It's that there are no jobs. Because jobs are, in our private enterprise system, tied to profit. Someone has to make more money than they pay in labor (jobs) to be willing to spend the money to translate work into jobs. If nobody's willing to pay the money — be it private investors (or, heaven forfend, the taxpayers) — then there are no jobs, and the work goes undone.
It's pretty simple, that way. Not that, in a world of limited resources, the answer is merely to spend. But understanding the role of profit in why there are no jobs is important. Because it isn't that there aren't things we need people to be doing (work).
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Do you know someone who is still looking for work, or still on the verge of losing their home?
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I'd ask the person who wrote that flyer this question: If there is so much work to be done, and you're out of a job, why don't you take out a loan and start a business yourself? Ignorance is bliss, apparently. The flyer author needs some real-life lessons in what it really means to take the risk and responsibility of running a business.
Sorry for the rant, Dave, but thanks for allowing me to vent.
No problem, +James D..
On the other hand, again, you can only get a loan if (a) you have the collateral to make the risk worth it, and (b) you can demonstrate there will be enough profit (beyond interest, even) to pay off the loan.
The question is, if everything is only valued to the extent that it's profitable, then it means the only things worth any effort are those that someone can make money from. That's certainly workable, but is it all that's workable — or what we want to be the case?
It almost seems like a call to unemployed people to "get out there and start fixing infrastructure!" But somebody has to hire them to do that.
Actually, it seems to be a call asking why someone needs to be making money in order to fix infrastructure (and pay people to do so)/
There's an ambiguity in the word "work" that makes it hard for this polemic to work.
Agreed — I found it interesting in terms of the concepts it raises, rather than a concrete set of policies.