Dr. Gavin Cameron wrote:
An alternative strategy for reducing unemployment
would be to focus on improving the search activities and the skills of both
the long-term unemployed and the unskilled, as well as reforming the benefit
system to increase incentives.
Thomas:
There is much I could comment on regarding the high academic viewpoint of
Dr. Cameron and the reality of the unemployed but let me use this little
quote as my main critique. This idea, common among those who write about
unemployment but who do not experience it, is that if only they could search
more and harder and better, then everyone would find a job. When there are
only so many beans in the jar, the aggressive picker gets a bean but the
overall number of beans remains the same and at the end of the day, if there
are more pickers than beans, then there will still be a large number of
individuals without beans - beans of course representing jobs.
The same is true of skills. If 10,000 printers are required in the market
and you have trained 12,000 printers, you still have 2000 printers
unemployed so skills training has the double effect of redundant training
expenses and surplus labour driving down the wages of those employed.
Now, reforming the benefit system, so politely stated, seems to me a way of
saying, reducing the welfare, dole, EI and other unemployment packages will
create a powerful incentive for those who are unemployed to get off their
fat lazy duffs and get out there and take a job away from someone else,
which in reality means creating another unemployed person who now has to use
up the available benefit funds for a net gain of zero except for the social
costs of those losing jobs, and having to use up their assets and savings to
survive until they are able to force some other employed person out on the
street.
Surely we can be a little more creative than this Darwinian methodology. If
this is the result of higher education, then thank god I ain't got one.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
