I think people have a problem with the concept of someone holding a gun to the state/taxpayers. “Oh sure, you don’t have to give me welfare (even though I am able bodied and capable of working), but if you don’t, I’ll turn to a life of crime. Wouldn’t you rather pay me the money directly, rather than have me steal it?”
Seems a bit like extortion in its own right.
because we don’t go to work all day to pay for other people to sit on their backsides and leech off of our effort.
I pay enough tax as it is, without subsidising people watching daytime TV and dribbling all day.
I strongly believe that aleviating suffering is one of the primary goals of government and society. Not working is not the same as actively engaging in evil (to paraphrase Don Quixote), but it’s also inimical to the human spirit to condition people into cramped, busybody lives without any possibility of alternatives, deferment, or release. In other words, today’s loafer might be tomorrows’ great artist. And if not, then as long as they’ve lived quietly, their laziness has not been a great detriment to the overall health of the society. (I am not taking account imo extraneous arguments like crime in government housing, ect).
Gaming the system is simply a matter of unjustly extracting too much benefit from unemployment. One should not be rewarded for not contributing; but one shouldn’t face the lash for refusing, at this particular moment in time, to put your nose to the grindstone. A society that has compassion even for those that do not do their fair share is a society in which they can grow and become citizens, and human beings, that never closes the door on the possibility of them fufilling their latent potential.
Making it illegal to sleep on public property (effectively charging people to sleep) seems a little bit like extortion doesn’t it?
Why? If throughout history those people have people always existed, and attempting to throw them away ultimately does more harm to society than good, why not let them do nothing?
Or is it just important that you have something to rail against like an old man with his pants hoisted up to just under his nipples?
Not really, we are animals, work or die.
Hunter-gatherers who didnt hunt or gather, fucking died.
Just to play devil’s advocate:
The counter argument is that if we are nicely accepting of people doing nothing it simply encourages more people to think of that as a good idea. It grows the problem. It does not, as this theory postulates, do more good than harm. See “moral hazard.”
You might not agree with that rationale, I don’t myself actually, but there is a decent argument out there that doesn’t necessarily involve escalating pants to nipples.
I was talking about rent and land ownership. I’m not sure how hunter-gatherer societies handled the elderly and low performing or marginal individuals. It probably depended on the society (and their location too).
Also, hunter-gathering I assume gave people more direct connection to their own means of production. Today, we are just free (at best) to choose our masters.
I agree with this of course, but it’s simply a matter of avoiding excess. No society should or can provide everyone with a mansion, a stable full of elephants, and a large serving staff. It’s the old, “whom serves the servants?”.
But it’s easy to avoid discussing this rationally during this time where government incompetence is assumed as at best a necessary vice and being called liberal is an insult. But, otoh, to simply pass out money and hope for the best without watching how the money is being spent and by who is not the solution either. Can’t society be generous without being stupid?
What?
Today work is what you do to feed and shelter yourself. Don’t do it? Don’t expect much food or shelter.
but then, I don’t even agree with unemployment payments or anything like that (never took it even when I could’ve). Save your dough for rainy days.
If you are disabled or something, sure, but ‘oh you just live in a shitty apartment and eat cheap food and you dont have to work’ is horseshit because plenty of people work just to barely be able to live in exactly those conditions.
I hated being in school and watching foodstampers buy steak while I ate potatoes and ramen.
Umm, maybe the system has changed, but that wasn’t my experience (of what I remember). We ate things like butter and sugar sandwiches, or top ramen with a bit of egg, not steak.
I’ll take your word for it though.
If you are disabled or something, sure, but ‘oh you just live in a shitty apartment and eat cheap food and you dont have to work’ is horseshit because plenty of people work just to barely be able to live in exactly those conditions.
Well maybe we should be bridging the gap for people working, yet barely able to make it.
fucking sugar sandwiches? bleh.
I had a friend who was an anthropologist, and continuously pointed out that humans in hunter-gatherer societies “worked” far fewer hours than we do today.
Heh. I was a kid. I didn’t know any better and my mom was hardly June Cleaver.
I don’t mean to make this a woe was me thing, what we had to eat varied, based on circumstances. By the time I was 10 or 11, things settled down a bit, but that brought its own host of problems. I’ve been lucky to have had the opportunities I did.
My siblings in general had it worse than I did and there’s lots of people, even in the US, that were and are in even worse situations.
Oh I know, my mom is a nutritionist for WIC. Kids != freeloaders, they do need healthcare 100%, food, clothes, school, and childcare.
Sure, but no Xbox! I dont know how they did it.
Although this thread has gone to hell in a handcart…
It’s the household that gets £32,000. There’s ten of them living there, although knowing their type (and unfortunately, I do) it’s more a case of ten of them have registered it as their address as some are living and claiming benefits elsewhere too.
WILL GAYS LEAD YOUR HOUSE ASTRAY?
I think we’re safe on this one.
Just ask Eddie Murphy.