Full Employment in America
Benjamin Broke
Copyright 2014 Benjamin Broke
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Contents:
Full Employment in America
About Benjamin Broke
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Full Employment in America
Fighting the Correct Enemy
A hardworking, honest person can find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own. I state this upfront because it is absolutely true. My concern here is not with the character and qualities of the unemployed person, but with the state called unemployment itself.
This paper proposes a radical solution to the problem of unemployment. To use a medical analogy, my proposal fights the disease itself, not the carrier, and not the cause.
Why not fight the cause of unemployment? The answer is obvious: That fight has already been lost. In the absence of thousands of new industries popping up overnight to employ the millions of Americans without work, something else has to be done. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
If unemployment is the problem then we must fight unemployment, not business, not government or global trade. Our fight must be directed against unemployment itself, which is why I propose that it be made illegal.
I’m proposing that we, as a society, incarcerate the unemployed.
Freedom Aint Free (and neither is anything else)
‘But an honest, hardworking person can find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own,’ the argument goes, ‘and your proposal would take away that person’s freedom, which is something we’re all entitled to.’ This argument works perfectly if you view the unemployed person as living in a vacuum, and not in the society that you and I share.
My response would be: What about the honest, hardworking person with a job? Shouldn’t they have the freedom not to live in a world full of hunger, violence, extreme poverty, and criminality?
The vast majority of unemployed people are not homeless or starving, so who is paying for their food and shelter? An employed person is. Even if they’re not supporting an unemployed family member, they pay through taxes that go to welfare programs, or rising costs at stores to offset petty thefts. In some cases they pay by becoming the victim of crime. Those who have jobs are paying for the survival of those who don’t.
And not all of the costs of unemployment are obvious. There are security costs, and all the lost revenue that used to come out of paychecks and go into city budgets. That money covered things like sewage treatment centers, water pumps, road maintenance, trash collection, and public schools. The cost of these things hasn’t gone down, but the number of people who are paying for them has. That means the people who are paying have to pay more, one way or another.
Prison Without Punishment
A person with a job is a person with something at stake. A person without a job is only interested in seeing upheaval and change. As Bob Dylan once sang, ‘When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.’
This is not an attack on the unemployed person, it is an attack on unemployment. We lock up drug dealers to fight drugs, rapists to fight rape, and thieves to fight theft. Incarceration serves two distinct purposes: To punish the perpetrator, and to benefit society by removing the perpetrator from it. Every jail sentence contains both a negative and positive aspect, negative to the convict and positive to society.
My proposal would see the creation of a new type of non-punitive detention. This would be a class of the prison population who aren’t being punished for anything, but whose continued liberty causes harm to society. I’m suggesting a new way of thinking about detention and incarceration. If we remove the negative, punitive side of the sentence, we’re left only with the positive benefit to society.
And who could argue that society wouldn’t be better off without the unemployed?
Political Distortion
There are not nearly enough jobs to go around, and we can’t turn a blind eye to that simple fact. We don’t have that luxury. But turning a blind eye is exactly what our so-called leaders in Washington are doing. They pretend not to see the fact that our children are growing up in a dangerous world, a world that has been distorted beyond all recognition by the sheer magnitude of the jobless population. Out in DC they suffer from a willful blindness, brought on by their own self-interest, because you can be sure that if an unemployed person does nothing else, they will vote.
And how does the unemployed person vote? They vote for the candidate who promises the biggest handout. This voter will always vote against the interests of big business. Whether out of spite or out of the honest belief that capitalism is evil, they want to see industry brought to its knees. The ideal liberal candidate has always been one that would shrink the private sector and grow the welfare state.
As the number of unemployed increase, so too do the number of senators and congressmen who do their bidding, which begs the question: What will counteract this trend? What will keep the United States from becoming another casualty of the failed socialist ideology?
The only answer is to solve the problem of unemployment.
Freedom is a Relative Term
Imprisoning the unemployed isn’t fair, but is it fair to make the employed person live in a world dragged down and distorted by the unemployed? Is the social ill of a non-punitive prison term worse than the social ills of having a population of desperate, hungry takers, unable to contribute anything, out in the streets demanding resources they can’t pay for?
Unless extreme action is taken, we will never see a full recovery. Economists often describe the economy as a web of interdependence. A business owner pays their employees, who then buy goods and services from another business whose employees continue the process. But when someone doesn’t earn an income they are not taken out of this web. Their needs remain and must be provided by someone with an income, who then has less to contribute back to the web. Take the millions of unemployed people out of the equation and you would see the economy roar back with a vengeance.
And let’s think for a moment about the problems that plague our once-great cities. Riots, violence, terror, crime, the rise of radical political movements, none of these are activities that people with jobs participate in.
If there were a street gang who were responsible for 99.9 percent of all crime, they would be rounded up and brought to justice. Any member of that gang, whether or not they themselves had committed a crime, would be subject to prosecution and imprisonment, just for belonging to that group. The unemployed are that group.
Incarcerating the unemployed would effectively eliminate crime in this country. It might not be fair, but ask the mother whose child is killed by a stray bullet how fair the current system is.
And how unfair is it really? The moment an honest, hardworking person loses their job, they become a taker in one form or another. They become part of a group that is responsible for virtually all the negative aspects of our society. They inevitably turn to underground economies, radical political movements, or crime.
Cost/Benefit Analysis
When a person loses their income, their value to their community becomes negative. As strange as it might seem, incarcerating that person brings their value back onto the positive side.
One of the fastest growing industries in America is the prison industry. Many private prisons are set up as factories that produce
goods for the global market. Building and maintaining prisons is an important source of jobs in many areas of the country. Prisons need guards and they buy food and medical supplies, and they consume energy. They are important engines of the economy, and the more prisoners they have, the better they do at creating jobs and products and profits.
And no one is proposing that we lock people up forever. I suggest a two-year term, followed by a trial release to see if gainful employment can be secured. If, after a reasonable period, work is not found, another two-year term would be served. This would give the economy a chance to grow without the constant drag of the unemployed. Imagine the rate of growth the economy would have without any unemployed people holding it back. The economy would be creating jobs at such a rapid rate that I would be very surprised if anyone had to serve more than one two-year sentence.
The last shred of resistance to this proposal comes in the form of personal fear. It’s not an argument so much as a nagging worry. ‘What if I lose my job?’ A person might be thinking. Of course nobody wants to go to jail, but consider the alternatives. Would you rather starve, turn to a life of crime, or subsist on government handouts?