High Unemployment is the Goal not the Problem.

Why have our government leaders done so little to stem the tide of unemployment? Its because the people that own our politicians (the usual suspect crew of sleazy lobbyists) represents that one percent of the population that likes high unemployment. Who likes unemployment? Owners like high unemployment. Puts the "slave" back into "wage slave". Try and leave your job. Go ahead try. Leave your job if that job provides decent health insurance. Go ahead and try. You're stuck.  That's the point. The at will laws for employees are a bad joke. Who has more power in an at will environment? The employer almost always does.

You can read a longer discussion by Marx, best analyst of capitalism ever, on this subject here, but this is the nut graph:

Marx concludes that: "Relative surplus-population is therefore the pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works." The availability of labour influences wage rates, and the larger the unemployed workforce grows, the more this forces down wage rates; conversely, if there are plenty jobs available and unemployment is low, this tends to raise the average level of wages - in that case workers are able to change jobs rapidly to get better pay.

IN other words, the people who have bought the president and the congress don't like it when unemployment is low and wages are high. Not good incentives. Same reason that wall street crooks do not go to jail, why fracking continues...We need an unbought Third Party.

Why I Read Marx and Support the Real News

We have a token libertarian over at Amsat (Trevor. See Post below.). He questions the wisdom of Marx. Of course, I find that Marx works best when you look at his writings and writings of his followers as accurate criticism of how capitalism works. Not necessarily as a system to follow. In fact, hardcore capitalists I'm told read Marx for that very same reason: to better understand how capitalism works. I suppose its not much different than when the old bad East Germans used to read 1984 for tips on what to name their organizations and rooms and so forth.

I just find that Marx's description of the ills of Capitalism to be pretty much right on the mark.

So, in today's episode of "Sure, I'm a Marxist" contrast this statement written by Lenin:

The present "freedom of assembly and the press" in the "democratic" (bourgeois democratic) German republic is false and hypocritical, because in fact it is freedom for the rich to buy and bribe the press, freedom for the rich to befuddle the people with venomous lies of the bourgeois press, freedom for the rich to keep as their "property" the landowners' mansions, the best buildings, etc.. The dictatorship of the proletariat will take from the capitalists and hand over to the working people the landowners' mansions, the best buildings, printing presses and the stocks of newsprint.

With this Youtube video about the Real News. It just strikes me as being a correct view of how the press works in a capitalist society. That's why I read Marx. I want to understand how the world works.