(Un)Employment

Remember how last post I mentioned it would be a double post day?

I lied. Unfortunately I had ladder games to lose and coaching to endure from a Masters Zerg. And it was endurance, I lost a lot of PvZ's.

So today I shall post the post you probably haven't been waiting for.

Once upon a time when I was still leaching off my dad in their seemingly upper-class conservative house I believed all that came from my Dad and hell even my stepmum's mouth was gospel. And when they ranted about dole bludgers being a worthless drain on the system I wholeheartedly believed them.

In fact I distinctly recall my best friend Shane and myself (Shane came from a similar socioeconomic background) discussing ways of eliminating this wastage. Like forced labor death camps. Or killing the dole bludgers, cooking their remains and feeding them to all the starving kids in Africa. Thus killing two birds with one prion-infected stone.

In time however, I learnt that my old man and my stepmum harboured unjust and harsh prejudices.

Nevertheless I couldn't help feel like I WAS a worthless drain on the system during my brief jobless stint. Among other things.

If you are unemployed and you do feel like this then... just don't. Because any well thought out socioeconomic analysis will tell you that you are in fact of great and vital importance to the economy.

 Consider the three main states the general labour market can reside at. There can be high unemployment, labor shortages or a perfect balance where unemployment sits at 0% and there are no labor shortages. In practice though you can get both labor shortages and unemployment and the unemployment rate is very rarely at exactly 0%.  Furthermore it is nigh impossible to ascertain a perfect 0% unemployment and no shortageof labor unless the nation in question is communist and even then t still is difficult.

So if the system must either err on having some unemployment or a shortage of labor, which is preferable?

If you answered, "labor shortages" then you are completely and utterly wrong. No workers means no work gets done and even being short a 5th of a person can slow productivity to a snail's pace. Labor shortages also mean that employers cannot afford to lose a single one of their staff lest their snail pace production slow down to to a complete stop, leading to a plethora of unreasonable demands employees can make of the hand that feeds them.

Benefits like holiday leave or maternity leave become liabilities that can render small business's bankrupt when labor shortages are already crippling productivity.

Then there are the effects of governmental intervention to solve labor shortages, such as mass immigration.

I'm sure I don't have to spell it out (but if I do, post below and I'll give you some historical examples), labor shortages can be devastating.

High unemployment is bad too, but the worst effects of high unemployment are on the unemployed themselves. If there is no welfare system to take care of them they tend to starve to death along with their families. If there is a welfare system in place then they just become a drain on taxpayers.

A little bit of unemployment though (2-10%) is perfect.... in a nation that has welfare to take care of the unemployed. The reason being that, businesses can operate with the best workers at their disposal and can use the "slack" of the labor market to readily expand their business or to fire and hire better workers. In a 0% unemployment labor market this is not possible; it is impossible to expand a business when there are no extra workers available to do so.

So If you are unemployed and suffer under uppity working class plebs brown-nosing you, then promptly tell them the truth followed by some "french". The cold hard economic truth is that your nation's economy cannot grow without you and all the other dole bludgers handing in their forms to centrelink/welfare every month.