This week nearly 2500 people lined up outside the doors of Countdown's new supermarket in Manukau, South Auckland to apply for 150 jobs. What this fact should illustrate is that there are very few, if any, dole bludgers out there.

In an economy coming out of recession, the fact that a new retail outlet is opening is a positive sign. But what the 2500 applicants personally recognised for themselves on Thursday is that unemployment is still trending upwards. On the same day they were standing in the queue came confirmation of this in the latest Unemployment Benefit figures from the Ministry of Social Development. These showed that nearly 66,328 people were on the dole in December, up from the 58,541 recorded in November, a 13 percent increase.

These figures and the number of South Auckland supermarket job applicants should give pause for thought to the beneficiary bashers.

Within this context, I am reminded of a recent lecture delivered by Emeritus Professor Jim Flynn at Otago University. A long time social democrat, Flynn asked as to how all of a sudden many thousands of people could be inflicted with the contagion of 'laziness disease' as he put it. In other words, how could the millions of people who have become unemployed around the world as the result of the Great Recession of 2009 have voluntarily decided to forfeit their income all of a sudden and become poor?

Yes, it is true that beneficiary bashers make the old Victorian distinction between the genuine and non-genuine poor. Many bashers do recognise that people become involuntarily unemployed and do their best to find new work. Otherwise, in the minds of the bashers, some unemployed people are 'lazy bludgers' who can't be supposedly bothered to get off their arse and do any work due to their receiving a benefit.

What I can't understand is as to why so many people would think that living on approximately $140.00 (plus supplementary assistance) equals a great lifestyle. I doubt that few if any people genuinely would. When talking to beneficiary bashers (and they come from all walks of life, including from within the working class) they tend to cite an anecdotal example of someone they heard about (often indirectly) being a bludger. This is most often, for example, the son or daughter of a second cousin or neighbour or something along those lines - in other words, a person they don't personally know.

I personally believe that unemployment is more the result of a deficit of demand within the economy. We get these deficits every now and again within our capitalist system - they are called recessions. Right now we are coming out of one of the worst recessions in living memory and there are many thousands more New Zealanders who are unemployed as a result. I concede that even in good times there is still significant unemployment. For example, during the most recent boom (2000-2008) the number of unemployed New Zealanders never dropped below 80,000. By contrast, from the 1950s until the late 1970s (the height of the Keynesian era), we enjoyed full employment with average unemployment rates hovering between 0.2 and 1 percent (there can't have been too many bludgers then, could there?). After the First Oil Shock of 1973, comparatively higher levels of unemployment (above 2 percent) began to be recorded.

High unemployment only became entrenched after the advent of Rogernomics in 1984 as free market economic policies laid entire industries to waste. Monetarism ensured that the cost of borrowing remained high, thus impeding much needed business and consumer spending which helped keep unemployment high. Furthermore, unemployment is used as a tool by capital to suppress wage rates as with an excess supply of unemployed workers, the lower demand for labour helps drive the 'price' of an individual worker down within the marketplace. This is why Karl Marx remarked that the unemployed were capitalism's 'reserve army of labour'.

That's why it's morally wrong to keep on blaming the unemployed for their plight. When a person is long-term unemployed, it may mean that they have become so discouraged and stopped looking for work altogether. I also find it repugnant that the unemployed and other beneficiary groups are (to paraphrase a song title from The Eagles) 'hit for getting up and hit for getting down.'

What is really needed to cure unemployment (and it's happened before) is to run a Keynesian economic policy that creates real jobs that pay decent wages for all who want them. And then the bashers might have nothing to bash on about anymore - helleujah!