Silly Things
Unemployment

Unemployment has settled in. It could not be helped, and it is only natural that it should be so. Whoever in today's society holding out some hope of full employment: do not kid yourself. Whoever making promises of full employment: do not tell lies.

It is such a simple equation that there is no excuse for failing to spot it. With every passing day another new machine comes to improve in efficiency and straight away more human labour gets replaced and shortened, while fattening the newly laid-off workers list.

Thirty years ago a large factory hired an average of 3,000 workers. Nowadays, the same factory -but now much more efficient than its predecessor- engages around 300 people... at the very most.

Day by day entire manufacturing processes are being fully automated and robotized. Agricultural production is readily available at the touch of a button. Mass migration from rural to urban areas proves the point. Fifty years ago about 50 percent of the population was working in the fields. We're talking millions of people here. Today there is scarcely a ten percent left: everyone has migrated from the lands to towns and cities.

When there is an overall improvement in the economy, standards of unemployment slightly decrease; but when economic issues start worsening, then lay-offs get rocketed up again. These seasonal variations in unemployment figures are still small if compared to the underlying hard-to-buck trends driven by this ongoing kind of R&D.

That's why when people start talking rubbish about subemployment as well as about subsidies on poverty or underemployment insurance, and even when they tear their hair out twisting the actual facts in order to present them as either an unacceptable economic distortion, or a politically improper handout, or kinda bearable stuff just as a temporary relief... it is because they lack vision.