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Some Peple just need welfare

a_unique_person

Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
a_unique_person
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
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Waiting for the pod bay door to open.
I can see them. They are out there begging, and I cannot imagine a more degrading existence. Even if we forced them into a job, they would be incapable of actually doing anything useful.

In certain countries, begging is more of a profession for some. But I am not talking about those people, just the ones that really don't seem capable of looking after themselves. They wear rags given to them by charities, which are often filthy and soiled.

Should we expect them to work, or be capable of doing anything. If they are not, then how should be provide for them.
 
Everybody can work in some way or other.

Welfare is only neccesary to ensure that those struggling to find work have a kind of safety net to protect them in the interim.

If people refuse to work they should be forced to. Plain and simple. No spongers please.
 
a_unique_person said:
I can see them. They are out there begging, and I cannot imagine a more degrading existence. Even if we forced them into a job, they would be incapable of actually doing anything useful.
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If you take away the begging part and just have the part about being incapable of actually doing anything useful, you would be describing me.

I like the idea of getting paid money without doing anything to earn it. I've got this extreme adversion to any type of work. The world owes me a living.

I'm just joking. But I'm not joking about not liking to do work. I wonder sometimes how I am going to fit into society without my parents spending money on me. There just aren't any jobs out there that interest me.
 
I'd like to also add that there aren't any jobs out there that I'm particularly good at.
 
I don't know where you live unique but there is no need for anyone to wear rags these days, there are so many charity shops here. The people in rags will do this at their own choice to gain sympathy and are possibly the beggers that are on drugs.
Here in the UK if one has not got an address, one cannot claim benefit from the state, so the begger neither has a home nor any funds whatsoever.
A simple way around this, in my opinion would be to beable to claim benefits by ones finger print. It would not matter then if one had a home or not. The government here must beable to set up such a system but choose to have beggers on the street instead.
I have every sympathy with beggers, it cannot be a nice way to live even if one is lazy, it seems a more difficult way of life than working. There will only be a very small minority who choose this sort of life..i.e. what we used to term as tramps, they liked the outdoor life.
I find it very difficult to comprehend that in this century we still have beggers and people living on the streets and sleeping in cardboard boxes. I think it is disgraceful that society does not do something about this. Communes could be set up for these people to live in. if they are the weaker ones in our society then they should be looked after.
There is way enough money. One of my offspring once lived for free in a London embassy house. She lived there for about a year. The tenant was a first secretary of another country and his way of thinking was.....well, you the UK tax payer, pay for this house and its upkeep...so stay as long as you wish. Can you imagine Tony Blair doing that? But in theory the 1st secretary was correct, the British tax payer was funding the house. So lets, let the beggers into some of the homes we fund. How about starting with Buckingham Palace, that has a lot of rooms doing nothing.
 
Re: Re: Some Peple just need welfare

JAR said:

If you take away the begging part and just have the part about being incapable of actually doing anything useful, you would be describing me.

I like the idea of getting paid money without doing anything to earn it. I've got this extreme adversion to any type of work. The world owes me a living.

I'm just joking. But I'm not joking about not liking to do work. I wonder sometimes how I am going to fit into society without my parents spending money on me. There just aren't any jobs out there that interest me.
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You do like 90% of the rest of the working population and get a job that doesn't interest you.

Whether or not you're actually any good at it is more or less irrelevant. Assuming you're any way intelligent you'll probably be able to hide your failings fairly well, at least for long enough to entrench yourself.

Once you're so firmly dug in to your miserable career that firing you becomes more of a chore than simply paying your wages every month, you're pretty much set.

All you have to do is sit back and watch as your youth, enthuasiasm and any kind of joie de vivre slowly drains away into the endless mire of meeting and reports, quotas and targets.

There is a hell and it's waiting for you. in the nearest office block.

I started reading The Life of Pi by Jann Martel yesterday. I'm not terribly impressed by it so far but there was one quote that I liked, I think I'll make it my signature line:

"A tie is a noose. It may be upside down but it can still hang a man"

That's slightly paraphrased, by the way, owing to a brain that's frazzled from staring at f***ed up account statements all day every day for the last month.

Oh well, back to work :rolleyes:

Graham
 
Just a friendly warning to non-Aussie posters, our social welfare system is vastly different to that of most other nations.

Many WORKING people here are not earning a living wage, and the trend towards casual employment means that fewer and fewer people in the workforce can predict how many hours they will work and how much they will earn in the next 7 days.

Our social security system DOES have a "mutual obligation" aspect, which requires recipients deemed CAPABLE of doing something to participate in approved activities in return for receiving their income support - these approved activities can be study, further job training, volunteer work, or a combination of the foregoing.
 
max--"I find it very difficult to comprehend that in this century we still have beggers and people living on the streets and sleeping in cardboard boxes. I think it is disgraceful that society does not do something about this. Communes could be set up for these people to live in. if they are the weaker ones in our society then they should be looked after."

Hi max, if you think about it, it is not so difficult to comprehend why we still have beggers and people sleeping in cardboard boxes. The human race hasn't really evolved as much as we would like to believe we have. Oh, sure, we have made huge leaps forward in technology, medicine, etc but our money driven, moral lacking minds haven't kept pace with these advances. Who cares if a homeless person crawls inside a waste disposal bin to sleep for the night and ends up being crushed to death as the garbage truck picks up the bin and empties it into its hold. Yes, this happened a few years ago. You care and most people here care but what do we do about it? Nothing. And those with the wealth care and do even less. We have a long long way to go.
:(
 
Always Free
I agree but we have regressed. When I was a child (1940s) one would see a 'tramp' every now and again. There weren't the large amount of homeless then. I just don't get it. If I see a 'homeless' I usually buy him/her a sandwich and a coffee rather than give cash for him/her to buy drugs.
I used to buy a cup of tea till one begger complained I never gave him coffee..ha I laughed for days at that.
 
Are homeless people simply being priced out of the market?

In the 40s and 50s and even up to the 60s there were stills plenty of slums in the western world. Terrible places but it didn't take much to be able to afford to live there.

Since then, all the slums have been torn down and even the very lowest standard of housing is, relatively speaking, luxurious and expensive.

It occurs to me that many of the homeless people we see today, living on the streets, would, 30 or 40 years ago, have been living in slum-type accomodation - just as poor and only marginally more comfortable but at least with a roof over their heads and out of sight of the general populace.

Similarly with jobs. Before Unions and PAYE and PRSI (or whatever taxes/social insurance etc you have in your respective countries) before it became a huge chore to hire/fire someone even for the most menial of tasks, there was a lot more casual work available. It was poorly paid and conditions were for the most part awful but it was an alternative to begging. What do you do nowadays if you're not capable of holding down a regular job?

So, have increases in the general standard of living simply pushed a bunch of people off the bottom rung of the ladder altogether? We have eliminated the slums and the almost-slave-labour jobs but have we left a portion of society with nowhere to go?

If so, what should we do about it?

Graham
 
max said:
Always Free
I agree but we have regressed. When I was a child (1940s) one would see a 'tramp' every now and again. There weren't the large amount of homeless then. I just don't get it. If I see a 'homeless' I usually buy him/her a sandwich and a coffee rather than give cash for him/her to buy drugs.
I used to buy a cup of tea till one begger complained I never gave him coffee..ha I laughed for days at that.
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Giving someone who is probably homeless and unemployed a meal and a drink is the best thing to do instead of giving money. That's a generous and thoughtfull thing that you do, max. :cool:
 
If they can beg they, can pick up trash on the street or some other menial job no one really wants to do. If working people can be forced to do community service as part of punishment for getting caught breaking laws, why can't bums do community service of some kind in order to get a welfare check. There are plenty of unskilled labor jobs that could be accomplished by bums if they aren't too mentally ill or hardcore alcoholics and drug addicts.
 
GrapeJ713 said:
If they can beg they, can pick up trash on the street or some other menial job no one really wants to do. If working people can be forced to do community service as part of punishment for getting caught breaking laws, why can't bums do community service of some kind in order to get a welfare check. There are plenty of unskilled labor jobs that could be accomplished by bums if they aren't too mentally ill or hardcore alcoholics and drug addicts.
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I agree with you in principle, I think but, what are your reasons for wanting this?

If it is purely that you want "bums" to work for their money, it seems to me that the cost of administering such a program could only add to the welfare bill. If it's going to cost us more to employ these people than it is not to - why bother?

Besides, who do you think is doing all those "unskilled" jobs now? There's a company contracted to keep our office park clean. Are you going to take their jobs away from them and give them to "bums"?

Besides which again, in my (admittedly limited) experience, actual honest-to-god "bums" (by which I assume you mean homeless people) aren't actually on welfare. In most places you can't get welfare without a permanant address, I think.

If by "bums" you mean simply "unemployed people", it is a requirement of most welfare systems tha tthe recipient be acively seeking employment. Having to do community service at the same time would seriously impede that operation and might well only lead to the person being on welfare for even longer.

As for the proportion of unemployed people who are fraudulently claiming welfare (whether by not actively seeking employent or by claiming a single mother's allowance whilst living with an earning partner or whatever), those people are going to lie and cheat no matter what you do and I see no reason to assume that the welfare system will be no more effective in forcing them to work for their money than it is in checking that they are actually entitled to the money in the first place.

Graham
 
GrapeJ713 said:
If they can beg they, can pick up trash on the street or some other menial job no one really wants to do. If working people can be forced to do community service as part of punishment for getting caught breaking laws, why can't bums do community service of some kind in order to get a welfare check. There are plenty of unskilled labor jobs that could be accomplished by bums if they aren't too mentally ill or hardcore alcoholics and drug addicts.
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I agree, anyone who is physically and mentally able to work, should work. But are there enough people out there to give them the work? To even care if they work or not? Is there someone who will find these people a proper abode so they can go to and from their job? If you don't have a roof over your head it would be impossible to go to a job every day.
 
Originally posted by GrapeJ713
yada yada yada
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...And the money to pay them comes from where exactly?

They have no community-provided jobs or shelters because the community (you and me, through our votes and purchasing decisions) has decided it cannot or will not pay for it.

Of course they are physically able to pick up rubbish. What about the people already employed to clear the streets? Are you saying those people should find other jobs? Please think things through before posting reactionary views about the homeless.

You sound like you believe strongly in the work ethic. Keynes suggested that people should be employed by the government to dig holes, while others should be given money to fill them. I say, why not just give people money if there's enough of it to employ people for meaningless tasks?

Why don't you tell me why we shouldn't just keep on giving them cash? Do you think people might be encouraged to be homeless?
 
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