All those of an anarcho-capitalist persuasion or their ilk, read no further. You have been warned.
there's usually at least 1 person in a household working so somehow we get by
there's also quite a lot war pensions and some unregistered work
about the cannon, yeah, probably
Unfortunately that is not an uncommon situation all throughout southern Europe. But there are a couple of interesting places in which the inhabitants are trying to change things by themselves, step by step.
One such example would be the town of Marinaleda in Spain (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinaleda). It's only a small town, with less than 3000 people, that, faced with lack of employment, housing and other basic necessities, was able to turn it around to full employment, and housing for everyone for €15 a month (though you have to help with the construction process and you can't sell the house afterwards apparently). The process initially involved taking over unused land, and then recruiting unemployed workers to build much needed houses and basic infrastructure.
I guess it's a way to kick start things though scaling it to a larger city would be problematic; but with that much unemployment in your city, do you think you guys could pull something like this off?
A quote from the Marinaleda's Mayor:
They all thought that the market was God, who made everything work with his invisible hand. Before, it was a mortal sin to talk about the government having a role in the economy. Now, we see we have to put the economy at the service of man.
—Mayor Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, May 2009 remarks about Spain's real estate bust and rampant unemployment.
