Thursday, 14 February 2019

Jobs

Capitalism destroys jobs. 

It's the welfare state and socialism that create unemployment. 

Discuss

My latest blogpost: JobsTweet this! Posted by Lola at 10:49

5 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Nice one.

14 February 2019 at 17:27
Bayard said...

As to your second statement, it is certainly true that with no welfare state and no minimum wage, so that the alternative is work for a pittance or starve, then yes, there would be a lot less unemployment, partly because the unemployed would tend to have a fairly short lifespan. That, however misses the point of the welfare state, which is there, not because the state is in any way benevolent, but because desperate and starving people tend to riot and do things like burning down houses, some of which are likely to be politicians' houses. So, like most things in the UK state, the welfare state is there to protect landowners.

14 February 2019 at 20:45
Lola said...

Bayard. Oh yes, I do know that the Welfare State is all about keeping down the proles and buying them off. Even its authors saw the 'poor' as a problem - not for being poor but for being in the way.
But it is simmply a fallacy that people have ever worked for a pittance under competitive capitalism. What they have been - of course - is exploited by landlords, not capitalists. And the MW makes the whole thing worse as it makes it against the law for someone to take a low paid job and also caps wages.
Remember the effect of the repeal of the Corn Laws (from which I don't tbhink the Tories have ever recovered).

14 February 2019 at 21:56
MikeW said...

He mentions rent seeking at the end.

'Are you Jokin?'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3E1I4lu6u0

Via RalphM, via LK!

15 February 2019 at 15:48
Bayard said...

"But it is simmply a fallacy that people have ever worked for a pittance under competitive capitalism."

I'm not so sure of that. In the absence of a welfare state and if the supply of labour exceeds demand, then wages could go very low indeed, if the alternative is starvation. In pre-industrial times, in this scenario, when the supply of agricultural labour exceeded demand, ie the harvest had failed so there was none to be gathered in, then the result was famine and a correction of the labour supply by brutal means.

16 February 2019 at 17:42

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