Quote:
Originally Posted by Gate Keeper
I slept on the problem and have not been able to come up with a solution. I have at last put my cards on the table with no clear answers. Nothing is set in stone and I am not ready to throw in the towel with this country. Fred what can you bring to the party? If you would not wish to go there, no problemo!  |
Mornin' Phil,
If I can manage it I'll try to bring a six pack to the party.
1. With regard to this thread and others like it where there is a generalisation that everyone in a particular group of people get tarred with the same brush I would say two things here. Firstly it just isn't true that it is completely the fault of each individual in the group. There are outside forces that create the conditions we live in. Secondly it can be upsetting to a significant number of people who read this type of thing because they feel they are being targeted. I would ask anyone thinking of starting a thread like this to consider whether they really need to or not. If they still want to I would ask they word their post very carefully and back it up with genuine evidence (as opposed to sensational newspaper headlines). I understand people get annoyed, frustrated and even angry about all sorts of things in our society but nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Try to look for reasons why things are how they are as a greater understanding might well mollify your emotions.
2. Never, ever take anything at face value. The world is full of self-interest groups who will tell you anything and everything from genuine facts to absolute bare-faced lies to show they are right. This can range from a one man band with a real bee in his bonnet about something through all aspects of society at large including politics, religion, commerce, ideology and anything else you can think of.
3. A potted history of me which will give you an idea of why I am how I am now.
I'm 62 now and through my life my views have changed from fairly extreme one way to fairly extreme the opposite way at different times. I feel I have now settled somewhere in the middle. At times I've been guilty of doing what I'm now asking people not to do - making uninformed judgements. I've lived through a lot, but not all, of the period since the benefit society we've been talking about started in the 1940's. My early years were unremarkable in a caring and reasonably comfortable family. I left school at 15 with no academic qualifications on a spur of the moment decision. That was 1966 and still a time when jobs were plentiful. I had given no thought whatsoever to what I was going to do. I lived with my parents and knew nothing about the benefits system at all. No-one in my family was in it themselves but I did have friends whose families were, on the dole, in social housing, that sort of thing. I walked into a job straight away and have had a quite wide variety of them in the private and public sectors since then. Other than for a period of nearly nine months in the late 80's I have worked ever since I left school. That nine months showed me how much things had changed in the jobs world.
Looking at my character I would say I am naturally lazy and unambitious. I rarely do today what I can leave to the last minute of another day and don't want to be in a position where I am responsible for telling other people what to do. Contrasting this though, at work I am a bit of a perfectionist. All the jobs I have done have been to the best of my ability but I do have what some have seen as an annoying habit of telling people who have been ambitious and risen to a higher position where they are going wrong.
4. I've never joined or voted
for a political party having never been convinced that enough of what they advocate was a good thing. Generally it has been a matter of voting for the one that will make the least mess of things at any given time. Sometimes I haven't voted at all. The biggest problem with politics is that the parties fundamental objective is to be in power. This, inescapably, means they only have a short-term view. Yes, over a series of periods in power they will achieve more of their vision of what things should be like. Unfortunately along the way they have bought their power with ill-thought out policies that have caused more problems than they can solve. As an example, I've talked about the way they've done things to manipulate the unemployment figures giving rise, in my view, to the situation we are now talking about in this thread. I'll just say that politics need a radical overhaul. While ever we swing to and fro our long term future is stuffed.
5. During my time in the private sector I learned that 20% of your customers generated 80% of your income. While that isn't hard and fast and I know there will be exceptions where it doesn't work, it certainly was the case a lot of the time. For those that persist with insisting that everyone who hasn't got a job should go and get one I must repeat this just isn't possible. I will say again, there just aren't enough jobs available for everyone to have one, even assuming they were all qualified and capable of doing those that are available. A fundamental change in all aspects of society would be necessary to even begin to start this process. And as most of this is about the cost of all this it is relevant how much or how little is involved. There is no point in chasing after relative peanuts rather than focusing on areas that involve much greater amounts. This makes sense, even if only to fund the necessary infrastructure to do something about the situation costing us the smaller amount.
It has also been said that benefits should be stopped if someone refuses a job. Other than, perhaps, feeling better because some sort of punishment has been imposed there are consequences that would impact on many more people who are working if this happened. For a start it would be another factor driving down wages. It could very easily lead to people not up to a job actually making things worse for a business - reduced productivity, late and/or incorrect distribution and even theft of stock by those that might well see it as a way of boosting their incomes. There would be additional costs on things like the health service and housing, almost certainly exceeding any money saved. There would, inevitably be a significant increase in crime affecting many people. Burglaries and robberies would go up, with inevitable increases in things like insurance costs. Violent crimes could actually increase the number of people with some dependency on the state.
6 (got there!
). What can we do about it? I have made some observations and suggestions in previous posts, particularly no. 54., but here are some other thoughts.
Given that I believe we lurch along, with no long-term coherent policies, according to whoever is in power at any given time how about we have some sort of charter or constitution? We could set out both rights and obligations for individuals so as to leave no-one in any doubt where they stand. It could do the same for
any government so they have to take a longer term view over their short-term ambitions. Many things could and should be taken out of government hands.
Given that it all comes down to money how about we set public spending as a percentage of GDP? It would probably need to be a bracketed figure rather than an absolute, if only to smooth things out a bit. This happens with other things such as foreign aid and qualifying criteria for countries joining the EU. There would, inevitably, have to be a minimum figure set below which it wouldn't be viable and in these circumstances if income (tax) wasn't sufficient to cover the cost we would have to either borrow (to a set level) or increase taxes. Business would also have obligations, such as the minimum wage and paying taxes.
I'll repeat the subject of means testing. We can't afford to be nice about this. If we are to look after the whole of society we should only pay according to need. Throwing money around willy nilly is simply wasteful and we can't afford it.
Will any of this work? Who knows?
Will anything like any of this ever happen? No chance!
But before you lose hope I am working on a much, much cheaper final solution involving the diversion of the marksmen currently involved with the Badger cull ..... only kidding ..... or am I?