NO PITY FOR THE LAZY!!!
Posted on 04/29/2012 7:23:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
I’ve occasionally commented on foolish public policy in the United Kingdom, including analysis on how the welfare state destroys lives and turns people into despicable moochers.
But if you really want to understand the horrifying absurdity of the welfare state, check out these passages from a report in the Daily Mail.
Carl Cooper thought he was doing a public service by offering seven benefits claimants the chance to work for him. But the company boss was flabbergasted when none of them turned up on the first day. Astonishingly, not a single one even had the courtesy to tell the marketing firm boss they would not be coming in. Mr Cooper and other staff members called the new employees to ask them where they were. Initially, some refused to answer their phones when they recognised the number calling them. When the staff finally got through, five said they would be better off staying on state benefits rather than doing the commission-based work. Four of the seven also claimed torrential rain had put them off.
Wow. Five out of seven admitted that mooching off the taxpayers was a better way to live. What does that tell us about the over-generosity of handouts?
Let’s continue.
Mr Cooper, who runs Car Smart, a marketing firm for independent car dealers in Canterbury, Kent, criticised the benefits system and said it rewarded people for doing nothing. He added: ‘I was left stunned when none of the new recruits turned up for work. They are a bunch of workshy layabouts. ‘These are people who are so morally twisted that they would rather stay on the dole than work. ‘People keep saying there are not enough jobs in the UK but the real problem is that there are not enough determined or ambitious people. ‘The benefit system is too generous and encourages the unemployed to stay unemployed and just breeds more laziness.’
But it’s even worse than Mr. Cooper realizes. He’ll still be paying these people, but in the form of taxes that then get redistributed to subsidize idleness.
You might think the moochers would lose their benefits because they chose laziness over work, but you would be wrong.
Mr Cooper said all his employees received a basic retainer of £100 a week initially and are enrolled on to the company’s commission structure, which could see earnings rise to up to £400 a week. The jobseekers who failed to turn up will not lose their benefits because the basic pay is under the minimum wage.
I found the above story via Kyle Smith, who also cites a story from the Times about a crazy proposal to have bureaucrats scrub floors and serve as human alarm clocks for the welfare class.
Town hall officials have been told to get down on their hands and knees and “clean the floors” of the homes they visit under David Cameron’s Troubled Families programme. They have also been urged to turn up at family homes at 7am if necessary to get parents out of bed and children ready for school on time. The orders were issued by the programme head, Louise Casey… “I want to see people rolling up their sleeves and getting down and cleaning the floors if that is what needs to be done. If a family needs to be shown how to heat up a pizza, show them how to do it. If it takes going round three times a week at 7am to get Mum up, then do it.”
I would have included a link to the underlying story, but the Times has the most incompetently designed website I’ve ever encountered (presumably because they want to charge, but they don’t even give you a chance to click on the story and then pay).
Anyhow, I have three quick reactions to this bit of foolishness.
1. I’d like to see the head bureaucrat, Ms. Casey, spend a month scrubbing floors and waking people up at 7:00 a.m. She strikes me as the typical leftist clown, sitting in an office enjoying a cushy and overpaid job while dreaming up absurd ideas on how to waste taxpayer money. Maybe if she gets her hands dirty by “rolling up [her] sleeves,” she’ll learn the difference between blackboard theorizing and the real world.
2. My gut reaction is that the government should cut the handouts to these dysfunctional households. For every day the welfare bums aren’t up on time to get their kids to school, they lose 10 percent of their loot. If their floors are dirty, that’s another 10 percent. If you want to change their behavior, start cutting into the budget for cigarettes and booze.
3. More realistically, we’re dealing with a problem of people who have little if any self-respect, and they pass horrible habits to their children. Kicking them off the dole might wake up some of them, but I suspect more than a few of them are past the point of no return. Society would probably be better off if their kids were put in foster homes, but I’m sure government would screw that up as well.
Stories like this leave me increasingly convinced that the only good approach is radical decentralization. Get these programs out of capital cities like Washington and London. The U.S. welfare reform was a decent start, but get responsibility to the local level. And in cities, put neighborhoods in charge. Have those small communities in charge of raising the money and spending the money.
That approach is far more likely to generate good ideas and good solutions, though I confess I’m pessimistic about anything working.
But we should figure out ways to stop inter-generational poverty and welfare. I gather it’s considered bad form to suggest mandatory birth control for welfare recipients, so has anyone proposed a different approach that might work?
Sounds like the US.
Hunger and cold can be great motivators. End welfare and see how many able bodied people are suddenly able to find work.
It is all just a simple vote buying scheme and the tax payers that are paying it are laughed at by the criminal class. (Read: Politicians)
Amen
Indeed.
Self-esteem they have plenty.
Self-RESPECT, not at all.
After being told how special and wonderful they are, they end up with a thin shell of “ain't-I-the-best” that can crack at the slightest bump.
These self-esteem junkies have no ability to stand on their own merits because they know they have nothing to buttress their claim of self-esteem. Consequently, at the slightest insult or “dis” they have an absolute breakdown. . .all because they expect, no, demand others worship their wonderfulness when they know they ain't that great.
Self-Respect ensures the person's confidence because they know they earned respect from themselves and will not really care what others think.
I have seen section eight recipients nearly mob assault the mailman for bring the reparations, I mean, gubmint checks a couple days late.
You have generations of people in the US that have learned how to eke out an existence on govt. handouts, working part time washing cars, picking up scrap, living in hovels that were handed down to them by their forebears that did work, and generally avoiding anything resembling a forty hour work week.
The crash is going to hurt these people very badly, and when it does, look out, because they have no compunctions about taking what isn’t theirs, and having no qualms about using violence to do so.
I have to deal with these ise;ess eaters everyday. Some have had their cards for years. One handed me his card and said “sorry it’s broken in half, but I’ve had it for eleven years”. I wanted to slap him!
They come with cart loads os steaks and shrimp, chips, pop, cakes and cookies. They “proudly” pull out the EBT card to pay. Then they have another load of toys, clothes and household items I would like to have but can’t afford. They pull out a credit card or a $100 bill to pay.
They have nice clothes, hair and nails done, and an enormous attitude when their card doesn’t have enough money on it. They are the fattest poverty stricken people I have ever seen. Many are illegals who have 3 or more children and another on the way. They have wads of fifty and hundred dollar bills in their wallets. The men use the cards and I wonder “how did this illegal man get this card”? Well, his wife/girlfriend gave it to him thanks to their anchor baby, its momma, and liberal ignorance.
The taxpayers are being spit upon even though we contribute, while the thieves prosper off of our hard work.
They say that there is a rape every ten minutes. Yes there is, and the taxpayers are the victims.
NO PITY FOR THE LAZY!!!
The most important lesson in this story is that welfare dependency knows no race nor ethnicity - in the US it’s largely (though not exclusively) blacks and hispanics who fall into the statist trap; in Britain, it’s only taken a generation or two to suck in the lower echelons of the white population.
A dirty little secret of the liberal do-goooders is that they don’t really think blacks can make it on their own, and so they draw much of the minority population into a continual cycle of welfare dependency, all the while congratulating themselves on their compassion. And with the current administration, providing record numbers of people food stamps and never-ending unemployment benefits, it won’t be long before that culture of dependency seeps out of the ghettos, barrios and white-trash trailer parks into much of middle America.
Think of parasites like worms and ticks. If unchecked, they will ultimately kill the host by literally sucking the lifeblood out of it. Parasites may seem a cruel word to use with respect to our welfare system but it is what it is.
Sad to say, even good people can be destroyed once they enter the welfare system. In the recent economic downturn, I personally know people that lost their jobs that I used to consider honest, hard-working people. But the generous unemployment checks have, I'm sorry to say, corrupted them. One formerly good friend of mine has been out of work for nearly three years and I went over to see him and his wife a few months ago.
It was a sad sight to see. Their once tidy home has been reduced to shambles. Junk and overgrown weeds are in the yard. The home is a dark, dirty place with the shades drawn in the middle of the day with only the light of a couple of TV sets that appear to be perpetually kept on. Yes, they were big screens - recently purchased.
The house was well stocked with food but it was mostly junk. Half empty bags of chips and cookies appears to be everywhere on the filthy kitchen counter and living room coffee table. My friend and his wife basically lies around all day on the couches drinking beer and eating chips while watching TV while dirty dishes pile up in the sink.
It seems lying around the home fosters laziness. People that work 40-60 hrs a week (or more) at fulltime jobs can be seen on weekends running chores, doing yardwork, etc. Their homes and yards are usually kept immaculate. But give them nothing to do all day and everything else falls by the wayside. Now running the laundry and mowing the yard seems like a big hassle once you get used to lounging around all day watching television.
Idleness fosters laziness and it becomes a vicious cycle that utterly destroys the lives of people caught up in it.
The only way we can beat this vicious cycle is to end welfare. Discontinue the EBT cards and rewarding young girls for having babies out of wedlock. Limit unemployment to only a few weeks. Get the federal government and even the state government 100% out of the welfare business. Keep it at the local level.
Once the towns become responsible for any welfare programs, see how fast welfare fraud is eliminated. It's one thing to have people cheating a system that is based in Washington D.C. or in some far-flung state capital that could be hundreds of miles away. But when the town raises your property tax because some freeloaders three houses down from you are cheating the system - well, let's just say that there is nothing like a little peer pressure to get people off their lazy butts.
Time to go Galt and watch the whole thing implode.
excellent article
and it could have been written about the USA.
I had no idea how much we give to people on the dole.
it is the same, why would anyone work when they can LIVE off the rest of us.
did you know we give in addition to WIC and food stamps, cash to dolers?
housing either free or nearly free
extra money at the start of every school year, even to anchor babies?
of course in addition to food stamps we give breakfast lunch and after school snacks, in most ataates all year round including saturdays in some
cimputers to school kids
cell phones and 250 mins
some states give cars
and we cover burial costs.
Seriously who would work at a MickeyD’s or Walmart?
Why does ANYONE even work in the UK????
“Time to go Galt and watch the whole thing implode.”
I did that in 1969 and I’m still waiting! Folks have a remarkable tolerance for societal degradation and socialism, evidently.
At least my life was spent off the grid and outside the matrix. ;^)
The problem with cutting benefits in a nutshell:
1. Eventually, someone publishes a picture of a “starving” child or some exaggerated sob story.
2. Women read the picture and get all weepy.
3. Leftist politicians play to to his sentiment to show how “mean” and “heartless” the reformers are (hurting our kids, blah, blah, blah)
4. Weak-kneed conservatives knuckle under and rescind the reforms.
5. Kids grow up just like their Mum and (? Dad).
That's because the UK invented socialism. Robert Owen, part owner of a cotton mill in Scotland, got rich the John Kerry way: he married into it. He lost his wealth over 4 years funding one of the first socialist commune experiments, in New Harmony Indiana of all places. He returned to the UK a failure but made a living selling socialist propaganda.
New Harmony, a socialist utopia attempt in Indiana: 
Those who enable the dependent class have found a new place to shunt them - onto Social Security Disability.
Dependent ones are bankrupting the SS system for the elderly who paid into it, undermining it for those who really are disabled, and destroying it for those who are currently paying into it.
There is also a practical reality. If you take the job, and it doesn't pan out, then you have to jump through all the hoops you already jumped through once to get back on the dole. People who have managed to finally get the benefits and housing and income they want from the government aren't going to risk it for a paycheck that they could lose, and then leave them with nothing.
I know people like this. It takes a long time and it takes a lot of patience, even a lot of mentoring, to work the system and get all the benefits. Once you've got them you won't risk them for a job that pays maybe minimum wage which could lay you off tomorrow. They won't do it.
Thats why the only answer is to make the benefits contingent upon going through some vocational training, and then cut them off on date certain.
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