Emailed in by Bob E, from The Guardian:
The best way to bring down the benefits bill isn't to reach for cheap headlines, it's to get people into work, paying into the system instead of drawing out benefits. Welfare reform that is tough, fair, and that works. That's how we get Britain moving again.
It's time the government listened to the IMF and changed course – starting with Labour's idea for a compulsory jobs guarantee to ensure we get everyone young or old on the dole long-term back into a real paid job – one they would be required to take or face losing their benefits. We can't go on like this. The IMF is right. And today's jobless figures speak for themselves.
Yes The Truly Gifted one once again complains about the welfare bill rising, and says that the Work Programme isn't working and should be replaced with "a compulsory jobs guarantee to ensure we get everyone young or old on the dole long-term back into a real paid job – one they would be required to take or face losing their benefits."
What's the difference between "requiring people to take a job or face losing their benefits" and what the current UK government is actually trying (but failing miserably) to do? Isn't that the same "cheap headline"?
As to where these 2.5 million "compulsory but real, paid jobs, the registered unemployed for the filling of" are going to spring from he of course says bugger all. Bugger All - just about sums him up, too...
18 comments:
AKH, I suppose this is a classic example of Indian Bicycle Marketing.
It really is soooo depressing. They tax and regulate the beejesus out of us and subsidise non-jobs at uneconomic wages and then wonder why no new jobs are created. They seem unable to grasp that jobs are a cost of production, not a benefit and that the only way to genuinely create jobs is to liberate production (NOT encourage it by subsidy).
Heaves deep sigh...
What staggers me but no longer surprises me is that this is so obviously the language of slavery.
It was spoken in Rome, its being spoke here today, no one can see it. Incredible.
Slaves - the starving or on welfare or low paid or fakejobs or charity
Senators - CEO's public and private sector, senior politicians of course, anyone working for Caesar but trying to get his job, those possessing large monopoly power.
Citizens - everyone else in between
RS. I have a theory that there are only two sorts of people as regards what might be termed 'politics'. There are (1) conscious or unconscious Nazis, and (2) the rest of us.
Byrne could have been quoting Mein Kampf.
L, I agree entirely with your first comment, except for thist bit:
"They seem unable to grasp that jobs are a cost of production, not a benefit"
From the point of view of the employer's accounts, yes, wages are a cost. But really they are just a share in the overall profits of the business.
So if you take on Mrs L as an employee, she shows up as a cost, but if you make her a partner in your business, the business profits are unaffected. And having a decent job is clearly a "benefit" to the worker and to society at large.
RS, agreed.
L, Byrne could have been quoting Iain Duncan Smith, that's the really worrying bit.
The simplest way to cut benefits is to set the HB level at the 1/3rd median rent point, and then let the market sort things out.
TS, earmarked HB is a recipe for disaster, better to bump up non-earmarked cash welfare and leave it at that. Or worst case, have a flat rate for the whole country.
On the 16th March the Beeb published a "spot the difference" story when Not Red Ed was explaining to the electorate how Labour would be doing things differently ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17394506
nb: I have had to quote one Not Red Ed quote out of sequence as originally reported by the Beeb, but it doesn't change anything ..
Ed Miliband has pledged to "conquer" youth unemployment, as he said Labour would guarantee a job to unemployed young people if they came to power.
The party's "real jobs guarantee" would offer six months' work to those aged 18 to 24 who had been jobless for a year.
The Labour leader said the "only answer to a job crisis was jobs" and the £600m policy would be funded by a bankers' bonus tax.
But Mr Miliband also warned young people they have a responsibility to take the chance and that "saying 'No' is not an option".
Those taking part will be expected to turn up for work, as well as looking for a full-time job and complete training, or face "tough consequences" - including possible benefit sanctions.
Ministers say Labour cannot afford the pledge and its past plans have failed.
Meanwhile the coalition's £1bn Youth Contract, launched by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, will provide £2,275 to employers to take on a total of 160,000 18- to 24-year-olds for six months.
MW,
I'm absolutely in favour of LVT and CI, but I think it's going to take a gradual shift.
I do wonder sometimes about the metropolitan/provincial divide in this country and how both parties are basically metropolitan in outlook now, and how much UKIP are a provincial party.
BobE, Indian Bicycle Marketing for connoisseurs, that one.
TS, LVT-CI isn't going to happen anyway, so we might as well plan for a full-on massive overnight shift, people will soon sort themselves out, within a couple of years it will just be normal.
What we observe is that people will whine if they think they are losing out, whether that's by £100 a year or £10,000 a year, the volume of whining bears little relationship to the perceived loss.
So why give them a new reason to whine each year for ten or twenty years if you can get it over with in one or two?
"– one they would be required to take or face losing their benefits."
Either he hasn't a clue, or he's playing to the Daily Mail gallery. The whole point of unemployment benefit is prevent there being starving people roaming the streets, people with nothing to lose. How is he going to prevent that if he proposes starving people back to work?
MW. I do see that. It's still a 'cost' though.
B, playing to DM.
L, you see it as a "cost" but clearly it isn't. Yes, it is a cost if the government makes you employ people just to deal with regulations and so on (payroll lady, compliance officer, health and safety officer).
But if you can employ somebody for £30,000 and this generates extra £50,000 gross profit for the business, then the whole of that £50,000 never belonged to you. It merely "rests" in your bank account for a short while.
£20,000 belongs to you, you earned it, and £30,000 belongs to the employee, it's his money, he earned it. If you sack him to cut "costs" then your profits go down etc.
Mw then that applies to every business expense?
L - surely it only applies to those business expenses that don't result from the business owners own decisions - the government isn't yet telling business where it can be based and what equipment it can buy to install and use, and who to obtain it from - ok perhaps that ought to be doesn't overtly do that, I accept that in certain circumstances there may be subtle pressures through "tax breaks" on siting businesses etc. but in general, business is free to go where it wants, and kit itself out as it wants. etc.
L, it applies to most true business expenses (not extra costs imposed by government).
So if one guy grows trees, chops them down, saws them, dries them, makes furniture, drives it to his own market stall and sells it, all by himself, he only records the minimal cost of growing trees (and maybe petrol) as an input cost and considers everything else to be profit.
But if the sawmill has to buy the logs, it sees that as a cost. And when the furniture factory buys the dried planks, it sees that as a cost. And when the wholesaler buys the finished furniture it sees that as a cost.
Wrong.
The cost is borne by the people who get the value ( buy the furniture), and the total value created is shared between the forester, the chap at the sawmill, the workers in the factory, the people who install and maintain the machines at the factory, the haulage firm, the warehousemen, the sales girl who rings up your sale, the man who delivers the furniture to your house etc.
Bob, I think I have illustrated what you are saying?
MW - thanks, you have most ably articulated that that I was struggling to ... hence the cop out of answering L's question with a question ....
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