I wonder how many jobs an economy needs.
In the barest terms we need people to extract and deliver the building blocks of life: food, water, shelter.
Beyond that we need people to heal and teach.
After that?
The next level of jobs might not be required, but they mean we have a more developed, sanitary, and efficient world: airplanes, trains, soap, irrigation, etc.
And beyond that? I'm not clear where I think the turning point is.
The bottom line...
I've got in my mind that the financial services industry and the marketing industries have gotten too big and hurt our society more than they help.
Marketing is suffocating the arts - movies, theater, television, books are the next wave in the age-old tradition of storytelling to create a myth about a society; to give a framework for the society, to ask questions - to confront, etc.
Instead the stories are taking a backseat to the financial bottom line.
People are supposed to feel good about themselves just as we are. We are all beautiful, on a journey.
But, marketing spends it's whole time convincing us we're not quite good enough or we could be better, faster, younger, smarter, prettier, more interesting, etc if only...
And the marketing supports movies, theater, television, books.
So, everything gets all mucked up.
It doesn't seem good to me for our society's long term benefit.
The primary occupation of the financial services industry is to move money around so rich people make more money. That's what got us into our current economic crisis in the first place.
Don't get me started on politics. That industry is less and less effective and think how many people it employs...the pollsters, the pundits, the television shows, the consultants, the lobbyists. And we don't even get the truth!
If all these useless industries gave up all their useless jobs - how many unemployed people would we have?
And, it occurs to me that the Republicans like to talk about how bloated the government is, but our capitalist economy is even more bloated, right?
Not to mention - all those useless jobs are the highest paid people. What's up with that?
