Structural Unemployment, Inflation, and Underpayment
How the Religion of Capitalism is Working Us to Death
I recently read that in Japan, over twenty percent of the workforce is temporary and lives without benefits of any kind. That made me think of a Japanese term I found recently in The Power of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. The word is karoshi and it means death from overwork. Here in the United States, the attitude towards workers is generally just as callous these days, and though we don’t have a separate word for it, our work habits definitely are unhealthy enough to contribute to a lower quality of life and an earlier death. Medical science tells us that those who take regular vacations and have good work/life balance live longer healthier lives, but most Americans can’t afford the luxury in the corporate state that is America in the new millennium.
Of all of the many defects in the new turbo-capitalism, this willingness to treat workers as mere commodities is one of the most troubling. Humans evolved in tribes where each member old enough to work had a job and a purpose. The Stone Age economy lasted at least 100,000 years. The agricultural economy that followed lasted thousands of years. It is only in the new capitalist age that whole groups of productive adults fall victim to the concept of “structural unemployment”. This means that the system itself requires a certain percentage of willing workers to go without work. It also causes those who have jobs to accept bad working conditions, and to literally work themselves to death to keep those jobs.
This 5% of potential workers doesn’t seem like much when represented statistically, but in actual social terms it is a calamity for those actual people that are affected, and their families. Even if we didn’t need work to support ourselves, we would still need it to create structure and meaning in our lives. We have evolved to be working creatures. We need to be useful.
To add insult to injury, these people, once thrown upon the junk heap of life in a capitalist state, are treated like purposeful losers. And, in recent years, after the right wing assault on public welfare, they find themselves more and more falling into homelessness and abject poverty.
This flaw in the system has always been there. Employment rates fluctuate, and though the numbers are good now, the pay for the lowest rung is not enough to afford the necessities of life. While those in power argue about a $15 dollar minimum wage inflation is outpacing the ability of even the middle class to keep up. By the time the congress passes a $15 dollar minimum it should really be $30.
Meanwhile the pandemic is causing slowdowns and supply chain issues even with 95% of available workers employed. I wonder, when this crisis is solved, will the policy towards “structural unemployment” change as well? What happens to that 5%? And how can the powers that be justify families with two working parents living in cars and on food stamps?
This is just one of the actual results of the capitalist religion, which is the only state sanctioned religion allowed in the United States.