The Relevance of Keynes Today with Particular Reference to Unemployment in Rich and Poor Countries

The world has masses and masses of surplus labour. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, over one billion workers, or one-third of the world’s total labour force, are either openly unemployed with no work at all, or disguisedly unemployed in the sense that they work a suboptimal number of hours and would like to work more, but can’t. Job creation for all those who want to work at the prevailing money wage is one of the great economic and social challenges of the twenty-first century. Not only is unemployment an economic waste, it is also a cause of poverty, stress-related illnesses, marriage breakdown and sometimes civil unrest. Indeed, for survival and basic human dignity, it could be argued that in a civilized society, everyone should have the right to work, just as Yunus Muhammad (2003), in the context of developing countries, has argued that everyone (not just the rich) should have the right to credit as a means of escaping from poverty.

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This is not a new sentiment. Adam Smith (1776) expressed it in the

Wealth of Nations

thus:

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all property so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands, and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property, (p. 136)