The Benefits of Full Employment should make Us Scream for Them

  How do you fashion an economy where everyone is employed?
  Think of it: If everyone is employed, and making a decent enough wage, everyone is going to be able to place food on the table. If everyone is eating, there are no poor among you (at least not so poor they are starving). There would be no recessions and no depressions (not if the definition of a depression is that people are going without food).
   And, if everyone is employed, the need for government food programs takes a dive and that means deficit spending decreases. You can start reducing the national debt.
   All this, if you can just keep everyone employed. It seems to me, we should look at all these benefits say we definitely want this.
   Unfortunately, most people would reject some of the measures because they cannot stomach the government being involved in providing jobs. So, what we are saying, is that while there is an answer to unemployment -- there is a way to keep everyone employed -- we can't do it because someone will slap the word "socialism" on it.
   And, we just can't have "socialism."
   (Before I continue, I want to say it isn't going unnoticed on me that if government does provide jobs, the companies created will have to be profitable, or the government has to prop them up with taxpayer money -- and that is hardly a way to reduce the national deficit.)
   First, let me suggest we should be able to do a lot of this without "socialism." We have a lot of millionaires and billionaires who happen to be two things: philanthropists and patriots. Ask them to create new companies -- even if they prove unprofitable -- just to provide employment. There is no telling how many such companies might result if we just put out a call for our rich to step up to create such jobs.
   Second, many of the government-created jobs might be no more than that: government created, but not to be government-owned for long. Once up and running, the lead employees could take them over and become the owners.
   As I exit this writing, I will add one other big benefit. Already I have spoken of no depressions and ending or curbing the national deficit. Those are huge benefits. But, there is another: Employment increases the character of a people.