Scroungers, just scroungers, do you admire them?

[dafodil]

This Monterey System, Is that the one created by Clint Eastwood when he was the mayor of that city in Calfornia? He did a nice job of it.

Clint Eastwood was never Mayor of Monterey he was in fact Mayor of Carmel a town down the coast.

We have used the same bar as he drank in at that time in Carmel.

My claim to fame:)

[Anna B]

Full employment has never existed, nor is it desirable.

 

We've had increasing automation for most of century now, it hasn't structurally driven up unemployment at all, but it has driven up living conditions.

 

I have to disagree.

 

Why do you think full employment is undesirable?

 

The closing of the heavy industries in the north of England devastated the area and the repurcussions are still being felt today.

Although some of the unemployed of this era found satisfactory work, many did not and they became the foundation of the long term unemployed and the subsequent generations of families who have never found work.

 

Employing people in the public sector, and moving the unemployed onto sickness benefits are typical of government schemes to mask the underlying problem and manipulate the figures, but the problems have never gone away and both have come back to bite us.

 

People need to work in decent jobs which pay a living wage and offer something in the way of security, not the revolving door of low paid short term contracts which wreak havoc with people's lives.

[I1L2T3]

I have to disagree.

 

Why do you think full employment is undesirable?

 

 

There is no such thing Anna. Any attempts to create full employment (as in soviet era) are contrived, quite simply because a certain percentage of the population will always be unemployable. For example those will physical and mental illnesses and handicaps, or those who for whatever reason just cannot adapt to participation in a workforce.

 

There are also economic theories that posit that 100% employment can lead to inflation spiralling out of control, and that there has to be a balance between the level of inflation and the level of employment. Look up 'Phillips Curve' for more info.

 

The best that can be hoped for is a near-100% employment rate but it will never be 100%. In that sense 'full employment' can be taken to mean an economically optimal level of employment as close to 100% as possible.

[andygardener]

There is no chance of full or anything like employment while we import foreigners and pay the feckless to procreate.

[Cyclone]

It's undesirable because it's impossible for the economy to grow naturally if you have reached full employment.

 

If a company needs to expand and to hire someone, it can't because there is literally no one available in the job market to hire. Poaching them, by offering incentives like a larger wage is the only option, hence the inflationary spiral that might result, but even before that we get stifled growth.

 

We don't want any long term unemployed (amongst the employable), but short term unemployment at a small level allows the hiring market to stay fluid and for natural growth.

[MrSmith]

I have to disagree.

 

Why do you think full employment is undesirable?

 

The closing of the heavy industries in the north of England devastated the area and the repurcussions are still being felt today.

Although some of the unemployed of this era found satisfactory work, many did not and they became the foundation of the long term unemployed and the subsequent generations of families who have never found work.

 

Employing people in the public sector, and moving the unemployed onto sickness benefits are typical of government schemes to mask the underlying problem and manipulate the figures, but the problems have never gone away and both have come back to bite us.

 

People need to work in decent jobs which pay a living wage and offer something in the way of security, not the revolving door of low paid short term contracts which wreak havoc with people's lives.

 

Unemployed Britain 1920s and 1930s

As most of us are aware the 1920s and 1930s were dark times for Britain, most of Europe and even America.

 

 

http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/unemployment

The 1950s and 1960s saw a very low rate of unemployment (around 3 per cent on average) as a result of the "postwar boom".

 

The economic orthodoxies of the boom years collapsed in the 1970s. The energy crises of 1973 and 1979 generated "stagflation", rising inflation and rising unemployment.

 

The 1960’s also saw a start in the rise of employed women, and more women entering the workplace would inevitably lead to more unemployment. In 1960 37% of women were employed, it rose to 50% in 1980 and 60% in 2000

 

---------- Post added 06-03-2013 at 08:04 ----------

 

It's undesirable because it's impossible for the economy to grow naturally if you have reached full employment.

 

If a company needs to expand and to hire someone, it can't because there is literally no one available in the job market to hire. Poaching them, by offering incentives like a larger wage is the only option, hence the inflationary spiral that might result, but even before that we get stifled growth.

 

We don't want any long term unemployed (amongst the employable), but short term unemployment at a small level allows the hiring market to stay fluid and for natural growth.

 

Unless some of those jobs are desirable but not necessary, having pool of low paid people waiting to take up better paid jobs as they become available would be better than having a pool of unemployed people waiting to take up employment.

[Cyclone]

I don't think you can define a job as economically necessary or not.

 

If the job exists, then to the company that job is necessary (if it wasn't then the job would be made redundant and no longer exist).

[MrSmith]

I don't think you can define a job as economically necessary or not.

 

If the job exists, then to the company that job is necessary (if it wasn't then the job would be made redundant and no longer exist).

 

I wasn't thinking of private sector jobs, the public sector can be used as employer of last resort, employing people to do low paid jobs that aren’t that important. So rather than having millions of people doing nothing when work is scarce you have them doing something until more private sector jobs are created. The lowest paid public sector jobs would need to pay less than the private sector jobs to encourage people to move from one to the other.

[I1L2T3]

I don't think you can define a job as economically necessary or not.

 

Some roles must be economically necessary. For example, law and order, education, healthcare, infrastructure supply/maintenance (power, roads) etc...

Business needs a economic framework to operate in. Note that for this argument I'm not saying the above should be provided by the state, just that they are necessary for business.

[Cyclone]

What I was actually trying to say was that by definition if you're being employed then the job is economically necessary, there are no "low value" jobs which are economically superfluous.

But

Most of the work you've listed there doesn't generate wealth or create anything.

 

Law and Order for example. It's necessary for society, but if we were all better people and we didn't need the police force, they could all be employed actually doing something productive, the government could charge us less tax, the economy would be better.

 

Public jobs are different, some are necessary for society without contributing at all to the economy.

 

Having the state 'employ' people to do nothing is just called benefits isn't it MrSmith?