100 Million Americans Without Jobs … The national unemployment rates gets lots of attention, and lately more attention has been paid to the workforce participation rate since more Americans have given up looking for a job, but we can also see that an astounding 100 million Americans don't have jobs … According to the April jobs report, the number of jobless American stood at 100.9 million. – Business Insider

Dominant Social Theme: We're going through a rough patch but things will be all right.

Free-Market Analysis: There are 300 million people in America including 230 million-plus adults, according to US Census figures. This article, above, informs us that only 130 million Americans have jobs as traditionally defined in the 20th and 21st century.

The statistics actually come from the federal government and, of course, not all of the 100 million Americans out of work want jobs or need jobs. Some are retired, or stay-at-home parents or students at universities or individuals with disabilities who are not able to work.

But 100 million is a staggering number, nonetheless. And of the remaining 130 million, how many are either underemployed or working more than one job to make ends meet?

How many of these jobs are "service" jobs, dishing out hamburgers or fried chicken? Nothing wrong with service jobs, of course, but the idea of a strong and vital economy is inherently a productive economy. The US – and the West in general – seems increasingly to produce employment that has little to do with production. Facebook would seem representative of that.

The US – and the West – has spent trillions overseas attempting to spread the Western model of employment and abundance but, in fact, examined from this point of view – employment that leads to production rather than service – the system is broken and not getting any better.

The dominant social theme of the power elite is that the system of "capitalism" is the best in the world and that developing countries ought to fully adopt it. In fact, this is happening but endorsement is a signifier of popularity not reality.

The reality is that central banking-based economies don't work well and eventually suffer at least quasi-collapses. This is what the US – and the West – are going through currently.

The reasons central bank economies fail over time is simple. Those in charge of printing money print too much, leading first to booms and then busts. As the economy becomes more unbalanced, those with a stake in the system demand that the top participants be supported.

The mechanism for support, of course, is the central bank itself. Those in charge of the bank in the modern era almost inevitably support their "too big to fail" colleagues.

And thus economies grow evermore distorted. It becomes difficult if not impossible to tell a healthy company from a bad one. Society itself is affected by the continuation of useless companies churning out unnecessary products.

New ventures are put off because of systemic inefficiency. Gradually the larger system grinds down, producing ever fewer jobs. The Modern State makes up for its monetary distortion by adding on more and more taxes targeting ever-fewer productive citizens. This also has the effect of shrinking the economy.

Business Insider points out that the current joblessness rate in the US is a record. In other words, in spite of all the efforts of the political class and all the fulsome articles praising this or that "reform," things are getting steadily worse.

[The current level of unemployment is] an all-time record and it's an increase of 26.2 million over the last 12 years. It's as if we absorbed the entire adult population of Canada and not a single person had a job. The numbers are staggering. The jobs-to-population ratio peaked 12 years ago. If we were to have the same ratio today, we would need 15.3 million more jobs, or 23.7 million fewer people.

The system is broken because the money stuff itself is not subject to competition. Monopoly fiat central banking gives rise to tremendously destructive booms and busts.

During the bust phase, tremendous centralization takes place as elitist institutions with access to central banking money wax fat – no depression for those with access to central banking fiat …

Only market forces can build a healthy economy. Only competitive money can guarantee it.

The massive distortions that afflict Western economies on a regular basis are part of a larger mania for state control fostered by elites that apparently want to expand the current system into a seamless web of globalist enterprises.

After Thoughts

There is no reason to think the current system will work better internationally than it does nationally.