The Benefits System

Xiderpunk

PasturesNew wrote: »

4 years ago, two young lads got a bit of wood and wrote "car wash" on it and propped it up on their wall .... now they've got good kit, there are about 4-5 of them doing it and there's always a queue.

Of course, they did start off with some advantages:
- time on their hands (they were still at school) to be able to give it a go and if nothing happened they could sit on the wall and chat to their mates until somebody rolled up ... and if nobody did, then no harm done.
- space - parents' house with a huge tarmac driveway, large enough to park 12 cars tightly, so room to be washing 1-2 with 2-3 queuing.
- house was right on a main road into town, probably the most prominent driveway entrance on that road, with thousands and thousands of holidaymakers arriving 4-5x a week with a car still grubby from their 200-300 mile trip to get here

If I'd tried that here, at my house, at the same time, I'd still be sitting on the wall with my mates as there's no room, no driveway, it's not on a main road.

Exactly, those kids deserve all the rewards that success brings. The key ingredient in this was a will to stand on their own feet no matter how hard it may be getting there. They recognized those advantages they had and utilized them. I would bet money that had their venture failed, a couple of weeks later they would have been walking up and down the streets with a ladder offering window cleaning services or some other service.

In years to come when those four lads are working three day weeks with their managers running their franchised operations, people like pqrdef will come along and protest how unfair it all is. That they should be taxed more, punished in order to support those who sat back and did nothing (because it was easier). Taxes get raised, VAT sees a hike. Those four guys now realise they can no longer support a workforce of 300 guys and have to let some of them go in order to keep the business going. pqrdef comes along, oh no we have more unemployed, we must tax these rich people more, ad miser infinitum.

heathcote123

pqrdef wrote: »

I've objected to the idea that everybody can do it, on the grounds that the black economy can't absorb two million unemployed.

Though actually I do think car-washing is a non-starter, because my local valeting centre will do it for a fiver. Much quicker with a bit of technology. I don't see how bucket and sponge man can compete and make a living. Start with a van and some heavy-duty kit, maybe. But that's where we came in.

Could you clean 3 cars in an hour with some fairly cheap low tech kit?

I'd be suprised if you couldn't. Next step is finding someone that will clean 3 cars an hour for 7.50.

heathcote123

Just like to add I'm stick and tired of people trying to clean my car wherever I park, so lets not encourage this any more.

DirtyDick

jamespir wrote: »

no i mean get them of benefits and give them a job doing that instead of forcing them to work for pittance if you've got the work to do why not employ them properly

and benfits isnt a wage its no where near

Because if you'd pay a standard wage it's not economical, but if you have a lot of people paid (admittedly not a lot) to be economically inactive, they could at least do the things that otherwise wouldn't be done. E.g. a council could not afford 3000 people to collect litter, tidy parks and streets, repaint park benches, if they had to employ them; but if you used the unemployed to augment their workforce, you perhaps could.

Of course, this depends on whether you think the Govt has a duty to find jobs for people, or stay as much out of the business and the workplace as possible and reduce taxation as much as possible.

jamespir

DirtyDick wrote: »

Because if you'd pay a standard wage it's not economical, but if you have a lot of people paid (admittedly not a lot) to be economically inactive, they could at least do the things that otherwise wouldn't be done. E.g. a council could not afford 3000 people to collect litter, tidy parks and streets, repaint park benches, if they had to employ them; but if you used the unemployed to augment their workforce, you perhaps could.

Of course, this depends on whether you think the Govt has a duty to find jobs for people, or stay as much out of the business and the workplace as possible and reduce taxation as much as possible.

so youd be willing to do the job you do for pittance then ?

pqrdef

Xiderpunk wrote: »

Because they have lived in a prosperous country where EVERYBODY has had every opportunity to get an education, learn skills, get a job and become wealthy.

Not really, because most primary schools are just not set up to deal with kids who arrive in the state that some kids arrive in. Basically they just label them as backward, whatever the favourite current euphemism is, and leave them to fall further and further behind.

A mixed-ability infant class doesn't provide equal opportunity for all. It works much better for those who've been brought up well before they start school.

Unfortunately kids don't get to choose their parents. But I gather you've got no problem with kids paying for the sins of their parents.

Xiderpunk wrote: »

Do the math, we can not as a nation continue to be paying MORE in the welfare system than we take in tax total.

I don't deny there's a problem, but it's fundamental and economic. England got rich first out of wool and then out of manufacturing, but now we don't have a way to make a living, although we seem to think the world owes us one anyway.

But we can't fix it by taking in each other's washing. That's just another form of redistribution. It only shunts the money around. We need more real jobs, jobs that pay for themselves by creating assets.

In the meantime, we have a surplus of labour. Short of leaving people to starve, we are going to have to shunt money in their direction one way or another. There are questions about who should be "selected" to be unemployed, and how impoverished they should be, and what they should have to do, or suffer, for what they are "given". Fair enough - since a surplus of labour is the default, most ages have faced these issues. The poor we have always with us, it was written 2,000 years ago.

But the absurd pretence that they could all be working if they wanted to should be seen for what it is. It's got nothing to do with solving the problem. It's just the tightfisted and mean-spirited constructing an argument that the unemployed should be treated as harshly as possible because they deserve to be punished.

pqrdef

heathcote123 wrote: »

Next step is finding someone that will clean 3 cars an hour for 7.50.

You won't make a living that way, because you won't get to do 3 cars an hour all day every day. You can't go round door to door, you'll have to visit customers at a time that suits them, so you'll waste too much time travelling, and when you get there at the appointed time, the customer will have gone shopping anyway.

Sorry to inject a note of realism, but if we're hand-washing cars on customer's premises I very much doubt whether it's possible in practice to achieve a year-round average of more than 20 a week. Even if you settle for £400 before expenses and tax, that's £20 a time.

pqrdef

DirtyDick wrote: »

E.g. a council could not afford 3000 people to collect litter, tidy parks and streets, repaint park benches, if they had to employ them; but if you used the unemployed to augment their workforce, you perhaps could.

How does this work? Public authorities are exempt from the minimum wage and allowed to employ people at JSA rate? In fact, required to employ at JSA rate everybody who would otherwise be on JSA?

Those park benches will be repainted so often they'll never be dry enough to sit on.

hallmark

Lol, I don't like to interrupt when you're enjoying talking to yourself so much but what an amazing amount of utter crap you talk.

Why don't you stop whining on Internet forums & go & do some work instead.

pqrdef

DirtyDick wrote: »

Of course, this depends on whether you think the Govt has a duty to find jobs for people, or stay as much out of the business and the workplace as possible and reduce taxation as much as possible.

I don't think people are looking for a solution that costs the State more in total. Of course the cost might be shifted from the welfare budget to the Parks & Gardens budget. But then people would say Parks & Gardens are way too expensive, they must be privatised or outsourced. And the new private operators would come in and sack most of the workers. Big saving, Tories delighted. Doesn't that just prove that the private sector is way more efficient. But then they'll start complaining that the welfare budget has gone up. Too many people unemployed now. And so it goes around.

In the 60s and 70s there was a fashion for subsidising jobs in "lame duck" industries. To appease the miners, the NCB "invested" vast sums in "development" at pits with no future. BR employed train drivers who played cards in the canteen all day and didn't drive a train from one month to the next. Kept the unemployment figures down, kept the welfare budget down.

Thatcher did away with all that. She figured, correctly, that the cheapest thing to do with surplus workers is to pay them to stay at home.

This can lead to social problems if mismanaged, but we've been happy enough to turn a blind eye to those for years. What's getting people airyated is the cost - but it's still the cheapest option. Making work costs more.

And there's not much point in people paying less tax if they're going to waste the money on spray-tans and having their nails done and their cars washed and their dogs walked. If they can afford that, they can afford to pay more tax.