I don't often go to Oxford, but had to go shopping there yesterday in a particular shop, and one thing I noticed was that they were after a sales assistant. But this wasn't just some small ad in the window, it was also prominently behind the till.
"So, you're a bit desperate for shop staff"
"We've put the thing in the window, in the paper, and had almost no-one coming in".
OK, they had a slightly specialised requirement, but we're talking fitting experience rather than brain surgery.
As I continued around Oxford, I noticed just how many other retail outlets had jobs. McDonalds, WH Smith, a couple of bookshops, a couple of cafes.
Now, you might think that this is some Oxford-specific problem. Expensive town and all that (but then again, estates like Blackbird Leys are very chavvy).
But then I started looking around the web at the McArthur Glen outlet centres. The one at Bridgend has 8 jobs, or around 1 job for every 10 shops. The one at Swindon, a cultural desert, has 7 jobs, or around in in 12 shops.
And of course, the last time that we were told that there were no jobs for the million-odd unemployed, lots of Poles came over and filled them.
The problem is not that there aren't jobs, it's that the job means a loss of benefits by so much that they'd rather shag their girlfriend/play Call of Duty/watch Jeremy Kyle than go to work for £1-2/hour. They're not lazy, they're just not stupid. As someone who works for themselves, I sometimes get call for people with £150 for a website, and in most cases, I politely decline, because my hourly rate will fall below £5/hour and I'd rather spend my time on training to help get higher paying clients than that.
The answer is the Citizen's Income. Get a fixed income for being an adult, enough to keep you from starving, but that's fixed rather than means tested. Go and get a job in WH Smith, you keep your Citizen's Income and get your WH Smith pay.
Not satisfied
1 hour ago
5 comments:
Agreed.
Agreed by me too. I suspect that hell will freeze over/ the welfare system collapse completely before the government would go for it.
How about replacing not just benefits, but education and most of the NHS with a citizen's income? After all it's poverty that blocks our education a lack which ails us most.
AC, probably because having such a heinously complicated and contradictory welfare system (the contributory principle is pretty much the opposite of the means testing principle, if you think about it) enables the government to play "divide and conquer" and generates jobs for the boys.
L, that's called "vouchers", which provably work - see nursery vouchers in the UK or education in Sweden, or the way that the health care system is run in most European countries.
It works the other way as well. My business could support another job, if it wasn't taxed so bleedin' much. Or look at it this way, I'd be more prepared to speculate on how another employee could increase our production.
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