"We must dismantle our culture of dependency"

TheBigShort said:
Whereas imprisoning people has smashed the cycle of poverty and led their children to lead law-abiding, career progressing lives?
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I didn't say anything about imprisoning people, but since you brought it up, committing a crime is a personal choice for which there should be repercussions dealt with through the courts based on the crime committed.

My point is that by making going to work the only option for most people *, children of those who would have stayed at home would probably be more inclined to work when they are older.

* excluding those mentally / physically impaired

Anyone who has lost their job should get higher dole payments on a sliding curve as they are more likely to go back to work.
 
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See my description of Johnny the waster above. Would you employ him? His parents were hard working when they left school, but a recession hit in the '80s and there was no work. Johnny s dad got depressed and turned to alcohol. Used to beat his wife up and Johnny too. Eventually he committed suicide himself leaving Johnny (14) and three sisters to be brought up by their mum. She couldnt go to work as she couldnt afford the childcare (what little of it back then) so she struggled on welfare but could never really motivate her kids, traumatised from all the beatings she got. There was no social services to help her as taxpayers were moaning about welfare payments to lone parents.

So what do we do about Johnny?
 
Give him opportunity to get job, some training, level of support payments in interim period to help with additional costs, etc. There are social services now.

If he refuses all help and turns to crime what option is there to jailing?

Not everyone who had tough up bringing turned into Johnny. Thankfully.
 

You might want to read the earlier part about a job offer first.
 

We don't cut his welfare, but we should remove JSA from him, as he doesn't look for work.

So he moves off the unemployment list, and gets SWA instead.

Otherwise, the Live Register will overestimate the true amount of unemployed.
 
Protocol said:
We don't cut his welfare, but we should remove JSA from him, as he doesn't look for work.

So he moves off the unemployment list, and gets SWA instead.

Otherwise, the Live Register will overestimate the true amount of unemployed.
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So how much will the taxpayer be better off? I mean, if we do what you propose then how much closer will we be towards dismantling the culture of welfare dependency? That is, after all, what this topic is about.
 

One condition of the dole is that you must be "genuinely" available for and seeking work. If Johnny is not then he knows that his dole will be cut - so that is Johnny's choice - not the "choice" that you are making for him.

If you think that a cut in the dole is going to entice Johnny into making a few quid illegally, then I can tell you that there is a high chance that Johnny is already doing this while in receipt of his full dole - so he won't care about a cut in his dole anyway.

Johnny's choice is not work or crime, his choice his work, make a genuine effort to seek work, make a genuine effort at interviews or alternatively get educated - or suffer a reduction in his dole payment.

There is plenty of opportunity out there for Johnny - if he wants it - if he doesn't and he "chooses" crime then he chooses the consequences for that choice. That is what prison is, it is not a consequence of being unemployed, it is a consequence of being found guilty of criminal offences.

My view on Johnny is the complete opposite to yours - if Johnny repeatedly turns down jobs or deliberately sabotages interviews - then he is deliberately sabotaging his own opportunities to progress off social welfare.

There will always be "Johnnies", but for every "Johnny", there are 100 Tommy's who did take the opportunities offered to them.

Johnny is going away no matter what, Johnny is always going to be a burden on the state - and no factory job or no dole is going to change that.
 
You have altered the facts as presented. You have made a (prejudiced) assumption that he is probably involved in crime anyway. Johnny is not involved in crime.
I have the view that cutting his welfare is more likely to push this type of individual into crime.
But more revealing in your comment is the part about the 100 Tommys who do take the opportunites. These people are genuinely looking for work and take it when presented yet, this topic is about damning these people as 'welfare dependents', when they fall on some hard times.
Because if this topic is really just about squeezing the Johnnys then, the return to exchequer in doing so would be close to negligible as to not be worth talking about.

So what is it? Is this topic about 1 out 100 This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language scratchers, or about the 100 tommys too?
 
TheBigShort said:
You have altered the facts as presented...
So what is it? Is this topic about 1 out 100 This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language scratchers, or about the 100 tommys too?
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Tommy isn't a fact. He's a hypothetical persona.
This topic is about the significant percentage - 16% to 25% that Brendan kicked this thread off with. That percentage contains the 'This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language scratchers' and the potential hard workers. We know that both types are in that percentage, nobody in the universe knows for sure what the split is between them, and there is no way in advance to establish what it is. It could be 1:99, 10:90, 50:50, or anything in between.
So it doesn't seem unreasonable to discuss carrot and stick approaches for both types i.e. we must consider the consequences and reactions of both to the proposed changes discussed.
 
TheBigShort said:
These people are genuinely looking for work and take it when presented yet, this topic is about damning these people as 'welfare dependents', when they fall on some hard times.
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You have not been reading the same thread I have been reading. The whole idea of this topic has been how to uplift people out of welfare dependency and back into the world of work where they have the possibility of bettering their position from year to year, and making a contribution with their talents, energy and putting their shoulder to the wheel when it comes to that.

It is the current system that damns them a life of welfare dependency on the state, locking them into a poverty trap for life from which it gets progressively harder to escape from. The longer someone is out of work, the harder it will be for them to return, or to be in demand by employers.

Please find me a single comment from me where I damn these people?
(By these people I mean the genuine cases, not the cases you think will turn to crime - we all seem to think they are past rescue, and the only difference is in how to manage them)
 
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Perhaps 'damning' is too harsh, and certainly not everyone holds the same views, but the 2nd comment in this thread had this to say,


Kind of sets a tone early on.
 
TheBigShort said:
Perhaps 'damning' is too harsh, and certainly not everyone holds the same views, but the 2nd comment in this thread had this to say... Kind of sets a tone early on.
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And comment #4, from the original poster, challenged that 'tone' immediately. There are four broad tones I detect on this topic ... yours and gerryc at one side of the debate, neutral\interested observer (from the OP), that of the likes of firefly and myself, and the tone expressed in the comment you highlight.

ps no criticism is implied by naming (I'm not shaming!), and no disrespect intended to the other posters in the thread, just naming those who have nailed their colours to the mast so to speak
 
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Perhaps we can move on to further the discussion. Perhaps 'welfare dependency' can be defined in some way? Perhaps ' a culture of welfare dependency' can be defined too?
My view of that would be something on the lines of,
"A significantly large proportion of welfare recipients who repeatedly and/or purposely choose to avoid opportunities to that would provide financial independence".

My view is that the vast majority of welfare recipients would choose financial independence first over welfare dependency. But as such, their current economic and social circumstances, by virtue of low pay job, part time hours, high rent, disability, lone parent, lack of skills etc...puts them in a situation that makes it almost impossible to get by in this economy without welfare assistance.
I dont believe their is a culture of welfare dependency in broad terms but I would accept that in some socially deprived areas it does exist.
The broad answer is not to cut welfare, but to increase it for those who have employment history.
 
TheBigShort said:
You have altered the facts as presented. You have made a (prejudiced) assumption that he is probably involved in crime anyway. Johnny is not involved in crime
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I did not alter any facts.

Let me refer you back to the post that I responded to:


There are no facts here. You have made a whole lot of assumptions about Johnny, including the assumption that Johnny is not involved in any crime - while at the same time assuming that he will sabotage any attempt made to employ him by the social.

You then seem to ask if we should take his welfare off him or cut it and then you make the assumption that he has two choices and two choices only when in fact, the offer of work was also a choice and Johnny decided that he didn't like that - his two choices according to you are turn over a new leaf or he can choose to turn to crime - you made that assumption - you then expanded on that assumption by laying out what you claim are the costs of Johnny's choice.

Your view of Johnny is that he is so reluctant to work and better himself and so reluctant to come off welfare, that if presented with the choice of taking a job in a factory and making more money - or taking the cut and turning to crime - that he would turn to crime.

My view is that there are less Johnny's and more Tommy's, in other words, I believe that if many people were presented with the correct support to return to education or to work, then they would.

They wouldn't sabotage the attempts by the state to provide that support and risk a cut in their income and then turn to crime - I don't believe that for one second.

As I said, your Johnny, as you presented him, is heading to jail one way or the other.
 
The original post stated that he hadnt committed a crime. Not as an assumption, but as a statement fact. That is the scenario as presented.
What would you do with Johnnys welfare?
If you were an employer, would you give him a job?
 
Let me refer again to your post:


Not at that point no.


But if Johnny makes this choice above - then he most certainly has committed a crime. You believe that because he sabotaged an opportunity to earn more money, legally, in the full knowledge that what he was doing would result in a cut in his welfare, and on that payment being cut - that this will push him into crime.

You then laid out the costs of those crimes:


You are asking if I would cut his welfare - well I would prefer to invest in Johnny, see him on a training course, or perhaps try and get him a starting position in a factory or something....

But if all those attempts failed then Johnny is the problem, because you can't help someone who chooses not to work and in making that choice, is choosing to live on welfare - which is not easy to do.

If Johnny can't live with a cut in welfare and has to turn to crime to subsidise it, then in all probability he couldn't live on the full rate, and was subsidising it anyway - a job might interfere with that and a job will never pay the going rates for dealing drugs.

As a matter of interest (sorry if you answered already), would you give him a job, what would your solution be?
 

Ok, you cant follow the point. If Johnny makes the choice to sell illegal tobacco that would be a crime - future conditional tense.

The fact that as of now (present tense) he hasnt committed a crime. This is definite. Whether he goes on to live a life of crime is not known.
My view, if his welfare is cut, coupled with his lack of opportunity, means, in my opinion, that he is more likely to choose a life crime, over a FAS training course. This of course is not definite, but in my view, given Johnnys circumstances, more probable.

If you still dont get it, then you are right and im wrong and you will move on from here.
Thanks.
 

His circumstances are not "coupled" with a lack of opportunity, the factory job and the FAS course are opportunities, his circumstances are as a direct result of his failure to take up those opportunities.

If he is told the consequences of turning them down - then he is creating his own circumstances.

I mean look at your description of Johnny again:

"Johnny is a tosser, failed at school, never worked a day, has no social skills, is from a broken home. Johnny smokes rollie tobacco, drinks 10 cans of Tuborg a day, eats fozen processed food and plays Xbox most of the day. He doesn't care, he collects his €188 a week off the taxpayer and gives two fingers."

And look at what Johnny does when he is presented with an opportunity for a job:

"The Social call him up and say that they have a job interview for him as a factory worker. He turns up for the interview but is clearly so uninterested that the employer refuses to give him the job."

And when presented with a FAS course - according to you - he is more like to choose a life of crime.

Clearly we don't share the same view of what exactly an opportunity looks like - but to me, these are opportunities.

Johnny is the problem, not the lack of opportunities, which he was warned that should he not take, will lead to a reduction in his welfare payment.

If Johnny doesn't care and he has no interest in taking up the opportunities then he knows the consequences - his welfare will be cut.

If Johnny turns to crime then it is not because he had no opportunities or choices - he did.

And if you can't see that, then I'll bid you goodnight.

Thanks.
 
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