when you realize literally all of society will collapse if we hit 0% unemployment it all makes sense
When I was a dumb lib I used to listen to NPR's Planet Money podcast. They once asked an economist what would happen if we had full employment and her brain totally seized up and she was like "fghrwf, I dunno..."
Yes, the parameters being 'let's redefine full emplyment to mean not actually full emplyment'.
Full employment is a situation in which there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment.[1] Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely structural and frictional, may remain. For instance, workers who are "between jobs" for short periods of time as they search for better employment are not counted against full employment, as such unemployment is frictional rather than cyclical. An economy with full employment might also have unemployment or underemployment where part-time workers cannot find jobs appropriate to their skill level,[2] as such unemployment is considered structural rather than cyclical. Full employment marks the point past which expansionary fiscal and/or monetary policy cannot reduce unemployment any further without causing inflation.
And so on, the capitalist definitions of full employment turn more and more into pretzels the more you read into them. At some point in the 70s they stopped trying to pass it as 'natural' or 'put people in the streets to stop inflation with this one weird trick' or whatever and said full employment is precisely that level of unemployment that keeps the whole system from exploding.
I live in latin america and I've travelled quite a bit, and one constant is destitute people picking up bottles and cardboard for some cash, usually with horse-drawn little carriages. Welcome to the third world, I guess.
Please read up on the reserve army of labour, it's a crucial part of capitalism.
Just thinking that as well. Apparently they were an entirely centrally planned empire with warehouses full of clothes and food. Sounds pretty cool ngl
They mostly got owned by waves of disease. It seems kind of unavoidable which sucks real bad. But yeah I really wish the americas had some bovine or something to turn the tides against the europeans. Because without disease I bet american societies would have owned the europeans.
I may be wrong but I believe China is the closest existing large civilization to this
Unfortunately, while acknowledging the massive improvements over the past few decades, poverty still exist in China today. Even Dengists acknowledge this, though they do clarify their belief that it's a necessary evil until China has the productive capacity to transition to full Socialism. Though again, Chinese poverty reduction in the past few decades is monumental; all the more so when compared to the total stagnation (if not worsening) in that front when considering the Capitalist world.
I would put forward the GDR as the state which managed to eliminate poverty to the absolute fullest extent ever seen. Read the top reply to this quora question, by someone who lived there, and it seems a Utopia in comparison to present day America.
https://www.quora.com/Did-poverty-exist-in-East-Germany-the-GDR?top_ans=69710294
There's few things I desire more than for my children to grow up in a world without any homelessness, and that was the reality in the GDR.
Dance Dance Republic continues to impress. Epic National Anthem too.
China's typically been relatively transparent in what their plans are. Right now it's to achieve "Socialist Modernization by 2035", beyond that their aren't any firm dates. However, it's important to note that despite the perception of many leftists; China has not been cynically delaying the planned date for achieving Socialism, in fact 2035 is 15 years earlier than when Deng believed China would reach the same stage.
It's reasonable to argue that their so called "Socialist Modernization" is Socialist in name only, however, the Chinese approach has been very effective in eliminating poverty over the past few decades, which is what the parent comment was about.
