The work-first principle (“arbetslinjen”) was instituted for pretty good reason: a welfare state requires a high rate of employment to fund itself.
But in the name of the work-first principle and “austerity”, that higher goal is constantly being undermined both on a primary and secondary level.
On a primary level the welfare state itself being dismantled and destroyed. The entire justification for to the work-first principle was to preserve and treasure and care for the welfore state. That “to each according to need” would be funded by “from each according to ability”. When the work-first principle becomes a means to destroy that welfare state we’ve all been made fools.
On a secondary level the goal of a high rate of employment, even that goal is being undermined. Help is being replaced by requirements. The public sector (our biggest employer and the reason this land survived the 2008 financial crash) is being gutted and looted. Employment rates are plummeting.
Let alone meaningful employment, spending time and labor and resources on things that actually make the world better. We are drowning in meaningless and distracting and ugly ads to buy buy buy while the world is burning and is the hottest it has been in 125000 years.
What’s really going on is this: It’s been the goal of the rich-gets-richer party for hundreds of years to keep the breadline long, cold, and uncomfortable. That is great for them because that means buying labor (“employing workers”) is a buyer’s market where you get the pick of the litter and can keep prices (“salaries”) down, and, the workers that you do have employed are less likely to organize or have demands. Being unemployed is deliberately designed to sting while at the same time as many people as possible are being kept unemployed.
That means that the lived experience for many people is meaningless drudgery. They suffer with meaningless WFTSOC so that the labor that actually is being extracted and exploited for the gainful profit of the owners is cheaper and more compliant.