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 ...
you are the exception....
good for your hubby, i was navy...its not easy moving up in rank as an enlisted man much less making it to the officer ranks....i tip my hat to him....
Should the employed be taxed into poverty to feed them?
YES, but only if minimim wage laws are repealed and if work age rules are also repealed. Then many people could find jobs that are paid at their level of ability.
You got me thinking about a story I was told of a famous man who would disappear and ride a box car for the "freedom" it gave him. I guess you called them hobos back then. I can't verify the name so won't post it, but he was given food in his travels at the Shaker Village in Maine (still there - Sabbath Day Lake) and upon returning home sent them a gift of silverware. (so the story went). But while trying to research and verify this story [Shaker tale), it was interesting to note that those hobos that rode the rail's DID WORK 2-3 days at a time for food, lodging, etc. They were called bums and hobos but set out to find whatever job they could. This Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression [source] talked about the number of children that rode the rails, "the boxcar kids"looking for work.
Artists rode the "free" rails and gave of their talent for food and lodging. One itinerant artist [a rock, a tree, a bush] has large murals on stage backdrop in an old Grange hall in N.Anson, Maine. I spoted a simple painting at a flea market, and my friend grabbed it up to add to his collection of that same artist (name escapes). Simple art often painted on used carboard (now collectible) in exchange for a warm place for the night, whatever labor was available.
We've all seen Tramp art which was created by hobos, said started by German or Scandinavian immigrants who traveled the countryside selling or trading their wares for a living.
Jack London, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, Woodie Guthrie, actor Burl Ives rode the rails.
How the world has changed....where's the adventure or just the romance of taking an adventure into an unknown.
I think that, in general, unemployment insurance is an excellent idea. It addresses an immediate, temporary problem (got laid off) and can stop it from becoming a long-term drain on society (bankruptcy, foreclosure, etc).
However, if, after nearly 2 years (and I'd argue that one year is plenty long enough) .... you haven't come up with a solution to get out of your situation (new job, move, new career, marry into money, *something*) ... then the problem ceases being the taxpayer's (mine) and starts being *yours*.
IMHO.
Anytime one pays one to do nothing one will get plenty of takers!
EXACTLY!
Bingo.
Although, let me add this qualifier - for instance, if a person on unemployment uses that time to retrain for a new job - think laid-off assembly line worker going to community college for a year to learn a trade - then, as a taxpayer, I look at that money as an investment. The person will better themselves, become more hire-able, maybe start their own business, etc etc etc. And, ideally, assume some of the tax burden from me.
But, I also wonder how many people are actually doing something like that, in comparison to those just sitting around on their asses waiting for the checks to stop coming.
That picture is going to haunt me...
Our unions and our government are also forcing work to go overseas without OSHA. In New Jersey where Affirmative Action is rampant, for a job working for the government, a foreigner has a better chance of getting the job over a native born New Jersean who has paid taxes all his/her life.
When I started in the computer industry in the late 60’s there were very few foreigners in the business, and it was a good field to be in. The foreigners didn’t even have computers. Now, half of the people I work with are on a green card, or the job itself has been shipped overseas.
I’m supposed to be gratified that I have a job in my own country !!
My college kids can’t even find a summer job.
The end is near, all hell is going to break loose I just hope I’m dead before it happens.
Congrats on catching that as well as me. What the scribbler is trying to say is that if a person loses a job, they shouldn't be expected to take just any new "demeaning" job. The scribbler is actually supporting the idea of a gov. stipend for these people. He automatically makes the case that anyone out of work deserves a new job commensurate with their old. Sorry, life doesn't work that way. If the only job available is digging ditches, there's a shovel over there.
Great points.
What you have described is the difference between the pre-radical-60’s generation and the current generation which I have labeled...
the “Gimme” generation.
I am disgusted at how willing to take without doing anything in return they are — manifest by how few of them say “thank-you” when they ring up your sale — AND RATHER EXPECT YOU TO THANK THEM FOR ACTUALLY WORKING.
I have witnessed the same pattern many times. In my opinion a person should not be able to collect unemployment until they have been unemployed for at least a month.
Thank you!!! I’m very proud of him. He worked really hard to get there. Went to school and served at the same time. He’d go to school at night and studying at night for 2 years, so he could move up. Was on a ship 3x’s and in Iraqi first war.
Your link on teen hobos during the Great depression was awesome. It moved me to tears just now.
Hats off to you, my friend.
When I was eight years old, I took over my older brother's paper route because he was too busy mowing lawns. (He had reached the ripe old age of 11.) I've been working ever since. A few years later, I started mowing a few lawns with my brother, and was still delivering newspapers. Then I delivered papers in the afternoon and washed dishes at night at the local steakhouse. Then I detasseled corn in the hot sun, and I lied about my age to do it because I was tired of washing dishes.
At that point I had to give up the paper route to my little sister. I was sad to let go of it. My brother had gone out and sold subscriptions, door to door. He built up the route from around 40 subscribers to around 50. I worked on it a lot longer than he did, and got it up to around 70 subscribers. Of course I was lucky they were building a subdivision just a half mile down the road, and all those newcomers were easy to sell. The same day there was a sign of habitation at a new house, I was knocking on the door. Every subscription was another 40 cents a week in my pocket. But detasseling made me give up all that. I was getting $2.90 an hour from detasseling. That was big money. I was 13 years old, and it wasn't even legal for me to be working.
Then when I was 16, I worked at a gas station in the days when it wasn't self serve, because I was tired of detasseling corn. I pumped the gas, washed the windshield, and then asked whether they wanted their oil or their tire pressure checked. Before I knew it, I was changing oil and rotating tires. Then I started doing brake jobs, replacing hoses, mounting tires and flushing radiators for a big 15-cent per hour raise. I drove a tow truck through the winter, and then I lied about my age again, and got a "good" job building grain elevators, four months before my 18th birthday. That was good money. Seven bucks an hour was a lot of money for a 17-year-old kid in the 1970s. And again, it wasn't even legal for me to be working there.
Again, I was lucky because all the (slightly) older teenagers who would normally take those jobs were going to Vietnam, including my brother. Or they were joining the Navy or the Air Force to avoid getting drafted. Nobody went to Canada to dodge the draft. Anybody who did that would have been disowned.
When my boss found out, he drove me home. He apologized to me because his insurance wouldn't cover him with a 17-year-old working there, and he said he was sorry to see me go. About a month later, on my 18th birthday he gave me a call and asked me to come back.
By that time I was driving a Mustang that I paid for and insured myself, and I was already back at my old job at the garage, and had my first paycheck from that job. My boss was offering to pay for my classes and make me a certified mechanic. All before I was even 18 years old.
Nowadays childhood obesity is a problem? I was eating three huge meals a day and always in great shape, because I was always working it off. There are a few really wonderful and inspiring exceptions among today's youth. But for most of them, if you tell them to go out and get a job like any one of the teenagers' jobs I just described, so that they could buy just one tank of gas for themselves, they'd look at you like you were from another planet.
It just makes me crazy.
I asked a simple question: "You're telling me Wal Mart hasn't been hiring in over a year?" You would have thought I told him that I had killed his dog.
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