Work for welfare - can it work for society and the unemployed.?

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Well, this is a bit tricky.
I usually approach any situation by gathering the facts, hearing every side of the story and then come up with a neat, elegant and fair solution.

But this time - even the Green Man is stumped.
what are we to do about the Unemployed, folks? let me tell you the problem.
First, have an LJ cut, now , are you siitting comfortablely? Then I'll begin...


The problem is the unemployed.

Ok , some people suffer from MS, or other conditions - they got and arm and a leg blown off in a war somewhere they didn't start that means that they are medically incapacitated.

And I think that if you can't work, that society ough to take care of you - especially if you happen to bee a disabled war veteran. Maybe you can do a desk job , answering the phone and helping people like yourself. but , even if not - the goverment should take care of you and I for one will pay taxes to make this happen

But what about it if you are young , fit and want a job , but can't find work?
Oh, it's happened to me before now. the banking system or the economy has gone tits up and a million people like me find ourselves laid off because the people in charge cannot do #their# goddam job properly. If I do a lousy job, I get fired. if some politician does alousy job and screws up the economy and starts a recession, thousands and maybe millions of innocent , hardworking men and women get fired. And that isn't right. So, it's down to the guvvermint to pay us and help us find more work.

But , then we have a situation where young men , brought up in the Welfare state that people like me help make, who don't ~want to work. they 'play the system'. they sign on , collect what the Brits call "the dole" - unemployment benefits, and do sod all in return. they have no intentions of getting a job. They just slob around all day, watching day time TV and reading the sports pages!While people like you and me have to keep them , either paying taxes or getting less benifits than we are entitled to in order to support these lazy sods who did nothing or do nothing to earn either our sympathy or our gratitude.

so, waht do we do with such people?

It has been suggested that we set up ' unemployment boot camps', or Nationl Service. "Put 'em in the Army" some say- that'll sort 'em out. Now, it has been done. A reality TV experiment in the UK tooka bunch of young lad who were confirmed ASBO collectors and handed them over to some real soldiers for a few months to see what would happen.

and, believe it or not, a lot of these young men, after a few weeks, began to shape up. they actually said that for the first time in their lives, they knew what it was to be part of something that they could feel proud of - having something that gave a sense of achievement, and when the time was up- they were going off to join the Armed Forces for real.

I was totally suprised by this reaction , but thinking on it, I can see the logic.
however, at the end of six months, even the professional soldiers had to admit that some of them were hopeless cases. they would never cut it in the Forces, or even in civilian life. they lacked backbone, moral fibre, and even when suprvised to within an inch of their miserable lives, were simply lazy good for nothing skivers.

so, what do we do with such people? See, the modern Army - US, Canadian or British, is a professional fighting force. Either totally or mostly made up of volunteers in peacetime.
You can't expect the men who run it to be sudenly inundated with a miserable shower of lazy, malcontented column dodging layabouts with criminal records. the reality TV experiment had their guys doing PT and drill on the parade ground- a real army does stuff like fighting wars and doing aid missions in disaster areas. We can't compromise their efficiency to become nursemaids and nannies to a bunch of idle layabouts.

So, maybe we should hire ex military officers to run a 'boot camp' for civilians on miilitary lines? set up workshops for the unemployed and teach them skills they can use to get on in life?
well, it may work for some, but I foresee a huge percentage of people who are just not going to cut it, and will land up in prison.

The problem with taking prisoners out in chain gangs is that
A) it provides cheap labour, but takes away jobs from honest men who deserve better than seeing criminals take away ther jobs.
B) the average criminal will cut corners, goof off, and needs total supervision or else they simply run away or goof off and do a sub standard job.

so - what are we going to do with people who ~wont~ work to support themselves? How can we target them and make them contribute something to society?

Comments

[omnot.livejournal.com]

Your whole post is based on the idea that there is a problematic proportion of people who are prepared to take welfare without fulfilling societal expectations of participation and contribution.

Australia manages to have a strong, reliable economy despite providing a near-ideal opportunity for people to become dole bludgers. Yes, we have a few who are only too happy to live in a pleasant climate and go to the beach or smoke dope all their days. They find ways to dodge the participation requirements involved in getting unemployment benefits.

There are abundant re-training programs in a variety of fields, and even work for the dole programs of laughable pointlessness. Ans still the vast majority of people want to work, and do eventually gain steady employment.

Unfortunately, the cost of instituting a punitive program to get the genuinely hopeless or the willful bludgers off the dole is greater than the cost of leaving them be. Politically, there is mileage to be made off of punishing dole bludgers, but the harm done to genuinely unemployable people who get swept up in such measures means that there is little actual gain to be made.

Lots of politicians rant about it, but when they take office, they find that they cannot sieve the gleeful layabouts from the borderline depressive/disabled/low intelligence/psychologically unstable people who, if society were to be entirely just, would not be on "unemployment benefits" but in a category not unlike the disability support pension.

Training people for jobs that don't exist is an exercise in futility. Re-locating "the unemployed" en-masse to work on large infrastructure projects as was done in the Great Depression and at other times is inefficient.

I do believe that there is work that would only be done by volunteers that could be done by people who are out of work, but as programs that are run by the government are heavily restricted by bureaucracy, any work for the dole programs I have witnessed have been pathetic. You don't need 14 people and four supervisors for two weeks to paint the chain-link fence around the local footy ground. No skills are learned, everyone gets bored and exasperated and by the third day less than half the "participants" even show up.

So short of employing the people who "won't" work to support themselves as speed-bumps, perhaps writing them off as pitiful losers is the only efficient, humane and sustainable option?

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

So, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that there will always be wilfull layabouts, but these are too small a number to worry about?

in the UK , there is a category of people called NEETs. this is people Not in Education, Employment or Training. Now, having been made redundant myself from time to time, I am not going to write off everyone on Unemployment Benefits as a useless scrounger.

However, I wonder about te cost of keeping too many of the workshy , weedsmoking scroungers about.

What you say about penalising people seems to be true - you make it too tough on them , and you start hurting genuine cases as well.
Better to let ten guilty go free than hang someone innocent, i guess.
thanks for your comments.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

There's also just the sheer cost of these programs. If paying somebody to laze about is expensive, how much will it cost to pay someone to investigate every unemployed person, another person to administer the camps, another to train a group of unemployed people... yeah. Costs mount pretty quickly.

[omnot.livejournal.com]

Yep. Someone is always going to want to game the system. And when you have a labyrinthine bureaucracy administering it, efforts made to appear to be being hard on dole bludgers can become rather farcical and awkward to enforce.

I believe the current system here requires that unemployed people apply for ten jobs a fortnight and record them on their claim form. I doubt that verification efforts are adequate to ensure that people are not just making up the details they fill in on the form.

People who are genuine and do not want to rort the system do their heads in trying to find five genuine jobs a week that they can realistically apply for. The people who are happy to bludge make up any old thing to write on the forms, and it seems to go unchecked.

Perhaps effective ways to address the issue have already been identified, but are not being implemented because of the expense of simply enforcing the rules we have?

Also, don't forget that politicians who control the policies gain political mileage from having a the unemployed ready as a whipping boy when they want to make a point about being tough on bludgers, or sympathetic to job-seekers. So the pressure to genuinely fix the issue is not urgent.

And given that booting people who want to game the system off benefits will not necessarily force them to work, but may well force them into illegal means of supporting themselves, maybe it's better to treat the dole as a form of "petty thief pension" with which society bribes people not to mug them?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

what are we to do about the Unemployed, folks?

A rather modest proposal...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... that.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

[so - what are we going to do with people who ~wont~ work to support themselves? How can we target them and make them contribute something to society?]

You may as well ask how we solve class issues. These folks are following the American Dream in the manner of their particular class. The American Dream is not in fact, "Work hard and you will be rewarded," it is "Fool as many people as possible into paying you for doing the least amount of work necessary to fool more people into paying you." It isn't just about the poor who make a pittance, it is also about people who earn huge salaries and those who make money with money. So what do we do about the people who suck vast quantities of cash out of the economy yet add little to no value?

Wage disparity is the problem, and it started with Reagan and the "trickle down" policy. The theory was that if we reduce taxes on the rich to pay for things that benefit all society, the rich will invest in those things on their own. So now instead of a 90% top tax bracket as we had in the mid 20th century providing funds for infrastructure, we now have lower taxation on the rich, less money for infrastructure and social programs, and more demands for taxation on the middle class. How's that working for ya?

It is somewhat ironic that the people with the money and means to solve the problem instead keep it all to themselves, and then complain when other people can't get a living wage, get wise to the system and settle for welfare. Is the lesson of history lost that the key to maintaining their own prosperity is a vibrant and productive working class? It is time to stop this trend of worship of the rich and quash the belief that most rich people are rich because they have earned it on a level playing field. It used to be that in exchange for the privilege of being idle one paid more into the system, but now the idle rich are of as little benefit as the idle poor, so who needs them?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

The American Dream is not in fact, "Work hard and you will be rewarded," it is "Fool as many people as possible into paying you for doing the least amount of work necessary to fool more people into paying you."

You just described the biggest problem underlying the American education system.

Oh, and: DAILYQUOTE!

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's that much diferent in Dear Old Blighty, actually!

[telemann.livejournal.com]

What do you think would improve the system? I am betting with your experience, you could offer some cool insights!

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Yeah - a certain political party - insert grin - has actually said it wants to make the CEOs to earn no more than 10 times the amount of the people at the bottom of their company's pay scale. This means that if you want to earn 100 grand, you pay the guys at the bottom 10 thousand a year. A lot of people in the UK live on less than that. Seeing as a lot of CEOs earn a lot more than a mere hundred thousand pounds, I think this would be fair to both sides.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I don't see a single bit of fairness in that statement whatsoever.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Wage disparity is the problem, and it started with Reagan and the "trickle down" policy.

No, wage disparity is not the problem, nor is it a problem, nor did wage disparity begin during the Reagan years. Where the hell do you come up with this stuff?

. Is the lesson of history lost that the key to maintaining their own prosperity is a vibrant and productive working class?

That was never the lesson.

It is time to stop this trend of worship of the rich and quash the belief that most rich people are rich because they have earned it on a level playing field. It used to be that in exchange for the privilege of being idle one paid more into the system, but now the idle rich are of as little benefit as the idle poor, so who needs them?

You and I do, because they're the ones providing the jobs and the tax base.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

{You and I do, because they're the ones providing the jobs and the tax base.}

No - they are avaiodibg taxes by going to tax havens off shore and outsourcing jobs wherever possible th the far est where they can get cheap labour.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Of course it's a problem. Do you only read the sports pages?
More equal societies have fewer social problems. The gap between righ and poor people is prominient in all societies with social problems like drug abuse, violent crime and a high of teenage pregancies.

Just coincidence , I am sure that Conservatives will say - however, I for one am not convinced.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

[No, wage disparity is not the problem, nor is it a problem, nor did wage disparity begin during the Reagan years. Where the hell do you come up with this stuff?]

Like seeing it happen right before my eyes during the 80s and 90s.

[You and I do, because they're the ones providing the jobs and the tax base.]

No they aren't. The tax base has gone away because of tax cuts and they moved the jobs overseas. What we now have are a bunch of upper-class twits who make money by leveraging money, not production.

[magna-carter.livejournal.com]

You seem to be assuming that dole scroungers are a problem. Compared to the cost of running an army, the money it costs for their upkeep is tiny. It's not like you can live a fulfilling life on the dole (I should know, I'm on it) and *most* people on the dole are actively looking for employment. I'd much rather be working and be able to save up for furthering my education, but with there being no suitable jobs around, I can't. I have a degree so I'm 'overqualified' for jobs I have experience in, and because I worked part-time low skill jobs as a student I haven't the relevant experience to aquire a job which is better paid. Or at least that's how I understand it. I haven't been offered a single interview in the almost six months I've been on the dole.
The problem here isn't with the people, it's with the government. If I'd have had more advice on career prospects while at university, if there were relevant work experience opportunities while at uni, and if there were actual fucking jobs ready for when I graduated, there wouldn't be so many well educated young people unemployed now. (This is relevant to the government as if they force the universities to comply, it wouldn't be an issue. The unis are getting way too much fucking money as it is. They run educational establishment as businesses, so cut as many corners as possible to save money.)

As for the unemployed under-educated young people, I think they're low in self esteem. They don't believe they're capable of working or 'making' anything out of themselves, as they've gone through an education system being told that they were stupid every single day. Though that's obviously only in my opinion and experience.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Though that's obviously only in my opinion and experience.

Oh , a lot of your experience chimes with mine.
i too have ben made redundant, then been told that , because i had supervisory experience, i was no good on the shop floor.
" to be honest, it's a dead end job mate. you, you would be looking out for promotoin , and we can't offer it. You would be leaving in 6 months for somewhere else." Yeah, I can see their point. but that don't help me.

And in school,the emphasis was on getting as many people thruogh and into Uni as poss. It did not if you were bright, but not bright enough , like I was.

Well, I did alright in the end I guess, but the system is more about meeting imagined needs like government targets than actually fitting real people into a useful career.

There ought to be a realisation that we need people to empty the bins, sweep the streets and do all the jobs that are needed but not glamourous. And we ought to pay them well and give them the respect they deserve for keeping the place going.

A socialist maxim is "If someone won't work, then don't let them eat."
But what work can you trust to the most unwilling?

But good luck with your search for a decent job, though.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

so - what are we going to do with people who ~wont~ work to support themselves? How can we target them and make them contribute something to society?

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Actually you can, if you sit on his neck and thus bend his head. But that's not democratic.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Nope, he can still opt to drown instead of drinking. That's just forcing him to water instead of leading him.

All the dope pushers...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

In my neck of the woods, all of the street dealers are also on the dole. They supplement their street pharmacy incomes with just enough cash to pay for a bug infested cubbyhole.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

We have mutual obligation for the long term unemployed here. Some schemes are just busy work or cheap labour, but some of them have been genuinely good for some of my friends. Two friends started businesses and another got into an IT role that gave him skills that he was able to translate into a career. I think it's best if the work remains for non-profits, training or starting a business. Essentially, the government is saying that if you haven't been able to find your own job in a year, they're going to force you to either volunteer somewhere, go to school or have a go at starting a business. All these things help the long term unemployed reengage with the community, which is the big killer.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

The children of these people? Education, education, education.

Now oddly, the worst situation I've seen just recently, is a case where two working parents ended up with one being long term sick (Lupus) and the other forced into part time work in order to care for him. 2 kids at home, neither can read nor write (14 and 16 yo), they both have goals but no ambition, and certainly no drive to get up and do something other than wander about saying "I'm bored, I'm bored".

Both are well spoken kids (To other adults) but hell If I spoke to my folks the way they do theirs, I'd not be able to type this now!