WarOne wrote:

Mr Mystery wrote:All the more incentive to find a job then, no?

Hmm...would this apply to specific people (such as those without great physical handicap)?

Ahtman wrote:

But I still fail to see how a unilateral 'get off your arse and do some bloody work for your benefits' is a bad thing?

It implies that anyone getting welfare is lazy, when not all people that are, are. I was responding to that specific quote. It also seems to ignore the fact that, unless they have never had a job in their life, they have paid taxes toward this. Again, I can only go by what I know of my state. Here, part of your taxes goes toward these programs and when you have to draw unemployment what you get is determined by how much you got paid and how long you have worked. If you only worked 6 months you aren't going to get unemployment for very long, as opposed to someone who worked 20 years and lost their job.

cpt_fishcakes wrote:The whole thing is a stupid idea, if theres a job worth doing employ someone to do. I strikes me a no coincidence just when tens of thousands of public sector workers are set to lose there jobs, work that would have fallen under the public sector is being outsourced and filled by slave labour taken from the dole queue. Why not put people in actual employment, the more jobs out there the better.

CptJake wrote:Maybe you pay enough taxes to cover unemployment, I know I don't (and I am in a pretty high bracket). (hint: the EMPLOYER is who pays for the unemployment insurance, both Fed and State, not the employee.)

CptJake wrote:Anyway, want to address the main point of my post (the context) that you seem to have ignored? Where I state that assuming everyone unemployed is just a down on their luck hard worker that they should be eager to do something productive for their benefits?

Wrexasaur wrote:
As long as it doesn't actually interfere with people's job search, and they are really giving something back to their local communities, this seems like a damn good compromise.

Kilkrazy wrote:What the UK needs is for the private sector to create more jobs.

The problem the country has faced over the past 30 years is that the private sector has not created the jobs needed to employ the population.

The government stepped in to fill the gap, through unemployment benefits, increased government jobs, and increased government spending on employing private companies to do government work.

All of that is only a short term solution because it simply imposes a greater burden on the people in 'real' private sector jobs.

Kilkrazy wrote:The kind of industries I mentioned are export earning. The people employed there need domestic industries such as building, transport, farming, catering and soon.

Tourism is an important industry which earns foreign cash as well as internal spending and does not require degree level education.

Albatross wrote:It's my hope that increased tuition fees will dissuade people from going to university who shouldn't be there at all. Maybe THEN we'll see more apprenticeships.

SilverMK2 wrote:

Albatross wrote:It's my hope that increased tuition fees will dissuade people from going to university who shouldn't be there at all. Maybe THEN we'll see more apprenticeships.

I don't disagree with a lot of what you were saying, however, I think we can be more selective about who goes to university without putting people into debt for the rest of their lives. Back in my parents day, you got a grant to go to university and only the best people would attend as there were fewer places on fewer courses and they all expected more from the students.

I would prefer to see this route more than just charging the crap out of people wanting to go to university. Get rid of all the silly useless qualifications in subjects that really should not be taught at university and focus on giving the best students the best education. We need world class scientists and engineers, doctors and nurses, software and hardware engineers, etc. We don't need another 40,000 Media Studies graduates, or 90,000 Fine Art History graduates (just pulling these numbers/subjects out of the air).

Get these people into vocational training, or other educational streams that both cater for their desire to learn and also prepare them to work in the field they are learning about.

Albatross wrote:Also, can you make a good argument for why the rest of society should pay for a private individual's education? Why is that not the responsibility of the individual? Education should be reward in itself, and shouldn't require financial blandishments in order to encourage people towards it. I think we should provide a baseline of education in this country obviously, but I think that responsibility should, largely, stop at 18 years of age. I wouldn't want to see all government further education subsidy scrapped, but I think the people who benefit most from it should pay most, if not all, of the cost.

Kilkrazy wrote:Society as a whole benefits from people being educated.

Wrexasaur wrote:I'm just going to mention, again, that we are talking about roughly 5 million people here.

It throws up plenty of questions. Namely:

1] How much will it cost to find the work and ensure that claimants are carrying it out? Bear in mind that there are now 1.5m people on Jobseekers’ Allowance. (A total of 5m are on some form of out-of-work allowance, of which 2.5m are on incapacity benefit). If all are put through this system it would surely cost billions of pounds to administrate.

UPDATE: It will only apply to a small minority of claimants. The scheme may prove to be rather symbolic.

2] Will the entire scheme instead only apply to a handful of the unemployed? To quote the Sunday Times: “Job advisers will be given powers to send benefits claimants on placements“. That sounds discretionary rather than universal.

UPDATE: Indeed. The DWP tells me this scheme only applies to those who aren’t trying hard to find a job. “It gives advisers more discretion when someone is not working at trying to find a job,” says a spokeswoman.

3] What kind of work will they be doing? The theory is that each will have to do four weeks of work at 30 hours a week - that is a block of 120 hours’ labour.

UPDATE: The scheme would be carried out by councils, companies, charities and other voluntary groups. Yet none have signed up to the deal or - it seems - even been approached, according to the DWP. It is still very early days as to how this would work, it seems. Don’t be surprised if the scheme ends up in the hands of existing welfare-to-work providers.


4] Will any of this be economically productive? If so, how will they match people’s skills with the requisite work? (It’s a complicated challenge).

5] Will companies be able to take advantage of the unemployed by getting them to work for almost nothing? Does that leave people open to exploitation?

6] Is the scheme as radical as it sounds or do officials already have similar powers?

UPDATE: The latter. “Advisers do have powers in place at the moment, but they are not very widely used,” says the DWP. I’ve done a bit of research and it turns out that Labour’s “Flexible New Deal” - which was around last year - forced people to do ‘four weeks’ work experience’ .

7] If it is not economically productive, will it all be fruitless Keynesian tasks such as litter-picking, digging holes or rolling boulders up hills and back again?

8] Will the policy only apply to those who have been out of work for a certain length of time? If so how long?

UPDATE: Yes, it is aimed at those who show no interest or application in finding a job. But defining such individuals is down to their advisers - which implies a rather arbitrary judgment. Some officials will doubtless be tougher than others.

9] How often will they have to do the hard labour? Once a year? Every six months? Every five years?

UPDATE: It is still not clear

10] Does it only apply to “layabouts” (the phrase in the Sunday Times) and “no-hopers” (News of the World)? Or will the 1m currently in work - but expected to lose their jobs as a direct or indirect result of the spending review - also face the test?

UPDATE: In theory, no, at least not at first.