BTW, why exactly would it be a bad thing for the government to provide half of the jobs?
In fact, have you ever asked yourself what the purpose of having a job is and how the current system came to be?
People need jobs so that they can feed themselves. People in centuries past used to feed themselves by living off the land. Which wasn't a very pleasant existence under a feudal system but they didn't have a job as we understand it today and the concept was unknown. Then as populations grew, the industrial revolution unfolded and land holdings became consolidated to be worked on a large scale, people were driven off from the land to the cities and to the factories where they were given miserable wages with which they were to buy food to feed themselves. And if they were fired or unable to work for some reason, they were left with no means to feed themselves. Which wasn't at all better for them than the feudal system of agricultural labor because back then while it was hard labor they were putting in, it was not 14 hours a day in a mine or a factory with horrible working conditions, 6 or even 7 days a week, all year long. Getting from that state of things to the current situation where people work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, have vacations, health insurance, can retire with a pensions, etc., took a very long process of people fighting for better conditions and employers and governments making small concessions, one by one.
However, all of those developments didn't change the fundamental point, which is that people need jobs to feed themselves. But do you really need jobs to do that and are jobs the best way to do so? No, if the goal is for people to be fed, housed and clothed, then the most efficient way to do so is to feed, house, and clothe people without going through the complicated process of giving them jobs, having to grow the economy to generate jobs for an ever expanding population, etc. Which can be done with a fraction of the energy, material and labor inputs that go into the economy today. In fact, what we have now is pretty much the most wasteful way one can imagine of accomplishing that goal and it is not even accomplished for disturbingly large numbers of people, even in supposedly prosperous places. But for people to understand that would require a giant leap forward in their rational thinking abilities and ecological awareness and an unprecedented shift in their worldviews, not really likely to happen anytime soon if ever
In fact, have you ever asked yourself what the purpose of having a job is and how the current system came to be?
People need jobs so that they can feed themselves. People in centuries past used to feed themselves by living off the land. Which wasn't a very pleasant existence under a feudal system but they didn't have a job as we understand it today and the concept was unknown. Then as populations grew, the industrial revolution unfolded and land holdings became consolidated to be worked on a large scale, people were driven off from the land to the cities and to the factories where they were given miserable wages with which they were to buy food to feed themselves. And if they were fired or unable to work for some reason, they were left with no means to feed themselves. Which wasn't at all better for them than the feudal system of agricultural labor because back then while it was hard labor they were putting in, it was not 14 hours a day in a mine or a factory with horrible working conditions, 6 or even 7 days a week, all year long. Getting from that state of things to the current situation where people work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, have vacations, health insurance, can retire with a pensions, etc., took a very long process of people fighting for better conditions and employers and governments making small concessions, one by one.
However, all of those developments didn't change the fundamental point, which is that people need jobs to feed themselves. But do you really need jobs to do that and are jobs the best way to do so? No, if the goal is for people to be fed, housed and clothed, then the most efficient way to do so is to feed, house, and clothe people without going through the complicated process of giving them jobs, having to grow the economy to generate jobs for an ever expanding population, etc. Which can be done with a fraction of the energy, material and labor inputs that go into the economy today. In fact, what we have now is pretty much the most wasteful way one can imagine of accomplishing that goal and it is not even accomplished for disturbingly large numbers of people, even in supposedly prosperous places. But for people to understand that would require a giant leap forward in their rational thinking abilities and ecological awareness and an unprecedented shift in their worldviews, not really likely to happen anytime soon if ever
