George Osborne has announced a new plan to force people on job seekers allowance (unemployment benefit) to do community work.
In the culture of British politics, this is obviously another attempt to win votes by scapegoating the unemployed and indulging the public perception that unemployed people are all just lazy.
On the other hand, I find myself agreeing with the measures. Firstly, I have never taken jobseekers allowance. Even in the two months I spent unemployed living in this country, I lived on savings and income from occasional part time tutoring work. The main reason I never took the benefits that I was entitled to was that I felt guilty about the prospect. I haven’t taken money from anyone since I was 18. I would have felt a lot better about signing on if I had been made to dome some community work for it. Actually, at the time I was volunteering anyway.
I can’t really think of any reason why healthy people on benefits can’t be asked to do some community work. The details of the plans haven’t really come out yet, but if it was ten hours a week of something such as cleaning up dirty areas, being community wardens etc I think it would benefit everybody.
My only concern would be that it would obviously be a disaster if the unemployed started doing jobs which used to be paid jobs, such as being street cleaners, as that would obviously add to the unemployment problem.
Have you ever thought about WHY they are unemployed? Of course not.
For example, if you are over 50 and out of work, you are screwed. The buzzword these
days is, overqualified. You can’t get hired to save your life. I was unemployed for months
until I went to a supermarket and got hired at minimum wage when before I was making
over 20 an hour. Companies rather hire kids out of college then anyone over 40. You can’t get
a job, pure and simple when you are older and thus unemployed. I watch my company hire
kid after kid as manager and they are getting worse. The new one we have doesn’t talk to anyone
and aimlessly wonders around the store with his head down. He doesn’t check, he doesn’t stock,
and he plays computer games in his office during his shift. He makes at least 3 times what I make.
His big selling point, ex miltary. The big thing now is hiring ex miltary to show how the company is
doing it part for the military. He won’t talk to employees because he demands workers follow the
chain of command and say anything to their supervisor and not to him. He has worked for
a month and has never, NEVER said a word to me. He is about 27 or 28 and without a clue.
That is the new reality. Unemployment is the result of companies actions, not people,
for the people I know are all over 40 and if they are out of work, they are not hired no matter
how many applications they put in.
A needless and unevidenced accusation, and quite false. I have actually thought about the issue a lot.
However, I’m not sure that anything you’ve is, strictly speaking, relevant. Even if there are no jobs available, I still don’t think that its a bad thing to ask people to do some form of work in return for receiving benefits. It keeps people busy, and keeps them used to working, and anyway - why not give in return for what you get? Isn’t that fairer for both parties?
Actually, I should say that I disagree with the Tory idea of 30 hours a week. I think 8 hours a week would be fair - roughly representing a minimum wage for what people get.
You’ve contradicted yourself. You did get a job. So obviously it is possible.
Modern day slavery is pretty horrendous. Many people are forced to work until they literally drop dead. People are enslaved as children, flogged, made to do excruciating manual labor for 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, fed scraps, all until they die. S
The reason ‘slavery’ is such a loaded term is because it is associated with conditions like this.
Even if you managed to find a good theoretical argument to support defining making people do 10 hours of community service in return for recieving benefits ‘slavery’ (which I think is something you’d struggle with, because it really isn’t slavery), I would argue that that would have very little baring on the ethics of the situation, as the motion in question is so far removed from is normally considered ‘slavery’.
What is being proposed is hardly inhumane. Its just a few hours a week.
Just because slavery isn’t as inhumane as it is in other parts of the world, doesn’t excuse it from still being slavery.
I despise this argument, since it basically says harm is ok as long as it isn’t as harmful as it is in other places, or was in other times.
It’s an economically absurd proposition to force the unemployed into work. Essentially, companies are getting taxed in order to pay for workers anyway, it’s just done via the government, rather than having companies simply pay for their employees themselves in the normal way. Except this tax that affords such a scheme is spread over non-employers as well, whilst simultaneously bypassing minimum wage laws because jobseekers allowance is such a paltry excuse for a government benefit. An attack on the poor from both sides, using tax against them as well as undermining their labour rights all within the same “disguised as beneficial” policy.
Another insultingly see-through move by neo-liberal conservatives to distribute wealth more into the hands of the rich than the poor. Fucking unacceptable.
Peter, it’s not just because he’s young. It’s because he’s dumb. Companies don’t want very many smart people working in certain positions, they only need smart people in a few. In most of the jobs a company offers, they’ll be looking for someone who will follow instructions even if those instructions are the road to hell. Judgment isn’t valued at all in business except for 1) limiting liabilities and 2) making more money.
There is a problem in Britain with people choosing to live on benefits, in some cases you are actually better off not working (so it’s understandable ).Also the benefit system allows criminals to avoid work whilst they “earn” their money in other ways .In many ways the benefit system here has created a parasitic underclass who basically contribute fuck all. Don’t get me wrong I’m totally in favour of those that can’t work getting state assistance, but those that can work should, provided their total income is at least comparable to the minimum wage (bearing in mind that an unemployed family can get their rent paid, family allowances, tax allowances, dole money , money for health problems etc etc…I know someone who has got a £30000 motor through motability even though he works full time and earns quite a bit more than me.)
A lot of pretty healthy people get cars through motability…
The literal definition that slaves are Slavic people?
Well yeah, obviously.
But that which “slave” is synonymous with fits the entire working class, who are literally owned by the capitalist class. At work, both their time and what they are allowed to do with their time are physically sold to their employer. They sign a contract to agree to such a sale. This contract involves establishing an amount of time that they are to devote to their work, which in turn restricts the amount of time they are allowed to have outside of work, and an exchange for a sum of money that restricts what they can “afford” to actually do with this time.
I did read the posts before I responded.
I didn’t say that you were talking about anything beyond “community work/not something which could potentially be paid work”. I was just observing what the scheme actually is. Real life and not what you hope it could be etc.
What does “work that is not something which could potentially be paid work” mean anyway? “Work” that nobody would pay anyone to do is work that nobody wants done. What good would that do the unemployed or anyone in society? None. That’s why the reality is that it’s supposed to undermine paid work… that’s how the conservative neo-liberals work.
Well, quite obviously you’ve been completely fooled by right wing propaganda.
If you looked into this subject at all, instead of just blindly accepting the stories that politicians and Jeremy Kyle sell to you, you would know that there’s more than enough money in the hands of the rich to solve all the “problems” of unemployment. Many times over. The economic theory that founds this whole system even necessitates that people are unemployed for reasons such as controlling inflation - look up the Phillips Curve. They actually do the VAST majority of people (who are actually in work) a favour, and should be paid for their service.
Which is the fault of employers not paying a living wage, not of the government for doing a better job in providing that.
It seems particularly callous to force the unemployed to work for their benefits at a time when the economy has crashed, and there are no jobs around. The fault for this lies with the bankers, who, instead of being thrown into jail, are being bailed out with our tax money.
“Well, quite obviously you’ve been completely fooled by right wing propaganda.
If you looked into this subject at all, instead of just blindly accepting the stories that politicians and Jeremy Kyle sell to you, you would know that there’s more than enough money in the hands of the rich to solve all the “problems” of unemployment. Many times over. The economic theory that founds this whole system even necessitates that people are unemployed for reasons such as controlling inflation - look up the Phillips Curve. They actually do the VAST majority of people (who are actually in work) a favour, and should be paid for their service.”
I was raised on benefits, I live on an ex-council estate with high benefit dependency, I have family claiming benefits, I work on people’s houses who live on benefits… so I am far from being “fooled by right wing propaganda”.
Whether people have deliberately been cast aside into the benefit system or not it is clear that that system has done, and is doing, huge damage to them and the country. From being a country of hard working, self reliant, decent people we have created millions who believe that they deserve everything for no effort ,and amongst them large numbers of feral kids from families broken in a system that encourages mothers to separate from fathers.
Slaves are owned, like property, by their masters.
The unemployed could choose not to accept the benefits. There is no threat of violence and no state of ownership involved. You could chose to leave the country and live and work somewhere else.
There may be an economic imperative, but then there is an economic imperative to have any job or do any work.
You have a hell of a lot of freedom. We all do. When I was 18 I moved to China for a year just because I wanted to, then I travelled around the world. You could do the same if you wanted to. You are pretty much completely free as anyone has ever been.
As it happens, I volunteer on a local back to work mentor scheme. I also teach literacy skills to a mixture of refugees and native speakers. Whilst I have met many bright people who are down on their luck, it is pretty much blind stupidity to deny that there is no one who doesn’t actually want to work or to improve themselves. There is a large amount of them. I’ve mentored plenty of people who were simply too lazy/didn’t care enough to do the applications that I helped them to start, to produce a final CV, sometimes they can’t even be bothered to turn up to appointments or free literacy classes, don’t do any homework, don’t bother to study and learn.
They may be lazy, or you could argue that there may be sociological and or psychological reasons for there behaviour, that it may be society’s fault not theirs. But if you simply don’t know they exist, then you are out of touch.
Whether there are jobs out there or not.
Whether the unemployed (that claim benefits) choose to be so or are out of work through no fault of their own.
I don’t see the harm in getting people to do something for the community and for themselves.
Sure, there are plenty of ‘scroungers’ but there are those who are genuinely stuck in the unemployment rut.
Maybe this plan can get some people into the work place where they can contribute in someway, meet others, get noticed and maybe get hired.
Brevel, back in the old says in the US, we had slaves, and then we had these other guys called indentured servants. Basically, an indentured servant is someone who pretty much looks like, acts like, talks like, works like, and gets paid like a slave…except they’re not owned. Instead, the owner just owns some of their debt, and they manipulate the terms such that the servant can never get out of debt, and then they get him to slave that way.
This is exactly the problem - that people don’t see that harm in it.
Did you even try to see any potential harm in such a seemingly innocent scheme?
At least read my posts - if not, actually read/think around the subject…
You have completely bypassed my point.
A slave that might have some degree of freedom? Sure.
All slaves have some freedom.
The degree of freedom? Well, are you “owned” by someone in any way? The working class are. They might have freedom, just as slaves throughout history have ALL had some degree of freedom. But the defining element is the degree of ownership by someone. The working class have that: the essence of slavery, just as slaves always have. Your argument is not an argument.
To your other point, I don’t deny that there exist people who resist being productive towards the demands of others.
Duh.
Drive a man away from productivity towards goals that you demand of him - and of course he appears lazy to you. Let him be himself and he will produce - god forbid that it might not be the production that you intended though… But is he productive? Damn straight he will be. Resistance is sweet just so long as there is someone to piss off who you are refusing to please just because he demands it. Be rid of those demands and you have someone who would like to produce.
Today’s people living in poverty resembles more like caged animals. They are no more free than lions at a zoo exhibit.
In fact genuine freedom in this society doesn’t exist for much of anybody even for those who truly believe they’re free. You always have to play by somebody elses rules and conform to the prevailing ideals created by others. You have to conform to the whole entire abominable rigid structure. Genuine individual freedom? What’s that? That only comes about upon collapsed empires, but only for very temporarily.
Don’t worry. The rug is about to be pulled from underneath everybody’s feet pretty soon and nobody, but a few people around the world knows it is coming. Keep your ears to the ground and pay very close attention. Things are about to become very interesting and the weak shall not survive.
The great global culling is coming. What the elites don’t realize is that it won’t turn out the way they want it to and that their own devised plans will turn against them. It will be sublimy poetic.
Things are about to become very interesting and the weak shall not survive.