Removing or degrading workers' security against hardship during unemployment forces workers to accept lower wages and/or less safe and comfortable working conditions.

Wage suppression is lowering unit labour costs. Unit labour costs, judging by historical experience, need to remain at approximately 70 % for a modern industrial society to function. Pushing unit labour costs substantially below this creates demand-side crises, like the one we are presently seeing. It is conceivable that pushing unit labour costs substantially above this value will create other forms of dysfunction, but such an income distribution has not been observed for any length of time together in any mature industrial economy, so this remains speculation.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.