While Bill Clinton deserves credit for pushing unemployment to 4.0% at one point and Barack Obama deserves credit for leading us out of the Great Recession, there is a dark side to this recovery — more and more women over 50 are considered disposable by Corporate America. Case in point — Chettie McAfee, a woman whose story is profiled in today’s paper:

Laid off at the start of the recession from the diagnostic testing firm in Seattle where she spent more than three decades, Ms. McAfee, 58, has not worked since 2007. “I’ve been applying and applying and applying,” said Ms. McAfee, who has relied on her savings and family to get by as she fights off attempts to foreclose on her home. At interviews, she said, “They ask, ‘Why has it been so long?’”

The fact of the matter is that nobody cares about people like Ms. McAfee — the more they are pushed aside, the better it is to decrease the surplus population in the eyes of certain twisted minds. While we have created jobs and recovery, we have not sufficiently filled in the cracks so that people don’t waste several years of their lives looking for work.

She is hardly alone in her experience:

A new study on long-term unemployment from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that the prospects for women over 50 darkened after the Great Recession. In 2006-7, before the downturn hit, less than a quarter of the unemployed in this group had been out of work for more than six months. By 2012-13, older jobless women accounted for half of the long-term unemployed.

We would not be having these sorts of conversations if we had Basic Income. And we wouldn’t be having these conversations if we were to adopt a plan for zero unemployment, meaning that anyone who wants work can have it — or can start their own business or organize with others into a cooperative. We can raise the money to pay everybody over 18 $30,000 a year just for being alive — no hoops or strings to jump through. It’s not that our politicians can’t do it; it’s that they don’t want to.

Native American society on this continent lasted as long as 30,000 years for a reason — while they were diverse, they had one thing in common. They were tightly organized into strong collective communities. “Going it alone” was something that was a completely foreign concept to them. Some tribes lived in homes with dozens of people — far from the stereotypical “teepees” of popular culture. Our country will not be sustainable in the long run unless we stop thinking of certain groups of people as disposable, like Scrooge and certain other “respectable” businessmen did in the 19th century.

All Indians lived in organized societies with political structures, moral codes, and religious beliefs. All had adapted to the particular environments in which they lived. The idea of private land ownership was foreign; land was held communally and worked collectively.

I’m not necessarily advocating collective ownership, but we have to move away from the idea that individualism is sacrosanct and that it is somehow the fault of people like Ms. McAfee that she has been unable to find stable employment since 2007.

Another diary today talks about how Donald Trump’s inflammatory call to exclude all Muslims is now becoming recruiting fodder for terrorist organizations. But I submit that the notion that certain people in America today are being considered disposable by Corporate America is also recruiting fodder for terrorist organizations as well. Many people who join ISIS and similar groups are not stupid low-information people, but highly educated people. The rationale is obvious — why should they work hard for 30 years of their life, only to be put out to pasture when their jobs move to Mexico through technology or TPP, and then drown in a sea of debt?

We see this thinking in other parts of the world as well. This morning, Weekend Edition did a piece on the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the fact that both ISIS and Al-Qaeda are now setting up training camps in that country. While the expert they talked to said the rapid drawdown of our troops there was a factor (I disagree; the presence of our troops there radicalizes people throughout the Middle East), another point that was made was the fact that local governments in certain places are so corrupt that people would just as soon have the Taliban back or even have a totally new sheriff in town. The point is that if we do not give our people purpose and meaning in their lives, and if we do not ensure everyone’s well-being throughout their lives, the drug dealers, criminals, terrorists, and gangs will do it for us. We created a country with peace and prosperity for a reason following World War II — we had presidents like FDR and Kennedy who gave us something to aspire to that gave us meaning and purpose.

While supporting our schools, colleges, and universities is important, a good education or serving in the military no longer guarantees comfortable employment; in fact, it can hinder employment because certain corporate types deem you “overqualified.” From the Times:

While unskilled workers are at the greatest disadvantage when it comes to finding work, many older women with impressive educational credentials and résumés tell discouraging tales of being turned down for job after job. Julie Woodbury, a 57-year-old Army veteran who lives in a suburb of Minneapolis, went back to earn a doctorate in communications after leaving the military. “It’s extremely frustrating,” Dr. Woodbury said. “I just can’t find something permanent.” She is not counted among the long-term unemployed, but finds herself cycling on and off the jobless rolls, as one short-term contract ends and she waits for another to begin.

Instead of forcing people into a narrow career path for a job market that might not be around in 20 years due to technology or TPP, basic income would allow people to discover their own path. Some might even go to school on a full-time basis; after all, education should be pursued for its own sake whenever possible. Such a process of self-discovery could start a new philosophical renaissance similar to what happened in Greece.

The other issue that came up in the NYT article was the fact that many of the women it featured took several years off of work in order to care for children. This was an immediate red flag for employers. We had government-run daycare during World War II, when we had to have women in the workforce. We need to return to that policy. France already has such a policy, with successful results:

But since my husband and I moved to France two years ago, this child care question isn’t one that we’ve had to think about. Why? Because of three very progressive child care policies instituted by the French government. In brief, the French government provides: 1) inexpensive municipal day care, 2) tax breaks for families employing in-home child care workers, and 3) universal free preschool beginning at age 3. Together, these make quality child care so affordable—even in expensive Paris—that we’re actually considering extending my husband’s work contract and staying in France until our daughter is school-age just to take advantage of them. While I don’t see the United States turning into France anytime soon (certainly not with Paul Ryan’s budget), these ideas merit serious discussion. Even instituting one of them would revolutionize the lives of middle-class U.S. families. Though many of these policies were put in place to combat France’s falling birthrate, they have had the added benefit of getting mothers back into the workforce. After a period of paying women to stay home with their children, the French government realized that many women wanted to return to work but needed child care solutions to make this possible. This is where the government has focused its efforts, and to mostly positive results. Over 80 percent of French women work, as opposed to just under 60 percent in the United States. Though employment declines in both countries for women as they have children, in France it’s still over 80 percent for women with one child and impressively over 50 percent for women with three or more children.

There is no reason why our politicians can’t do this here in the US. Again, it’s not that they can’t do it, it’s that they don’t want to.