So, eventually, in my 20s, I thought: “I’ve tried security work and plumbing and I’ve even been a taxi driver for six months, but I just don’t like working”. My mates all left school and became mechanics, sweating it out in stinking, dirty garages for a couple of hundred quid a week.
"I’m much better off than any of them. The highlight of their day is going to the bakery to get a pasty for lunch and they’ve aged 20 years from the stress of working for a pittance and being stuck indoors all day. It’s my right to claim benefits. We’re all entitled to do what we want in life.
I’m surprised those people are as blatant about it. I can kind of see the mother’s point as far as the time and effort required to raise children, but that doesn’t excuse her kids choosing the same life.
This points to the conundrum of public assistance. If you provide enough benefits that people can live out their lives on it, then this is what potentially happens. On the other hand, if you limit assistance you leave people in bad situations.
If you create a local maximum in benefits, where getting a job means a decrease in quality of life, people rationally choose not to get a job.
You could probably help reduce this problem by increasing the minimum wage. But I know that’s just crazy talk.
Puritan work ethic in the hizzzeeee!
Fucking hell Rollory, this is at least the second time you’ve gone and picked up some reactionary piece of bullshit from the Daily Mail and posted it here.
Let me save you the trouble. Next time you feel like sourcing a provocative new piece of reporting from the batshit insane Middle Englander arm of the British media, go here instead.
EDIT: God this thing is awesome. Sample headline:
COULD NEW LABOUR INFECT THE QUEEN WITH AIDS?
Also:
WILL TEENAGE SEX DESTROY YOUR MORTGAGE?
You’d have to raise it pretty high, at least in the UK example. The article quotes that woman as getting 32,000bp a year. Minimum wage in the UK is apparently 5.50pb/hr.
I think the problem is that the benefits are too high. 32,000bp/yr works out to $64,000 at current exchange rates, and that doesn’t factor in the housing subsidy.
So is the Daily Mail story untrue or is it misleading in some way?
I realize it’s a tabloid, but completely making up a story like that seems a lot different than the US equivalent papers.
Let me recontextualize this for you:
Fixed.
Those are some pretty broad categories. We don’t know how that 2,700 is divided up for various needs and how many people that is supporting. If 2,700 is for the entire family, that’s not nearly as much as you make it seem. That’s not counting the higher cost of living in the UK in general.
Some of those quotes seem tampered with at the least for maximum impact with their audience.
Others seem much more realistic about what’s actually happening.
In some ways, I wish I could go out and get a job because I’d love to be able to afford to go out with my mates, buy clothes and take Codie on holiday or to the zoo. But I think it would be harder if I was working because I’d only get a job paying the minimum wage, yet I’d have to pay my own rent then, so I’d have nothing left. But I do want a better life for Codie and me.
DO PAEDOPHILES GIVE THE MEMORY OF DIANA CANCER?
WILL IMMIGRANTS KILL THE BRITISH PEOPLE?
DOES THE LEFT IMPREGNATE YOUR DAUGHTERS?
DO ASYLUM SEEKERS SCROUNGE OFF ENGLAND?
What are council houses?
DO TEACHERS HURT THE MEMORY OF DIANA?
COULD TONY BLAIR IMPREGNATE BRITAIN’S SWANS? <- my favorite
WILL TEENAGE SEX DESTROY THE ELDERLY?
DO LESBIANS DEFRAUD FARMERS?
WILL POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HURT YOUR MORTGAGE?
I even found the one that generated this story:
COULD THE UNEMPLOYED DEFRAUD THE MIDDLE CLASS?
edit to be informative:
Public housing if I’m not mistaken.
Give the generator guy knighthood already.
Think “the projects”
CHANNEL 4 WILL IMPREGNATE HOUSE PRICES.
I know the Daily Mail is exaggerating, but this still seems pretty shocking to me. And I looked up council houses in Wikipedia and they don’t look half bad to me. Then again, I’m from dog-eat-dog Asia so what do I know.
While the piece is written sensationalist I know this stuff really happens because it happens over here too.
The most grating part is that this kind of people keep reproducing, introducing ever more members like it to society.
Living of welfare? Fine, but mandatory sterilization will be your payment to society.
Uh.
Being an internet nazi? Fine, but mandatory sterilisation will be your payment to society.