Government Benefit/Dole. - Receivers = Free labour force??

[Voodo chile]

Just a brief thought. There is a culture with government benefits in that it has become a life-style and a cycle within generations and the safety net turning into a hammock.

Basically from what i understand, they get weekly payments but are not required to actually do anything and i assume have a hell of a lot of time.
Would i be fair to say that unemployment beneficiary's could be utilised by the government? So that they actually do work to earn their pay. Cleaning public toilets or something similar
Would you think that this would stop people from thinking it as an easy way out? or do you think it would encourage people to go on it as an actual occupation?

[kentuckybandit]

As much as I like the idea of your idea, in the end it would go against the essence of unemployment insurance, which is to provide you with money to survive while you spend your time looking for another meaningful job. Obviously in reality the whole situation is rather farcical but if the government was to use people on unemployment for labor jobs, it would no longer be unemployment. It would require an entire overhaul of the system in place.

[Mangalore]

As much as I like the idea of your idea, in the end it would go against the essence of unemployment insurance, which is to provide you with money to survive while you spend your time looking for another meaningful job. Obviously in reality the whole situation is rather farcical but if the government was to use people on unemployment for labor jobs, it would no longer be unemployment. It would require an entire overhaul of the system in place.

There is also the issue of compulsion. The state needs very good reasons to force anything on people particularly things these people might not want to do or are not fit to do. And as others said when the state employs them it actually shuts them out of the regular job market since they have an even harder times getting in there.

Aside of that there are cost and wages considerations. Paying hundreds of thousands of people who do work for the state wages (aka their welfare benefits) which are nowhere on a level what a normal worker would get (reason those jobs often do not exist as regular employments) reeks of exploitation which in turn would mean raising those wages which in turn creates additional costs.

I also assume you are talking about welfare benficiaries and not per se unemployment. The later is usually covered by an insurance system, the former is a social safety net for everyone since we do not want to have people starve. In parts they already cranked up the enforcement quite considerably so you cannot reject a job just for fun anymore.

[Thorn777]

Just a brief thought. There is a culture with government benefits in that it has become a life-style and a cycle within generations and the safety net turning into a hammock.

Basically from what i understand, they get weekly payments but are not required to actually do anything and i assume have a hell of a lot of time.
Would i be fair to say that unemployment beneficiary's could be utilised by the government? So that they actually do work to earn their pay. Cleaning public toilets or something similar
Would you think that this would stop people from thinking it as an easy way out? or do you think it would encourage people to go on it as an actual occupation?

Do you have any facts and statistics coming with that assertion? Did you hear about it on ITV and Daily Mail?

[Claudius Gothicus]

Mmmmm I see where you are coming from, it's true that lately there has been a sector of society that lives alternatively between temporary low-paid jobs and food stamps or welfare checks.

But is doing ''State-sponsored'' menial tasks really going to bring them to ''the real jobs'' or is it simply going to take away time from them, shrinking the possibilities of using that time in searching for a better job or gaining more money in the current one? Unemployment beneficiaries have to be reinserted into the labor market effectively in useful and productive jobs.

The problem is that Europe and the USA in some cases have grown accustomed to a 10% unemployment rate. Which is in no way natural, and is at the same time not salvageable through welfare be it with a check or cleaning a toilet.

[Rolling Thunder]

The problem as well is that economic activity is becoming far more capital-intensive, in terms of both the human and physical capital required in almost all fields of industry. Thus, unskilled work is increasingly hard to come by due to a shrinkage of supply and an expansion of demand.

[Claudius Gothicus]

The problem as well is that economic activity is becoming far more capital-intensive, in terms of both the human and physical capital required in almost all fields of industry. Thus, unskilled work is increasingly hard to come by due to a shrinkage of supply and an expansion of demand.

Well... that's a big problem of highly developed societies, nowadays the lack of simple informatics knowledge almost puts a person on the level of an illiterate.

[Rolling Thunder]

Well... that's a big problem of highly developed societies, nowadays the lack of simple informatics knowledge almost puts a person on the level of an illiterate.

Precisely, so I hardly find it fitting that so many people want to moan about welfare when the reasons' for it are clearly not due to the idle-minded laziness of the poor but rather the natural economic consequences of sustained technological development.

[Claudius Gothicus]

Precisely, so I hardly find it fitting that so many people want to moan about welfare when the reasons' for it are clearly not due to the idle-minded laziness of the poor but rather the natural economic consequences of sustained technological development.

Well one could most certainly moan about the fact that welfare is aimed at keeping them at survival or subsistence instead of working like a labor reinsertion instrument.

But moaning about the existence of welfare altogether is like wanting for society to explode in a Class War.

[Rolling Thunder]

Well one could most certainly moan about the fact that welfare is aimed at keeping them at survival or subsistence instead of working like a labor reinsertion instrument.

The opposite is the case in the UK, and it still receives enough criticism from ill-informed Torygraph readers.

[muller227]

In 1991 I applied for unemployment in Montana. The state program offered job placement services, job training and day work. Job Placement was pretty simple, they sent you out on interviews with employers who had posted jobs with them I got the first one I went on so never went further or collected benefits.

Job training was a little different called boot strap it had certain requirements of the employer mainly that it taught a state deemed marketable skill. My girlfriend at the time went this route the state paid half of your wage and the employer paid half, it was run in conjunction with welfare. Woe to the employer who attempted to cycle through employees on this program they kept close tabs on it. It was also hard to get into, you had to volunteer for classes and pass the classes, teachers were qualified volunteers and pretty harsh missing class could get you kicked out of the cycle as could excessive tardiness, failing tests or just being a problem. The volunteers had to sign off that a person could do the basic job before you were admitted into the program.

Day work worked basically like a temp service, you could be sent out to help people move or clean up a construction site, you wnet out with your time card and at the end of the job they signed off on your work. The job service billed the employer directly for your services kept a portion of the employers payment and stipended a person's unemployment with the rest. It served the dual function of upping benefits slightly and also partially funding the state program I think it also with enough billable time could extend your benefits not sure about that though.

Its been more than 20 years so I have no idea what they do now.

The program seemed to work well enough, but Montana is a state with a very small population I am not sure it would work well in larger states.

[Col. Tartleton]

Here's my problem. The government sucks at doing things properly.

My uncle, a self employed master carpenter had a life threatening work related spinal injury which prevented him from working, and he was the only income for my aunt and him. He couldn't even get on disability or unemployment or whatever. They wound up running up debt. He had insurance. He got the surgery, but he's still recovering. Now I believe he's retiring, and they're going to sell their home and move down south to where it's cheaper to live.

My dad? Also self employed. If he gets hurt he's in the same boat. We're paying for services we don't even qualify to get or something.

But I know people are on welfare type stuff and they've got big screen tvs they didn't pay for, and instead of working they're doing stupid stuff like trying to get a rap career.

The government is actively destroying the middle class. Not big business. It's not unfair that the rich are getting punished less, it's unfair that we're getting punished more.

[Claudius Gothicus]

The government is actively destroying the middle class. Not big business. It's not unfair that the rich are getting punished less, it's unfair that we're getting punished more.

Yes, the US government is going against the expansion of the middle class.

-Regressive Tax system.

-Increasingly expensive College fees and difficulties to get a good post-secondary education.

-Decentralized funding for Schools, the poor schools for the poor and the rich schools for the rich.

-One could argue that the dismantlement of Labor Unions brought down ability of lower classes to bargain a piece of the cake.

-Losing the competitive edge on many industrial spheres.

But I guess that the welfare problem is far beyond that, it has to do with how is the welfare system created, in functions to do what? maintain the unemployed urban-poor, reinsert him to the productive sphere? keeping them from riot or theft?

[Col. Tartleton]

It's not that the Unions are dismantled. It's that they've become political action committees which act a lot like the corporations they screw around with. Unions ought to be concerned with getting a square deal in exchange for unrivaled quality. If the workers are going ahead full blast and making the company money they ought to share the rewards. That's fine. If we had the best schools in the world I'd be fine if the teacher unions asked for better pay. We're getting the job done. We're busting heads and baking bread. That'd be great. The problem is where our schools are not competitive and they ask for more and more stuff. At some point the response has to be you. They aren't failing because they don't have enough benefits or pay or tenure. They're failing because they're wasting money, wasting time, and using outdated methods and as an organization aren't focused on the kids. The Unions themselves don't care about the quality of the teaching, they just want to get more stuff for the teachers because that's who they work for.

We're seeing a petty fascism where the Unions, Politicians, and Corporate Executives are all in bed together. There's nothing wrong with organized labor, my grandfather was a blue collar factory guy and worked his way up and was a big player in the union. He worked his way up to white collar, then he got fired for supporting his men when they went on strike. I'm sure he was in the right. But then he was also a hell of an alcoholic back then, so I don't want to read too much into his life choices. A few years later he got his job back after working for a different company. There's nothing wrong with government. There's nothing wrong with enterprise. There's a huge problem when they're all gaming the system in cahoots. The Unions are forcing up more and more benefits, the Government is redistributing and squandering wealth, and the corporate elite can find massive loopholes to avoid paying taxes.

The tax rate in pure terms is progressive. The problem is that they don't actually have to pay it. The colleges are being jacked up in price by the easy access to huge loans and grants so that they can get away with charging a lot more than it actually costs and dump that money into stupid attractions like world class free private gyms and all kinds of fancy non academic furnishings. If they're guaranteed money the prices will go up. We ought to have a federal voucher system for public school funding. And obviously we can't compete with western countries, let alone with the powerhouses in the developing nations. We're less competitive than the Japanese. We're less competitive than the Chinese.

[muller227]

@Col Tartleton

You cannot just say that Government cannot do anything right, you yourself in the next post mention other Countries that educate quite well with education systems run by their governments. I do not disagree that the US Government at virtually every level is ridiculously ineffective considering what is spent. As far as education goes nothing is quite as ludicrous as our system. K-12 has become a vast pyschology experiment. We long ago threw out the baby with the bathwater. A look at the much maligned TFA program shows that all that special child psychology training means virtually dick. People get standard degrees in Ivy League schools, go to a five week basic teaching course and seem to be as effective on average or better than normally trained teachers.

The education system can perhaps be forgiven a bit when most Americans now consider it free daycare, sorry thats the way it really is, just watch as some crap kid is allowed to get away with all kinds of that 30 years ago would have had him booted out of the system. Now the school district gets sued. If the average American wanted education over government sponsored daycare we would have it.

[Denny Crane!]

This threads conclusions are basically coming down to "the luddites have it"

[magpie]

As previous posts have said we live in a more teq driven age, with less labour really needed by industry to do regular jobs.

The 10% unemployment ratio is now the new norm for western societies.

One could augue that anyone paid by the state is on welfare at different pay scales, From the unemployed/job seeker,s to the top civil servants.

I really do not know what the answer to getting proper full employment going is. It used to be making things other people wanted to buy.

However for the last 30 years it seems to be all about service industries whatever the hell they are, or produce to sell I am not sure?

Without the big building booms of the last 10 years we would have been at the 10% unemployment norm a lot sooner.

[muller227]

As previous posts have said we live in a more teq driven age, with less labour really needed by industry to do regular jobs.

The 10% unemployment ratio is now the new norm for western societies.

One could augue that anyone paid by the state is on welfare at different pay scales, From the unemployed/job seeker,s to the top civil servants.

I really do not know what the answer to getting proper full employment going is. It used to be making things other people wanted to buy.

However for the last 30 years it seems to be all about service industries whatever the hell they are, or produce to sell I am not sure?

Without the big building booms of the last 10 years we would have been at the 10% unemployment norm a lot sooner.

I personally don't think this entirely accurate, one the mass migration into the US over the last 20 years was largely fueled by big business obstructing border control. Cheap labor supply was a goal of Republicans as well as democrats, albeit for different reasons. An emphasis on technology and large scale manufacturing would have driven down the cost of housing much moire than the cheap labor supply. The inclusion of prefab homes into the mobile home category seriously hurt the efficency of the housing industry. These kind of homes were barred from most developments yet are structurally far more sound and scientific in construction. They do however require specialization and are enormously cheap in comparison to an industry that thrives on a contracted profit margin. Meaning higher the cost the higher the profit. One has only to go to a custom built subdivison and can tell immediately the interior might be custom but that is it. Custom companies adopted many of the practices, of the prefab industry, (hence the cookie cutter look in many subdivisions), but they never went for centralized production.

Factory Homes can be built and shipped within a matter of weeks arrive in place and go up on a foundation within a few days. My dads boss bought one 30 years ago, and it was a presto house, on top of a custom designed basement done locally. Compared to the many lesser homes in the region it cost less than the custom homes and was larger and much more utilitarian in design.

The point is the American market has for 50 years attempted to thrive on cheap labor rather than effecient labor, both sides have their reason for doing so. The upshot is now we have a huge imbalance inside our labor supply, where investment in technology would have maybe cut earlier profit margins in markets could have possibly been maintained internally by a continued investment in various effeciencies and the high skil jobs maintenance of such systems require. We have come late to the effeciency market with an undereducated population that has been taught to expect to be in charge and arrives on the job market with few job skills.

I personally hold migrant workers legal or illegal inside the US blameless as long as they do not engage in other criminal activities, I feel the same about natural born citizens. Our government created this situation in full agreement with the bulk of the American population and business community and now is whining about the consequences. The first patents on Robotic vacuums for hotels go back 30 years, but were expensive, only now are they coming into use. The ways to replace cheap loabor were available long ago Americans thought short term eschewing the cost at the time and now we are not as competitive as a society.

[Simeon]

There is a culture with government benefits in that it has become a life-style and a cycle within generations and the safety net turning into a hammock.

Would i be fair to say that unemployment beneficiary's could be utilised by the government? So that they actually do work to earn their pay. Cleaning public toilets or something similar
Would you think that this would stop people from thinking it as an easy way out? or do you think it would encourage people to go on it as an actual occupation?

Beneficiary's get the money for self-sustainance during their unemployment. Self-sustainance holds that this isn't a lot of money (and shouldn't be). If your country has got minimum wages imposed by a government, the government support for the unemployed should be lower than that (as it provides an incentive to look for a job). Government benefits are thus meant to not let the people starve. It is furthermore a fallacy to think this money is 'thrown away' or 'wasted'. As it is a little amount, the people are somewhat forced to spend all of it on goods and services. Government support thus somehow stimulates or sustains economic growth (at least in the 'basic' utilities such as foods, drinks and public utilities).

This system of government support can be quite complex. There could be support for temporarily unemployed, disabled, unsuitable for work (permanently unemployed). Point is, discussing government benefits should not be limited to and focussed on a 'group' of 'actual unemployed people', sharing certain characteristics, as this allows debaters to come up with exceptions to certain rules, debunking assumptions etc., while disrupting and delaying the actual matter at hand, which is more abstract.

The poster below addressed this matter in detail, and I concur. Once there is such a thing as 'state employment', exploitation may be possible. The British game show QI once adressed the US prisoners' contribution to the US GDP or production of defense capital (helmets etc.). They are a cheap work force with plenty of free time, even though comparing detainees with the unemployed is a bit odd.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPZed8af9RI

There is also the issue of compulsion. The state needs very good reasons to force anything on people particularly things these people might not want to do or are not fit to do. And as others said when the state employs them it actually shuts them out of the regular job market since they have an even harder times getting in there.

Aside of that there are cost and wages considerations. Paying hundreds of thousands of people who do work for the state wages (aka their welfare benefits) which are nowhere on a level what a normal worker would get (reason those jobs often do not exist as regular employments) reeks of exploitation which in turn would mean raising those wages which in turn creates additional costs.

I also assume you are talking about welfare benficiaries and not per se unemployment. The later is usually covered by an insurance system, the former is a social safety net for everyone since we do not want to have people starve. In parts they already cranked up the enforcement quite considerably so you cannot reject a job just for fun anymore.

I have some remarks however: the statement that forced labour hampers job searching seems valid in general, but I do not think that if people have eight hours a day of free time to look for a job, they would look for a job eight hours a day. I would say that part-time work (4 hours a day) would suffice in such a situation. If a job interview (or something related) is scheduled during work hours, you're exempted from work for that time.

Furthermore there is the matter of what work should be done. Given the low government benefit it can't actually be work with a high marginal value (the added value of the job to the business would then be high, such as an MP to the government system), for otherwise you're just denying the concept of distributing revenue proportionally to the contributors of that revenue (school managers may earn more than actual teachers, simply because the managers' task is to keep the school 'together', which is to a school higher valued than teaching).

There is thus another very pragmatic reason to let the unemplyed have poorly paid jobs: since there are always people able/willing to do that kind of a job, they are of low value (literally) and the wage can be set low and still have employees. Then again, availability of jobs must be guaranteed continuously (including workspace and actually doing something). This availibility and use by the unemployed must be administered properly (increasing dreaded bureaucracy).

It is furthermore worth to explore the concept of exploitation. Actual exploitation may not happen, however governments can use the unemployed as a 'strategic workforce' whenever the government needs to have something done. Within legislation there must be clauses dealing with this matter to check the government's power.

Overall, I see quite some issues with mandatory work for the 'unemployed', ranging from the practical (availability) to the fundamental (exploitation?). Is it 'fair' to force the unemployed to do something? In a way, you are living based on society's acceptance to pay for your sustainance (even though one could argue that a democracy is a system where the electorate allows politicians to implement even the unwanted (by the same electorate), and not a system where the electorate forces politicians to accept the electorate's point of view). Any method to lighten that burden on society may seem valuable. If however this policy does not decrease unemployment, it must not be implemented for it is to me then unclear what the policy maker wants to achieve with this.
I don't see government benefits as an easy way out, for the amount of money does not allow an easy life (unless of course you're satisfied with water and bread for dinner).

As previous posts have said we live in a more teq driven age, with less labour really needed by industry to do regular jobs.

The 10% unemployment ratio is now the new norm for western societies.

One could augue that anyone paid by the state is on welfare at different pay scales, From the unemployed/job seeker,s to the top civil servants.

I really do not know what the answer to getting proper full employment going is. It used to be making things other people wanted to buy.

However for the last 30 years it seems to be all about service industries whatever the hell they are, or produce to sell I am not sure?

Without the big building booms of the last 10 years we would have been at the 10% unemployment norm a lot sooner.

With regard to the question whether labour is necessary in a capitalized (tech driven) world, I would like to refer to the video above. Assembly line work may still be necessary (not all production is outsourced to Eastern Asia).
Getting full employment is hard and quite possibly impossible without some sort of state intervention (right until the 1990's, East-Germany had a pretty good employment rate I believe). If left to the market, one has to have a set of jobs and an equal amount of people wanting the job. Furthermore I believe a 'country' or 'inhabitants' is too big a group to measure employment in since I sense in my own environment (and I know, I musn't actually generalize this) that people like to negate job offers outside a region, even though there is very little supply of jobs matching their demands. This could simply be due to travel time, but house ownership contributes as well among other factors.
The 10% unemployment rate has got to do with decreasing demand and growth over time as a result of the past crisis and the (seemingly only limited to Europe) current crisis. The USA have some debt and somehow suffer more from crises than European countries (some notable exceptions though). However, during times of prosperity the USA booms and Europe just grows.

The building boom is only wise if there is actually some (expected) demand for them. It keeps the construction folk employed, but if the demand fails to follow contruction programs (which can happen solely based on the perception of uncertainty about the future), the cost of building them may outweigh the future benefits (even endangering break-even points). Massed speculative building however can lead to decreased value easily and is already visible (for example in empty office buildings). That said, if I were a policy maker responsible for crisis management, I think I would have 'helped' construction and infrastructure as well as others did who were in that position at the time.

[Rolling Thunder]

Service industries provide services. Doctors diagnose illnesses. Accountants help with taxes. Lawyers help with the law. 999 operators dispatch the relevant emergency services. Shop assistants sell you goods. They are the necessity that comes with having products more complex than a sharpened stick.