"Thousands of new jobs have been created in the last several decades in every major city that has experienced population growth. If creating jobs in a city reduced unemployment in the city, then each of these cities should now have an unemployment rate that is less than zero, whatever that means..." April 15, 2006
Essentially every politician in America, at the local level, the state level, and the national level, promises to work to create new jobs in his or her jurisdiction. This seems to be regarded as the highest service a politician can render to constituents.
Did you know that creating jobs in a community increases the number of people in the community who are out of work?
Suppose the equilibrium unemployment rate in a community and across the country is 5%. A company comes into the community, builds a factory, and starts hiring people. This reduces the local unemployment rate to, say, 3%. Then what happens? People from the outside move into the community to take jobs so that the unemployment rate is returned to its equilibrium value of 5%. But because the population of the community has grown, the number of unemployed people is now 5% of the larger population. When the equilibrium unemployment rate is restored, more people are out of work in the community than before.
Every time you create 100 new jobs in a community, you create 4 or 5 more unemployed people in the community.
Thousands of new jobs have been created in the last several decades in every major city that has experienced population growth. If creating jobs in a city reduced unemployment in the city, then each of these cities should now have an unemployment rate that is less than zero, whatever that means. In spite of all of the growth, the unemployment rate in these cities is never far from the national average unemployment rate. So creating jobs in these cities has caused population growth but it has not caused any long-term reduction in the unemployment rate, so more individuals are out of work than before.
As long as people can move freely around the country to take jobs wherever they wish, creating new jobs in a community will always, in the long run, increase the number of people in the community who are out of work. So we can see that creating jobs in a community is an appealing mechanism for promoting population growth of the community. Considering all of the environmental destruction, congestion, crowding and increased taxes that are caused by growth it is clear that creating jobs is a promotion of quantity rather than quality. And we need to remember that, contrary to what the promoters say, the growth never pays for itself.
Population growth increases the rate of consumption of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources so that these resources won't be available for the use of future generations. This led the late David Brower to say words to the effect that,
"Promoting population growth is simply a sophisticated way of stealing from our children." (Source: http://www.numbersusa.com/news?ID=6993)
Posted by proutist-universal on January 5, 2007 10:34 PM
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"In economic life there is extreme inequality and exploitation. Although colonialism no longer exists openly in the political and economic sphere, still it persists indirectly, and this should not be tolerated... In this respect you should remember that in economic life, we will have to guarantee the minimum requirements of life to one and all... There cannot be any sort of adjustment as far as this point is concerned. The minimum purchasing requirement must be guaranteed to all. Today these fundamental essentialities are not being guaranteed. Rather, people are being guided by deceptive economic ideas like outdated Marxism, which has proven ineffective in practical life and has not been successfully implemented in any corner of the world. Why do people still believe in such a theory, which has never been proved successful? The time has come for people to make a proper assessment of whether they are being misguided or not." |
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"Human beings have still not been able to form a human society, and have still not learned to move with the spirit of a pilgrim. Although many small groups, motivated by self-interest, work together in particular situations, not even a small fraction of their work is done with a broader social motive. By strict definition, shall we have to declare that each small family unit is a society in itself? If going ahead in mutual adjustment only out of narrow self-interest or momentary self-seeking is called society, then in such a society, no provision can be made for the disabled, the diseased or the helpless, because in most cases nobody can benefit from them in any way... in that case there always remains the possibility of some people getting isolated from the collective. All human beings must attach themselves to others by the common bond of love and march forward hand in hand; then only will I proclaim it a society." |