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Work for benefits?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
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I'm not sure but last time I read about this the idea was to allow private companies to run the 'community work' schemes. Obviously, they're going to have to be paid as well, along with the 'workers' benefit. I wonder if these private companies are good friends of some prominent MPs.
I'm also concerned about what exactly constitutes 'community work', there's very little work I can think of that directly benefits everyone in the community. What if these people are used as labor for private profit enterprises, will they be paid minimum wage for their work?
If there's so much public community work apparently available why not give people actual real jobs doing them? Forcing them to accept a real job is far fairer than making them 'work for benefits'.
probably both the cost of doing this combined with the effective hourly rate would be tantamount to subsidised slave labour
this country doesn't have 1 job to every person, so therefore it's unfair
Much like with probation and rehabilitation, money put into helping people to get skills and get back into work does save in the longer term.
The big stumbling block is what do you do about people who really dont want to work, who wont get new skills - just kick them out on the street?
Dont really see a problem in letting them starve.
And if they don’t obediently curl up and die, but enter a life of crime to feed themselves and their families? I'd suggest jail is a lot more expensive than benefits.
Food stamps and emergency housing. You can still feed and shelter people, but make it so low quality that they are tempted to go and find a job
Well that's a great idea for single men and women who happen to refuse to work. Hardly fair on any kids they happen to have, who've done nothing to deserve such a shit deal though.
Its hardly fair on the kids if your parents refuse to work, anyway.
If we are going to press gang unemployed people into forced labour at below the minimum wage you may find that others are forced out of the labour market.
Emergency housing? Force them to live in squallor in other words. I dont know whether you have been in much council housing in the most deprived areas but its not exactly all that much above squallor now.
so what would you do? let those Lazy little shit have good housing, nice food, money to buy nice things?
I would certainly invest a lot more into social housing, the current standards in parts of London are truly shocking. It really isnt surprising that the kids there are angry with the world.
As for job seekers, as I said further up it needs to be well funded and it needs to the tailored to the individuals needs. Many of them wont have the skills needed in the current job market, so we should teach them.
As for those who persistantly refuse to join in, then yes I do think there should be some sort of community service - but it does need to be managed to make sure kids lives arent ruined for the sins of their parents.
More than anything though I think we are targetting the wrong people - we are (as virtually always) blaming those with virtually no power in society for societies problems.
there are lots of working people who live in some very shit places just because they cant afford anything better, i would be a little more worried about them then some lazy little cunts.
About as much as his pocket money, probably.
Most of it isn't though (and the majority is improving - eg decent homes funding). And yes if someone can't be arsed to work they should get the bare minimum. I'm happy to pay for people who can't work because they're ill or disabled or can't get a job. I'm not happy to pay for people who can't be bothered.
And that's why they have to look at the system again. Frankly, generations of people have been screwed by letting them live on benefits, they pass it on to their children and their children's children. none of them have an idea about how to have a job. This is an attempt to break that cycle
Will it work? fuck knows
But we do know the current system isn't...
I don't see what these changes will achieve. Why does someone have to be unemployed for months before they're given help finding a job? The government has tried to change the system over the last few years and it's just made it harder for people who really are unable to work, while the people who just don't want to work adapt to the changes and carry on as normal. You can't change someone's way of life just by making things hard for them, you have to make sure they understand why they should change.
However, mistakes have been made over the years. The Thatcher government made the disastrous error in the 1980s of putting millions of people on Incapacity Benefit. (or Invalidity Benefit, as it was known back then) This was symptomatic of the way government was increasingly using the welfare state in order to conceal its own failings. New Labour, in its 11 years in power, has done next to nothing about this, and I am unconvinced that James Purnell and the Nu-Labour clan are sincere in their desires to reform the welfare state. Even the most pathetically modest reforms in this government have to be watered-down to the point of meaninglessness, simply to pander to Labour dinosaurs and the cheque-writers at the trade unions.
History will repeat itself once more.
Interestingly, unemployment* has fallen but total employment has remained steady. This indicates that more people are deciding they don't need a job, or are classed as unable to work. In essence, in order to make it look like like unemployment is going down, the government have made it easier for people to get off jobseekers and onto some other form of benefit, or by just excluding them from jobseekers altogether.
*as defined by the government
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/unemployment/the-true-level-of-unemployment-in-uk/
It's a practice which has to be stopped.
Would you be prepared to do community service for your benefits simply because you've been a printer or office manager or financial adviser or mechanic all your life and the only offers you've had since your redundancy were for shit-paid, no-skill, dead end jobs? I know I wouldn't...
Isn't it? We have much lower unemployment than the European average, and roughly the same as America (which btw counts 1 hour of paid employment per week as an "employed" person, so their actual rate is much higher than the European equivalent statistics). Ours is 5.1%, so we should be looking at countries like Denmark (3.1%), Holland (2.6%), and Austria (4.1%) to see how they achieve it. But tbh, we're not that bad.
Incidentally, I think that this offers a picture of the sort of thing you might expect from a more harsh welfare system.
Tbh, I reckon that employment levels have very little to do with welfare tbh. I just don't believe that welfare is an incentive for anyone to not work.