There's no excuse for unemployment

by Gene Michael Stover

created Monday, 2011-01-17 T 09:02:03Z
updated Sunday, 2014-06-08 T 05:34:28Z

There's no excuse for unemployment. If anyone is unemployed, the government has no excuse. In a democracy, if the government has no excuse, the people have no excuse.

How to cure unemployment? Simple: Anyone should be able to walk into city hall, say he wants a job, & start the next day. In return, he'll receive a living wage.

Who could be eligible for these jobs? Anyone. Anyone! (Well, maybe not children. But anyone else.)

• An able-bodied young person, of course, could take a job doing some manual labor (or whatever).
• A little old grandmother who needs help to cross the street could read to children or have them read to her.
• A quadrapelegic could have people read to him.
• Everyone can do something. And if the person feels it's not work, not hard enough to deserve his or her living wage, then we found the perfect job for that person.

These jobs won't be glamorous, but neither will they be punishment for not taking a job in the corporate world. The jobs might include:

• Gardening in parks, on the streets, & other public areas.
• Cleaning up those same places.
• Painting public buildings.
• Greeting visitors in public facilities.
• Government clerical jobs. (There must be thousands.)
• Checking on house-bound people in the neighborhood, running errands for them.
• In-home nursing
• Reading to others or listening to others read (such as grandma listening to children read)
• Surveys, census
• And more!

None of the jobs should be dangerous. For example, they don't include being a soldier. If they did, you'd probably be entitled to more than the basic, minimal, living wage.

How about minimum wage? You could throw the Republicans a bone by trashing it. By offering a guarranteed job with a living wage, the government is raising the bar for industry. Industry is free to offer whatever it wants for pay, as low as it wants, but if it's no longer a living wage, people can always go to city hall, ask for a job, & get one with a living wage.

Copyright © 2011 Gene Michael Stover. All rights reserved. Permission to copy, transmit, store, print & view this document, unmodified & in its entirety, is granted.

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