Employment

According to an article in the paper (you can’t believe everything you read in the papers but I think this one is probably true) eighty percent of British mothers are fearful for their children’s future. It is not really surprising. They are worried their kids might never find jobs, never be able to afford a house of their own but have to live in rented accommodation for the rest of their lives. With so many countries economies gone haywire and prices spiralling out of existence they have every reason to be afraid. The unemployment rate in the EU is evidently the highest it has ever been. The unemployment rate has been fairly high since the year dot but the situation can only worsen. Why? Once upon a time not so very long ago there was an industrial revolution which produced a phenomenon called the Luddite. The Luddites went around smashing up machines because they thought, in fact they knew, their livelihoods were in danger and such of course was the case. A machine, industrial or agricultural, could suddenly do the work of six or more which meant six or more were no longer employed. In Yorkshire for example hand weavers immediately became redundant as the dark satanic mills took over their lives.

Now, in living memory, there has been another revolution, an electronic one and the amazing computer growing in power every day has taken the place of machinery in denying the workforce work. If the computer can do the job of six or more, of twelve, of eighteen, of twenty-four, or more, all these people are made redundant. Well, the computers, unlike machinery are here to stay. They can’t be smashed. But with some industries in decline and some gone forever what exacerbates the problem even more is the ever growing population. As more and more young people reach working age so more and more are simply going to be unable to find work. And being well educated without being qualified in a specific profession, medicine, dentistry, engineering etcetera, isn’t going to help. It seems these days everybody wants to go to university, everybody wants to attain a degree but it seems to me that academe is letting them down by offering ridiculous course that in the great wide world amount to nothing. It also seems that many of these graduates, gifted though they may be, simply cannot find work and it can only get worse. So the mothers of Great Britain and everywhere else for that matter have every reason to worry.

Then, as fewer and fewer people work in an ever increasing population and more and more go on the dole, never to become tax payers, what happens then? Can the country or the remaining tax payers sustain the expense of keeping more and more people idle?

Forget jihad, forget terrorism, the frustrated unemployed, unemployable young are without doubt the world’s biggest problem and it can only get worse.