The problem in developed countries is quite different, there's plenty of capital (in comparison) and many of the people with the ability to make effective use of it are already doing so. The unemployed remnant is in a very different pickle. For example in the US there are far more unfilled jobs than there are unemployed people, it's that they are largely in different places and require skills and experience the unemployed don't have. That's a completely different problem to the one in Kenya, say.

That can't mean "unfilled jobs at market wage", because jobs at market wage get filled (that's what market wage means). So you're talking about unfilled jobs at below market wage. Of course there'd be tons of those posted. Not sure that comparing it to the number of unemployed people means anything.

All that happens then is that a suitable applicant quits their lesser paid job and takes mine, but at a market level that just shuffles the problem around. There's still an unfilled vacancy. It doesn't matter how much money you offer, the invisible hand of the market can't magically conjure up qualified experienced applicants out of thin air.

This is the problem with this kind of blinkered market forces fundamentalism. The market isn't instantaneous, there isn't an endless supply of every product or service depending only on price, to fill every need. The real world is lumpy, and slow, inelastic and constrained.

if we just broaden the handouts from taxes on the large corporate winners, couldn't that make this problem worse? unless there's something else driving it.

Eventually there'll be no truly useful purpose for most people EXCEPT as a functioning market for selecting goods and services, for the benefit of the much smaller percentage that can innovate and run small businesses. Heaping scorn on the majority of people seems like a weird strategy.

By far the most effective technique for improving conditions for the small entrepreneur is to dump money into the customer base, even if that customer base won't be making entirely 'good' decisions. Hell, if you don't like them all doing heroin at home in their rooms, build nightclubs. If they are not so broke that they can't come out, they'll start attending your nightclub because there are other things in life besides nodding off on soma.

People with no money tend to think they need to use any money they get ASAP on fast rewards, only when they have enough money to save do they start thinking about saving any at all. Of course this will hardly work to get those already addicted to change their ways overnight, but some long term financial stability can change the worldview of new generations so they plan for their own future instead of living like they were to die tomorrow.

The problem is we already do this in the US, and we've seen the concurrent rise of a new drug epidemic arise alongside it among the same demographic who are receiving disability.

Your post that I was replying to was also very specifically NOT about the working poor, but about jobless people on disability having a "lack of purpose".