I know I've mentioned this before but I'll never forget when I was a kid and I heard about "the unemployment rate" or something for the first time and I tried to get my mom to explain it to me
If these people want to help, why don't we let them? They're poor, so is there not enough stuff for them? We could let them work and they can make stuff for themselves! Or if there already is enough stuff, we could just let everyone else work a little less and then these people can work too. Or just give them the stuff, if it's there already, and they wouldn't have to work because we don't need them to. Why don't we just do that, mommy?
And I honestly don't remember a shred of her answer because I'm 90% sure it was a dodge or otherwise just unsatisfying
Turns out, I was right! Unemployment *doesn't* make sense!
That's not *exactly* how it went down, I remember my first point of confusion was just not understanding why people not having jobs was a problem in the first place
@socalledunitedstates I remember as a kid I didn't understand jobs or money. I thought parents went to work because they liked to and because they wanted to contribute to everyone's access to goods. Then I was taken to a Costco and I saw so much stuff everywhere, even things people didn't need like a lifesized version of the Robot from Lost in Space and that's when I started asking about what was going and thought the entire thing was ridiculous.
@RadioAngel liberals: "capitalism is just human nature! can you imagine the kind of work it'd take to make people understand and accept a different system?"
children who haven't been sufficiently socially conditioned yet: "I don't get it, why don't people just share and help each other?"