US. twenty to thirty million forced not to work.

Unemployment line from the past. This threatens again.

The population of Canada is 34 million. The population of Mexico is 107 million. This is a lot of people. Now 20 million is also a lot of people. Imagine that 20 million Canadians or 20 million Mexicans were forced not to work. This would be a huge blow to these societies. There is a country where between 20 million and 30 million are forced not to work. This is made up of just under 20 million who have lost jobs or cannot get jobs and over 2.6 million people in the countries prisons and jails and another 6 million who have given up looking for work. This is a staggering waste of resources of the people with no work and of society as a whole. What country is this? Maybe a poverty stricken former colonial country which is being kept down by the major capitalist countries? Maybe that is it.

Well if you guessed this you guessed wrong. It is the USA. (See the recent unemployment figures adjusted to reality) Yes, US capitalism cannot utilize the resources of between 20 million and 30 million of its people. Just imagine what work could be done, what products could be turned out, how the country could be improved with the labor power of up to 30 million more workers. But US capitalism cannot give work to these workers. It forces them to remain unemployed. This is another reason why we on this blog say that capitalism does not work. It wastes vast amounts of resources. Not only is the country "awash with cash" as the Wall Street Journal puts it but it is also over flowing with tens of millions of workers to whom it cannot give jobs. Capitalism cannot utilize its resources.

To add a point. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, that is per head of its population it has more people in prison than any other country. It has less than 5% of the world's population but 23% of the world's prison population. This is almost unbelievable but it is true. This also shows that capitalism cannot work. When it has to lock up so many people in the most wealthy and powerful capitalist country in the world this proves the case. This incredibly high prison population is directly related to the unemployment rate and to US capitalism's meagre approach to unemployment benefits. Millions of people have no jobs and no income of any kind. So they are forced into crime. Not the crime of Wall Street and the capitalists but the street crime of the poverty stricken sections of the population.

On top of these wastes of resources we have the vast waste of the prison industrial complex. There is a lot of money to be made by capitalism in building prisons, in administrating and staffing them, in providing the energy and the rest to keep them running. US capitalism is rotten to the core.

#For guaranteed jobs for all at union wages and benefits. The right to a job with union wages and benefits to be a human right.

#For a surge of investment to build roads, railways, schools, hospitals and to rebuild the infrastructure, again at union wage jobs and benefits.

#Take the money from the war machine, end the wars and occupations, tax the rich.

#For an end to capitalism and a democratic socialist society.