Posted on 04/26/2010 5:20:58 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
As an election slogan it would certainly have some appeal:
“We should cut all your benefits and starve you into going back to work.”
Those are the words of Lord (Digby) Jones, a former Labour trade minister, on a television programme in which two middle-class youngsters said there was no point looking for work because they got £12,000 a year in benefits.
Surprisingly, when he uttered words to such effect to the Labour cabinet in 2008, “They all just said, ‘What? What are you talking about? You can’t say that’.”
I wonder why? “We’ll starve you back to work” – not quite what Keir Hardie had in mind, is it?
But he has a point. The main problem with the unemployment system is that it does not differentiate enough between young and old. People who’ve worked their whole lives and find themselves out of work because their industry is dying – ie coalminers, carmakers, welders, and, er, journalists – shouldn’t be forced to scrub toilets, pick up litter or do anything else that might heap further humiliation upon them.
On the other hand it’s perverse that a million young people aged 16-24 are not in education, employment or training, and that they’re allowed to waste their lives. These are formative years in which people’s characters are fixed. If they spend their entire early twenties at home smoking a bong while mummy and uncle Government pick up the tab, what hope for their future?
It’s even more perverse that this was allowed to happen while the British economy was desperate for cheap labour, and had to import hundreds of thousands to do the jobs the “Brits wouldn’t do” (including working on the Olympic village, an utter scandal).....
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Sounds good to me.
Only one little problem though. What happens when there are no more taxpayers?
Seriouslly, we have to stop sending jobs overseas and stop giving money away to freeloaders. Some unfortunate people do need a handout, and those should be helped to get back on their feet. But avoiding work to be a leech and suck the taxpayers dry should be criminal.
While I would not particularly enjoy it, I think that I would find scrubbing toilets for a living far less humiliating than sitting on my ass letting other people subsidize my life.
exactly, growing up i sold fruist & veggies on the side of the road, i washed dishes, i pumped gas, i dug ditches for sewer lines, then joined the miltary. i worked to get where i am doing all the dirty jobs people today don’t want to do...they all think they deeserve to start at the top....well i have news for them...it doesn’t work that way unless daddy owns the company....
I’m sorry but I think welfare/etc should be as close to subsistence existence as possible.
I still on occasion take food to the food bank and am flabbergasted by the people pulling in there to get food driving newer Camrys and Ford Explorers, whatever!
Hell, all three of my rides are older than most I see in the parking lot at that place.
The way to stop sending jobs overseas is to reign in Government make-do agencies like the EPA and Safety Agencies like OSHA and such. They cause many unfunded mandates for businesses and add to the allure of foreign shores for factory construction.
I can not even remember all the jobs I had starting at 16.
And another victim in the law-of-unintended consequences is that those who are using the safety net as a hammock are breaking that hammock so that the safety net will not be there for those who truly need it.
In the USA, the Government excersizes the poweer to use the force of law enforcement to prevent people from infinging on government sold franchise.
The situation is such that the working poor who would, during the depression, have hung a taxi sign on their car, or set up a stand out front selling burgers will be arrested, tried, and fined for producing their own work by today’s Government.
This socialism that has crept in under the guise of fairness, safety, and promoting health is a factor people need to address in their politics if they are going to claim to be conservative.
In America today, the protection rackets carry badges.
Good points. Don't forget all the unemployed who work under-the-table to supplement their checks. Or the many young women who make more money because they don't have to pay day care, gas, food, etc.
In the future, please post some sort of warning just ahead posting a disturbing image of this type. A non-caricature image of this person is frightening enough!:)
Not necessarily starved, BUT made to feel that they CAN work and contribute...
After all.... don’t Liberals LOVE to remind us how we are all, as individuals and as a society, the product of their ‘survival of the fittest’ theory????
I love the way Liberals beat us over the head with their ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking trying to convince us we are all really glorified apes with no right to any greater moral/psychological/religious awareness than your average tree slug…. THEN beg our charity (which, as Christians we provide voluntarily, anyway) and humanitarian empathy whenever some criminal, bust-out druggie or undocumented freeloader can’t function in our society and must be supported by everyone else who learned in youth to be responsible for himself/herself and to pay his/her own way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They make me sick.
BTW - I have been unemployed and NEVER once felt anything but shame and humiliation not to be working. No one went out of their way to coddle me or make it out to be anything but what it was. I got myself back into an employment situation as fast as I could, whatever the job…and took it from there.
I have worked for daddy. Not all it is cracked up to be and certainly not starting at the top.
Not to be mean-spirited or cold-hearted but there are many who subsist by taking the dole, lowering their personal standards and making do. They refuse to work at any job they don’t “want” o9r find “demeaning”. They want so much per hour...not just what they might be “worth”. They do some part time stuff “off the books” and just pocket the money. They take advantage of every liberal “program” they can find. They mainly just sit around. Clever, slackers, losers, desperate or whatever...I just don’t think they should be supported in their society-undermining attitudes and status.
Exactly!!!! I did baby sitting and was a soda jerk, for those that are old enough to remember that ....lol I also worked at a grocery store for several years and insurance company and did temp work. My hubby started as an E2 in the Navy and worked hard, I mean hard. When he retired he was a Lt. Commander. There is no free lunch in this world.
Actually, that is the way it works in the natural order of things. Are socialists are now just figuring this out? I doubt it.
Can’t really blame them. They have a choice of either exploiting the system or letting the sytem exploit them. -Through extortionate taxes, ethnic cleansing and failure of law enforcement etc... Why should they show any loyalty towards their country when their country shows no loyalty towards them?
This is what inevitably happens when the social contract is broken. And it is a good thing. The sooner the system is bankrupted the sooner can our civilization be saved (if it’s even still possible).
Great observation.
"The social safety net should not be a hammock."
I agree. My daughter-in-law was laid off last year, and loved it. She did my landscaping, spent a lot of time with her kids, and redocorated her home. She was off for two months, when she was offered a job for less pay, etc. She took the job, because she has always worked.
Clockwork Orange PING!
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