U.S. Unemployment

Corporate profits are up and so is unemployment. The media say (media is the plural of medium, since television is one medium and radio and newspapers are others; something most seem to have forgotten)...they say that corporate bonuses are back while unemployment continues to rise. None of whatever positive trends we see on Wall Street seems to be affecting a huge portion of our population positively. Why?


Let's consider some possible answers. Per capita productivity is at an all-time high, yet the labor market is not seeing any benefit. On the contrary, labor, including many clerical, managerial, and professional positions, was already working more hours and making less, and now many are not working at all, working part time, or working for vastly less than their earning capacity warrants. Meanwhile, until recently, consumerism has been growing to the breaking point. It is now down only after a worldwide financial crisis has struck. 


In my previous blog, World Markets, Planetary Consumption Rates, and the Global Economy we discussed what should ultimately be the need (obvious to anyone who can think past their nose, since natural resources are NOT infinite) to conserve and recycle non-renewable resources and eliminate non-renewable energy. With population growth as great as we have already seen and our current technological ability to consume massive quantities of resources per capita, this is clearly inevitable in the long term if humans are to survive in any but a very primitive form. This means, of course, that we have to change our consumption habits radically in the long term. It DOES NOT mean we have to reduce our quality of life. Our quality of life has NOT improved in ways that correlate positively with consumption rates. 


Many older people realize this. Not so long ago, we did not have to have two family members working long hours to make ends meet. Children did not have to have tons of electronic toys to be happy. We could use sticks and dirt and other natural and man-made objects and our imaginations to entertain ourselves. We could walk a mile or two to school without worrying. We could play outdoors all day in the summers without dangers lurking around every corner. We did not have anyone shooting us at school or selling us drugs between classes or on street corners. 


Do we really think the unsavory changes we've witnessed have nothing to do with having no time for our families, our children, or with our (and now their) preoccupation with supplying them with slick modern gadgets in lieu of love and quality time? I would personally bet that if our children were to experience what it is like to be in a loving family that spent time together at solid, healthy meals and healthy play involving the vigorous but fun physical activities that used to be the norm, the running and jumping and climbing freely in the natural world around us, or what's left of it, they would gladly trade in their fancy gadgets for it. 


We have already begun to see the reduction of consumption rates. It seems vital that we continue on that path and not eliminate it in the interest of nearsighted, short-term economic goals. Higher per capita productivity and less consumption spells one unavoidable result: fewer hours per capita per week. The corporate world does NOT want that. It is not in their narrow interests, even if it is in that of our societies, and consequently in the long view, in theirs as well. 


In the 1950s scientists were predicting twenty-hour work weeks within a few decades as technology advanced. Instead we've seen the opposite. Meanwhile, those who control production have reaped all the benefits. They justify that to themselves by noting that they are the ones who invested in the technology that has made them so wealthy, but this has only widened the gap between the rich and the poor and soured the society around them as well as us. They have only succeeded in manufacturing a world that is less safe both for them and for us. 


It is of the utmost importance to recognize one simple thing. They could not have done this without our unwitting consent. We have blindly cooperated. We fall for their carefully designed advertising, masterminded by psychologists teamed with writers, graphics artists, statistics analysts, focus groups, and savvy media producers. We let them sucker us into consuming to satisfy our shallow, materialistic egos, our false and empty sense of social status, while we work our proverbial posteriors off, leaving no time for ourselves or our families...all just to make them wealthy while we dig ourselves into bottomless credit pits and save little to nothing. 


Our quality of life decays because we don't have each other. We work ourselves into stress and diseased states, economic fear, and vulnerability to the economic downturns the wealthy impose on us while they remain rich and relatively immune. They hold the purse strings even on our tax dollars. Yet neither are they happy. Their greed knows no limit, including legal ones. They are insatiably hungry for wealth and power because it's all they have and it's never enough to do it for them. With their advertising they attempt to make us in their own image and, so far, they have succeeded amazingly well, even if not admirably. We are the only ones who have the power to stop them.