On Unemployment, Volume II

The need for further exploration of the economic injustice of unemployment should be obvious. Unemployment is currently at historically high rates and these high rates may be becoming structural. Aside from inequality, unemployment is accordingly the problem that is most likely to put critical pressure on our political institutions, disrupt the social fabric of our way of life, and even threaten the continuation of liberalism itself. Despite the obvious importance of the problem of unemployment, however, there has been a curious lack of attention paid to this issue by contemporary non-Marxist political philosophers. On Unemployment explores the moral implications of the problem of unemployment despite the continuing uncertainty involving both its causes and its cures. Reiff takes up a series of questions about the nature of unemployment and what justice has to tell us about what we should do, if anything, to alleviate it. The book is broken into two key parts. Part I of the book contains the bulk of the necessary theoretical discussion. Part II suggests how we might implement these more general observations in the real world. It discusses the politics of unemployment and the extent to which opposition to some or all of the book's various proposals stem not from empirical disagreements about what are the best solution for the problem of unemployment, but from more basic moral disagreements about whether the reduction of unemployment is indeed an appropriate moral goal. This exciting new text will be essential for scholars and readers across business, economics, and finance, as well as politics, philosophy, and sociology.