I was just thinking about this - involuntary unemployment is a made up phrase by the left and other political types who like to blame the market for poverty, etc. Obviously, no starving man will sit in a room and allow himself to starve because he cannot find a job. He will lower his acceptable wage rate, change professions, or self-employ. Even begging could be considered a form of self-employment, as it requires labor and produces and income. If wage rates are incredibly low, some may prefer dire poverty and leisure over slightly less poverty and hard work. But that's voluntary unemployment.
The whole notion of involuntary unemployment, in this light, seems to suggest that some class of men are implicitly machines or mindless slaves, who must be given orders and practice obedience in order to produce anything of value. The master class must employ them, or they are doomed to utter poverty and a swift death. Self-employment or other forms of entrepreneurship is simply impossible.
Maybe this is a good argument against the left. It turns the moral argument on them. Rather than their relief and job programs being merciful and equitable, we can show that they are classists who believe most of society literally can't survive without obedience to a master class.
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meambobbo:If wage rates are incredibly low, some may prefer dire poverty and leisure over slightly less poverty and hard work. But that's voluntary unemployment.
If wage rates were incredibly low (in a free market, that is. I'm not talking about places like North Korea) then that would reduce the cost of inputs for production, lowering the final prices of goods. Then a wage that is low can buy low-priced items.
From what I understand of their theory, the bourgeois own all the means to production. they also conspire to keep a significant portion of people unemployed in order to force them to compete for work and drive wages down. This means that Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Jerry Sanders, Craig Barret, Paul Otellini, Andy Grove, Hector Ruiz, Micheal Dell, and countless other executives from the computer industry collude to make sure people with computer manufacturing or programming skills remain unemployed, and that anyone that does work will get paid just enough to live. And that's just a few people from a few companies in the computer industry. We must be mindful that the entire capitalist economy, and not just one sector, is built this way according to their theories.
They also believe that entrepreneurship is impossible or doomed to failure, or that it serves too few people to be of any good. So if most people want to be entrepreneurs because they think it might be a good way to live, they can't because of... the bourgeois control everything and crowd them out.
No surprise here, I recently sat down and had lunch with Howard Dean with a handful of fellow students. It's amazing how they rally behind some of the biggest sophistries known to man in an effort to insidiously frighten college students. When I challenged him, he immediately became defensive and he asked if I had an ax to grind with him.
But, with regards to your question, I think they are arrantly guilty of this. The statists, whether on the left or right, are always seeking victims grab more power. Whether it's welfare or warfare, it's always been the same game.
I was really unimpressed with the former DNC chairman though, he was devoid of any composure or restraint after I challenged him. I became slightly nervous myself, when he became unhinged, since I was sitting in the chair next to him. If only someone were recording him when he blew a gasket.
Sorry about the grammar errors, I'm in quite a rush to finish a few things right now.
This is stupid. Did you pick up an economics textbook? How does it define it?
If you say that taxes are involuntary, a communist will adamantly deny it, claiming that it is medically voluntary. Then they call other medically voluntary things involuntary in the next sentence. (E.g, wage slavery) That is the standard intellect of the communist for you.