The voluntary-unemployment premise reduces the Depression to an unpaid vacation for millions
Evidence
Similarly, the notion that unemployment is voluntary is, in the context of the current self-inflicted wound in Europe, downright offensive. Real workers must pay bills and feed families from jobs that have fixed hours and fixed wage rates. The idea that workers “trade off” labor against leisure by figuring out the real wage rate and then slacking off or going on an indefinite unpaid leave is the type of thinking that leads us to see the Great Depression as a giant, unexpected, and astonishingly long unpaid vacation for millions of people: original, yes; helpful, no. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 428
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to critical assessments of neoclassical labor supply theory in the wider austerity critique, and to Keynes’s dismissal of wage cutting as a remedy. — connects to: Depression is a despecialization that ruptures the social bond — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 20; Mass unemployment isolates families and weakens parental authority — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 438; Unemployment structurally disciplines workers and lowers labor costs in capitalism — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 150
Broader Connections
- Unemployment structurally disciplines workers and lowers labor costs in capitalism
#contradicts(0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 150 - Depression is a despecialization that ruptures the social bond
#qualifies(0.75) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 20 - Mass unemployment isolates families and weakens parental authority
#corroborates(0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 438