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Saturday, November 16, 2013

Capitalism And Unemployment

Capitalism as a system seems incapable of solving its unemployment problem. It keeps generating long-term joblessness, punctuated by spikes of recurring short-term extreme joblessness. The system's leaders cannot solve or overcome the problem. Before the latest capitalist crisis hit in 2007, the unemployment rate was near 5 percent. In 2013, it is near 7.5 percent. That is 50 percent higher despite the last six years of so-called "effective policies to address unemployment."

Capitalism makes employment depend chiefly on capitalists' decisions to undertake production, and those decisions depend on profits. If capitalists expect profits high enough to satisfy them, they hire. If capitalists don't, we get unemployment. Capitalism requires the unemployed, their families and their communities to live with firing decisions made by capitalists even though they are excluded from participating in those decisions. The United States revolted against Britain partly because it rejected being victimized by tax decisions from which it was excluded. Yet employment decisions are at least as important as tax decisions.

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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday and questioned some of the workers.
The owner of the stores has made it public that the new health care law will cost him in excess of 1.3 million a year.
He also made it public that if this is so , he will close all the stores , I think he has around 500 store more or less.
Obama has done a wonderful job of screwing up this country in 5 years that has been a success for 300 years.

Anonymous said...

I might add that the 5 years that he has had to mess the country up , if you look at it closely , it boils down to one thing , a race issue. Black against white.

jim said...

What kind of crap os this? Capitalism is not perfect but every other system out there results in the loss of personal freedoms. Nobody ever said freedom is easy but it beats the hell out of not being free.

Daddio said...

Crony Capitalism is what we have these days.

Not quite the same thing here.

Bullard Construction said...

Mr. Wolff, and I won't call you professor, I read your whole article here. You are so totally off base here, it's amazing, but, then again, you are just an "economist" teaching at a university, not a capitalist businessman actually facing the challenges of running a business daily in the USA.
According to your thought process, a cattle rancher would choose to this his herd and put it on birth control in order to reduce his number of cowhands and grow more grass and alfalfa as opposed to finding a way to grow more grass and alfalfa to increase his cattle production and his number of workers!
When you do decide to start, say, a manufacturing business here and are forced to run your business under the guidelines, regulations, insurance requirements, and tax laws we have here as opposed to just outsourcing that work to countries that can do it for pennies on the dollar, you will then have received your "Degree" and have the ability to "profess".

Until that day, please stay away from anyone claiming to be a "student", as your poison may infect them.

Anonymous said...

I say BS. Less government less taxes equal more jobs simple .

Anonymous said...

A work farm prison has 100% employment.

Anonymous said...

Where did this clown come from with this communistic view? Does he not know that the greatest controlling burden on businesses is the Tax and Regulatory structure imposed by the government entities??