Americans love to obsess over the unemployment rates, as if job creation is someone else's responsibility. In my humble estimation, unemployment is the default state of being. No caveman ever woke up and thought, " Well, today is hopeless, there's just no work out there." There are no jobs in the natural world, except to find food and shelter for yourself and your family.
The advent of trade is where the concept of a job developed. To be looking for a job means that you have relied on trade so heavily that you neglected to provide those things for yourself. In modern society, this is true of everyone. Since the Agrarian Age and the subsequent centralization of farming, we've been slowly weaned off of our actual independence, not as citizens of a nation, but as human beings roaming the earth. The tradeoff? Convenience, advancement, and the "security" of an overgrown tribe. There's plenty of reasons why this was well worth the trade, then again, it depends on who you talk to. The Great Pyramids were a modern marvel erected in ancient Egyptian society, yet I wonder how the slaves who built them felt about it. If they had realized their freedom was possible, would they have taken back their lives and started something of their own? Clearly the risk of attempting escape only to be stranded in the desert wasn't appealing enough to most slaves, except maybe Moses and his crew.
Is the working class today in an analogous scenario? Is the Chinese workforce too desperate and impoverished to leave underpaying jobs, and are Americans too comfortable and oblivious to discover that alternate career options are even possible?
Throughout history, expecting jobs to be created for you and demanding for government subsidies to be provided is a blatant admission of dependence. It's broadcasting that you remain in submission to a master entity, and that you expect more in return than what you're currently getting. And for most people, that works just fine. It goes without saying; it's what we are born into. It's when taxes are increased and government services deteriorate that people start to wake up from the American Delusion. When an entire class of people have been kept from living a free and prosperous life, many of those people will start to steal what they need. It's not a matter of morals or ideals, it's simply cause and effect. If people in a poor area start dealing drugs despite the law and despite the threat of danger, why do you think that is? If there are no immediate opportunities to obtain basic needs and selling drugs pays 5 times the average job, guess what people are going to choose?
When people take on the mentality that every person is responsible for their own freedom, things start to take new shape. Freedom is not a matter of what we deserve, it's something that is, or isn't. When we assume nothing, it's all up to each individual. Even when someone gets a job, he is still responsible for himself. If someone else has the control to fire him, then he needs to be the boss of something on the side. As the side project starts to succeed, he will have more confidence and leverage in any pre-existing employment as well.
Currently, I don't work a salaried job; I take opportunities. That makes me " unemployed," or self-employed. It also makes me free in certain ways. Most people would say they want something stable, predictable. And I really can't blame them. Working freelance is too uncertain for most people, due to expectations. They want to wake up and expect to work their job and be compensated a consistent wage for their time, effort, and skills. But to me there lies a fine line between trading your time for resources and trading your life for a paycheck. When you get a "big boy job," you often chain yourself to the perks of convenience. You eventually get so comfortable with your employer paying you every two weeks, covering your insurances, and investing your money for you in a 401(k) that you become dependent. You can't imagine your life without those things, and therefore you can't imagine your life without your job. For me personally, that is where your life is no longer your own, at least to an extent.
If the people of America ever wake up from the Delusion, they'll start to see that they have so much more power that they realize. One day, millions of workers might even walk out of their jobs to start something of their own, instead of waiting for a raise. The people who intrinsically know that unemployment is simply a figment of our entitlement mentality are well on their way to taking back their lives, and the responsibility that comes with it.