10A046 One Way Back to Work by Jim Davies, 10/18/2010 "Jobs!" is the cry, this election season, and little wonder. Even government admits that 9.6% are unemployed, and that's a fearful waste of human resource; around 15 million people would like to work, but can't. The reasons are shown here. I offer here a simple solution. It's not, you understand, that I want to preserve the statist status quo by helping it out, but rather to demonstrate that since statists will reject my solution, statists have to go. I come to bury government, not to prolong its miserable life. Consider its school monopoly. It indoctrinates about 50 million school children, using 7 million teachers and over 750 billion stolen dollars a year. Now suppose that it vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving those 7 million teachers jobless, those 50 million kids ready to learn, and those $750 billion back where they belong, in their owner's pockets. You'll have noticed that the unemployed number has now risen from 15 to 22 million. Those 22 million have a wide variety of talents and skill mixes, but here's another fact: a large fraction of them have children, or grandchildren. There is a familial connection between the 50 million eager students and the 22 million jobless adults. My idea is to let them exploit that connection. The first result would be to home-school them all, with a teacher-student ratio of (50/22 = ) 2.3 students per teacher. That's pretty good! Even a completely inexperienced family teacher could, with some very hard work and some on-line help, probably keep up with two or three inquisitive children. But wait, I hear it objected; this would occupy the 22 million unemployed, and very productively; but would it pay them? - after all, they are looking not just for a way to spend 8 hours a day, but also how to earn 8 hours' worth of moolah. Answer, yes. Those cancelled taxes of $750B a year would divide among all former payers, almost all of whom would have a family connection to one or more school children (child, grandchild, nephew...) and so will want to see them well educated and therefore be eager to contribute to that by handing over all or some of their tax rebate to the family member doing the teaching. So most of the $750B will wind up with the 22 million parent/teachers, average up to (750/22 = ) $34,000/yr each, completely free and clear of tax. Any complaints? True, my figures are all on the back of an envelope. Some of the tax reductions would not reach those parent/teachers because they have no relations, or mean relations, and we ought to account for former ancillary staff as well as teachers, and so on. So the estimates are rough. Perhaps the average net gain to these 22 million parents would be rather less than the tax-free $34K/yr suggested. But they would be well occupied, and well rewarded, and even if they were still counted in the government's statistics of the "unemployed" it really wouldn't matter, because there would be very great gain all round. Your feedback, please!