How to Save Democracy When No Job

If a model doesn't work, is it better to try to fix it, or buy a new one? In the field of technology, the answer is increasingly often to buy a young person. The specialized stores in computer repair are disappearing. If the laptop doesn't work, you better get rid of it. But what is good for technology is not necessarily appropriate for politics.

The political model of Western democracy, grown side by side and then within the capitalist economy, has been broken. The first testimony to support this paper is undoubtedly Donald Trump, but there are others.

In last year's presidential elections, one-third of French voters voted for Marine Le Pen, a fascist of “rescripted”. In the German elections in September, an eighth of the electorate voted for “Alternative für Deutschland” ( The AFD, Alternative to Germany, a party whose most extreme arm is open neo-Nazi, and now leads the opposition in Bundestag, the German Parliament. Last month, in Italy, the two parties that received the best results in the elections are led by populist officials. Not to mention Brex in the United Kingdom. The subjects that dominated populist rhetoric were racism, nationalism, hostility toward immigrants, and employment.

Mass unemployment

During the election campaign, Trump did not basically speak of anything else: immigrants steal jobs, American entrepreneurs, free market parades, export jobs, foreigners are stealing breakfasts from America. Down the market free! First America! Ets, etc. (a little explanation: Donald Trump is not Republican, Donald Trump is populist.

Trump doesn't know much, but one thing I know for sure: We live in an era marked by mass unemployment, and no one seems to have noticed. As the US president noted, the next day of his first victory in New Hampshire, in February 2016, “do not trust the false figures that are offering you. They talk about unemployment at 4.9 per cent or 5 per cent. The real percentage is maybe 28, 29 or 35 percent. I've recently heard about 42 percent”.

Unemployment is certainly not 42 per cent, but not even 4.1 per cent (current official data in the United States). According to “

Why haven't we noticed? Because the unemployed do not protest in the streets, as they have during the major depression of the 1930 ' s, even if the unemployment rate approaches these levels. After World War II, all democracies built social welfare states, primarily to prevent a future generation of radical populists from taking power in case of a new phase of mass unemployment.

That worked, in the sense that this time there is no blood on the street. But millions of unemployed people are angry even if social assistance prevents them from starving. They're people who vote and if you don't do anything to temper their anger next time they can choose someone who will make Trump look like a great politician.

So unemployment is the problem. But the answer is not clear because the main cause of unemployment in Western countries is not immigration or moving jobs, says Trump. The main reason is the computer.

One third of the jobs in the American production sector have disappeared over the past 20 years, and most of them (85 per cent) have been destroyed by automation. The algorithms and machinery have already killed Rust Belt (former industrial states) and it is reasonable to think that half of the current jobs will be automated over the next 20 years.

How will politics emerge at that moment? Perhaps not very democratic, except that a solution is found to reduce the ire of the unemployed. This involves not only giving more money to those who do not work (with a large expansion of the welfare state) but also finding a way to wipe out shame, which is linked to a lack of employment, because anger produces only the humiliation of being considered a loser.

The Right Problem

The main proposal currently under consideration is that of universal fundamental income, or citizenship revenues. With its introduction, each citizen would receive enough money to live with dignity, whether there is a job, even if most people continued to work to earn more money. The introduction of these universal incomes means the disappearance of shame and anger. It would be right from birth, not a gesture of love toward those who lost their jobs.

In practice it may not work, but at least address the right problem. Besides, there's enough money to follow this approach.

Whatever the solution, it must meet two criteria: place money in the pocket of those who do not work (which is in the interest of owners and managers, whose business model cannot work, if consumers do not have money to spend, buy products and services) and do so without creating humiliation, disillusionment and radicalism.

Some may argue that in this way capitalism is preserved, not destroyed. It's true, but evolution is always better than revolution. Making a broken model, basically through a great expansion of the welfare state, is certainly better than rejecting it. / Internasional RH.al