In response to a reader's comments

In response to my post on Unemployment socrates comments:

1. the global market is too integrated for one government to be able to combat unemployment on it's own,
   
2. the current consumption levels are unsustainable, which will lead to a crash and social unrest
   
3. the only solutions to keep the current consumption levels are a)accept many low paid workers into the first-world economies, or b)buy as many goods as possible from low income countries (Vietnam, Singapore, China, India, etc.)
   
4. to control the social unrest that may be caused by point 2 governments are using the supposed "war on terror" as an excuse to have a tighter grip in society
   

I'd like to comment on the first statement:

the global market is too integrated for one government to be able to combat unemployment on it's own

Although it is true that the global market is very integrated - as witnessed by ripple effects caused by the Asian Tiger's crisis in the 90's - it is not totally true that a single government cannot do much against it.
Again I go back to the Asian crisis of the 90's. Joseph Stiglitz[1] argues in his book that the devaluation of the Thai Baht was worsened by the policies imposed by the IMF. Indeed those same policies caused the economic collapse in Argentina in 2002[2].
What this tells us is that the current global financial system is not ready to handle economic crisis on a local scale, the question is: if the we cannot attack this type of problems with a global approach why should we not use a local approach?
Indeed a local approach was what some of the Asian economies took with very positive results. And Poland and China are cited by Stiglitz as having taken a different approach than what the Washington consensus (IMF, World Bank, etc.) advocated and have had success in implementing important reforms in their economies without going through the same troubles as the Asian countries that followed the IMF's advice.

The global financial system is not ready to deal with one country's problems, its interests are far more on the side of conserving the wealth of those that already have it than protecting those that most require help, an example of that is what the IMF did in Argentina: trying to avoid Argentina's default on debt at the cost of famine and strife for the Argentinean peoples.

So, my point is: there is a solution to unemployment that will avoid social unrest and will not cause an economic crisis, but that solution requires more courage and action from local governments, not necessarily more IMF/World Bank intervention.

If you are interested in this "local approach" you can read more about "microcredit", just google for it. Microcredit initiatives have done a lot to reduce poverty in many countries, both rich and poor.

[1] Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its discontents, Penguin books, 2002
[2] for a comment on Argentina's economic collapse