If we lose more jobs, we'll breed more mobs

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

"We need jobs!"
That mantra drives politicians to do stupid things, such as spend millions to create jobs that evaporate just as soon as the subsidies are pulled out from under them.
But common sense and history both teach us that, if most of our people cannot be gainfully employed, either working for themselves, e.g., farming, or for others, e.g., in factories or offices, we will create a permanent welfare-dependent underclass, a ghetto society, a Roman mob, whatever.
Down that road lies a death spiral for nations, for civilization. The Dark Ages in Europe aren't called that grim name for nothing. Once Rome collapsed, much of Europe lived hand-to-mouth for generations, amid constant wars, raids, killings, enslavement, mayhem.
Where is the United States heading? Fully 40 percent of American households are so "poor" that they pay no federal income tax. Probably 20 percent of our able-bodied people are jobless, and another 20 percent are underemployed.
Yet what does the future hold? Consider these examples in our society today that we take for granted:

• Postal Service: Now, 700,000 jobs, down from 800,000. A decade from now, when virtually all communication takes place on line and delivery of printed material is weekly? Perhaps 70,000 jobs.
• Printing and publishing. Newspapers have already lost perhaps 20 percent of the jobs they provided a decade ago. E-books threaten to decimate the commercial printing business, from textbooks to books read for pleasure. In the past quarter-century, our own composing room has gone from 13 people to one person, with computers taking up the slack.
• Land line telephones. It takes a lot of people to maintain those lines. It takes little imagination to foresee that, like the water towers and coal tipples that once lined our railroads, the lines will go. The jobs will go along with them.

Closer to home ... When the Plant 18 glass producing plant in Brockway closed in 2000, it put 380 people out of work. The plant has reopened - with 125 or so workers, plus automation.
For the past two decades, the United States has been undergoing a productivity revolution that enriched the stock market - and put thousands out of work.
Look to the Middle East. There are no jobs in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Syria. In Libya and Saudi Arabia, there are jobs for immigrant workers, while native-born people sit idle, sustained by oil revenues - until the oil runs low.
In the Dark Ages, the population was reset to the carrying capacity of the Western European continent by plagues, wars and famines.
With far more people than there are gainful occupations, what is the fate of the Middle East? Of the United States?
It isn't a matter of government creating jobs. Government-created jobs suck tax money out of the economy.
If our private sectors do not revive, the jobs will give way to the mobs.