Not Enough Jobs

We've seen the new Sonoma County pension proposal made by Supervisors Shirlee Zane and David Rabbit, and it is conventional, thoughtless and a good illustration of why the Democrats will have a hard time enlisting the 99%ers into their party. The Tea Party fled immediately into the arms of the Republicans because they were Republicans to start with and because the Tea Party wanted funding from Wall Street. Now the Democrats hope for a similar boost from the 99%ers, but they won't get it unless they figure out why the 99ers are in revolt. So far they haven't.

The county Democrats plan to reduce benefits for county employees (a Republican concept involving punishing the poor for the sins of the rich) and to increase the age of retirement (guaranteed to reduce employment slots for young people). The elected Democrats are not getting the message--they listen to corporate campaign donors, not to ordinary people.

The basic problem is that there are 7 billion people on the planet and not enough jobs to go around. The Democratic Party response is to make the lucky folks who have jobs keep them longer, shutting out newcomers. That's senseless.

We live in an age where technology ends more jobs than it creates (see RACE AGAINST THE MACHINE by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee). That is our future, except that it's going to get worse. Robots are more profitable than human workers. Our current economic system depends on everyone working to earn money so we can purchase products etc. And the system is failing because many cannot find work. An estimated 2 billion people on this planet go to bed hungry each night.

There are quick temporary fixes for the relatively rich Western World. We could cut the work week to 35 hours and have instant full employment. We could make the retirement age 55 and have full employment. But our ideology--when times get tough, America punishes the poor--forbids these answers. Our political class doesn't get it (or doesn't want to). Almost no one in power is listening. Finding humane answers is left the powerless.