Click on the cartoon to see it larger.
[spoiler]Title Panel
In large letters: “Our Top Ten Excuses For Ignoring Unemployment”
Below the title, a man prays and says: As the Bible teaches us: “Screw those who cannot help themselves.”
Panel 1
Cheerful looking man in tie, seated at desk: High unemployment means lower wages! Think how high profits will be if wages drop to zero!
Panel 2
Declaming woman: Just get rid of welfare! Once the welfare queens have to pay their OWN way, they’ll find jobs!
Cheerfully agreeing man: Like during the great depression!
Panel 3
Sour-looking man in expensive suit: As the OPPOSITION party, we are firmly opposed to ANYTHING getting done.
Panel 4
Screaming woman with large teeth: THE UNEMPLOYED ARE PARASITES! THEY DESERVE STARVATION!
Same woman, in smaller sub-dialog: I’ve been self-reliant since the day I was born!
Panel 5
Trembling, fearful man: Lower unemployment COULD raise inflation slightly, which MIGHT cause investors to make SLIGHTLY less money!
Same man, sub-dialogs: O the horror! I just peed my pants!
Panel 6
Cheery man on tennis court: I’LL FIGHT UNEMPLOYMENT! As soon as someone pays my six-figure lobbying fee.
Panel 7
Content-looking man in big suit, huge body, tiny head: DEFICIT SPENDING is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Unless it’s for something ESSENTIAL, like tax cuts for millionaires.
Panel 8
Senator in her office, buried above her elbows in a sea of cash: We Senators would LOVE to help, but we can’t lift our arms because we’re buried in Wall Street money.
Panel 9
Woman shaking her forefinger in the air: THE UNEMPLOYED ARE JUST LAZY! That’s what causes recessions! Sudden inexplicable national epidemics of LAZINESS!
Panel 10
Man standing on a path through the grass, picket fence in background. What’s in front of him might or might not be a cliff. He says: Who CARES? I’VE got enough money.
[/spoiler]
These are, albeit expressed in a partisan way, the conservative arguments against government policy aimed at boosting employment. (Although panels 2, 4, and 9 are all essentially the same argument, so technically you owe us two more excuses.)
I’d love to see a cartoon criticizing liberals for the times when they don’t care about employment. Environmental regulations, particularly, have a lot of job impacts, but liberal policy preferences in many other areas also can have job-killing effects.
Is there a big moral difference between deciding that economic growth is more important than employment, and deciding (say) that the preservation of a jumping mouse species is more important than employment? Maybe, but I don’t see it.
If Robert wants another excuse, how about this one: “If unemployment went down I’d have to stop screwing over my employees or risk them leaving for better jobs!”
Robert, claiming that environmental concerns are about nothing more than some random mouse species somewhere is really disingenuous.
We only have one home, and when we destroy it that’s it. Yes the livability of the earth is more important than the economy, because without the ability for humans to live, there IS no economy.
Also, environmental regulations often have an impact on unemployment for a variety of reasons, many of which are expressed in the cartoon (e.g. the rich, who care more about their own individual interests than the welfare of humanity, aren’t willing to take the financial hit when environmental regulations cut profits, so they pass it off to the middle and poor class by firing people instead of taking a pay cut in their six and seven figure salaries).
Edited to finish the thought. I hit post by accident, too soon.
I’m loving the face in panel 5.
Matt,
I like that one, too. What’s your favorite Amp-drawn face?
Mine is panel 3, here:
https://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2010/06/02/cartoon-reassuring-white-people/
@Kataphratic – true. If the environmental question is “shall we pave the Earth to make jobs for asphalt crews”, I am likely to come down with you on the side of “our home is more important”. But there are environmental regulations that are trivial in this sense – the survival of the Preeble Jumping Mouse is of zero import to the survival of life on Earth – and others that have no bona fide human survival motive at all.
My point, however, was not that environmentalism is Wrong and Bad, it was that people have reasons for the things they do and believe – and there are many liberal/progressive reasons for job-killing decisions. Barry’s cartoon is partisan. (And there’s nothing wrong with that.)
(e.g. the rich, who care more about their own individual interests than the welfare of humanity
Virtually EVERYONE cares more about their own individual interests than the welfare of humanity. There are a handful of activists, etc. for whom this might not be true. Those people are crazy, and widely regarded as such. (Though they sometimes do good work on our behalf, so God bless them.)
The logic chain you then describe has absolutely no correlation to being wealthy. It has a correlation to being rational. Yes, rich people could save (a few) jobs by cutting their own return from businesses, if only they cared more about humanity! Similarly, when we put a $4 tax on a pack of cigarettes to fund orphanages, those greedy smokers could keep the orphans snug and fed by giving up other spending to keep up their old habit – but they instead choose to act in their own interest and reduce consumption. If they cared about humanity, they’d smoke the damn cigarettes and pay their taxes!
“Caring about humanity” is a nice ideal but a demonstratedly scarce practice. Caring about the group more than the individual sounds nice, but in practice a species with that characteristic would soon go extinct. “Let’s all sacrifice ourselves for the greater good!”
Love the faces.
“Caring about the group more than the individual sounds nice, but in practice a species with that characteristic would soon go extinct.”
Not true. People care about their family group, and in many cases are expected to care about their family members before themselves. If we didn’t care for our children (caring about the group more than the individual) then we would go extinct.
“Virtually EVERYONE cares more about their own individual interests than the welfare of humanity.”
I care about the unemployment benefit in my country because I’ve used it, I might need to use it again, and it would hurt my family if I relied too much on them during times of unemployment. The welfare of humanity, in most cases, IS in the interest of the individual. I know that if we set up the society to ensure noone will starve no matter their circumstances, then I will not be at risk of starving in times of trouble. Anyone can be struck by tragedy or disaster, and be taken beyond their financial ability to cope – unless they are very rich. Do you have enough money to look after yourself in the face of any disaster, no matter how rare?
Panel 7 reminds me of an Onion story: American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist to Push Interests in Congress
Great cartoon!
I care about the unemployment benefit in my country because I’ve used it, I might need to use it again, and it would hurt my family if I relied too much on them during times of unemployment.
OK. You’re down to your last $100 and don’t get paid for another week. Do you buy groceries/pay utilities for your kids for the week, or send the $100 to the unemployment people?
If you spend it on your needs, well, isn’t that “greed”? Isn’t that you placing your interests above the group’s interest? Don’t you care about humanity?
We aren’t extinct because we care about the social group, yes, but we care (as individuals) about the individual more. Some people would spend the $100 on beer and porn and let the kids be hungry; some people would spend the $100 on food for the kiddies; some people would spend $90 on food and scrape together $10 to give someone even worse off. But nobody sends the $100 off to “society” and then settles in quietly to starve to death. The scale of what people are willing to sacrifice quickly drops away as you move farther away from your own genetic group (self, family, tribe) and towards larger groups. I’ll die to defend my daughter without hesitating. I might enlist to go fight a war to protect your daughter, maybe. I’ll give blood to help the daughter of some other American who I don’t know. People in Africa, I will leave to starve, and I will carry on with my life without a qualm.
That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Yet, not a single person reading this lost any sleep last night about hunger in Africa. Are you all monsters? Or are you just rational about what you care about and how you prioritize your caring?
The welfare of humanity, in most cases, IS in the interest of the individual. I know that if we set up the society to ensure noone will starve no matter their circumstances, then I will not be at risk of starving in times of trouble.
Really? I know that if we set up the society to ensure no one will starve no matter their circumstances, then I don’t plan to spend any of my life energy on producing food. Hope you’ve got a lot of farmers committed to the idea that the welfare of humanity ought to be their big motivator.
Robert, as I’m sure you’re aware, this isn’t “Top Ten Policy Reasons Stated by Conservatives For Accepting a Certain Level of Unemployment”. Amp isn’t deriding a sound economic argument that taking corrective action to reduce unemployment to x% will have worse effects overall than leaving it alone; he’s mocking particular arguments made by twerps. Unless you really think that liberals never say “Who cares? I’ve got enough money”, or that Tennis Lobbyist Guy is a conservative rather than an opportunist.
I suppose, Mythago. It’s titled “Our Top Ten Excuses” so I suppose he’s including liberals in there (as though they were people!)
I just kind of suspect that there are a lot more liberals caring more about green policy than jobs, than there are liberals who would be all about the jobs if only they were getting lobbying money for it.
Robert,
You may have somehow missed it, but we are in the middle of a massive wave of unemployment that looks like it will continue for years (and perhaps a decade or more). Amp’s cartoon isn’t about why people don’t support full employment, or why people are willing to trade some specific jobs for some other benefits. Amp’s cartoon is about why we are doing very little to deal with the current unemployment crisis.
There may be arguments that policies that don’t produce full employment produce better long term economic growth, there may be arguments that certain environmental policies increase unemployment, but that is irrelevant to the subject at hand, which is why we aren’t dealing with high unemployment right now that has nothing to do with environmental policies (except that there are a bunch of pro-environmental policies that could be implemented to provide immediate valuable jobs).
I can see why you want to push the discussion off into the generic, and pushing it off into “see, not everyone puts maximum employment first”-land is even more generic, but that isn’t actually what the cartoon is about. The cartoon is about why people oppose dealing with the current unemployment crisis, and the speciousness and vacuity of those reasons.
Assuming you aren’t advocating for doing something about the unemployment crisis, it really behooves you to defend your position or shut up. No one really wants to hear you explain that your opposition to dealing with the current crisis is hunky-dory because most people don’t sacrifice their lives for the betterment of complete strangers.
Amp’s cartoon is about why we are doing very little to deal with the current unemployment crisis.
OK. But the causes of unemployment today are no different than the causes of unemployment in the past, and there is not a word or visual in this cartoon that would make it out of place in 2010, 2000, 1990, 1980, 1970, 1960 or even before. (I guess maybe the women loudly expressing political opinions might seem weird in pre-feminist days.) And the fixes that people of Amp’s economic preferences would advocate (Keynesian stimulus, I presume) were the same that were desired in 2010, 2000, etc.
So if Amp was intending to make a comment on the immediate crisis, rather than unemployment as a generalized economic phenomena, then I have to say he has done a miserably poor job of telegraphing that. And it also seems to be a distinction without much difference.
Robert, I suspect that like (or perhaps more so than!) conservatives, there are many liberals who are able to care about two things at once. There are also probably a lot of liberals who do not see ‘green policy’ as a whole and reducing unemployment as unalterably opposed in all circumstances – likely more than conservatives who pretend that ‘green policy’ and ’employment’ are a zero-sum game. *ahem*
Rob —
This week you keep on posting things that I find totally mistaken and really want to respond to, both here and on TADA. But I can’t. Because I’ve got a comic book convention to go to this weekend, and I’m not at all sure I have enough time to be ready for it as it is.
But I wanted to let you know IT’S REALLY BUGGING ME that I don’t have time to respond. I figure you’d enjoy knowing that. :-P
Best, Amp
Other folks: Thanks for the kind words about the faces! This was a fun one to draw. Personally, my favorite face in this cartoon is the moon-shaped face of the opposition party dude.
Awesome. I will spend the next three days posting long-discredited conservative anecdotes about welfare queens, misleading statistics about job creation and environmental policies, and subtly wrong but plausibly brilliant suggested strategies for Democratic politicians, in the knowledge that this will kill you, and I will get your stuff.
Brilliant, Amp! Robert will waste his time blogging and he’ll stay out of trouble.
Whoops – that should have been in email, right?
Also, just to REALLY bug you, I should say that in looking further into the green policy/employment connection, I have to say that I think Charles was right and I was wrong. Badly-designed policies can cause huge problems but well-designed programs seem to be pretty job-neutral at worst. So that was a bad example and I withdraw it.