Is the USA uncivilised?

[Audley Strange]

I have seen programs come and go, intended to lift welfare beneficiaries out of poverty and into the work force. Most fail miserably, and the few that achieve anything tend to work only for a minority of the beneficiaries.

We need to get out of the simplistic thinking mode, and look a little deeper. The sad fact is that a lot of welfare beneficiaries are incapable of making the change to becoming productive workers. There are many reasons for this, ranging from drug addiction, to family background, to cultural, to gang memberships etc.

Just suggesting that the idea that we can somehow wave a magic wand and put everyone into paid work simply is not going to work. Perhaps some programs can reduce the number of beneficiaries by a small percentage, but there is not likely to be any gain much more than that.

Worse, if we use truly draconian tactics to try to force people to work, or else starve, they will simply turn to crime, and society will face enormous damage from burglaries etc.

I have pointed out before that holding someone in prison, at a cost to the taxpayer of $ 100,000 per year each, is cheap compared to that person being loose and committing crimes.

Paying a benefit to those people who are unemployable is actually cheaper than removing the benefit and suffering the crime consequences. As I have also pointed out before, this situation will only get worse, as robots and other mechanisation methods take over more and more jobs. I suspect that, in 100 years, most people will be on benefits, and being a beneficiary will lose its current stigma.

Just suggesting that the idea that we can somehow wave a magic wand and put everyone into paid work simply is not going to work. Perhaps some programs can reduce the number of beneficiaries by a small percentage, but there is not likely to be any gain much more than that.

Hang on.

So your thinking about many people is: They are essentially mental or physical fuck ups who are unemployable, we shouldn't bother trying and just bribe them so they don't act like savages? Well unless they are smackhead robbers and crackhead muggers or those in the lower or middle eschelons of organised crime, those guys we should pay to be criminals because some how that makes the street safer? If this is your view, would it not be cheaper and more beneficial just to execute every last fucking one of them? I mean I don't like to point it out but what you are describing is that we should sustain detrimental parasites at the expense of ourselves. Yours is a pretty bleak perception of folk why not go the whole hog?

I've always thought most people tend to consider areas of high unemployment areas are impoverished and have high domestic abuse rates, child abuse rates, violence, robbery mental illness, gang culture and substance abuse because these people cannot work. Not that they cannot work because they have all these social problems. We have to attempt to raise some families out of poverty so they can start being free of the social issues that are caused by long term unemployment, not just give up and fling money at them.

You say we should be less simplistic and think deeper, but your answer is to consider them useless eaters or savages and bribe them not to kill us as we watch them turn our society into a shithole?.

And what we do in 100 years time when no one is paying tax because they are all unemployed and demanding benefits?

Any ideas?

[Blind groper]

Audley

The percentage of welfare beneficiaries who are so criminally or mentally ill that they fit your description is low. However, many are not fit for work for a wide range of reasons, and some of those reasons do not make them despicable. For example, there are many kinds of mental illness. We should not penalise people because they are ill.

I am not suggesting we should stop finding ways to encourage as many as possible into the work force. Sure, let us do that. But we should realise from the outset that it is impossible to achieve 100% success. There will always be some that simply cannot become good little workers.

We need to provide benefits to those who cannot work because without those benefits, out of desperation, they will turn to crime, and that will cost society a hell of a lot more than the benefit money.

Nor can we simply execute them. Apart from matters of ethics, they would kinda resist. Lethally!

[FBM]

The US will remain uncivilized until they get enough guns.

[Seth]

Hang on.

So your thinking about many people is: They are essentially mental or physical fuck ups who are unemployable, we shouldn't bother trying and just bribe them so they don't act like savages? Well unless they are smackhead robbers and crackhead muggers or those in the lower or middle eschelons of organised crime, those guys we should pay to be criminals because some how that makes the street safer? If this is your view, would it not be cheaper and more beneficial just to execute every last fucking one of them? I mean I don't like to point it out but what you are describing is that we should sustain detrimental parasites at the expense of ourselves. Yours is a pretty bleak perception of folk why not go the whole hog?

I've always thought most people tend to consider areas of high unemployment areas are impoverished and have high domestic abuse rates, child abuse rates, violence, robbery mental illness, gang culture and substance abuse because these people cannot work. Not that they cannot work because they have all these social problems. We have to attempt to raise some families out of poverty so they can start being free of the social issues that are caused by long term unemployment, not just give up and fling money at them.

You say we should be less simplistic and think deeper, but your answer is to consider them useless eaters or savages and bribe them not to kill us as we watch them turn our society into a shithole?.

And what we do in 100 years time when no one is paying tax because they are all unemployed and demanding benefits?

Any ideas?

Man, have I been waiting a long, long time for someone else to have this particular light-bulb (sorry, energy-efficient LED bulb) go on in their head.

You have the very nut of the issue. This is the consequence that no Marxist Progressive is willing to acknowledge, ever.

Alexander Tytler (or perhaps someone else) said it succinctly 200 years ago: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

That's exactly what happened to the Soviet Union...and Cuba...and is happening right now in Venezuela.

You can't solve poverty by throwing money at the poor. All you do when you do so is to further disable and enslave the poor by your largess, even if it's well-meaning, which mostly it's not. Mostly its self-serving and arrogant and aggrandizes the individual who is "helping the poor" or it's a direct political motive to keep the poor enslaved to the government to maintain control of them.

This does not mean that we should not invest in the poor or attempt to abolish poverty, it means that the method and purpose of the effort has to be about restoring their freedom and dignity and assisting those who are willing to raise themselves out of poverty by helping them to obtain the knowledge and tools they need to do so. History proves that when you do this, when you grant them the respect they are due as humans of not presuming that they require patronistics management because they are inferior, when you look upon them as equals and every bit as capable of economic and social success as anyone else if and when they choose to reach out and take it for themselves and their children, and that what they really need is hope that their efforts will be rewarded by providing a self-sufficient life for themselves and their children that restores the dignity that they lose by being forced into dependence, people will mostly respond and do what they must to prevail over adversity and succeed.

You can't build dignity and self-respect by constantly telling people that they are incapable of caring for themselves or their children and that only the government can protect and support them. As we've seen over generations here and abroad, sooner or later they lose all self-respect and dignity and clamor for more and more government largess that they have been falsely lead to believe is their birthright.

[Seth]

Audley

The percentage of welfare beneficiaries who are so criminally or mentally ill that they fit your description is low. However, many are not fit for work for a wide range of reasons, and some of those reasons do not make them despicable. For example, there are many kinds of mental illness. We should not penalise people because they are ill.

No one here has ever said we should, certainly not me.

I am not suggesting we should stop finding ways to encourage as many as possible into the work force. Sure, let us do that. But we should realise from the outset that it is impossible to achieve 100% success. There will always be some that simply cannot become good little workers.

Indeed. There will always be those who for one valid reason or another are functionally incapable of supporting or caring for themselves, and these people require our generosity, compassion and charity. But then again that's not who I've ever been talking about.

We need to provide benefits to those who cannot work because without those benefits, out of desperation, they will turn to crime, and that will cost society a hell of a lot more than the benefit money.

Again, that's not who we're talking about. You are stating a false dilemma. I am, and have always been discussing those who are fully capable of performing useful labor but who refuse to do so because it's easier and more convenient for them to take the dole money and spend their time robbing people and smoking crack. They are the ones who consciously choose to take advantage of a system that gives them money without requiring anything from them.

For decades I've advocated a welfare plan that would actually work.

Here it is:

If you are unemployed, in order to get money from the government you must report each weekday at 9 am to your local sports arena (or other like venue) and clock in using your government-issued ID. You then proceed to the seats in the arena and sit down. And there you sit for the next eight hours. You get a 30 minute lunch break and two 15 minutes breaks like every other worker. Otherwise you have to sit in your seat.

Here's the catch: You can't talk to anyone, you can't text anyone, you can't listen to music on your iPod, you can't do anything at all other than sit in the seat in silence, contemplating the whichness of the why or whatever else you desire to ponder. If you get caught violating that rule, you get thrown out of the stadium for the day. Repeat offenders may be banned.

You have one option however to alleviate the grinding boredom of being alone with your thoughts: You may attend one of many academic and vocational classes that are offered each day, just like you would going to school...which is in fact what you're doing. If you are disruptive or fail tests you get thrown out as above. But so long as you apply yourself to improving your knowledge and skill set with an eye towards employment, the state will support your every effort in doing so by providing the classes, and the lunch, for free.

At the end of the day you clock out with your government ID and your welfare benefits are automatically added to your account on a per-day basis.

Don't show up for "work" every single day? You don't get paid for the days you miss.

Comprehensive health services, addiction counseling, job counseling and placement and other social programs are offered to those who actively participate in improving their lot in life.

Those who wish to sit on their front stoop smoking crack and doing nothing, or worse being a negative factor in society, can and should starve.

I don't mind paying to educate people and make them better workers nearly as much as I loathe paying with my labor to support idlers and drug addicts who just want to live as they like without any responsibility...on my dime.

But if I'm going to pay for them to better themselves, I want to know exactly where they are and exactly what they are doing for the same eight hours that my boss expects to know where I am and what I'm doing in return for my paycheck. I think that's perfectly fair and reasonable, don't you?

Oh, one other small catch: You only get to do this for four years max in your lifetime, so make the best of it.

Nor can we simply execute them. Apart from matters of ethics, they would kinda resist. Lethally!

Well, they would here in the US. Elsewhere...not so much...as the disarmed Jews of Europe demonstrated in the 40's.

As a matter of history it's never been very difficult to engage in large-scale genocide to eliminate enormous numbers of people. Stalin did it to the Ukrainians without firing a shot. As the Germans found out, the biggest challenge they faced was sanitation. Soon after they began killing Jews and burying them in huge trenches the negative public health aspects of rotting bodies became apparent, which is why they went to ovens.

By the way, you've just demonstrated exactly why an armed citizenry is highly desirable as a defense against just that kind of attempt, which is actually anything but unusual in history. It's actually quite commonplace, even today.

[Blind groper]

Seth

You still don't get it.

There are people who literally cannot work. The reasons why they cannot work are frequently (perhaps nearly always) invisible. There are so many subtle forms of vocational impairment.

What would you say about a Masai hunter who came to the west and could not settle down to a day's work? This is a guy who will spend 16 hours without pause hunting an antelope to feed his village. But he cannot put in 8 hours work in the western sense. Nor could he sit still in your rather sadistic little set up.

That Masai without assistance would go on a crime spree to survive. People would be hurt, as would the economy. A million such crime sprees and the whole nation's economy might collapse.

There are thousands (perhaps millions) of people who are like that Masai. Though for different reasons. They may try going to work and putting in 8 hours, but they soon get tossed out on their ear.

I was almost one myself. I tried several jobs at which I was hopeless before I found some that I could get enthusiastic about and put in a dedicated 8 hours. But if I had to settle for the lousy jobs that drove me nuts, I know I would goof off and get sacked.

People are often unemployable, and it is not necessarily because they are lazy or visibly sick. Often the ailment inside them is invisible, even to themselves.

[Hermit]

You have the very nut of the issue. This is the consequence that no Marxist Progressive is willing to acknowledge, ever.

Alexander Tytler (or perhaps someone else) said it succinctly 200 years ago: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

Factually wrong. Our (Australia's ) current Prime Minister came to office after promising to dramatically slash expenditure as well as taxes. The electorate was very aware that this meant significant government cuts in social welfare, health and education budgets, yet it voted his party into government. It is not the first time we have done that, and if you cared to have a bit of a look around, say in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy, it turns out we are not the only voters to have done so, repeatedly.

[Seth]

Seth

You still don't get it.

There are people who literally cannot work. The reasons why they cannot work are frequently (perhaps nearly always) invisible.

No, you don't get it. I'm not talking about such people, as I explicitly stated in my last post.

There are so many subtle forms of vocational impairment.

Subtle forms of vocational impairment? WTF? If you don't know how to do something, you learn.

What would you say about a Masai hunter who came to the west and could not settle down to a day's work?

Go back to Kenya and herd cattle again, or take a training course and learn a new vocation, but don't expect me to pay for you to be idle.

This is a guy who will spend 16 hours without pause hunting an antelope to feed his village. But he cannot put in 8 hours work in the western sense. Nor could he sit still in your rather sadistic little set up.

That's rather the point. He has a choice: sit idle and bored or get an education and vocational skills and then go get a fucking job.

That Masai without assistance would go on a crime spree to survive. People would be hurt, as would the economy. A million such crime sprees and the whole nation's economy might collapse.

Deport him.

There are thousands (perhaps millions) of people who are like that Masai. Though for different reasons. They may try going to work and putting in 8 hours, but they soon get tossed out on their ear.

Not interested I'm afraid. Root, hog, or die. They need to learn discipline and self-control and understand that other people are not going to support them in the lifestyle to which they would like to become accustomed just because they have poor work skills. Hunger is the best motivation there is to encourage close attention to job performance. Billions upon billions of people have learned this lesson over the millennia, so can your hypothetical red-herring case.

I was almost one myself. I tried several jobs at which I was hopeless before I found some that I could get enthusiastic about and put in a dedicated 8 hours. But if I had to settle for the lousy jobs that drove me nuts, I know I would goof off and get sacked.

And others should be required to pay for you to goof off why, exactly?

People are often unemployable, and it is not necessarily because they are lazy or visibly sick. Often the ailment inside them is invisible, even to themselves.

Most "unemployable" people are unemployable because they have been indoctrinated into the notion that they are entitled to a life without having to work precisely because liberal idiots feel sorry for them and facilitate their sloth and idleness. Even blind people with no legs can beg for alms on the streets of Calcutta. It ain't much of a job, but it's a job.

Yes, there are those who for reasons not associated with their own personal unwillingness to apply themselves are utterly incapable of doing anything productive eight hours a day, and those people need our support. But just because you were not emotionally or intellectually suited to whatever jobs you took doesn't mean that I or anyone else owes you a fucking dime. I don't care if you don't like your job, or that you aren't enthusiastic about it, or aren't fulfilled by it. If you want to eat and have a roof over your head you'd fucking well better suck it up, buttercup, and do the fucking job whether you like it or not. Presumably whatever job you take is better than not eating and living in a cardboard box under a bridge. But if it's not, then fucking go live in a cardboard box under a bridge and starve to death, because you're not getting a sou from me. Your choice.

Fucking parasites.

[Audley Strange]

Audley

The percentage of welfare beneficiaries who are so criminally or mentally ill that they fit your description is low.

I'm sorry I thought it was the premise of your argument. I'm glad it's not.

However, many are not fit for work for a wide range of reasons, and some of those reasons do not make them despicable. For example, there are many kinds of mental illness. We should not penalise people because they are ill.

So when you discount the now marginal number of people who have "issues" (which we do here. Long term unemployed is a different category from "Ill" or "villian.") what are you left with? Homemakers, the terminally lazy and entitled ex-students who think they're too good to do certain jobs. Most homemakers have volunteered themselves out of the system so they don't count in the stats either.

I am not suggesting we should stop finding ways to encourage as many as possible into the work force. Sure, let us do that. But we should realise from the outset that it is impossible to achieve 100% success. There will always be some that simply cannot become good little workers.

I think only the naive would assume anything near 100% success on any government programme to get the public to do anything.

We need to provide benefits to those who cannot work because without those benefits, out of desperation, they will turn to crime, and that will cost society a hell of a lot more than the benefit money.

You're still saying we need to pacify the barbarians or they'll sack our towns, that its both the most cost effective way and ethical way of dealing with them. Now I don't agree with that perception. I think firstly most people are able to work and that these programmes might be important in breaking decades of learned helplessness.

Nor can we simply execute them. Apart from matters of ethics, they would kinda resist. Lethally!

But if they are savages and parasites then why should we consider it ethical to pander to extortion by them? That's kinda what you're saying we do. How is it more ethical to pay them not to kill us and less ethical to eliminate "them" as a social problem?

I don't agree with your view on the ill and various other dysfunctionals being the majority of long term unemployed but it seems to me that to consider them as such is to suggest they are a specifically economic and social detriment because we need to pay for their lives because if we don't they'll kill us. If you believe that then I think you are inevitably promoting your society's doom.

[Audley Strange]

Man, have I been waiting a long, long time for someone else to have this particular light-bulb (sorry, energy-efficient LED bulb) go on in their head.

You have the very nut of the issue. This is the consequence that no Marxist Progressive is willing to acknowledge, ever.

Alexander Tytler (or perhaps someone else) said it succinctly 200 years ago: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

Oh they'll admit it but only as it pertains to all other ideologies, just like all other ideologies. 8 billion misshaped pegs cannot fit one round fucking hole without a lot of brutal and painful physical and mental alteration. I didn't realise it wasn't common knowledge. Any rule system will be exploited for advantage by any group willing and able to do it. Doesn't matter if its indolent masses or Robber Baron CEO's, Protestants or Catholics, Feminists or Radical Islamists. The police, press and parliament here who are meant to define and support that rule system have been exemplars of ripping the piss out of it. Nothing to do with Marxism other than why its fundamentally doomed, like all systems, to fail.

You can't solve poverty by throwing money at the poor. All you do when you do so is to further disable and enslave the poor by your largess, even if it's well-meaning, which mostly it's not. Mostly its self-serving and arrogant and aggrandizes the individual who is "helping the poor" or it's a direct political motive to keep the poor enslaved to the government to maintain control of them.

Well that's what surprised me by Blind Groper's points. Essentially he seems to be saying "yeah they ARE worthless scum, so we need to placate them or else we're fucked." which I think is a pretty dark way to look at those who don't have a job. That mentality could easily be used to reclass them away from "citizen" to ward of state, sectioned, placed in camps and given well, gassed. It is a patronising way to look at the unemployed for someone who seems to care so much about their well being.

I'm not you, I believe in a safety net, I don't believe I'm paying my taxes in fear of a pleb rebellion but nor do I believe that people should be entitled to others money in perpetuity.

This does not mean that we should not invest in the poor or attempt to abolish poverty, it means that the method and purpose of the effort has to be about restoring their freedom and dignity and assisting those who are willing to raise themselves out of poverty by helping them to obtain the knowledge and tools they need to do so. History proves that when you do this, when you grant them the respect they are due as humans of not presuming that they require patronistics management because they are inferior, when you look upon them as equals and every bit as capable of economic and social success as anyone else if and when they choose to reach out and take it for themselves and their children, and that what they really need is hope that their efforts will be rewarded by providing a self-sufficient life for themselves and their children that restores the dignity that they lose by being forced into dependence, people will mostly respond and do what they must to prevail over adversity and succeed.

You can't build dignity and self-respect by constantly telling people that they are incapable of caring for themselves or their children and that only the government can protect and support them. As we've seen over generations here and abroad, sooner or later they lose all self-respect and dignity and clamor for more and more government largess that they have been falsely lead to believe is their birthright.

I agree with that, our nanny state has lead to a state of spoilt overprotected and over entitled brats of four current generations. To blame solely one party for all of this however would be to assume a one party state in all but name. Parties are ideological but most people seem to be reflexive or reactionary voters. They don't so much vote someone new in as vote the old lot out when they inevitably fuck up. So again I really think you're limiting the issue when you blame it firmly at the door of Marxists. Corruption and costly bureaucratic and authoritarian policies are widely available from all your major religions and domestic faiths.

[Blind groper]

I have never said people are worthless scum who must be placated. Nor do I say that most unemployed are unemployable. The number who fit that category are very small. But there will always be some who cannot become, as I said, "good little workers."

If you act like a ruthless and callous asshole, and want to toss them out in the street to starve, you will get an unpleasant surprise, when they turn criminal and violent in order to survive. When a person is starving, he or she will do desperate things.

Providing welfare for those who cannot settle down to a life as a good employee is the smart thing to do.

[Seth]

I have never said people are worthless scum who must be placated. Nor do I say that most unemployed are unemployable. The number who fit that category are very small. But there will always be some who cannot become, as I said, "good little workers."

If you act like a ruthless and callous asshole, and want to toss them out in the street to starve, you will get an unpleasant surprise, when they turn criminal and violent in order to survive. When a person is starving, he or she will do desperate things.

Providing welfare for those who cannot settle down to a life as a good employee is the smart thing to do.

In that case, I'm going to become an unsettled employee and demand that YOU pay to support me...along with millions of others who will instantly game the system and drive the entire society into bankruptcy. And if you don't, I'll come over to your house and personally do something desperate to you and your family for failing to accommodate my "disability." Pay up, or else...That's not enough, pay more, or else.

What fucking idiocy you spout...sheesh.

If you are starving, ask for help or get a job. If you do "desperate things" because you "cannot settle down to a life as a good employee" you're what we like to call a "lazy fucking criminal who needs to be excised from society for the betterment of all."

I'd much rather respond to lazy fucking criminals doing desperate things because they cannot settle down to a life as a good employee as the law authorizes me to respond when anybody tries to take what is mine or harm those I care about. And guess what? I not only am able to do so, I have a constitutional right to do so. You don't. How stupid is that? It's really no wonder why the cowards down there choose Chamberlainesque appeasement to strength and morality...they are all scared to fucking death that some disaffected welfare leech will rip their head off and shit down their necks because they are utterly incapable of defending themselves, having allowed their masters to disarm them long ago. Servile fuckwits.

Adapt or die, lazy fucking criminals...and Chamberlainesque cowards.

[Audley Strange]

I have never said people are worthless scum who must be placated. Nor do I say that most unemployed are unemployable. The number who fit that category are very small. But there will always be some who cannot become, as I said, "good little workers."

No you didn't but you did say "a lot" and then proceeded to give a list of people who were either criminals or had various social or mental issues as if that is what the long term unemployed comprised of. You may not have said it but it was heavily implied. I was trying to clarify that because I assumed that it was not your position.

If you act like a ruthless and callous asshole, and want to toss them out in the street to starve, you will get an unpleasant surprise, when they turn criminal and violent in order to survive. When a person is starving, he or she will do desperate things.

Well if you are being so ruthless and callous, turning them out to become criminal and violent would be exactly the pretext you need for public support to get rid of them permanently. I'm not denying that people with nothing have nothing to lose, but you claimed the problem wasn't simple and that we needed to think deeper and then did precisely the opposite, man.
You took a stereotype of the long-term unemployed and suggested we just give them the cash we already give them.

Providing welfare for those who cannot settle down to a life as a good employee is the smart thing to do.

No the smart thing to do is to encourage that person who can't settle down to life as a good employee to find something constructive to do with his/or her time. Why are we paying council workers to waste time with trivial shit like painting park fences when we could get people on the dole to do it, even temporarily? They do it 4 hours a week then they get 4 hours of minimum wage as a bonus. No-one that dysfunctional that they literally cannot work at all is on Unemployment benefits, they're usually on disability (which is a whole other can of worms). Those who are on unemployment benefits have to show a willingness to work. From what I have gleaned this leaves a smaller group of people who are your junkies and gang members, who are single mothers looking for part time work while at college, indolent fucks who use their council homes like battery farms for kids, those who've been out of work so long it all feels hopeless. While many of those are not going to be willing to take any job, Some of those people need their attitudes fixed. Just giving them money deals with nothing.

Despite the protestations of the well meaning there is an entitled class. They do exist, come to a dole office in Glasgow sometimes and spend an hour listening to the people who work there and those who go there, you'll see generations of people who'd have everything handed to them on a plate and done fuck all but take take take and make life shittier for everyone around them. Still there are also those who have been made so despondent that they have a problem with learned helplessness. We have professional dole cheats and 22 year olds needing it for six months while they wait for their post-grad employment to start. It is a complex problem. It's not deep just to say "give em money."

We need to at least try to stop those who can work but won't from getting to the stage where they are either taking the piss or are completely resigned to their fate.

Welfare should be a safety net for those in trouble it should be a means to an end, not an end in itself.

[laklak]

I like the work camps idea, that way we don't have to look at them. It's like sitting in first class - for some reason they board you first, and then the peasants have to walk past you to their seats. Offensive, honestly. I don't want to look at them, they put me off my Moet.

[Blind groper]

To Audley and Seth

The thing you are forgetting is that there have been, globally, literally hundreds of government schemes set up to get beneficiaries into work. All those schemes have a degree of success, but not one of them ever had 100% success.

There are always going to be a small number of people who cannot be forced, cajoled, persuaded, or otherwise driven into being good little workers. If those people are handed a job on a platter, they will be tossed out of that job rather quickly when it is found by the employer that they literally cannot do the work scheduled.

This is not simply my opinion. This is an empirical result from numerous trials. In other words, no matter what your mind conjures up, it does not change the reality.

So what do you do? I am happy to support schemes to increase job availability, but we have to realise that not all people are going to hold down a job. For those people the options are to toss them onto the street, and have them turn criminal (which will cost the taxpayer about 400% of the welfare cost each year to keep them in prison), or to provide welfare.