There are 2,520,000 unemployed people in the UK at present, assuming the data is correct.
Not all of these people claim benefits as a result. A majority do. Those who succeed in claiming have to be dedicated to finding work: it's not easy to evidence but these people (more than 1.5 million of them) succeed in proving their intent despite that.
So these people are involuntarily unemployed, there is no other reasonable interpretation.
But the only possible explanation of Tory policy is that they do not accept that claim. It seems most really think that there is no such thing as involuntary unemployment. That accords exactly with their chosen economic theory. If, that says, there is a real market - without control - then everyone will be priced into work. Blow that they may not be able to live on that wage; we now know that being able to live on your income is not their concern. They think it is the duty to work, not the duty of society to ensure people can live with dignity.
The Tory belief that there is work for all thrown off benefits can only be explained by this economic assumption.
The assumption is obviously wrong: there is very obviously involuntary unemployment, and it is very obvious that sub-subsistence wages are paid. But this evidence is ignored by Tories when creating their benefits policy.
I sincerely doubt that the giant social experiment the Tories have launched can survive for long; people will suffer too much for it to survive. But the fact that it has even begun shows how far removed from reality this government, those who support it and the economists who have legitimised it really are.
And that is deeply worrying.
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Don’t you know it’s impossible to ‘price yourself’ into work with the minimum wage. That’s why it has to go.
There’s also ~2.5 million ‘inactive – wants a job’ and 1.5 million ‘temporary but want full time’ – all according to official statistics.
If that isn’t evidence of a significant market failure, then I struggle to see what could be.
The problem is not just the availability of jobs but work that is inherently rewarding. I think we are now in an era with mass dissatisfaction of those IN work. We no longer have much of a sense of what we are working for when we are working. Unemployment at a high level has been a structural factor for at least the last 30 years and started climbing vertiginously around 1973 when oil prices rose steeply. I doubt the classical system of economic ‘thinking’ (if it can be called that) could produce full employment without a war. Perhaps a ‘moral’ war, as Pascal put it, could achieve this. At present, the polarities of a rich oligarchy and an underclass seem to be the future. The Tory belief that everyone can be an entrepreneur is now a variation of the ‘American Dream’ which, in reality, turns out to be a form of social Darwinism. The idea of working for some sort of common good is dismissed as idealism and we are then left with ‘red in tooth and claw’ capitalism influence by the dodgy rhetoric of evolutionary biologists like Dawkins who have unconscious vested interests in being totally uncritical of the economic set up. We need big sustainable housing projects, expansion of green transport and energy and a total clean-out of the City and the financial sector so that the money travels with human need.
The question for me is: how can we create jobs that are meaningful? Even people in work are often unhappy and don’t know what they are working for. It is clear that full employment can never return as it has been at least 40 years since we had anything close to that. We are still trying to live with the post-war mindset of infinite growth and people are getting more and more unhappy because the ‘goods’ can no longer be delivered.
It’s curious how they deride opponents as believers in the ‘magic money tree’ – when it seems they are committed to a belief in the Magic Jobs Tree from which all can pluck work.
Not, as you say, paying work – they are now mooting cutting the minimum wage.
Genuinely cherished this