Women Who Do Housework Should be Paid For It.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, I don't like these figures and they are from 2000. Not sure how accurate they are for today's world. I still believe that working women do more work than their husbands on average, but the gap is shortening as a more socially aware youth enter the workforce and family life.

[laklak]

Ah, fuck socially aware youth, they make my piles throb. Bet they make their own goddamn sammiches.

[pErvinalia]

They drink kombucha tea and eat quinoa. Sick little shits!!

[laklak]

I'll bet there are man buns and gender neutral pronouns.

[pErvinalia]

Definitely!

[Seth]

Evidence suggests otherwise, Jim. A basic income has been trialled and used in a number of places around the world and the results are usually an increase in work and economic participation and a reduction in entrenched poverty. This idea that there is a threat of spongers is simplistic neoliberal fear rhetoric.

Where has it been trialled?

And I think the key to reducing poverty is policies which get the maximum number of people working as possible, which means governments investing heavily in job creation, infrastructure development and, in particular, well targeted training schemes... Of course, along with that, giving adequate financial support to people who simply cannot work, or are in between jobs.

The reality is that the west is facing systemic un(der)-employment due to offshoring of jobs and technological disruption. It's only going to get worse. We either accept this fact and agree that there will always be a 15-20% of the working population un(der)-employed, with that percentage growing in the future, and pay everyone a minimum living wage, or follow the current inhuman system where we treat welfare recipients as spongers and inherently flawed (i.e. Social Darwinism bollocks) and punish them for not working in jobs that don't exist.

Well, the problem with that analysis is that it is not true that jobs "don't exist." To begin with, there are about 12 million jobs that do exist that are occupied by illegal aliens rather than poor citizens of the US. Aliens are not entitled to hold jobs in the US, indeed they are prohibited by law from doing so, which means that the first thing that needs to be done is to unemploy and deport all illegal aliens occupying jobs and replace them with American citizens who ARE entitled to work here. That knocks 12 million off the number of people who are unemployed immediately.

I'm not sure on the US situation but in the rest of the western world it's common for the ratio of jobless to job vacancies to be something like 2x or 3x.

So where the hell is abortion when you really need it. Or mandatory neutering as a condition of taking welfare payments. Why the fuck do you allow them to reproduce if there's no work for them?

Regarding your illegal aliens thing, they won't be working for the minimum wage. If they went away overnight, you wouldn't find there being 12 million additional job vacancies. There'd be considerably less. Your U6 unemployment numbers are 16.5 million people. And that only includes those searching for work. There's always a significant number that have dropped out of the job market altogether.

It's start.

Take away that support and they will find jobs or they will go hungry and homeless, and hunger and homelessness are the traditional, historical and perfectly appropriate and moral drivers to individual responsibility and labor.

Social Darwinism has no place in a civilised society. You were born 100 years too late.

It's not "social Darwinism" it's "get off your lazy ass and get to work if you want to eat." What's uncivilized is expecting, nay demanding at the muzzle of a machine gun that other people labor on behalf of those who won't work.

But, if we are going to have to pay to support them, then I expect them to report for "work" each and every day at 9 am at either a vocational school, menial government job like hauling garbage, sweeping streets, patching potholes or painting lines on the highway with a brush...ANYTHING that will require them to labor for eight hours a day in return for an EBT deposit at the end of each day for the appropriate dole amount.

Who cares what you think? Economic and social decisions should be made on evidence and reasoning, not backward morals.

Who cares what you think? Economic and social decisions should be made on evidence and reasoning, not backwards morals...like "steal from the rich to give to the poor."

We have to make being unemployed and on the dole more unpleasant and undesirable

No "we" don't.

Well, you're right there, I didn't mean you, because you're a socialist and you deserve everything you get for being one, including being enslaved to the dependent class.

If we did away with the whole welfare system and just payed everyone a set minimum wage, I'd expect it wouldn't be much more expensive, and possibly less expensive in the long run. No need for reporting and enforcement measures and associated staff, and all the cross checking and auditing that goes along with that. Centrelink could be closed and go fully online. Save HEAPS of money.

What you'd get is a nation of unemployed and unemployable slackers, idlers and layabouts who, being given what they need to survive without having to do anything at all, will spend their time robbing people, burglarizing houses, smoking pot and otherwise being antisocial elements sucking off the public teat...

Problem for you is that the direct evidence and psychological research show the exact opposite.

No it doesn't, and you're full of shit.

Your conservative brain is inherently distrusting of human nature.

No, your Marxist brain is inherently greedy, avaricious and jealous of the success of others.

The problem is that reality has a liberal bias.

Evidently not, given the hundred million people who have been murdered in the name of liberalism.

Your brain is giving you a particularly wrong view of society as you are overly scared due to an enlarged amygdala.

Enlarged prostate maybe. Your brain is giving you a particularly wrong view of society because it consists of less than a teaspoon of actual operating brain matter.

until the OPM runs out

Zero sum game fallacy, yet again.

It ain't zero-sum, it's other people with money refusing to allow it to be seized by someone else. Venezuela is a prime example of that. Fuck with people's capital in an attempt to redistribute it and they just take their capital and go elsewhere and deny your fucked-up society access to it and BINGO! the OPM runs out...for you. It's recirculated somewhere else, where you can't lay your greedy, grubby mitts on it.

and those tasked with creating wealth

"tasked" with creating wealth?!? What mythical being is 'tasking' these people?

The collective of course. "From each according to his ability" as defined by those in charge. Fail to meet their assessment of what your ability is and they will punish you and, do it long enough, they will liquidate you.

You can't "welfare" people into economic prosperity or even economic sufficiency, it's fiscally impossible for any society to achieve this goal. The math simply won't allow it, so people have to be given incentive to work to create wealth rather than being dependent on others for their income.

Except both math and reality show it is possible. [/quote]

Except it isn't and has never been demonstrated to do so. Ever.

[PsychoSerenity]

I'm not sure on the US situation but in the rest of the western world it's common for the ratio of jobless to job vacancies to be something like 2x or 3x.

So where the hell is abortion when you really need it. Or mandatory neutering as a condition of taking welfare payments. Why the fuck do you allow them to reproduce if there's no work for them?

My god Seth do you really have such poor grasp of economics or are you being deliberately stupid here? It's not about absolute numbers of people it's about ratios. If you reduce the number of people you also reduce the number of jobs that need doing for them.

[pErvinalia]

He really does have that poor an understanding of economics.

[Hermit]

Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many.

They are also seasonal. Not much happening for fruit and vegetable pickers outside autumn. You can't survive a year when most of the pittance you earn comes from three months of work.

[pErvinalia]

You should be required to split off from the rest of your family and travel the country all year chasing jobs. Anything less than that you are a Marxist and deserve everything you get.

[Seth]

I'm not sure on the US situation but in the rest of the western world it's common for the ratio of jobless to job vacancies to be something like 2x or 3x.

So where the hell is abortion when you really need it. Or mandatory neutering as a condition of taking welfare payments. Why the fuck do you allow them to reproduce if there's no work for them?

My god Seth do you really have such poor grasp of economics or are you being deliberately stupid here? It's not about absolute numbers of people it's about ratios. If you reduce the number of people you also reduce the number of jobs that need doing for them.

Not in one-to-one proportion. Preventing the birth of one upcoming welfare recipient doesn't eliminate one job.

Just look as Somalia. Despite decades of drought and rampant starvation people keep right on having kids they KNOW they cannot feed and they KNOW will die horrible, brutal painful deaths. All food aid to such regions should be laced with contraceptives so that nobody has any more kids until the famine passes.

Besides, I was being facetious and sarcastic.

[Seth]

He really does have that poor an understanding of economics.

Not really. Unlike you, I understand that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and somebody has to work to provide social welfare benefits to those who do not work, and that forcing someone to work to provide social welfare benefits against their will is outright involuntary servitude, and that such a state of affairs cannot go on forever and therefore the economics of direct-benefit social welfare programs will inevitably go into negative numbers, resulting in the bankruptcy of any economy that does not handle social welfare programs very, very carefully so that they a) don't enslave anyone; and b) make the expenditure of social welfare benefits a temporary investment in creating an individual who will get off of the program and become a contributing member of the productive class as quickly as possible.

That's not something socialists or Democrats want though, because when they control the social welfare benefits of the non-productive dependent class, they control the votes of the dependent class, and the easier it is for them to coerce votes by threatening to cut off those benefits.

It's all about politics and deliberately creating eternal dependence on government largess, not economics.

[Seth]

Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many.

They are also seasonal. Not much happening for fruit and vegetable pickers outside autumn. You can't survive a year when most of the pittance you earn comes from three months of work.

It was only an example of the difficulties that inure to the welfare state with respect to getting people OFF of welfare and turning them into members of the productive class.

When sitting around smoking crack and pot is less "back-breaking" than working for a living, people will take the dole if it's available...until it's not available any more, and then they will go to work when they get hungry and cold enough that the "back-breaking" nature of the work is less uncomfortable than starvation and freezing to death in the dark.

[Forty Two]

Yeah, I don't like these figures and they are from 2000. Not sure how accurate they are for today's world. I still believe that working women do more work than their husbands on average, but the gap is shortening as a more socially aware youth enter the workforce and family life.

Probably roughly to the same extent that working men tend to do more hours of paid work than their wives, on average.

[Forty Two]

I'm not sure on the US situation but in the rest of the western world it's common for the ratio of jobless to job vacancies to be something like 2x or 3x.

So where the hell is abortion when you really need it. Or mandatory neutering as a condition of taking welfare payments. Why the fuck do you allow them to reproduce if there's no work for them?

My god Seth do you really have such poor grasp of economics or are you being deliberately stupid here? It's not about absolute numbers of people it's about ratios. If you reduce the number of people you also reduce the number of jobs that need doing for them.

That doesn't make sense, actually. The number of available jobs is not controlled by the number of people living.