I just went to the shops and there is still food on the shelves.

I just went to the shops and there is still food on the shelves. Yet we are told the unemployment rate is rising. These jobs that were lost aren't important.

The employment rate for people of working age (16-65) was 72.7 per cent for the three months to June 2009

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=12

16% over 65yrs and 19% under 16yrs = 35% not working age
So 65% working age of which 72.7% are working = 47.26% of total population working

52.75% of the UK population do not work.

A figure which is rising.

So if half of people are supported by the other half in recesssion what exactly do all the extra jobs achieve out of recession?

The answer I suspect is nothing! It is simply a feature of an out of date economic paradigm.

Animals support themselves with whatever adaptations they inherit. Humans can rely upon ever improving adaptations, economies of scale and most importantly the input of fossil fuel.

(Sources available for what follows).

Hunter gatherers achieve a return on energy invested of 2.5 times. That means for every calory spent in gathering food they get 2.5 back. This decreases until modern intensive agriculture (which is land efficient but not eneregy efficient) where 4 times more energy is invested than gained from the land.

The point is the amount of energy that we utilise and replace human efforts with. Given the vast input of energy in systems that are more efficient than animal systems why do we all need to work?

Survival has always been solved. Since the Neolithic actually work has been the problem that has been solved... but it raises a question, what to do when all the work is done?

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York notes for "Of Mice & Men" p9

"In 1938, the year that oM&M was published, half of America's grain was harvested by mechanical combines. These machines required 5 men to do the work. Only a few years earlier, the same work had needed 350 men."

Since the start of the industrial revolution there is no doubt that the vast majority of workers have been replaced my machines and "freed" from their labour on the land. What is odd is that new jobs have been created out of thin air ... and seem to continually be created indefinitely. We either have an infinite capacity to consume things (i.e. and infinite market) or our machines are not very good (neither of which is true - limited resources, time and bellies). So we would expect "unemployment" to naturally increase somewhere down the road... or rather we would expect to be "freed" from labour somewhere down the road... or is economics just a rug to pull over the eyes of the working "class"?