Scrap the community wage

Scrap the community wage and let them starve

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

I am a New Zealander, and, because we have a labour government, there is a community wage for the unemployed. I am finding this to be a really bad thing for many of the civilians, apart from the fact that 70% of our taxes (already 39%) go towards helping lazy people sit around at home and watch TV. Teenagers living in decile 10 areas of the country were surveyed, and 80% of these said their all-time “ambition” in life was to go on the community wage. Most of these came from homes whose parents had no jobs. I consider this a hopeless state of affairs. I can understand a pension for those who are UNABLE to work- eg. the elderly, terminally ill, or disabled, but among perfectly healthy people, it is shocking to find so little desire for success. I’m only a teenager myself at the moment, but I have to work in a classroom with others who don’t have any goals in life beyond relying on the government to support them. They don’t seem to realise that by their laziness they are robbing many diligent civilians of their hardearned wages. My vote: scrap the community wage and stop shielding people from the real world.

[b]igor hath theen countrieth that have no unemployment benefit/community wage… the rethultth are not nice…

imagine young motherth thitting thlumped under traffic lightth, choked by fumeth and heat, a malnourished 6 month old baby in their lap… day after day.

imagine a man with no legth and one arm, knuckling down the thtreet with a box full of thtolen cigaretteth, begging people to buy.

imagine troupeth of children rummaging through dumpthterth, with bare handth and covered in filth, crushing canth and thtacking cardboard boxeth on their headth - for a pittance from the recycling agencieth…

igor thinkth the community wage mutht thtay, but that there mutht be thtipulationth attached, thothe people who take it mutht work on government projectth, at leatht a couple of dayth a week, to qualify for their money… Not prison-thtyle hard labour, but enough to make the lifethtyle lethth attractive to the unamitiouth.

i can underthtand your anger, but to jutht leave them hanging, ith to invite chaoth back into the thtreeth.[/b]

prankstar,
in the usa the number one group of people on welfare are white/divorced mothers. why is that?
many women enter marriage without much education. they assume the man will be the bread winner. they will be the stay at home mom. when divorce occurs, the women are usually awarded custody of the children. getting dads to pay…what is it called…i’m blanking. hm. well, dads pay a certain amount of money for the child caring process, despite divorce. most of the time these payments aren’t made and the government does very little about it.
when these women go to get jobs they are limited by their limited education/work experience.
most people in the usa think lazy/obese people collect welfare (the majority of people…).
it isn’t so.
your situation sounds much more different and real.
for me, an usa citizen, i find it so sad to hear that this is the situation in new zealand.
perhaps there should be stricter laws about who qualifies for these pensions.
it must be hard being a person who cares (about doing, pursuing, living, etc) and being in the minority for it.
i wouldnt’ get rid of all community wage. i’d just make it harder for people to get it.
thanks

So why isn’t this your ‘all-time “ambition”’?

In South Africa, there is no benefit scheme and people are dying of starvation. It’s a tough call, in England there are children as young as 14 getting pregnant for housing benefits. What’s better?

A

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “tough call”.

Are you sure 14 year olds get housing benefit?

I’m sorry, I didn’t make myself very clear. I meant that in SA there are no benefits, and on one level it means that people are pushed to either come up with creative solutions or live a life of poverty. It’s hard because of lack of education which is made even harder by a government that doesn’t seem to give a damn. Somehow it’s all tied into education, those that are educated seem to be able to cope well without benefits.

In the UK it’s an entirely different issue. These kids have government assistance yet choose to lie around all day. I don’t know if they actually receive housing, certainly they receive benefits and they do believe that benefits are an easy way out of working. Also I’m making a sweeping statement to illustrate that benefits or no benefits doesn’t seem to be the real social issue.

It appears that the choices we make are more about who we are and less about whether or not we are assisted.

A

[b]igor agreeth - in the uk more and more people fail to realithe that a job ith very much part of your perthonality and the growth of your identity - whatever flimth and the media thays - you are your job to a thertain degree. the thafety-net of income-thupport becometh a chair too comfortable for thome to get out of.

igor wath unemployed for almotht 2 yeath, it ith not a bad thing in itthelf - but it doeth not do you any good either - it ith like being in thtasis… waiting to become - thomething elthe. thome flourish, thome decompothe.[/b]

To repeat my initial question, if life on benefits is such a bed of roses, why don’t we all do it?

Well, I guess, because it isn’t a ‘bed of roses’. And this is the problem I have with these types of rant. Can you imagine an existence, so short on promise, that having a kid just so you can get some crappy housing and a few quid each week to spend on chips, fags (smokes) and fake Tommy Hilfiger clothes down the market, is you life’s ambition?

If that is where you are at, I don’t begrudge a portion of my wages to keep hunger and cold at bay (and more than this, I don’t begrudge a bit more tax to see if we can make the whole of society feel inclusive).

Delboy, no-one suggested life on benefits is fun. Also no-one was ranting about having to pay for it either.

A

Yeah, sorry. That wasn’t aimed at you. However, the original post was more rant than anything else and generally these topics become a rant.

What’s your point then?

A

Why? Because I feel much more fulfilled working towards something worthwhile. And life on the benefit isn’t all that bad. On the news a little while ago they showed unemployed people filling out forms to calculate how much money they needed to live on. For some, the government was actually paying for 100-channel TV, when the average WORKING person has access to only 4 channels!
Also, maybe I should just clarify that the community wage here is SPECIFICALLY designed for the average unemployed citizen…ie. it does not include the benefit for single moms, elderly people, disabled, or terminally ill. That’s what gets me: that the people who are on the community wage aren’t incapable of getting a job…they just can’t be bothered. And there’s no shortage of jobs over here…my Dad had no trouble finding one when we came over from South Africa a while ago.

Undercover Prankstar… so glad to hear that others in the world are realizing what a drain these crap-excuses for humanity are.

Why should it be anybody’s responsibility to take care of those who will not take care of themselves? Why should the rules of nature be ignored? Ever hear of survival of the fittest? Do you think if a gorilla suddenly stopped hunting for his own food that the other apes would support his lazy ass? No!
And why should they. They’d kill him and steal his women, (assuming the lazy bastard had any).

Why do we, (by we I mean some of us; not me though) as a species feel an obligation to support this drain? What benefit is served by contributing to this problem? These people are infectious waste and should be allowed to starve. There’s an old fable about the grasshopper and the ants. The grasshopper plays all summer long, never planning for the winter while the ants very wisely store food for the coming cold season. In the end the grasshopper is starving and cold and looks in and sees the ants in their winter comfort. The moral? Work for a living or die!

You ever volunteer time in a homeless shelter? Ever meet any of the former combat vets there that lost limbs on foreign soil so you could smugly proclaim survival of the fittest? How about the ones with mental problems?

Actually you can watch film footage of apes, chimps, etc sharing food all the time. Sure they fight, mainly over social hierarchy and mates, but if your argument is that apes are rugged individualists your argument is incorrect.

I don’t see it as an obligation. Personally, my entire life, I have never really cared about money and shiny things. If my tax dollars go to feed some hungry kid as opposed to being used to help finance some corporate welfare (hey, what happened to survival of the fittest) then I don’t mind. And this doesn’t come from any sense of obligation per se, so much as it is the result of a lack of inherent greed on my part.

And those who can’t? I present to you this modest proposal. Since they will never be able to contribute to ever growing corporate coffers, and will only live to serve as a drain on the most important thing in life, our money, why not… instead of waiting for them to die… why not kill just kill them. I mean Johnny might not have ams or legs, so you know he can not do much (except provide blow jobs).

So kill him him. But wait… since we are killing people because the bottom line is all that matters, why not also harvest their corpses for organs and what not? Johnny’s kidneys worked fine, and Abercrombiegirl88 had an allergic reaction to suede and now needs new kidneys, so why not use them? This doesn’t just apply to the physically handicapped, lets start harvesting the organs of the mentally handicapped. Since only the fittest should survive perhaps only the brightest should survive also.

Wait a minute… what’s that??? You were only talking about lazy people? But what do they have to do with survival of the fittest? Not a damn thing?

Exactly.

You make valid points, GCT, but doesn’t address the actual issue- the crux of the original post is the idea of eliminating the free ride for those who simply don’t feel like working. I myself am flummoxed by the abuse of our own version of entitlements, called welfare in America. I’m a libertarian, but even I think a ‘safety net’ is a good idea and well within the realm of possibility for a civilized and progressive society. Certainly a vet who got his limbs shot off serving his/her country should be supported by the State.

But I don’t think we should let everyone who’s simply too lazy or disinterested in working have a free ride at public expense. Save social programs for those who need them, not those who simply prefer being kept to earning their keep.

GateControlTheory wrote:

I too love Swift’s Modest Proposal. But I’m being serious when I say no work = no free ride. IF you want to give your money away, that’s fine by me. When it becomes a problem is when the state mandates that I help via my tax dollars. The governmnet is supposed to protect the people, not play Robin Hood.

To your point about Vets who have been injured in various ways: that is a completely different topic. These men and women sacrificed themselves for the protection of all, including me. They should be cared for. In fact they should have the best treatment because of their selflessness. They didn’t just give up, have 10 children, and drink Albertson’s brand vodka all day long, (which they bought using food stamps that came out of my taxes).

I wish that there was more room on this tiny little planet so I could start a new country where people earned their living and religion was banned. It would be great. But alas, I must suffer in this ever-shrinking world and watch my hard work go to support those that I would rather spit on than support.

That would be because I was replying to someone who didn’t address the actual issue either. :stuck_out_tongue:

As I understand it, poverty is the result of economic forces and is not determined by genetics (insofar as no one is born with a genetic predisposition to be poor).

As for lazy folks, trust me I have known my share and many of them struck me as being worthless (not in the sense that their worth is determined by their wage, or lack thereof, but some of the ones I have known were two faced liars, hypocrites, etc). But I won’t generalize that to apply to everyone.

For example, children of worthless parents could very well be future Microsoft employee of the month material. But if we are just going to force them out into the streets to survive then they are going to get an education that is very much different from C++ programming (or whatever it is). The sort of education that makes fine, upstanding citizens like you and me not want to drive down certain streets during certain hours of the evening.

Give people nothing and you leave them no choice but to take something.

And it isn’t ransom. People give other people things all the time. You get hired to do a job for someone, somewhere is giving you the opportunity to work. You start your own business and hire your own employees, you are giving them the same aforementioned opportunity.

You call yourself a Libertarian, I assume then you think people should be able to fuck whoever they want to (the literal, in coitus kind of fucking ((damn me and my recent potty mouth))) Anyway, two worthless people meet across a vast ocean of faces. their eyes lock and soon so do their genitals. 9 months later out pops this little lump of love most Right to Lifers insist must be born.

This child is not responsible for its parents lazyness, yet it will suffer as a result. Such is the world we have made, where people can fuck whomever they can get drunk enough to agree with it and also the world that enables you and I to afford our computers, power supply, and the leisure time to visit ILP to debate such weighty subjects.

This world cannot give up on that child. Even if its parents prosper from its existence in such a way they they enjoy a significant free ride at our fiscal expense. Because, either in this world children are more important than the paper we print money on, or something is wrong with us as a species. And since we have already fought the most destructive war in history over whether or not only certain children of particular skin tone, creed, physical and mental capacity, etc get to live or die… I believe any arguments stating such are moot. (not that you would make such an argument Phaedrus, but I wonder about some of my fellow posters here sometimes).

It’s not about “giving up on the child” (the children! what about the children!). That’s a red herring. The State always can and will simply take the children away if the parent chooses not to take care of it. Happens all the time.

If parents simply choose not to work to support themselves despite the opportunity to do so, why should my taxes support their lazy asses? That’s like killing your parents and then begging for mercy on the grounds that you’re an orphan.:wink: Put the kid up for adoption and let someone who’ll take care of raise it. Problem solved.

Yes, I don’t really care who fucks whom, so long as it’s consensual. But the consequences for personal behavior are personal. The government simply cannot and should not bail out every dumbfuck who screws up and give them a free ride. Even the most hardcore socialist should be able to do the math- if everyone gets a pass simply because they’re lazy, and no one decides to work, how will the gravy train keep rolling?

I work with a lot of people on welfare. At times I wonder just what is wrong with these people and then I will meet some kid that I believe to be very bright. Maybe he or she will do something great, or even mundane, and get their family out of trouble for generations to come. It’s then that I’m glad welfare exists. The parents are complacent but at least they aren’t tempted to use the kid to get money.

I’ve watched several documentaries recently, the one was about India and the other about a large variety of locations. Anyway, the amount of child prostitution across the world is heinous. In Bombay there’s building after building of child bordellos. It’s disgusting and I am happily parted with my money to prevent such stuff happening in my country. It is not the rich people selling or abandoning their children. They aren’t demoralized.

Meanwhile, a capitalist government ensures that there will be poor people. Society is stratified like a pyramid. The rich are at the top in a small minority, the middle-class form the bulk of the structure, and the base is made up of the poor. Even a corporation is made like this. There has to be a cleaning lady and there has to be a CEO, and due to supply and demand, there will be a person that can’t even get a job there. So, my point is that poor people are built into the system. It’s wrong to put them down for it.