In the absence of a consolidated welfare state, United States politicians love to obsess about the unemployment rate — unemployment, after all, means no health care, no money for education, no money for buying your kids school supplies...in the “greatest country on Earth” it means all these things, at least.
In America, the unemployment rate is currently about 4.7 percent. In the EU, it’s about 10.2 percent.
USA! USA! USA! Right?
Well, how many Americans are employed in parasitic industries: student-loan servicing at Nelnet or Sallie Mae, processing health insurance claims at Cigna or Aetna, concocting new “financial products” on Wall Street?
Then, step back, and think about it: in most European countries, there are not armies of student-loan servicing employees, because university is free. There are not armies of health insurance company bureaucrats, because health care is either free-at-use, or, if there is insurance, prices for medical procedures are regulated by the government, so the non-profit health insurers that do exist need many, many fewer worker bees.
So, what’s my point?
Let’s not get all excited by a low unemployment rate — especially when that statistic is the result of lots of workers occupying positions in parasitic industries — ones that produce “negative GDP” — whose very existence contributes to a lot of suffering and financial stress for all the Americans not working in them.
