The 'economically inactive': Useless or undervalued?

The 'economically inactive': Useless or undervalued?

A term often featured in discussions around the state of the economy is ‘economically inactive’.

This rather dismissive term is used to refer to people who are neither employed nor actively seeking employment. They may be raising children, studying, caring for a sick relative, or just generally making the world a better place in their own unique way, but if they’re not a cog in the economic machine, they count for very little in the minds of many politicians and economists.

Even more disparagingly, young people not engaged in employment, education or training have been dubbed ‘Neets’, always referred to in a negative way which serves to stigmatise them.

This dismissal of whole sections of society as comparatively worthless seems bad enough, but in a radio discussion about population growth, I recently heard the term ‘useless eaters’. This chilling phrase is used to refer to anybody who is using up resources without producing anything. The Nazis referred to disabled people in this way – in German ‘Nutlos Esser’.

This utilitarian or reductionist way of looking at individuals, all with their own unique gifts and talents, is very disturbing. If we value people only for the economic contribution they can make we are on a very slippery slope. Taken to its logical conclusion, why should we bother to care for anybody if they are, in economic terms, simply a drain on resources? There is no place for love in this philosophy.

Apparently, some economists are in favour of euthanasia as an answer to this perceived problem of ‘useless eaters’

It seems that in some quarters this, and almost anything, can be justified by reference to our allegedly dire economic situation, and the assertion that there just aren’t enough resources to go round.

However, a recent report from the Tax Justice Network showed that there is £13 trillion stashed away in tax havens. There is plenty of money in the world. It’s just not being distributed well.

What we need is not austerity, which is punishing the poor for the mistakes of the rich, but a system in which resources are distributed more fairly, which is perfectly possible given the political will.
As Ghandi said, ‘There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.’

The French government has begun to show the way, with the introduction of a 0.2% financial transaction tax. Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said it was “the first step toward fiscal reform and a move toward justice.”

David Cameron’s response was to invite any French financiers who wanted to avoid the new tax to move to London.


