Ok, so you raise an excellent doctrinal question, its one of philosophy. What is the role of the state in employment?
A libertarian view would have the state remove any barriers (short of money) that would prevent an individual from improving their own skills.
A traditional capitalist view would have the state provide enough educational opportunity to become 'minimally skilled' and achieve a living wage.
A socialist view would add to the capitalist view with a support network for folks with additional disadvantages such as learning disabilities or other impairments.
A communist view would provide jobs regardless of skill even if the product produced nothing of economic value.
A despotic or corrupt view would empower people to enslave others to increase their economic output as long as it didn't make the state 'look bad' to the international press.
Its a spectrum (more like a 3D surface) with folks all over the map. So far there have been few long term successes when the laborers were not able to improve their own skill sets, and some pretty spectacular failures when the labor pool was artificially prevented from improving itself.
You're misrepresenting the socialist and communist positions here. They aim to provide all education (up to university level) on a meritocratic basis. Since they're committed to providing for everybody, their idea is to get everyone to do something useful (the "from everybody according to their ability" part).
If someone can't become skilled through training and education, they should be given work that doesn't
require education (say, a janitor). Makes that person feel more useful vs just giving them unemployment checks for staying home.
Fair point, it is part of the socialist and communist doctrine.
There is an interesting 'post period benefit capture' issue that comes up. Lets say you're a young rebel and fritter away your youth rebelling rather than learning. Sadly in the US a lot of these folks end up either in the criminal justice system or on the marginalized edge of society. There are some great programs run by ex-gang members in LA [1] that tries to give people the skills they need, after they realize they need them, which may be much later than when the 'system' would normally provide. Adults going back for a GED and then on to college for additional skills.
A libertarian view would have the state remove any barriers (short of money) that would prevent an individual from improving their own skills.
A traditional capitalist view would have the state provide enough educational opportunity to become 'minimally skilled' and achieve a living wage.
A socialist view would add to the capitalist view with a support network for folks with additional disadvantages such as learning disabilities or other impairments.
A communist view would provide jobs regardless of skill even if the product produced nothing of economic value.
A despotic or corrupt view would empower people to enslave others to increase their economic output as long as it didn't make the state 'look bad' to the international press.
Its a spectrum (more like a 3D surface) with folks all over the map. So far there have been few long term successes when the laborers were not able to improve their own skill sets, and some pretty spectacular failures when the labor pool was artificially prevented from improving itself.