Full Employment Quotes

“While people will submit to suffering which may hit anyone, they will not so easily submit to suffering which is the result of the decision of authority. It may be bad to be just a cog in an impersonal machine; but it is infinitely worse if we can no longer leave it, if we are tied to our place and to the superiors who have been chosen for us. Dissatisfaction of everybody with his lot will inevitably grow with the consciousness that it is the result of deliberate human decision.”
― F.A. Hayek

“When we lose our waged jobs we are not freed from work! We are supposed to go on doing the work of reproducing labour power and to make the labour market function by looking for waged jobs. Part of our effort must be to make these dynamics clear so that we can struggle for what we really want, which is a secure income and less work-for-capital so that we have more time to re-craft our lives. Thus, instead of demanding “full employment” and strenuously searching for new jobs, we can demand less restrictive and more unemployment compensation or even “citizen wages” independent of jobs.”
― Harry Cleaver

“...by the time Malcolm Fraser came to power, neoliberals working for Treasury quietly redefined 'full employment' to mean a rate of just 95 per cente employment at any time. Unsurprisingly, it's a habit of neoliberal governments to make the experience of unemployment as punitive and humiliating as possible, to discourage people from risking it. (p. 64-5”
― Sally McManus, On Fairness

“...by the time Malcolm Fraser came to power, neoliberals working for Treasury quietly redefined 'full employment' to mean a rate of just 95 per cent employment at any time. Unsurprisingly, it's a habit of neoliberal governments to make the experience of unemployment as punitive and humiliating as possible, to discourage people from risking it.”
― Sally McManus, On Fairness