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Polly Toynbee raises some interesting point about how to tackle unemployment, especially amongst the young.
Rather going on about how bad mass unemployment, the bit that interests me is how to tackle and stop it.
At the end of the day, government intervention is what matters. Putting up money is important. Possible schemes involve subsidising wages, guarenteeing places in education or training etc.
She compares schemes for encouraging people back into work against ones designed to stop people loosing their jobs (the latter in Germany). To me, that highlights a cultural differences between Germany and the UK, with the UK having more emphasis on a 'flexible labour market'. The thing is that it's easier to go from job to job than from unemployed to employed and so i would probably come down on the side of keeping people in their jobs.
As ever, the question of how to pay for it is massive. I like her idea of taxing (bankers) bonuses with an explicit link to keeping people in work. People might buy that
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They are never going to be able to create jobs for everyone because unless there is a profit to made the capitalists won't do it. Unemployment and also shutting down factories to drive up the cost of goods and profits suits them too.
I think only with a new deal like system under roosevelt would we be able to end unemployment. The Works Program Adminstration during the 30s in America created millions of jobs through mainly road building and public building projects.
If we had a socialist planned economy where people would work together then we could prevent any future recessions. This thing called democratic socialism says that they would leave small businesses alone to retain their independence but that they would nationalise all big business and industry and turn it over to worker's councils and let those who are skilled and actually produce the wealth to decide how resources are used and spent.
The boss may put up the capital but he often doesn't know how to run the place; he has no skills except the skill of exploitation. Tony Benn says that 10% of the people own 80% of the world's resources and he thinks it is amazing why people stand for it. Even president lincoln said, "you can't fool all of the people all of the time".
Ever since we were caveman and decided to form tribes because it was mutually beneficial to work together than against or on our own; we have thought that working together and looking after the needs of everyone in society was superior and more evolved I think.
in many places in the UK the private sector has failed to provide people with jobs, so the state has stepped in to that gap. I'm in favour of this as at least the people have jobs.
In 'green industries' the market has fallen well below what it is in other countries such as Germany and the state has a role as enabler in situations such as this.
I'm in favour of small businesses, not so much the larger ones. Too much power with too little accountability
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