This is wrong on so many levels I honestly don't know where to start. Maybe it's best to just give the correct version of this statement, translated from economic lingo to human lingo: "Everybody Needs Purpose In Live!".
source: Picpedia.org
Since I'll be having an extremely busy week ahead of me, I'll be reposting some of the posts I made three years ago in a series called "Myths of our Economy". These posts are from a time when I just got started on Steemit, and when I was posting only a few articles per week. As an introduction you might also want to read Hitchen's Razor On Capitalism, which I wrote two years ago.
You see, every era and every population has its own dogmas. Mostly they were, and in some cases still are, rooted in religion; some holy text told us what was good and bad, spirits guided us through adolescence and adulthood and from that we collectively derived the "rules" and manners of interacting with each other, and we assigned each other a place in the hierarchy of humankind according to our adherence to those rules and our ability to change them. The King is Gods Representative on Earth, so if we lead obedient lives not wanting to much and working hard, earning our daily bread, the Priest assures us our place in Heaven where we can be truly Free and Happy.
And this indoctrination starts at a very young age: even now in the fairy tales we tell our children The King is almost always a kindhearted man who genuinely tries to do what's best for his people. And if something bad happens, it is always because of his endearing ignorance or the evil-doings of someone who wants to steal his power, mostly through his innocent daughter, the lovely Princess.
It's sad that, as a society, we often much later learn the truth about the real workings of the hierarchy. A modern joke, here in Europa at least, is this: "Looking over their people the King said to the Bishop: you just keep them ignorant, then I'll keep them poor..." Religion was the prevalent dogma of the day and from it we were given the things we accept to be true without hesitance, without giving it a further thought. We all knew how to live a good life and the exact requirements to avoid Hell and land in Heaven.
Genesis 3:19
By the sweat of your brow You will eat your food, until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.
In The Bible the notion of working hard to earn your daily bread was is as fundamental as the dust we were made from. Well, "The Economy" is today's prevalent dogma and from it we are given the things we accept to be true without hesitance, without giving it a further thought. And the blatant lie about jobs is today's choice of "truth" we will dismantle in this series of economical Myths. Because we citizens of 2018 also know how to live a good life and the exact requirements to avoid poverty and land in a villa... or two... or three... or 100. And this good life starts with work, most of the times a job and sometimes a small business of your own.
We measure our lives along an economic ruler that rapidly is taking the place of the moral compass The Bible and other religious texts try to be. I'm not a religious person myself but I dread the dogmas spread by this new religion of the market economy. So why is it a lie that Everybody Needs A Job? Well firstly the real workings of the human hierarchy haven't changed since the days we were ruled by Kings and Bishops: the most part of the value you create with a days work at the workplace lands in the pockets of your boss.
And because the labor-market is a marketplace like any other, it's important to remember how that works: your boss shops on the labor-market like you shop in the supermarket. You look for a product that won't set you back too much financially, while still fulfilling your requirements for quality: you buy the cheapest peanut butter that still tastes like peanut butter. Generally speaking of course. So the boss shops for the cheapest labor that still meets his requirements. And since his first and foremost requirement is making a profit, you can rest assured your wages will be but a fraction of what your labor is really worth.
What Is Full Employment?
Also never believe politicians that use empty slogans like: "everybody that is willing to work can find a suitable job", or that it is even possible for everybody to have a job that pays a living wage. The same rules for scarcity I explained in part 1 of this series, "Overpopulation", also apply to the labor market: work, jobs have to be scarce for them to be able to pay any wages at all. Everybody can work a register, so that's a low paying job, but surgery is difficult and takes years of study, surgeons are scarce so they earn a lot more. So all of us with low to medium paying jobs should be thankful for any unemployment and thank the unemployed for "not contributing to society", for they are the reason our jobs pay any wages at all. In economic terms, "full employment" is not the same as zero unemployment, merely that labor is being utilized at its fullest potential, as is explained in the above linked short video. It also talks about "skills that are not needed in the labor market"... Yeah right. Like the skill of raising the next generation, being able to make beautiful music or paintings for which there is no market, and so on...
We are made to think that having a job equals being productive and contributing to a common cause; the development and evolution of society as a whole. I'll tell you who's productive: all the mothers and fathers in the world who try their best to make live better for the next generation. But they don't get payed. All musicians and other artists whose art is heard, seen, experienced by thousands of people and expecting nothing or very little in return. All the people here on Steemit (and Hive and Trybe) and other shared platforms where ideas roam freely, instead of being patented or copyrighted: there's almost no bigger hindrance for human progression than the locking away of IDEAS of all things... Who still believes that competition brings progress faster than collaboration and the sharing of ideas?
Nobody wants to feel useless. This is the basic truth that today's lie about jobs preys on: the market-economy, by word of its movers, made you feel like having a job is the only way to usefully contribute to society, as well as being the first step towards the heaven of a financially secure and carefree live we see painted in every corporate communication, be they internal for the employees, or external for the customers (adds). This spits in the face of all who are productive in a way that's not valued in the economy: single mothers live some of the hardest lives, while doing the most important thing for the future of mankind.
I don't care if you are left or right, liberal or conservative, Marxist or Jehova Witness; you are a human being living on planet Earth and you will have to bow to the dictatorship of reality. The reality is that we live on a planet that has more than enough of everything for everybody; no one has to suffer from hunger, thirst, housing or a feeling of purpose in life. It's just our capitalist, scarcity-demanding market economy that creates absurd realities like homeless people next to scores of unused office- and other business-related buildings. Hunger next to enormous overproduction of literally everything. Ever see the car-parks full of unsold cars, or the megatons of unsold groceries that's being recycled to food for cattle so we can overproduce meat even more, instead of feeding the hungry.
With having a job, you play your part in the marketplace we transformed our planet into, by selling the only possession you have: you're selling your time and energy, and you're selling it at a market price. This price is agreed upon by the CEO's of the biggest employers by proxy of your local politicians: in a marketplace everything has its price and politicians are no exception to that ironclad rule. If you believe the fairy-tale that says "entrepreneurs take a risk and it's only right they earn a lot if that risk pays off", think back at the crisis we had in 2008: you, employees and citizens are the real barer of this supposed risk.
The first to suffer when profits aren't high enough to satisfy our modern Kings are the employees: they get fired or the workplace is moved entirely to some sunny country where worker-rights and environmental laws are non-existent. In fact, an employer's ability to fire an employee, is his or her greatest power; watch the below linked video for much more on that, and how taking away that power could lead to guaranteed living wages. Again, ask yourselves: who are the real risk-takers in our current system? And why should surgeons earn more than the drivers of your local garbage-trucks? Which one does more valuable work? What percentage of the population will miss the surgeons compared to the garbage truck drivers, should they go on strike? After a week, when the smell in the streets is unbearable and you managed to not break your leg that whole week, you'll have your answer.
"But the surgeon has to study for years, he can start earning when he's 30 years old so it's only right he earns money faster..." Stop it already: the garbageman is spent when he's 45 years old, his muscles and bones worked a sweat each day since he was 18 years old and they are done, he needs to rest. The surgeon and other higher end jobs allow you to work well into and even after your pension age; the years the surgeon sacrifices before he starts his professional, earning life are the years the garbageman loses after his professional earning life. Just see things the way they are and not the way The King and The Bishop want you to see them.
There's so much more to be said about this, but I hope I've given enough reasons to start to explore some of the things you take for granted. The harsh truth is that having a job often is very detrimental to humanity and its surroundings. Let me close with another example of how measuring everything on an economic scale makes no sense whatsoever. There's this idea of building a permanent settlement on the planet Mars, I'm sure you heard about it. Now, in pure human and resource related terms we could have done so years ago. It's not a question of willingness, because apparently there's already enough humans crazy enough to volunteer for such a gigantic adventure. It's not a question of natural resources or human brainpower: all those requirements are met easily.
The only requirement that's not met is the economic one: we "struggle" to "raise the funds needed". Many of us forget the fact that the economy is nothing natural, but merely a humongous stack of laws and rules by which we have agreed to divide among ourselves that which we produce out of the stuff the planet gives us. It's a human made construct that we can collectively choose to ignore. Ignoring it on an individual basis though is choosing to starve... So remember that essentially nothing has changed much: you still are as free as the ones you work for allow you to be. The Kings and Bishops are still here, only now they're called CEO's and their PR representatives who act as our political representatives.
The Politics of Full Employment
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