Work For Dole And Benefits; James Purnell Is On The March, Claimants Should

[muggle]

If they did this then the government should be forced to pay minimum wage, which would work out at about £200 for a weekly dole payment.

Which is roughly what you get if you include income support, housing benefit, council tax etc.

[abaxas]

If they did this then the government should be forced to pay minimum wage, which would work out at about £200 for a weekly dole payment.

I bet the right wing biggots wouldn't like that idea! They want their slaves.

So lets assume £200 a week, u then take off.

Tax,

Ni,

Travel to work,

Housing benifit/mortgage relief.

etc etc.

In my past I spent a period on the dole, £50 pw at the time. I worked out I needed about £120 quid after tax to be about the same.

Hence I'd assume that £200 before tax is about the same as £60 dole, if you take the other 'advantages' with it.

[huw]

Apparently there are just under a million job vacancies in the UK. And most estimates seem to think we'll soon have around 3 million unemployed.

Mmm something doesn't add up here does it!

So what happens to those 2 million+ people for whom there is literally NO JOB?

How about if we had a million jobs and a million-and-one unemployed? 1.1 million unemployed? 1.5 million?

The relative numbers are irrelevant; we still apparently have a million jobs that could be matched up with a million workers.

And we're probably suppressing many additional jobs with wealth/work-destroying legislation and excessive taxation.

[delboypass]

Doesn't work. If people wanted those things doing, they would pay for them. If you have to corral those who are happy to live frugally and force them to work as slaves then no one wants the work done, simple as that.

They only need benefits because they are prevented from orking by the state in the first place. Remove all restrictions, remove all taxes.

Undercut with slave labour and you will become a slave yourself.

We are paying for them already...through benefits...

Why cant benefits be classed as a wage..? They get more than minimum wage already so why cant they get out there and work for benefits.

I dont understand why it is so hard for you to comprehend..?

[bearishonhouses]

HOW CAN THERE BE NO JOB WHEN WE ARE PAYING THEM BENEFITS TO DO NOTHING!!

SURELY THERE BENEFIT PAYMENTS COUNTS AS EMPLOYMENT

THEY CAN GO OUT AND SWEEP THE STREETS LIKE THEY DO IN JAPAN AND ANGOLA

OR SWEEP THE SNOW OFF THE SIDEWALKS

PICK POTATOES

WHO CARES WHAT THEY DO..WE ARE PAYING..THEY SHOULD DO SOMETHING FOR THE MONEY!!!

Use of appropriate netiquette and correct spelling would be appreciated by all readers.

[Stars]

Some people would rather see nothing done which is a greater step back than whats being proposed. Classic example people dont pick up any litter lying on the floor instead they leave it for the council or someone else to clean up.

How are they prevented from working? Thats the daftest comment I've heard in ages. Its probably more likely their own stupidity that prevents them from working.

1) The land on which they can work is owned by others - this amounts to a state backed exclusion from the opportunity to work for themselves.

2) Taxes fall on any income gained by working

[delboypass]

Use of appropriate netiquette and correct spelling would be appreciated by all readers.

A subject that gets me riled - at least i deleted the expletives before i posted.

PS thanks for the comment - boosted you to a whole 2 posts...congratulations...and really added value to the thread.

[PopGun]

People need to be priced out of benefits, not priced out of work. More ill conceived detritus!

Purnell, wasn't he the one that screamed blue murder about editorial deceit, and then got caught being photoshoped onto an existing picture as he was late for the photoshoot?

[domo]

And how would this work without creating even more unemployment?

Its very much like Comrade Obamas plan to force all school students to do 50 yours slave labour "community service"

[dredwerker]

HOW CAN THERE BE NO JOB WHEN WE ARE PAYING THEM BENEFITS TO DO NOTHING!!

SURELY THERE BENEFIT PAYMENTS COUNTS AS EMPLOYMENT

THEY CAN GO OUT AND SWEEP THE STREETS LIKE THEY DO IN JAPAN AND ANGOLA

OR SWEEP THE SNOW OFF THE SIDEWALKS

PICK POTATOES

WHO CARES WHAT THEY DO..WE ARE PAYING..THEY SHOULD DO SOMETHING FOR THE MONEY!!!

Then how do people go to interviews etc..

Thats the prob its sifting the people who would like to work and those are just out and out lazy. I speak as someone who doesnt have a job in 2009.

If you make people sweep roads then that is what they will do forever and thats pretty crap if you are unlucky enough to be in the wrong place.

Why not do the Germany style thing 75% of earnings but if there is a job with your skills anywhere in the country then you have to do it. I will do that and travel home if I have to anyway.

[BoomBoom]

Stop all benefits.

Stop all taxes and remove all restrictions on who does what work.

Sorted.

You fancy getting open heart surgery performed by a bus driver?

[gavp]

Rather than create 'make work' programmes, the government should specify that you need to do 15 hours a week voluntary work for a registered charity in order to get the JSA. This would still leave time for the unemployed to look for work, generally wouldn't take away existing jobs and would help some good causes, plus hopefully be onerous enough to put off those who are on the fiddle or who don't really need it.

[frozen_out]

Hang on a mo.

All those in favour of working for benefits - Just think for a minute what happens when the government decides they're going to do YOUR job for £60 a week.

There's just no logic in this suggestion.

If there's a job to be done, litter picking, road sweeping, whatever, then people can be employed to do it. If there's no job to be done then they won't.

What they could do is say 'Take this job and be paid a wage, or starve. Your call'.

Edited December 2, 2008 by frozen_out

[Injin]

Close.

That scenario would create quite a bit of real estate inflation - the owners would be enjoying infinitely comfortable terms, while the non owning sector's work would be raising their asset values; a very comfortable position of unearned gains which would raise prices. Very soon this inflation would create cost problems for people who were working and then we would be back to class warfare and gargantuan state intervention

That was very close, though. You only missed being a genius by one oversight -

No taxes - no state.

No state = no mass exclusion from the land.

Ty, ty, I might be here all week.

[Injin]

You fancy getting open heart surgery performed by a bus driver?

No, I am a complete ******wit and would let anyone operate on me.

Thank the lord I have people like the health secretary to give permission to Harold Shipman and co to look after me.

Edited December 2, 2008 by Injin

[hilltop]

Rather than create 'make work' programmes, the government should specify that you need to do 15 hours a week voluntary work for a registered charity in order to get the JSA. This would still leave time for the unemployed to look for work, generally wouldn't take away existing jobs and would help some good causes, plus hopefully be onerous enough to put off those who are on the fiddle or who don't really need it.

Charities have the same legal obligations as any employer in many ways. Who will find the extra funding for the charities to supervise, train and involve these people? This is an area without easy answers but a start could be made by Government requiring public bodies to make more jobs available to less qualified applicants, although has its own complexities.

[Injin]

Some people would rather see nothing done which is a greater step back than whats being proposed. Classic example people dont pick up any litter lying on the floor instead they leave it for the council or someone else to clean up.

What's wrong with doing nothing?

How are they prevented from working? Thats the daftest comment I've heard in ages. Its probably more likely their own stupidity that prevents them from working.

No, you need licences for most things these days. Remove them.

If you have no taxes how do you pay for teaching, healthcare, transportation, defence, organisational bodies working in the public interest like trading standards, environmental health, policing, ambulance, fire? You cant cite insurance companies for the likes of fire or ambulance becuase a classic example is that businesses that insure their debts from customers going bust have recently had their funding levels reduced meaning customers can not get so much on credit which inturn is meaning suppliers are hitting brick walls now with work dropping off. Whats the point of having an umbrella in the summer when you need it during the winter, this is all the insurance companies are doing now which is actually making this recession worse. These insurance companies insuring commercial debt should maintain the level of funding instead of reducing it but no they go ahead and reduce it just like in the 90's and make this country even worse off than it needs to be.

If no one wants those things, stop doing them. If people want them, there is no need to tax. This is the market for you.

You only have to look to the US to see that a private healthcare system doesnt work becuase many simple cant afford it.

State monopoly.

Cheap sound bite rhetoric. There are plenty of jobs not being done by paid workers so to have unemployment benefit people carrying out these jobs would not be a bad thing.

People are mostly working to pay their massive tax bills, paying for crap they don't want. Remove tax burden, lots of people have time off, and his is th end goal of capitalism - total unemployment.

These are jobs either not being down enough or by people who earn little or no money anyway so how can you be slave if more work is being created or the work carried out is now getting some form of payment ie charity or home carers?

Free markets equalise wages.

That's wht those who want a diferential always intervene in them.

[godless]

"The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise."

- Mark Twain "Official Physic"

[BoomBoom]

For a start they cant do my job, I innovate new computer software solutions for business so much so that my innovations even get me referrals from the US parent company who wrote the programming language I use. People all over the world contact me to save them time and money and I'm a one man band who doesnt advertise and have helped other industry leading software companies sell their software for up to £1.5m for a program. I've developed a tool that enables me to build software faster than anyone else in any other windows language be it a win32 or .net solution, I can turn out bespoke software in days or weeks instead of it taking weeks or months or years.

Wrong, there are jobs that need doing but they are not done by paid workers or not done frequently enough becuase people dont want to pay for them through things like council tax.

You sound like a world class bullshitter.

[Stars]

No state = no mass exclusion from the land.

But its ownership itself forms a mass exclusion

How would land ownership operate without a state?

[dredwerker]

The same way people go for interviews when in full time employment, they make arrangements to go to an interview and get time off.

but then you are in an office on your ar$e with a net connection and some spare money for the clothes and the travel expenses.

[thod]

There was a time when almost everyone worked the land. Now we produce more food than ever with only a tiny fraction of the people. So we have 1 man producing as much as 100 used to, what are the the other 99 to do now. Well we still have the food, so they have gained 100% leisure time. Of course the one that still has to drive the tractor resents them. But you don't see him offering to cut his work hours and share the labor around. He wants to earn more than everyone else. This is the basic problem, too many people are working too hard. The factories are the same, the robots can do what 10 men used to do, we still get the same amount of product. We are just going to have to stop working so hard and spread the work around more. Make it illegal to work more than 20 hours a week. Those that want to prove they are better than everyone else because they work harder are going to have to find other ways to play their oneupmanship game.

We could start classifying the workaholics as anti social in that they deprive other men of their jobs. Or we could classify it as a mental illness. Still most people are happy to let them be the mugs and put in all the work hours. Just so long as they get their share. All you hear about is complaints from those mugs that they get taxed, thats because they are so dumb they cant see the big picture. They cant see anything but defining themselves in terms of work and money. So we encourage their psychosis. We don't need their labor it can all be made by a few hours a week from each person.

In the future it will all be done by robots. There will still be guys going out trying to play a game that isn't there anymore.

[R K]

Rather than create 'make work' programmes, the government should specify that you need to do 15 hours a week voluntary work for a registered charity in order to get the JSA. This would still leave time for the unemployed to look for work, generally wouldn't take away existing jobs and would help some good causes, plus hopefully be onerous enough to put off those who are on the fiddle or who don't really need it.

Ok, here's the deal.

You are forced by the govt. to insure your car. You pay your car insurance each month, and one day you come back to your car and you find it has been stolen.

So, you ring up your insurance company and you ask them to pay you for having your car stolen.

They tell you that yes of course they will give you something towards your stolen car - much less than it was worth to you by the way - but in exchange they require you to stand in the road with a broom wearing an orange jacket with the words "crime victim" across the back sweeping up litter. They'll pay you back your insurance money as you go so long as you turn up.

You think that's reasonable?

[Injin]

How do they live then if they do nothing go on the steal?

Seriously. How much is a food and heating bill?

Takle off the taxes and life is cheap, very cheap.

Postal service was better before they tried to privatise it so was BT and BG. At least we had gas stored in the UK, now we have no gas stored so we have to import it into the country when the price & demand is the greatest.

No idea what this is on about, sorry.

I agree we have an excessive amount of bureaucracy but you need rules otherwise it descends into chaos. So do we all pay for private security and get rid of the police and the laws of the land now? You sound like an anarchist.

I am one. Anarachy is what we have, it's time you lot grew up and start dealing with it.

To a point if everything was equal and started equal but like we have monopolistic companies which Thatcher and Reagan pursued once a company gets too big in its chosen field then all competition is stiffled hence the need for the monopolies commission. Microsoft is another example.

If there is equal entry then wages for all equalise. This is just how a market works for all products, including labour. There isn't an infinte market for mince pies, why on earth do you think there is one for peoples labour?

[Converted Lurker]

HOW CAN THERE BE NO JOB WHEN WE ARE PAYING THEM BENEFITS TO DO NOTHING!!

SURELY THERE BENEFIT PAYMENTS COUNTS AS EMPLOYMENT

THEY CAN GO OUT AND SWEEP THE STREETS LIKE THEY DO IN JAPAN AND ANGOLA

OR SWEEP THE SNOW OFF THE SIDEWALKS

PICK POTATOES

WHO CARES WHAT THEY DO..WE ARE PAYING..THEY SHOULD DO SOMETHING FOR THE MONEY!!!

Ok, so the govt are predicting an extra 1,000,000 unemployed by this time next year and we currently have in the region of 9 milion economically inactive who are technically suitable for work (according to Purnell). Now if we accept the govt figs that there are 500,000 jobs in the economy at any one time then it's safe to assume that if unemployment spikes by one million next year this job count will reduce to somewhere in the region of 200,000, and these will only be replacement/natural turnover positions as we will have *lost* one million jobs in the economy. So not only will there be no jobs, if Purnell has his way ten million economically inactive folk will chase these 200,000 jobs down and fight amongst each other for them or be declared skivers and have to enter into a pointless agreement to find work even though there are no jobs; as proved by the government's own figures....

Edited December 2, 2008 by Converted Lurker