem, most people can find a job in reasonable timeframe and they won’t be jobless long. Those that can’t find a job are just generally useless so that’s an entirely different social problem, not a jobs issue.
But then sometimes the economy goes poorly and then you have a real jobless problem. People that could be productive aren’t because of bad politics or poor financial stability, it becomes quite a waste and really valuable people can fall on hard times and lose their potential to depression, criminality, alcoholism etc.
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