Op-Ed: Wanted — 600 million new jobs

According to a recent report, the world needs to find 600 million new jobs over the next decade. The reality is we need less employment, not more.

The war on drugs may be a massive delusion and a dangerous one, but the necessity of full employment is an even bigger delusion. Predictably, the call to create so many new jobs comes from an organisation which represents - or claims to represent - workers. The International Labour Organization's report can he found here. Unsurprisingly, the ILO is an agency of the United Nations; its mission statement includes bringing “together representatives of governments, employers and workers to jointly shape policies and programmes promoting Decent Work for all.” This sounds noble, but so do many professed goals of similar organisations. What though does it actually entail? Who does all mean in this context? All men and women up to the age of seventy or perhaps older as British workers appear now to be facing? What does Decent Work mean? The very term implies there is such a thing as indecent work. Prostitution perhaps? Or some essential but unpleasant job such as embalming bodies, carrying out autopsies, cleaning drains or maintaining sewers? It is not 600 million new jobs the world needs, rather it is the mechanism to distribute the goods and services the community creates, and if those goods and services can be distributed using less human labour or no labour at all, then we should aspire to that. Imagine a world in which the lion's share of labour is performed by robots, and most of our other needs are served by self-replicating machines. What will happen to the concept of regular paid employment then? Our masters do not seem to be able to grasp this concept; in his State of the Union address, President Obama spoke admirably about levelling the playing field, kicking the bankers into line, and of creating real jobs, but this is not enough. Unless and until the people who control and direct the economy - the politicians - grasp the essential truths as expounded by Major Douglas and his Social Credit philosophy of a national dividend/Basic Income for all, the gap between the haves and have-nots will continue to widen, with all the associated social evils that entails.