0% unemployment

I'd like to once again deviate from my regular technological themes and instead discuss philosophy or rather some shade of philosophic economics. I was watching CSPAN the other night and a show came on discussing poverty in America. There was a panel of speakers including heavy weights in the topic along with some celebrity personalities sprinkled in. Some of the speakers espoused what is almost close to pure socialism that it was the responsibility, nay a requirement for corporations to hire people that they don't need and, which in turn, will create jobs for the poor people, and will help them get out of poverty. Now what the corporations are doing instead is hording the cash and rewarding their management ranks for driving efficiency - i.e. doing more with less people.

I am in technology and in laymen terms that means that my job is to build systems, which create automation, which in turn, create efficiencies or in other wards reduces headcount. I am even horrified when management hires too many people for one project as it destroys efficiency, makes the process tremendously burdensome and bureaucratic, and this eventually leads to either a failed system or a very poor system. These projects always cost more and deliver much less.

So - how do you achieve 100% employment - or more specifically, some higher number like 95% as in every society there will be some group of people which either cannot or won't work. In America, the official unemployment rate is just under 10%, but there is probably another 5% or more of unemployed which do not collect unemployment benefits. This means America has 85% employment - looked from this angle, that's not bad at all. But, it would be important to understand the distribution of the income across the 85%. Is the income completely skewed - i.e is it a nice bell curve or a steep hill with a cliff drop off.

If the bell curve is nice and even that would mean that we have a strong middle class and no fear of a revolution. On the other hand, if the curve is more of a cliff, then there will be tremors produced from the mountain, which could erupt and bring down everything around it. The problem is that individuals are rational, but people are not. Our political process is also looking more and more weak with the least worthy striving for notice. Politics and education should be the epitome of the most intellectual of us all - rather finance is where we spend our energies.

I am confusing various topics - but they are all related. Our wealth and the most brilliant talent seems to be focusing either on financial engineering or entertainment be it social type websites or some form of media.

It is very easy to get into a negative feedback loop and it is not easy to get out of it as the decisions and choices are counter intuitive and not at all obvious.

One should always better oneself - and perhaps the forces of good and right will prevail over the forces of ignorant.

This is not the most fluid of posts as I don't yet fully understand how all the pieces fit together.