I am one of the "parasites" on unemployment benefit who is draining your income

If you think I am going to pass up the 405 I get a week from unemployment, that's before taxes mind you, for a job making minimal wage just to get off unenjoyment then your crazy...

I worked for my unemployment.....

Unemployment is not welfare.... at least I worked for the benefit and payed into the system for it.

I feel for these teenage kids though... All of us old fookers took their summer jobs this year to pay the mortgage.

Why would a company hire a snot nose 17 year old that wants to be a teenager and party or hire a middle age person with responsibility's and will be reliable.

i think they should bring in a work for your benefits scheme - so people like yourself have to benefit the community - litter picking, mowing grass etc etc for 35 hours a week - failure to show up would mean susspension of benefits, also benefits wouldn't be cash it'd be food and clothing vouchers.

i also feel housing benefit should be a fixed amount - just enough to get you in a towerblock. theres then a driver for people to take and use insurance and also a driver to get people back to work would also probably stop the majority of non working imigrants coming into the country.

Originally posted by Zaanny
I worked for my unemployment.....

Unemployment is not welfare.... at least I worked for the benefit and payed into the system for it.

If I'm not mistaken - but I'm pretty sure, off the top of my head, this is within ballpark (maybe someone can look it up) - the maximum FUTA rate paid by any employer is $60 annually and roughly the equivalent in state UI taxes.

So, yes, if you haven't drawn any unemployment in 30 years you paid $3600 into "the system." Every dollar you take out beyond that $3600 you're taking away from me, not anything that's been "banked" by you. Every dollar beyond the first $3600 is welfare with a fancy name. Despite what you may think, you really are - more than likely - a welfare mom.

(the preceding is predicated on the assumption you live in the U.S.)

Since there are lots of people clearly struggling here I'm going to post one of my secrets -

How I earn some extra cash

But I don't want to be accused of spamming, and note that this is NOT an easy way to make money.

Basically what I've been doing is buying domain names and then selling them on an auction site aimed specifically at domain names.

It's free to use, the researching a domain is free - no one makes any money here except you if you sell a domain name.

It costs around £7 to register a domain, I've been selling them for between £30 and £90 - so a pretty good return.

HOWEVER - you need to read around a few forums first to make sure you understand what you're doing.

Generally the ones that sell are the ones that have a product or service as the name - so redshoes(dot)something would probably be okay for example.

All I do is use the Google keyword tool to see how many searches a range of phrases get, pick the ones with the most searches, then see if those domains are available.

If they are I register them, then put them on the auction site.

That's about it.

HOWEVER let me say again that this is not easy money, you need to make sure you're buying domains that people will buy off you.

If anyone wants to try this then I suggest you make a list of the names you find and like, register what you think is the best one, and try that out.

If anyone wants the details of the auction site, etc then PM me, I'm not going to post it up, I don't want to be accused of spamming, nor to be responsible for people spending money they can't afford.

It is possible to make money from it though. If you bought and sold 15 domains per month at an average of £30 each, that'd be £450 in sales with a cost of £105 - so a pretty good return.

But please do as I suggest if you try this and do a ton of research first.

reply to post by Muckster

There is one and one only reason you are unemployed. Government (you already nearly got it right in OP).

reply to post by Ko-Dan Armada


In the UK it's slightly different. I'm on a modest wage but at least have had the security of being employed all the way through my last 23 yrs. The governments tax take from me is approx £3,500 per annum ... times 23 and that's £80,500 ... or USD $123,000. That's what I've paid in, give or take.

When I get paid off, the most I'll get back is £65.45 pw for 6 months ... £1,823.60 ... because I've been stupid enough to put some money by, I can't get benefits after 6 months, or at least until I've used up my savings.

Not the greatest bargain, the British system. But at least I won't go hungry, I guess that's beyond any price.

as above in uk goverment takes 24.5% out of our wage packet, this then goes into the goverment and pays for all the benefits - which is why i don't agree with the current benefits system and feel it sould be reformed - see my previous post for my ideas on this

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


Of course humanity will always move forward by new discoveries which revolutionize the technologies of production, or new goods or services, things that have never existed before, but which require some human labor to produce, and this provides some demand for human labor.

You mentioned the industrial revolution, past that we have the information technology revolution, which re-ordered nearly everything in human society, and was a source of demand for employment and it provided growth in the world economy.

Past that again, we will have or are in the early stages of 'revolutions' in bio-technology and in energy production, both which will create a demand for human labor as they evolve.

However, the basic problem remains that when the primary goal of the economy is efficiency, then a major portion of a 6 billion plus herd of humanity, will always be surplus, and will be living in abject poverty as the people employed will always be the least cost labor pool.

So, I had hoped the answer to that would be obvious enough, efficiency should not be the singular goal shaping human economies.

For example, it would be less efficient for Africa to develop industrial and information, and biotechnologies, etc. than to simply rely on excess capacity in each of those realms, and simply for Africa to be supplied from the excess capacity as it exists around the world, rather than develop it in Africa.

That would be more efficient, but it would also keep the human populations in Africa at the bottom of humanity in terms of skill sets, income, spendable wealth, and the means to supply its needs generally.

So while it would be less efficient, Africa should still develop its own production capacities.

And the same could be said for the US for example and consumer durables industries, the US could continue to import the bulk of what it consumes in consumer durables, but then some portions of the US public will remain, surplus, unskilled, unpaid, without the means to be self supporting.

So efficiency should not the only goal by which economic decisions are made for divisions of humanity.

Therefore, this implies that governments, and global corporations must require that other goals, such as a reasonable distribution of wealth, distribution of opportunity, constructive redundancy, and other economic goals should shape actual economic development.

And there is the concept of a 'social credit' which even Republican Richard Nixon understood the necessity of and incorporated a version of in the US tax system. The social credit is needed transitionally, to keep economies, and to keep members of society from falling into such a negative position in the economy that their lack of participation as producers is impossible to reconstruct, or to create in the first place.

Think about this, we have in the US a 'free educational system' - public schools, which are funded by society in general, and people help to pay for this whether they have children or not in those schools.

So we in the US realize that while this is a shared responsibility, it benefits everyone in society enough to keep it maintained.

But as you know, there are some people, Republicans by philosophy, in fact who want to destroy and eliminate this shared support so they can send their children to private schools, or just to not have to pay this expense anyway, which they argue is inefficient and a burden on them.

My point is the Republican perspective runs against societies greater need, and that pure efficiency should not be the determining factor in whether the US maintains or abandons its system of public education.

And of course that is one instance only of this issue.

Another example is science conducted for the public welfare, such as monitoring and predicting the weather. This information is costly to develop but it is shared between nations.

The problem of course, and the reason for this thread, is that our current model of globalism is destructive, it is spreading poverty not wealth, and it leads to the sort of conditions people have written in about their own experiences and circumstances.

People have been made redundant, by the millions and tens of millions when the world follows an economic model shaped primarily on efficiency.

As long as that is the primary shaping goal for economies, these problems people have written in about are unsolvable.

Let me be more specific, people writing in are discussing their personal circumstances negotiating the best path available to themselves in the UK social welfare system.

This is rational behavior, and people will try to maximize their own best result, given the system rules.

But I am arguing this is not a solution.

If the UK imports a good percentage of what it consumes, (as the US does) and then constructs a social safety net to help people survive their own irrelevance to the productive side of the economy, this will always produce unacceptable, limiting conditions for people.

It would be better for the UK to import much less, and to produce a much greater percentage of what it consumes, that would produce more wealth locally, and would mean fewer people in the social welfare system.

It would also mean less efficiency in the production of those goods, but otherwise, the result with efficiency as the controlling goal, is more people living marginal lives as non-producers, surviving off of marginal social welfare.

This may not describe the UK very well, but it does describe the US very well.

But all of the nations of the world are now in the grips of an efficiency driven production side economy, and as mentioned this is spreading poverty not wealth, since when production always moves to the lowest labor cost nation, to little wealth is produced for consumers to consume, and we have only 1/2 of a functional economy, we have some of the means to produce but not the means to consume, since it makes too many people surplus to production, and without an income to buy the products being produced.

Ultimately the result is what we have now, an unresolvable world economic decline.

However we as individuals come to negotiate our own employment careers, or how we manage to negotiate the best bath for ourselves thru the social welfare system, the larger problem remains for society and will only get worse, given present trends.

Our current model for globalization is producing the spread of poverty not wealth, and given the trends this will only get worse.

The point of my writing this, is that we in the US, and hopefully in the UK, must stand up to our 'leaders' and let them know that with this current model of globalization they have made a colossal mistake, that can only be addressed by deliberately taking another path to develop the world economy.

reply to post by leschwartz


Great points.
To reiterate part of my previous post in this thread, I believe that the stock market is also a big part of the problem you bring up. In that it's not so much about efficiency, and more about maximizing profits. The stock market creates a situation where companies are primarily responsible to their shareholders, at the expense of the general public. Under the economic model our world is currently (not) working under, for a company to be considered healthy it must be in a constant state of growth. This is simply not sustainable, and leads to situations, as I previously mentioned, where a company will lay off workers, or reduce wages when there is no risk of the company going into the red. It's simply done to increase profits (which, unless I'm completely off base, is the point you were making regarding efficiency).

Out of curiosity, What solutions would you propose?

Off the top of my head, given that we live in a world of international corporations, would it not make sense to enforce international regulations on these companies?
For example (and again, off the top of my head): Force companies to follow the employee welfare and environmental regulations of the country where the majority of their advertising dollars are spent. So, if company X makes widgets that they sell primarily to the US market, then regardless of where their factory is located they must pay a US minimum wage (at the least), and follow american environmental standards.
In my mind, this would bring a great deal of outsourced jobs back to America. It would raise the cost of said widgets, but that would also force companies to compete based on the quality of their products instead of what celebrity they have shilling them. I remember my friends parents having a TV that was older than I am at the time it finally stopped working, now days the average television works for what, 5 years? 7-10 if you rarely use it?
What about enforcing a law that prohibits companies to go through rounds of mass layoffs if they are still in the black? Perhaps such a regulation could even be appealable, the caveat being that winning the appeal means the company must first lay off it's executives (without severance not offered to lower level employees).

But to put all the blame on the people who run businesses is also not a truthful view of the problem. The individual also has to take a portion of the blame, as we (or at least many of us) have bought into an idea that needless wealth is something to aspire to.
Look at the housing market, which was a big piece of what led to the economic situation we're currently in. Sure, bankers convinced people to take mortgages they couldn't really afford, and real estate agents put pressure on people to buy homes that they couldn't really afford... but the desire had to exist on the consumers end.
So you have a culture of people lusting after oversized mansions and luxury sports cars, who can afford neither, yet put themselves into massive debt to create the image of wealth. for what end?

Originally posted by LeBombDiggity
reply to post by Ko-Dan Armada

 

In the UK it's slightly different. I'm on a modest wage but at least have had the security of being employed all the way through my last 23 yrs. The governments tax take from me is approx £3,500 per annum ... times 23 and that's £80,500 ... or USD $123,000. That's what I've paid in, give or take.

The government isn't taking £3,500 per year from you to fund Job Seeker's payments. That goes to fund that, plus your NHS, plus the Royal Navy, plus Windsor Castle, plus salaries for MPs, plus maintaining the M1, etc.

When I said the government is taking $120 per year, that's specifically the amount the US and State governments take, per employed person, to fund unemployment insurance only. It's not broken-out this way in the UK as Job Seeker's payments are paid out of the general fund. But, the point is, you most certainly have not "paid-in" £3,500 per year for Job Seeker's benefits (unless you've never used a single other benefit the State provides in your life - e.g. you've never driven on a road, never visited a hospital, never voted, never taken a train, can single handed fight off any invading army so have never needed the protection of the British armed forces, etc.).

Originally posted by FuzzyDunlop
reply to post by leschwartz

 

Out of curiosity, What solutions would you propose?

Off the top of my head, given that we live in a world of international corporations, would it not make sense to enforce international regulations on these companies?
For example (and again, off the top of my head): Force companies to follow

The middle-way - that of the social democracy - is not a solution. Using the boot of the state to enforce increasingly heavy regulation and interference in private commerce stabilizes the economy at the expense of dampening it.

The problem is the system itself is fundamentally unsound and unworkable. "Tweaking" it or making slight adjustments to it is like a pregnant woman trying to "hold in" her baby. Eventually it's coming out, whether you want it or not.

The only way to achieve permanent economic stability is to scratch this entire model of economic organization and start over. The simplest and most natural system will always be the smoothest operating. A wheelbarrow is less likely to break-down than a car.

The only economic system that is "naturally occurring" in a human civilization at its outset - that is not the product of human construction and the creation of artificial systems such as Capitalism, Communism, etc. - is Mutualism as described by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

When the First International convened in London in 1864 they faced the choice between moving forward under Marx's Communism or Proudhon's Mutualism. Unfortunately, they chose the former - which was the wrong choice. As a result, today, 99% of the public only knows about Capitalism and Communism and thinks the only alternatives are various mid-points between the two.

A Mutualist economy, however, is not going to be voted-in at any ballot box. The current system has too many gears and has become too rusted together to take apart with a wrench and screwdriver. It can only be taken apart by a sledge hammer. Unfortunately, in the short-term this will create more misery and suffering than anyone can imagine, and rewards will only be seen in the very long-term. Because humans don't have the ability to plan for things beyond their lifespans, Mutualism will never come to fruition and the current system is one with which we're going to have to live.

Here is part of an article with a lot of pertinent facts;

Please take a look at the entire article at the link, I think it makes the case very well that we are collectively all on the wrong track attempting to follow this "free trade" anything goes model of globalism which shifts as much employment globally to the lowest wage nation, leaving behind everywhere poverty.

finance.yahoo.com...'s-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT ,XRT,DIA

The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.

• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.

• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.

• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.

• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United
States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.

• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

We collectively are on the wrong path, this model for global development is not working, it is spreading poverty, and

our 'leaders' have no intention of changing these policies because they are influenced by the world's largest corporations to keep these policies.

I believe there will be no global recovery, no US recovery until these policies are stopped, and we are going to have to force our political 'leaders' to end these policies.

[edit on 25-7-2010 by leschwartz]

reply to post by Ko-Dan Armada


Responding to the point that radical social change is required.

Respectfully, I do not agree.

Local development, local employment, maintaining standards for the environment, labor laws, allowing international trade but not allowing unbalanced trade will move us far along the path to sustainable economies.

Not giving in to control of government by corporations, ultimately disallowing 'corporate person-hood' in the law will eliminate the need for radical social re-organization.

Educating people to the issue I have been discussing that efficiency is not the only important goal to shape economies by, is also important.

In my view.

[edit on 25-7-2010 by leschwartz]

Originally posted by leschwartz
reply to post by Ko-Dan Armada

 

Responding to the point that radical social change is required.

Respectfully, I do not agree.

Local development, local employment, maintaining standards for the environment, labor laws, allowing international trade but not allowing unbalanced trade will move us far along the path to sustainable economies.

Not giving in to control of government by corporations, ultimately disallowing 'corporate person-hood' in the law will eliminate the need for radical social re-organization.

Educating people to the issue I have been discussing that efficiency is not the only important goal to shape economies by, is also important.

In my view.

[edit on 25-7-2010 by leschwartz]

I concur. Obviously some Government is needed, otherwise we have anarchy.

Too much regulation is also bad, however.

It seems that there is a movement to undo everything that has been accomplished in the past Century or so re: labor and safety laws. They want to do away with the EPA, OSHA, minimum wage, etc.

This is a good quote:

"If you like Weekends, thank a Union."

Lazy Unions wanting 2 days a week off work! We'll never be able to compete with the communists like that!

;P

A little more from that important article;

finance.yahoo.com...'s-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT ,XRT,DIA

The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it

-quote
The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.
So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of

Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.
end quote-

www.business-strategy-innovation.com...


Standard of living. We can fix the problem. By literally rebuilding America. A new era of super-construction projects.