Unemployment and Poverty Tackled
This chapter outlines how Social Employment combined with the Utopian Payment Model effectively solves unemployment and poverty problems.
In short, with the presence of Social Employment in addition to the Utopian Payment Model, citizens do not ever need to worry about them being poor and its adverse consequences. These two don't make riches available to citizens, but citizens are assured of financial security regardless of any factor that may adversely impact their wealth situation. Some of these factors are: age, health, origins, inexperience, absence of luck, desire to do social work, absence of savings and investments, poor education, poor guidance, etc.
The section, "Benefits to Citizens", points out how social employment eliminates unemployment for those people who can work and are willing to work. It eliminates the need for citizens to work for no pay just to prove that they have skills or just because they wish to do socially valuable work for which no one is willing to pay.
The section, "Benefits to Private Enterprises", points out the benefits to private enterprises when employing people using social employment.
The section, "Benefits to Not-For-Profit Organizations", points out that not-for-profit organizations benefit by having a much better access to people's time and hence can take up a much larger variety of social work, which in the current situation is either difficult or impossible.
The section, "Benefits to Society", points out that the society is the largest beneficiary of the system of Social Employment. By creating an alternative to regular employment, society shields its citizens from the practices of off-shoring, mechanization and automation that take away their employment opportunities. This helps citizens in being independent and self-sufficient and thereby reduces their reliance on the Utopian Payment Model.
Benefits to Citizens
Any citizen who has difficulty finding regular employment, will not find the same difficulty in finding social employment. Thus, every citizen who wishes to work and has some knowledge and skills to offer can find employment.
Usually, unemployed citizens will use social employment to assist them when they find themselves unemployed and also the need to earn money to meet their monetary obligations associated with their lifestyle prior to being unemployed.
A citizen who has difficulty obtaining regular employment can still work the same amount of time that an average regular employee works and earn his or her living. With this provision, all citizens who can work and are willing to work can find employment. Unemployment ceases to be a problem.
Social employment is not limited to only the unemployed. Social employment is always available to all citizens, whether currently employed or not. Citizens could quit their regular employment and obtain social employment. Whether to use social employment or not is up to the citizen.
Using social employment, a citizen could gain an internship at any organization that is willing to hire such social employees. Such an organization will be willing to "try out" potential employees and evaluate their skills if some citizen is asking for such an opportunity to showcase their skills.
Citizens can use social employment as an easy way of finding employment with a private enterprise with the intention of demonstrating one's knowledge and skills and converting the social employment to a more valuable regular employment with the same enterprise. This is like an internship, with zero wage cost to the enterprise and a higher probability for an experienced and well motivated citizen to find the right regular employment.
Using social employment, a citizen could offer to volunteer to work full-time for any organization that offers such social employment opportunities. Such volunteers still get paid for such volunteer work. Of course, such volunteering is limited by the limits of social employment. But now citizens can volunteer their time to the causes that they feel are important and not suffer significant financial hardship.
Benefits to Private Enterprises
Most of the employment in the society is in the private sector. Hiring someone and asking that person to do some useful work is still the prerogative of private enterprise.
The work that the employing enterprises provide to social employees can be any work that the employees are capable of. It does not have to be work that requires only the minimum skills.
We make the cost of labor zero for these organizations and yet pay citizens a fixed wage. We leave it to the ingenuity of the employees of these organizations to find useful work to do when the cost of labor is zero and derive some profit from that useful work. This enables those businesses that are not fully mechanized and automated to compete with other businesses. Thus, we are helping businesses and citizens.
Private enterprises can hire interns without incurring the cost of wages.
Private enterprises can hire volunteers for which they cannot justify wages.
A private enterprise facing challenges in competing can use social employment as a means to reduce their costs and improve their competitiveness.
Benefits to Not-For-Profit Organizations
Current not-for-profit organizations can convert to "public not-for-profit organizations". These organizations do not have to rely on unpaid volunteers. Using social employment, they can have access to a much larger number of concerned citizens who can volunteer because these citizens no longer have to worry about "earning their living" or "sacrificing their wages entirely".
The kinds of activities that can be pursued by public not-for-profit organizations can be potentially very large. Some examples are: medical services, fire fighting, environment cleanup, neighborhood beautification and maintenance, child care, elder care, providing light work to seniors for their physical activity and social interactions, tutoring and homework help, etc.
Since there are public not-for-profit organizations, citizens can factor these organizations into their plans when they build community centers and provide space to these organizations at zero cost to conduct their community activities.
Social employment provides human power to socially beneficial public not-for-profit organizations.
Benefits to Society
Availability of social employment ensures that citizens of society can find employment and take care of their needs and wants with the wages that they can earn. From a society's perspective, this is better than unemployed citizens living on social welfare. It enables society to end the entitlements for doing no work.
Availability of social employment and ability of citizens to set the wage for such employment ensures that poverty is not possible for anyone who is willing to work.
Availability of social employment eliminates the need to commit crimes that are primarily motivated by a person's need to have some money to satisfy his or her needs and his or her lack of employment.
Because private enterprises can also employ social employees, society can to a certain extent objectively assess the social responsibility practiced by private enterprises. The government can publish these numbers for each enterprise and provide historical charts and graphs of the enterprise's use of regular versus social employment. Individual citizens can form their own judgment based on these numbers and can decide the course of their future relationships with these enterprises.
Because private enterprises can also employ social employees, the need of using mechanization and automation by such enterprises is reduced which naturally suppresses the introduction of employment-robbing automation, especially in tasks that any human could do and gain employment. Society accomplishes this without mandating it.
Presence of social employment can reduce the cost of labor for private enterprises. Work that was previously sent offshore to get done cheaply, does not need to be sent offshore. Presence of social employment can reverse job losses due to imports of goods and services.
Currently, regular employment is the only kind of employment available to all citizens. By introducing social employment, we have introduced a competition for human capabilities. If a private enterprise is not careful in valuing its employees, they will soon lose these employees, as now those employees have an alternative. This would improve the respect that employees should get. This will ensure that employees are not treated merely as "resources", because such treatment now runs a larger risk of losing the employees.
We enable organizations to hire citizens as social employees at zero cost to them and pay these employees their wages through taxes, because it is for the common good. This provides all these organizations human capabilities at zero cost, and that changes their financial equation in favor of humans and makes mechanization and automation expensive. This is the way we support our citizens to continue to be useful to others, have employment, earn wages, satisfy one's own needs and wants, be independent and self-sufficient.
As long as they can work, citizens' reliance on the Utopian Payment Model is diminished.
With the presence of Social Employment and the Utopian Payment Model, citizens are much less likely to engage in money motivated crimes, primarily because they don't "need" to.
That reduces the risks to all members of the society. Reducing crime contributes to the well-being of all citizens. An ideal society strives to do things that will enhance the well-being of all its citizens - not just a few.
Moreover, we are accomplishing this without resorting to "punishment" as a deterrent to committing crimes. We are accomplishing it by eliminating the need to commit crime just to earn some money. This is the Utopian way of doing things.