Forum Post: Natural Unemployment
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 26, 2011, 7:16 p.m. EST by hidden
(430)
from Los Angeles, CA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I'm wondering, how many people here know what "Natural Unemployment" actually is?
By mainstream economics, "Natural Unemployment" considered to be about 5%. Of cause, this rate is based on statistics among the the people who actually reported their unemployment, in reality it could be bigger, though let's not go there.
So, %5 are people, yes, they are actually people. People who have to be unemployed, have to starve and have to die. These people are not suffering for nothing, they are playing important role in our economy, they keeping the pressure on the next %5 of employed. This pressure is required to keep wages and prices low, otherwise the inflation would rise. Of cause, these 5% keeping pressure on the next and so on. So, what are these 5% employed, are they ok? These 5% of hardly employed people are under constant stress, they straggling to keep up with their bills and can loose their job any time. They are also important because keeping pressure on the next in this slavery chain.
In a country like US with population of 307,006,550 people, 5% is 15,350,327 people. Yes, 15 million people have to be unemployed! 15 million lives is the price we have to pay to keep our economy going! But what is it? Is it just one time charge? Well, it would be, if people can survive without money, but these are people who have to eat and place to live and no money - means death. Which means when they run out of supply they will have a choice, to die or find another way to get money which usually streets and crime. But, that's not where it stops, all the choices mean these people go off the statistics and the next 5% take their place.
Some people might think that these people die and it's their own fault, but it's not! These people a murdered by the people who support the market system, the capitalism.
We live in 21st century, how can we consider murder of 15 million people on a regular bases a normality?
There are a number of factual problems with your statement. The unemployment number is based not on the total population of the country, but rather the workforce. This significantly decreases the number of people we are talking about. You also ignore the argument of why there is natural unemployment. Natural unemployment has to do with flexibility in the job market. If everyone were employed it would be impossible to hire anyone. This 5% is not statically unemployed. When the system is running well this 5% is a constantly changing group of people with a fairly small amount of time spent unemployed.
If the 5 of workforce is starving, then their children are starving with them and statistically they happen to be the people who have the most children. And "fairly small amount of time" is at very least 4 weeks.
You are right about the natural unemployment rate. You are wrong to infer from this that these people "have to starve and have to die." There is nothing that says that it must be THE SAME 5% who are unemployed one month to the next -- only that some 5% ought to be unemployed at a given time. Furthermore, there is nothing that says that the unemployed cannot benefit from the social safety net set up for just this reason. Unemployment benefits, medicare, food stamps, welfare, not to mention charities... Perhaps you don't think it's enough to live a satisfactory life on, but those who are unemployed in America today do not "have to starve and have to die."
Natural unemployment may not be a good thing, but it is not "murder."
So, you saying, these people just starve in turns with people who already live in hardly survivable conditions, who not even working full time jobs and already on food stamps? To be eligible for "Unemployment Benefits" they have to be previously working for five calendar quarters. They have to be without a job for at least 4 weeks to be considered unemployed. The "Unemployment Benefits" as it is already increasing the unemployment by decreasing the pressure on people and Food Stamp are actually lowering survivable income. That's why it's 9.1% official unemployment.
"People who have to be unemployed, have to starve and have to die."
...or they become organized criminals, steal stuff, rape, pilage and murder, eventually take power of a county and call themselves the Chinese Communist Party.
Why do they have to be Chinese? Or why do they even have to be Communist? Maybe they should design the economy from scratch, so it will not be based on murder of people.
I was giving an example. If people are really starving and they have no food, they will die or kill. I am a man of peace, but, if I had to starve, I mean starve in the street homeless, I would have to admit that I would kill; sad, but starvation and homelessness, would be the last straw and would drive me to sociopathy, I have no doubt; just like a pirate in Indonesia. I mean, if society would let a highly educated MBA, like me, starve in the street,be homeless and die, than why let that society survive, at all?
Under those utterly extreme circumstances, the rich sociopaths leaving me to die, would have to die too. Now, how can men and women, once driven to utter sociopathy, now create a better society? We would end up with the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, but then again, whose fault would that be, ultimately? The rich don't have to leave MBAs to starve to death in the street, now do they? Put it another way, if the rich had to starve to death or roll a tank over me, what would they do? [wink]
Exactly, it's not their fault, it's the environment conditioning the people to behave this way, therefor the system that is not based on competition would prevent most of these problems. The thing is, the rich 1% do not want the change and 5% don't have neither manpower nor purchasing power to change and they can't do nothing without the other 94%. That's why I'm talking with the non-violent 99% :) And, you know, this is funny, how you put Soviet Union on the same line with Nazi Germany. Soviet Union had many problems mostly due to dictatorship nature trough it not anywhere near Nazi Germany. And almost anybody who lived in Soviet Union mostly remember the positive sides of it. Trough it's not about Soviet Union.
The problem is this mentality: if economic system is not based on starving people then it must be communism or socialism. This is not going to bring us any progress.
The new system should account for current state of progress, and not just on patches of the system designed hundreds of years ago.