I was reading about unemployment today and how it is impossible to go down to zilch. Unemployment is indeed a hard problem. The government cannot just allow the unemployed and their families to starve or resort to crime (or throw themselves onto the tracks…). Yet it isn’t a good thing if the government hands out taxpayer’s money for people to do nothing. Is there a way to find a Golden Mean?

My inspiration stems from two sources
1. My classmates and their talk about how we should send mainly failures to the army. It sounds damn elitist i know, but our Prime  Senior Mentor once suggested this, though it faield most unfortunately
2. The story about how this poor guy stole just to go to jail to get food

lloyd’s proposed solution is basically to —

Draft all unemployed people. Recruit them, immediately put them in the army. They may not necessarily be part of the military combatants but they can be stuff like clerks, cooks or even parachute folders. That would grant them a job and some income.

Basically, “if we can find money to ‘kill’ people, we can find find money to help people” — a quote from Tony Benn, a former British politician who is extreme left. Perhaps there are other roles in which the government can provide apart from the military.

I will not go into the possible consequences of such a move — but it is feasible in my opinion. If you can conscript and train all 18 year olds, you can do the same for the unemployed as well.

Maybe this policy may not even involve much money being paid out…Perhaps not being sent back to the army would be a good reason to get a job — ANY job, even a cleaner. Essentially, disincentivise people from being unemployed ^.^ I don’t believe there’s such a thing as being “unable to find a job” just “unable to find a job that would suit a person’s tastes/preferences”

I have a slight problem with the definition of unemployment — more often than not the main phrase left out of the definition is “looking for a job”. Why the distinction? Perhaps it is mainly for women who’d willingly stay at home — to not count them as unemployed and thus screw the statistics up. My point ofview on the evolution of gender roles means that men can as well. But regardless of gender or the willingness to look for a job, it does not change the fact that they *can* contribute to the labour force and they have the potential to do so.

There probably is only one problem with this idea i’m toying with — we can’t exactly pinpoint who is unemployed to force them to become militarymen. Then again, why would that matter — its not our fault if people “refuse our help”. Just wait till theyre desperate enough and they’ll seek this avenue of employment and income.