That's still higher than U.S. unemployment, which is 4.6 percent, but let's not forget that many of the jobs created here pay low wages and include no benefits. In Europe, the jobless still have access to health care, generous replacement wages, job-retraining programs, housing subsidies and other benefits. In the United States, by contrast, the unemployed can end up destitute and marginalized.
Here's an interesting question.
How hard would it be to create a methodology to deflate the deflate the differences caused by differing definitons and the like?
Phrased as another way.
What constitutes the condition of unemployment?
Is Clintonian welfare to work merely a restatement of the Victorian workhouse?
Is what's really needed a measure of full participation in the economy.
That is to say that those wages that pay less than "maintenance" a la Wealth of Nations should be excluded from any measure of employment because they represent a case employers have managed to drive wags below their natural level?
Isn't this the substantive meaning of the unemployment measure? Employment is meant to offer a measure of economic independence rather than trapping the individual in a dependent relationship. Remember that in 19th century UK and US, up until the middle of the century there was often a wealth requirement before one could vote. The last state to end the property requirement was Rhode Island in 1841, where there was something akin to a small scale civil war called the Dorr Rebellion. In the UK the disenfranchisement of the working class lead to the rise of the Chartists a working class movement aimed at expanding the vote to people excluded by electoral law at the time.
This relationship between democracy in a nation's economics and political democracy should not be lost. If we look upon equality in social relations (that is the extent to which the relationship between individuals is more or less equal an horizontal rather than unequal and vertical, think of the relevance of the internet in this regard) as neccesary for political democracy to function. Then these methodological differences in the way that that the unemployment rate is calculated matter. Because it tells us the extent to which a nation has fulfilled its obligation to provide for the common welfare of its citizens.
Meta-theoretical concerns aside, it seems like there should be a recognition that in any objective sense the condition of a single mother forced to take a job that provides a wage (perhaps) 60% of the poverty level is not in any way equivalent to work that grants pay and benefits that allow the worker to participate fully in the economic, social, and political life of the nation.
If we harmonize these measure so that the distortions created by questionable differences are unmasked, what does this tell us of the significance of the difference between liberal America and Social Europe?
I think a rework of Colman's classic series on this issue into a letter to the editor of the Washington Post is in order. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
I think debunking the old mythology and creating a new one is very much what we should be about - hence the provisional Free Market Unicorn scoop, which I hope will do exactly that.
The point is that the mythology is - quite possibly deliberately and consciously - slanted and biased politically.
There are various angles of attack:
All that's happened is that the approved narrative has changed from 'Weak Europe' to 'Out of control Europe'.
It should be simple enough to turn this around and point out that free-market policies result in the kind of financial disaster that's crippling the US - etc.
The key point isn't really to clock the facts correctly, it's to match the slightly condescending tone that the right always uses.
I suspect the combination of the tone with a checklist of pre-chewed sound-bite narrative hit points is far more influential than the facts ever are.
6. Stop giving them the benefit of doubt.
I, for one, am fed-up with interpreting, editing, revising, and transforming their incoherent prose into something resembling rational thought. (Ref: this thread in Jerome's "Even Cato & etc" diary of yesterday.) Why the devil should we spend our time and energy making their case intellectually respectable? A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
That is to say that those wages that pay less than "maintenance" a la Wealth of Nations should be excluded from any measure of employment because they represent a case employers have managed to drive wags below their natural level? Isn't this the substantive meaning of the unemployment measure? Employment is meant to offer a measure of economic independence rather than trapping the individual in a dependent relationship.
Isn't this the substantive meaning of the unemployment measure? Employment is meant to offer a measure of economic independence rather than trapping the individual in a dependent relationship.
This is a GREAT idea, and something that should be pushed. It needs a catchy name (underployment or something), and a basic study to get some numbers out.
I expect that numbers will be pretty high in all countries, but even higher in some. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Unemployment is bad because it indicates the economy isn't using its resources optimally.
Human dignity isn't Pareto efficient?
My thoughts on this may be found in my new sig below. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
No need to reinvent the wheel.
The European Union has an established policy combating social exclusion.
Philosopher Axel Honneth thus speaks of a "struggle for recognition", which he attempts to theorize through Hegel's philosophy. In this sense, to be socially excluded is to be deprived from social recognition and social value. In the sphere of politics, social recognition is obtained by full citizenship; in the economic sphere (in capitalism) it means being paid enough to be able to participate fully in the life of the community.
Thus, we come to SEWs and SIWs.
Socially exclusive wages (SEWs) are those that deny the employed the ability to fully participate in the life of the community, thus in substance denying them the equality and human dignity requisite to the democratic society. To allow the persistence of SEWs permits the diffusion of anti-democratic norms that promote unequal social relations mediated by things rather than interpersonal relation. Labor is commodified, and the sacred nature of human life is denied through the imposition of anti-social market logic.
Socially inclusive wages (SIWs) are those that permit the employed to participate fully in the life of the community, granting them positive rights. The promotion of SIWs through its insistence on egalitarian social norms based upon the belief that vertical economic relationships are contrary to the fundamental basis of the democratic society. Equality.
It would be a huge project, but I think that at the NUTS II level you could parse out the cost of decent housing, the cuisine constituting the local social norm, and such cultural and educational activities as are deemed constitutive of the civic experience. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
