Progressive Solutions to Unemployment: Budget Keynesianism
The government’s new policies for unemployment were, according to the Tories, lifted from the Conservatives. This wouldn’t surprise me, seeing as they pause only from outright theft to try a spot of outflanking {the Tories have lately, finally, wisely, taken to simply claiming the centre instead of plunging further outwards towards fascism}.
Irrespective of their origins I am left wondering what exactly distinguishes this proposal, that able bodied people shall be put to work in exchange for their benefits, from the standard social democrat solution to unemployment of job generation. It’s an old trick practiced by reformists and revolutionaries, right and left, alike: the revisionist Marxists who reached power throughout Europe had the people participate in the construction of public parks, dams other massive projects, the National Socialists built the autobahn, Roosevelt had people hired to scare pigeons away from public monuments with lengthy sticks, the Paris Communes kept people occupied through having some of them dig large holes and others fill them in again.
So why would New Labour follow such a radical tradition? Why would it engage in something so closely resembling the socialism it had previously denounced? And, more curious still, why would the Conservatives lay claim to such policy? Why would they desire to be seen as the architects of this piece of outright statism? Does their view of the relationship between the British people and British State really involve a significant increase in people who deem it their employer?
Well, a singular thing separates this proposal from the rest of those examples: in all of them the workers were given a proper wage; whereas here the de facto state employees will be getting the usual pittance they were anyway in exchange for full time labour.
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