For those who complain about "the economy"....

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You also have a lot of very disenfranchised people acting out of disenfranchisement. That will happen just as quickly on an even bigger scale when 30 - 40% of the population find out that their existence is truly superfluous. We would need compulsary charity work at a minimum, pandabear's outlook of making work a drafted 'tour of duty' thing for a society works up until we look at experience vs. training and implications this may have on the survival of different enterprises and even quality in vital areas that still need in-depth human analysis such as the medical field, law, high tech engineering, business consulting, etc..

The way I see this going down, in the most realistic scenario, is that unemployment checks mean compulsary work for government projects or for philanthropic engagement. Those who are neither skilled nor sociable enough to do so will be picking up trash on the side of the highway (the only actual opt-outs would be the mentally/neurologically impaired). Obviously, by the unfortunate nature of what we are, this would be seen as low-brow, not to say that minimum wage jobs aren't already, it would probably spark controversy on a regular basis as people start wondering if we aren't on a slippery slope toward 1984.

I don't know what else we're looking at for a future here. To give people government checks and just let them hang out all day though is a non-option.

So basically we will have what we have now but there will be actual laws to ensure those who can not acheive financial stability, are left to wander the streets collecting garbage?

That's phenomenal reading comprehension. Please re-read and try again.

Wow thanks for that you really made my day let me tell you, now that I feel insulted I will gladly waste my time re-reading your post so I can get it wrong again and be insulted again. No thanks its probably better if I don't stay here to get insulted more.

Sorry but I've had too many people shooting my posts up in the last few days with replies that weren't in line with what I said. Nothing personal. I think the part that got missed though was 'all receiving a government check', which would be all non-working persons having several options.

If your proposals are serious, then you have no business calling Inuyasha, me, or anyone else here ret*d.

I see a couple of major systemic issues:

1) Employment.

Consumer spending is the backbone of the economy--everything else pales in comparison. And if consumers don't have income, they can't spend.

Coupled with this is the enormous political challenge presented by collecting and analysing unemployment data. When we minimize the problem, we also minimize the focus that we direct to that problem.

But this isn't only about unemployment, it's also about underemployment which has two particular facets: people who cannot find sufficient hours of work, and people who are underpaid for the work that they perform.

While government should not be (and, frankly, cannot be) the employer of last resort, I think that government has an important role in creating a framework for the labour market that addresses not only the raw unemployment situation, but also looks to underemployment and exploitative employment.

At the individual level, one can argue that some job--any job--is better than no job. But for the overall health of the economy, that calculus breaks down very quickly.

2) Household debt

This is the dirty little (not-so) secret of the U.S. economy. Almost all growth has been fuelled by growth in household debt. In the last 30 years the ratio of total household debt to GDP in the United States has doubled from 48% to 100%.

So here's the dilemma--to get a grip on household debt, you have to pay down that debt. But to pay down that debt, you have to spend less. And if you spend less, the economy contracts. So, are you going to inflate your way out of debt? And if so, how are you going to maintain the growth to accompany that inflation without incurring further debt?