A nation forsaken

There are 15.9 million people unemployed in the Euro area of sixteen nations and 23 million in the wider EU27.  In America there are 14.6 million unemployed or on temporary work but who would like full time employment (This is the U6 measure of US unemployment) and in Japan there are 3.3 million.

Making a total, in the financially driven and ‘advanced’ world, of 41 million people.  That is a nation forsaken.

Those on the right will be quick to say these are the feckless and bike-less (British joke) who could get a job if they could only get out of bed, draw the curtains, get on their bike or catch a bus and go to where the jobs are. So let’s look at that point of view and do so in the nation where that attitude is most often and most vociferously expressed, America.

So who are the ‘unemployed by choice’ and how many of them are there?  Well, back in 2007 unemployment (the narrower U3 version) was 5% in America. And that 5% unemployment held pretty much steady from 1990 all the way until the start of ’08.  That 5% is about 7.5 million Americans who we are going to say, for the sake of this argument,  are the social parasites the right wing always claims are the people dragging us down.

In fact if we look a little bit closer we find that of that 7.5 million, nearly 7 million of them were actually short term unemployed.  They were part of a churning number of people losing and getting work.  Only 645 000 or 0.65 million of them were long term ( a year or more) unemployed.  So if you really want to point your finger at those who stay on welfare even in ‘good’ times, its less than half of one percent.

But for the sake of keeping the right wing with us, lets pretend that the whole 5% unemployed of 2007 are the people too lazy to work , who would rather live off welfare.

But what about what happened next? From the beginning of ’08 unemployment rose from 5.5% to the 9.8% it is now.  Another 6.45 million Americans lost their jobs. Can we, even by this uber right wing argument, really claim that the extra 4.3% of Americans who lost their jobs since ’08  are feckless parasites?  Well if they were so feckless surely they would have been lazing around before ’08.  Why wait to be lazy? It seems clear to me that even by this right wing argument, the extra 6.45 million Americans who have lost their jobs and are likely to lose their homes as a result, are NOT the feckless and work shy. They are the victims of the bankers free market melt down.

But they are still the ones going to be punished.  2m million of them will lose their unemployment benefits from November unless the now Republican House of Representatives votes to extend benefits beyond the present 99 week maximum.

Right wingers always splutter about how if people can’t find a job after 99 weeks then they must be feckless and so on.  99 week is  a long time.  Just under two years.  Just less than this recession has been going on.

Since the start of the bankers’ crisis the long term unemployed (a year or longer) have gone up from that core of 0.6 million work-shy in 07 to 4.5 million today.  4 million Americans who until early 08 used to work everyday, did not suddenly become parasitic spongers.  They are people who used to work, would like to work, have looked for work, are looking for work, but cannot find any.  And yet come November  extremely wealthy and privileged Americans of both major parties will more than likely cut them adrift.  The wealthy will watch as the poor drown in debts and joblessness they did not create, cannot stop and do not deserve.  While those who damn them will pay their accountants to find ways of minimizing their taxes as does our own UK Chancellor, George Osborne (a verminous little lion if ever there was one), who avoids about 1.5 million pounds of tax.  See here for details.

That is the picture, using numbers from the Bureau of Labour and the ILO.  The situation is not very different here in GB.

From 2000 to 2008 unemployment averaged around 5.5%. In ’08 it rose to 8%.  In Ireland it rose to 13%, in Spain to 20%.  This nation of working men and women had their livelihoods wrecked by the actions of a small class of the super wealthy who live and work apart from the rest of us, in a luxury system of financial apartheid.

I just wanted to talk about the flesh and blood now that all the talk on the television and newspapers will be about banks and money.  It is this robbed and forsaken nation who we should be helping and should be talking about.

Our leaders stand shoulder to shoulder when it comes to printing up hundreds of billion of dollars and euros in order to protect the banks and ‘the system’.  But when it comes to spending a fraction of that for the victims of the banks and their systemic carnage, it seems we can barely spare a dime. We begrudge the poor and uncomprehending every nickle and feel free to call them worthless and lazy.

Their children will grow up in a land of want of ignorance. A land we have built for them.