The World needs a World Bank

As a former Executive Director of the World Bank, 2002-2004, I assure you that more important than who is the president of the World Bank, is getting the world some representation there. The real problem of the World Bank is that, at its Board of Executive Directors, the world at large, and the human race, are not truly represented there, only geography bound parochial governmental interests are. 

If we are going to have a chance to rally support for such global critical issues as world-wide sustainability and job creation for our youth, I do believe we need some sort of World’s World Bank, and, a good start, just for starters, could be adding to the Board some independent voices who do not report to a government, or, much worse, to a single ideology. 

Would such a proposal be feasible? I haven’t the faintest! But, if we cannot get the human beings to cooperate and work as one, on some vital issues, across the borders, our chances of all humans making it are much reduced… and so let’s not kid ourselves.

We need worthy and decent unemployments

What politician does not speak up for the need to create decent and well paid jobs for young people? But, if that's not possible, and the economy is not able to deliver that on its own ... What on earth do we do?

Society must of course do its utmost seeking to solve the problem of youth unemployment ... including taking leisure to levels never thought of… six months vacations! But it also needs to prepare itself to handle a growing number of unemployed, not cyclical but structural, that is, those who never ever in their life will have a chance to get an economically productive job.

Two decades ago, concerned about growing unemployment, half in jest, in an Op-Ed in El Universal of Caracas, I asked something like whether it was better to have one hundred thousand unemployed running each on his side as broody hens, or to seat them all in a huge human circle where everyone would scratch the backs of one of his neighbors, charging a lot for his services, while his own back was scratched by his other neighbor, at an equally high price. The tragedy is that this question seems to me now less and less hypothetical.

And is not necessarily an act of desperation to think about what to do with the unemployed ...because sometimes, in seeking to unravel a tangled twine, starting with the other end, may be the best way to release the first. Which is better: educating for a source of employment likely to be absent and therefore only create frustration, or educate for unemployment, and suddenly perhaps reaching, when on that route, the pleasant surprise of some jobs?

The power of a nation, and the productivity of its economy, which so far has depended primarily on the quality of its employees may, in the future, also depend on the quality of its unemployed, as a minimum in the sense of these not interrupting those working.

That the gentleman of the leisure class to which Thorstein Veblen referred did not work, was essentially a result of them being free of economic needs. But that does not also mean that the economy and the social peace of the moment, were not also in need of these men not competing for the fewer jobs to be had resulting from an industrial revolution.

The gentleman was encouraged to study philosophy and art by means of the social status he gained when knowing about such matters. In this respect, one of the most important challenges we currently have as a society is how to create social status and other incentives, for the unemployed to become solid and worthy unemployed citizens?

And we need to imbue the unemployed with special pride, because only this way will we keep them from making impossible economic demands... so far I have found no clues about how to handle a bargaining with their union representatives.

Given that we do all have to guard against the dangers of idleness, since the last thing we need is for the structurally idle to be idle, even circumstantially. Many of the current unemployed youth keeps busy with their smart-phones, and we do not want them not to be busy… and so using what is really their net oil revenues, to help them to immediately upgrade to an iPad, sounds like a good start. 

Friends, Venezuela should aspire to good jobs, but also to have the world's best unemployed.

Translated from El Universal, Caracas
PS. July 30, 2014 the new shareholders of El Universal, friends of Chavez and Maduro censored me, and all links to my 14 years of Op-Eds were erased.

PS. Minimum wages helps cause minimal wages.

PS. To get more jobs and higher salaries: Call on all capitalists to exploit any low salaries, for as much as they can. J

PS. Throw out the useless credit-risk-weighted capital (equity) requirements for banks and… if you absolutely must distort, then use potential-of-job-creation-weights instead (and throw in some sustainability-weights too for good measure). J

PS. A Universal Basic Income, since that is not a not-having-a-job-or-not related social contribution, could be a part of the efforts needed. That said these would be my minimum minimorum rules on a UBI

PS. Increased tariffs and minimum wages are superb news… for robot manufacturers L

PS. Perhaps we must put payroll taxes on robots to permit us humans to compete for jobs on more level grounds.

PS. Once social cohesion breaks down it is too late. As a Venezuelan I should know.