The writer is the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s candidate for Vice President.
Anybody who has been part of the Occupy Wall Street movement knows that many participants are youth who are either in college or just out of college. These “disaffected” youths, as they are often labeled, have seen their peers or are themselves living the truth behind the myth that was sold to them in high school. “Go to college and you will be able to have a job you like,” the adults in our lives would say. “Not just something you get up for in order to pay your bills,” they’d repeat.
A lot has been written about the suffocating and restrictive effects of the massive student loans placed on college students, but this alone cannot explain the disaffection that many young adults feel when entering the workforce and realizing that they went to college and still cannot pursue their passions.
A report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics appears to shed more light on this disaffection among young working adults. If we look at the numbers provided by the BLS it is easy to conclude that capitalism is not only incapable of providing jobs for all people who want to work but also for those who are lucky enough to find employment but are stuck in jobs that are below (and at times very far below) their educational level.
According to the BLS, a total of 17 million college-educated adults in the U.S. have jobs that do not require their level of education. There are over 80,000 truck drivers with at least a Bachelor’s degree. Some 317,000 waiters and waitresses have graduated form a four-year college and over 5,000 janitors have a doctorate degree! One could say the U.S. has the world’s most educated bartenders, construction workers, janitors and parking lot attendants!
Statistics illustrate wasteful nature of capitalist system
However, these statistics are really no laughing manner. While there is no shame in being a janitor or a waitress, these numbers illustrate the wasteful nature of capitalism. Behind each statistic are real human beings who feel like they not only could be so much more personally but in fact could contribute a lot more to society. Because of the anarchy of capitalism, the knowledge of millions of working people is being squandered to fill the ranks of the army of low-wage workers that provides steady profits for the capitalist class.
This election year we will hear countless politicians talking about how we need to invest in education to send more people to college and beyond. Now, you will never hear someone in a poor neighborhood say they do not want more education. However, the facts seem to argue that people’s personal sacrifice for education may be futile or at best offer a minimum “return on investment.” Without an economic system that is able to utilize the human potential of the entire working class, many of our potential scientists and architects will undoubtedly rot in the doldrums of low-wage work.
There is only one reason jobs are created under capitalism: Someone (the owner/employer) has deemed it profitable to hire someone. It does not matter that the banks have more cash on hand than ever before ($8.9 trillion, according to The New York Times), these capitalists will not spend these trillions of dollars in cash until they believe it can return a steady rate of profit for them.
No matter who is elected to sit in the White House, under the current economic system we cannot force the capitalists to hire our college-educated workers, because that would infringe on their “property rights.” After all, they claim, it is their money. Because of this economic dictatorship, where the rich control who has a job and who does not, all that capitalist politicians appear to do today to address joblessness is give more and more concessions to the capitalists to make them feel more “confident” in hiring workers.
We need socialism!
Socialists demand a society where our human resources are used to address the vast needs in our communities. It is not “utopian” or “extremist” to demand a society where we begin to move forward from the mind-numbing and back-breaking work associated with the semi-skilled industries. Under socialism, we would use our college graduates to come up with the machinery and technologies to free us from these mundane tasks so we can begin to take that next step in history to a more peaceful, advanced and productive era where a good, meaningful job is a right and not a luxury.
No longer can we live under the tyranny of the owning class who refuse to release us from the ever-expanding muck of unemployment and impoverishment. So our campaign says, “Seize the Banks!” Place the wealth of society under public control and the ownership of poor and working people. Then and only then will we be able to stop the growing pauperization of our class, and in doing so we can put a lot of those janitors with doctorates to work on cleaning up our society instead of our floors. Vote PSL!
