On the "exploited" conference

As every year in the last 7 years, the "exploited" conference, or formally known as the "social justice" conference, took place in front of Tel Aviv's David InterContinental hotel, manifesting against Israel's Business Conference which was held inside the luxurious hotel.

The conference is considered as a summit of all social activists from most of Israel's left organizations, whether economic or political left (on this problematic coupling and its internal contradiction in another post), as well as organizations whose relevance to this kind of activities is beyond me, as Tel Aviv University's students council or Green Course, which is an environmentalists organization, whose joining this solidarity might prevent possible future coalitions with the business sector in cases which both sides' interests are similar.

On the conference website there are many references to the linkage between capital and politics and the inevitable outcome of this linkage - corruption. I have written about it in the past, but I will mention again the contradiction in the economic left idea - you can't expect the government to be involved in every aspect of our lives (including our economic lives), and in the same time limit the government's power. When the governments dominates the economic activity (just as the protesters in the conference want), it is natural that private sector people will network with politicians, since they can benefit from this relationship. I guess some politicians have true friends, maybe because they are nice people, but many of their relationships are interest-based, which result in nepotism, cronyism and other sorts of corruption.

Anyway, today I read an article about the conference on "Ha-Ir", a wide spread Tel Aviv local weekly. I will refer to several chosen quotes by the participants answering the question why they think Israel's situation is so bad as they claim it to be:

"They won't give anymore unemployment allowance to people under the age of 28" - can anyone explain to me why should we give unemployment compensation to people who are young and able? Lucky me, I'll be 28 this year, so can start planning my retirement...

By the way, this subject of young labor is a huge deal in other countries too. It seems young people don't want to work no matter where they live. See what happened in France a few months ago, during the students protest against the CPE (Contrat Première Embauche), a reform suggestion, making it easier for employers to fire employees under the age of 26, during their first two years on the job.

Firing someone is a long and painful process to the employer in France, and changing this status quo, is of course bad for the young people, that can suddenly find themselves jobless, without the aid of their union. Is that really so?

The result of this status quo is that employers prefer to hire experienced workers, with a proven record in the labor market. This way they know exactly who they hire, and what they get for the money they pay. Hiring a university graduate with no experience is a risk, since if he or she aren't suitable for the job, firing them isn't an easy task as I mentioned, and the employers are "stuck" with employees they don't want.

Unemployment rates in France are relatively high, compared with other developped countries, but when focusing on young people, unemployment rate jumps up to 25% - every fourth young frenchman is unemployed.
So you might say the today's situation doesn't benefit the young people of France, and the suggested reform, which isn't guaranteed to give the best solution to the problem, might have encouraged employers to hire young people without fearing that they won't be able to fire them if they need to.

"They cut budgets to 'development towns' - an interesting name, development towns. I think they should call them depravedness towns, since nothing has developped there along the years whey enjoyed government support.

"The 'Wisconsin' plan (a welfare to work program) is still running" - OMG! they make people look for a job as a condition for recieving social welfare. I don't know when the guys at the labor party or at the youth movement "working and studying youth" forgot the principal value in their names - work, work and work!

The one I liked best is "The economy is sick - I wish it was dead". It's obvious that the economy is some seperate organ, which has nothing to do with us, and has everything to do with businessmen, exploiters, corrupted ministers and parliament members and evil employers. It will be so good if the economy dies, and takes with it all those plotters and schemers. This way we'll be able to live quitely in a world with no money, no trade and no need to work at all.