About time some might say:
Jobless people who refuse to accept help to return to
work could lose welfare benefits, the work and pensions minister warned
yesterday.
In the latest "crackdown" on the "can’t
work, won’t work" minority, John Hutton said that hard-working families
could not be expected to pay for those refusing to take jobs.
Roughly what happened in hte US wasn’t it? And that was successful wasn’t it?
In
Whether this works depends *entirely* on how it’s enforced. There are similar rules in Australia, but they’re very easy to get around. My bet is that the Labour government won’t have the guts to enforce them. As the Tele said today, this proposal is short on details, and Labour gutto’ed out on similar proposals in 1997 (and Blair has much less power now than then).
Simple time-limited benefits would be the easiest to manage – a 5 year lifetime limit for access to benefits. This works with human nature rather than against it – people will want to “save” their allowances for a “rainy day”.
How about accounts, where you have a balance credited by paying NI, and you can debit from it until you run out.
Both of those suggestions are far too sensible to have a hope in hell of being adopted (in the UK at least).
“Simple time-limited benefits would be the easiest to manage – a 5 year lifetime limit for access to benefits. This works with human nature rather than against it – people will want to “save” their allowances for a “rainy day”.”
That would be lovely for the genuinely long term sick… Just let em die eh?
“Both of those suggestions are far too sensible to have a hope in hell of being adopted (in the UK at least).”
No, both of those suggestions are /fucking insane/ and completely ignore the whole freaking point of the benefit system, to protect those most vulnerable.
Does it fucking matter if someone has paid NI contributions for 1/2 their life?
How would you feel if you suddenly suffered a permanent disability and were /unable/ to work, and the system stopped supporting you when your NI contributions were spent?
I would feel like I should have bought unemployment insurance just like I’ve bought health insurance, car insurance, etc.
I would feel like I should look into private charities to make up for the shortfall if the insurance starts to run out.
I would feel like the whole country shouldn’t be forced at gunpoint to support a huge number of no-hopers on the off chance that some of them truly can not find *any* work whatsoever – even though we have programs that employ the mentally handi-capped, blind, etc.
“A huge number” here = 100,000 long-term claimants. Supporting them costs £250m a year, or £10 per worker.
I’m happy to pay a tenner a year to live in a country where even the terminally idle don’t have to die on the streets – if you aren’t, then why not emigrate to somewhere where they do? And don’t let the door hit you on your way out…
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