what area are you in?
Unemployment up to 5.3% (10 month high)
- Thread starter buzzlightyear
- Start date
what area are you in?
Prepared to work is the key ingredient.
I have a family member who is a qualified mechanic and has been unemployed for more than 12 months. 30 years old living cheap with dad, doing cash in hand jobs but does not admit to receiving welfare. (I don't believe this bit)
Perhaps its too easy with all of the welfare and handouts.
Yes apparently house prices are 40% overvalued too according to the Economist and Morgan Stanley.
A builder friend of mine told me that's he's getting a lot of requests for quotes on mostly demolish/build, splitter type projects. Apparently he's not really affected by the suppose to be slowdown however he's smart not to do too much spec builds. Most of the jobs that he takes are for mostly home owners/investors builds that even though is most likely going to be less profit but less risk.
I've just been advertising for an experienced stonemason for the last couple of weeks. Almost no local interest whatsoever. A couple of people rang up saying they wanted the job but didn't know what a stonemason was, or thought it was a mispelling of storeman and said they could pick and pack really well. Most qualified applications have been coming in from Ireland, with a decided note of desperation attached to them. The most humorous applicant by the way was a local, a young South Korean immigrant kid, with scant English and almost no stonemasonry skills (only a few months experience using a hand polisher), who actually wanted to be paid more per hour than our highest paid worker, a fully-qualified stonemasonry CNC operator. Oh, how we laughed at that!
I can't but conclude that there really is a serious problem with our welfare system: It rewards too many young people in their 20s who would simply rather not work if it means having to get up at 6am, actually work 38 hours a week rather than pull bongs and watch daytime TV, and then take home as a starting wage after tax little more than two times the combined dole + rental assistance (worth around $290/wk, I'd estimate).
I don't have any problem with giving decent welfare where it's needed, but I am personally at a loss to see how you can motivate young locals to get off welfare when the reward for working is quite clearly so comparatively disadvantageous.
I mean, work is at least a hassle if not downright hard, while watching TV is easy, and a 2:1 comparative monetary reward ratio won't motivate anyone except the already-motivated (i.e. people who regard unemployment as a depressing, temporary but surmountable setback, rather than as a sufficient and comparatively-rational lifestyle choice).
I can't but conclude that there really is a serious problem with our welfare system: It rewards too many young people in their 20s who would simply rather not work if it means having to get up at 6am, actually work 38 hours a week rather than pull bongs and watch daytime TV, and then take home as a starting wage after tax little more than two times the combined dole + rental assistance (worth around $290/wk, I'd estimate).
I don't have any problem with giving decent welfare where it's needed, but I am personally at a loss to see how you can motivate young locals to get off welfare when the reward for working is quite clearly so comparatively disadvantageous.
I mean, work is at least a hassle if not downright hard, while watching TV is easy, and a 2:1 comparative monetary reward ratio won't motivate anyone except the already-motivated (i.e. people who regard unemployment as a depressing, temporary but surmountable setback, rather than as a sufficient and comparatively-rational lifestyle choice).
then I presume you'll stop voting Labor
Newcastle ... guy at the local lawnmower shop already has a list of over 20 waiting for a guy to become available to do their lawns.
I too think the Australian welfare system pays too well for people to bother with "work". We advertise for jobs and getting quality people is hard. In one week, we book 5 for appointments. Only 1 came in and he was an hour late...
It makes me think sometimes, those who strive and work hard to be successful, WILL eventually be successful. There are lots and lots of individuals out there who want to be successful but will not put in the hard work!
It makes me think sometimes, those who strive and work hard to be successful, WILL eventually be successful. There are lots and lots of individuals out there who want to be successful but will not put in the hard work!
It's got nothing to do with voting Labor. What I'm suggesting is that the welfare state is both necessary and pernicious. Welfare systems came into being because societies weren't working well without them. Poverty, crime and disaffection had a serious social price too. But today we seem to be creating a new problem: Excessive feeding at the trough of the welfare state. It only got worse under the last Liberal regime, with an explosion in welfare largess being doled out to the middle class.
Yep, I know that problem only too well. Now, I schedule all interviews to happen only between 7.30 and 8.00am. It sorts the wheat from chaff real quick!
My personal views regarding welfare is similar to yours. As you elequantly put it, with a word I actually had to look up its meaning, its both pernicious and necessary.
Pernicious in that for some in our society especially low income workers it maybe more cost effective\rewarding to not work. This must surely be a result of high living expenses, ineffective tax regime and urban sprawl demanding long commutes and travel costs. I actually (heard of) people getting fake divorces just so one can get full benefits because between childcare/tax/petrol etc usually the wife would have to work to simply pay the bills to allow her to work in the first place - I too get it, whats the point of working.
I cannot fault their logic beyond my instictive feeling that surely you want more than subsistance living (but many are happy there) I am not one of them so I choose to work as I want more.
So whats the solution?
The solution at first seems easy then either reduce those costs that make the equation between working for low income or receiving unemployment benefits more stark. If we reduce living expenses, travel costs, childcare etc then the benefit of working is magnified.
However such solutions are not easy and likely to never happen in my lifetime at least. Instead its much easier to strip away benefits in order to make the equation more lob sided to working versus not.
Here is where the problem lies, stripping away benefits will force many to work begrudgingly however there will always be a decent chunk of the population who are scum (choke on that civil libertarians) and will never work. This is just a fact of life there will always be those who refuse to work and refuse to contribute. The solution here has nothing to do with the welfare system but rather, education and in many cases breaking cycles of poverty, violence etc.
The easy solution of stripping benefits has the unintended consequence of growing crime, violence, theft etc which over time will become a cancer throughout society. Who here actually thinks the United States for instance, todays empire is a healthy, functioning society thanks to their harsher wealther policy or public system in general including health etc? So anyone advocating more stick than carrot just has to look their for the end result of such a move.
Of course none of what I say helps one iota to you or me when we are sweating blood to feed our families and have to listen to some scum bag complaining that department of housing took 2 days to come fix their TV antennae. Or one of my personal gripes is each time I drive over the harbor bridge seeing that huge housing apartment with 360 degree views of the city\harbor and thinking why the F$%#%@#$CK doesnt the government sell that and ship them off to cheaper housing!
I think what has changed recently is the text book definition (from economic perspective) that unemployment\welfare is to assist the transition of a worker from one job to another. This definition or interpretation applies much less in today relatively highly prosperous socitiety when actually working may not be the most cost effective solution for ones time compared to living on the dole.
Unfortunately the solution is long term policies around education and good governence leading to decisions that help bring down the cost of living etc. The welfare system is merely the bandaid and admission by governments that the system will never be perfect so we just dish out welfare as its the most cost effective and solution bearing least negative consequence.
Pernicious in that for some in our society especially low income workers it maybe more cost effective\rewarding to not work. This must surely be a result of high living expenses, ineffective tax regime and urban sprawl demanding long commutes and travel costs. I actually (heard of) people getting fake divorces just so one can get full benefits because between childcare/tax/petrol etc usually the wife would have to work to simply pay the bills to allow her to work in the first place - I too get it, whats the point of working.
I cannot fault their logic beyond my instictive feeling that surely you want more than subsistance living (but many are happy there) I am not one of them so I choose to work as I want more.
So whats the solution?
The solution at first seems easy then either reduce those costs that make the equation between working for low income or receiving unemployment benefits more stark. If we reduce living expenses, travel costs, childcare etc then the benefit of working is magnified.
However such solutions are not easy and likely to never happen in my lifetime at least. Instead its much easier to strip away benefits in order to make the equation more lob sided to working versus not.
Here is where the problem lies, stripping away benefits will force many to work begrudgingly however there will always be a decent chunk of the population who are scum (choke on that civil libertarians) and will never work. This is just a fact of life there will always be those who refuse to work and refuse to contribute. The solution here has nothing to do with the welfare system but rather, education and in many cases breaking cycles of poverty, violence etc.
The easy solution of stripping benefits has the unintended consequence of growing crime, violence, theft etc which over time will become a cancer throughout society. Who here actually thinks the United States for instance, todays empire is a healthy, functioning society thanks to their harsher wealther policy or public system in general including health etc? So anyone advocating more stick than carrot just has to look their for the end result of such a move.
Of course none of what I say helps one iota to you or me when we are sweating blood to feed our families and have to listen to some scum bag complaining that department of housing took 2 days to come fix their TV antennae. Or one of my personal gripes is each time I drive over the harbor bridge seeing that huge housing apartment with 360 degree views of the city\harbor and thinking why the F$%#%@#$CK doesnt the government sell that and ship them off to cheaper housing!
I think what has changed recently is the text book definition (from economic perspective) that unemployment\welfare is to assist the transition of a worker from one job to another. This definition or interpretation applies much less in today relatively highly prosperous socitiety when actually working may not be the most cost effective solution for ones time compared to living on the dole.
Unfortunately the solution is long term policies around education and good governence leading to decisions that help bring down the cost of living etc. The welfare system is merely the bandaid and admission by governments that the system will never be perfect so we just dish out welfare as its the most cost effective and solution bearing least negative consequence.
What state sponsored welfare does is divorce effect from cause, particularly in relation to family and moral values. Historically, the first port of call for welfare was family, then extended family, then religious denomination or immediate community. Whatever, the relationship between cause and effect was never severed as effectively as in a nanny state.
However, to go back to this structure would undermine the relevance of large socialist state government.
If we all had to focus on individual responsibilities as much as indivdual rights, then the power of the individual would usurp the Socialist's prime argument to tax heavier.
Societies don't work well due to a lack of welfare.
They don't work well when individuals, family units, and traditional independent support channels (like religion) don't work well.
State sponsored welfare doesn't have the answer.
The answer is within the individual, the family unit, the religious or community unit.
State sponsored welfare cannot make a parent teach their kids self discipline, community conscience, respect for elders, cannot make kids do their homework nor eat fruit and vege, nor live a wholesome lifestyle.
A nation that looks to State sponsored welfare rather than first to the things above, is sick. Welfare will do nothing to heal that.
It is a values issue. And it is politically incorrect, even racist, to say one set of values is inferior to another.
Welfare isn't the primary cause of apathy.
There are hard working and noble welfare recipients who don't screw the system.
The cause will be found in individual and family values - essentially all that stuff which is anathema to interfering liberal progressives ever out to usurp more of other people's money.
You make a good point, Tim. There's something seriously amiss today with both governance and people's education around welfare. It seems like everyone now feels like they each individually deserve something from the public purse - and therefore gets it - on principle. What started out as a redistribution of resources to protect the most vulnerable (and therewith, protect the rest of society from consequentially anti-social behaviour) has to my mind just gone off the rails.
People often - and I think rightly - complain about the nanny state, but very few complain about what they get gratis from the state every day. But one does seem to invite the other: Nanny always wants a say in how the kids are raised if she's going to do the babysitting for free!
Eventually this gets down to the relationship - or contract - between civil society and the state, I think. Why should a young person strive for independence when they see everywhere their middle-aged elders still gorging at the teat? Why should unemployed people take any job whatsoever to get a foot into the tax-paying world, when wealthy retirees can be seen enjoying all of society's benefits without their plentiful superannuation incomes being taxed?
Somehow, a culture of general dependency of civil society upon the state has evolved in most western liberal democracies, one that was never the intention of its architects (I'm thinking here of the essentially 'institutionalised' liberal tradition from J. Stuart Mill through to J. Maynard Keynes that we see around us today). Only a philistine would confuse welfarism within this liberal democratic tradition with socialism, and so be blinded as well to the cancerous danger of ever-growing societal dependency upon the state. Dependency empowers the state, leaving it less cause every day to keep up its contract to always strive to maximise our personal freedoms. When you see disaffected dole-bludgers rioting and looting, ask yourself, who do they really want to upset: their own neighbourhood that they're damaging, or the authorities responsible for protecting it?
(Note: We employed somebody around 8 months ago now who'd been on the dole for 16 years. In 8 months he's earned himself over 2 months of accumulated personal leave and workers compo leave, 3 formal written warnings for not following trained procedures, plus half a dozen verbal 'reminders' about not letting his act slide along the way. He's coming around slowly but surely, and is even beginning to display the first signs of autonomous intelligence these days. I actually have some hope of rescuing this one from the prison of dependency mentality, but it's going to be a long and testing road for his co-workers, his supervisors and his directors, without any doubt.)
People often - and I think rightly - complain about the nanny state, but very few complain about what they get gratis from the state every day. But one does seem to invite the other: Nanny always wants a say in how the kids are raised if she's going to do the babysitting for free!
Eventually this gets down to the relationship - or contract - between civil society and the state, I think. Why should a young person strive for independence when they see everywhere their middle-aged elders still gorging at the teat? Why should unemployed people take any job whatsoever to get a foot into the tax-paying world, when wealthy retirees can be seen enjoying all of society's benefits without their plentiful superannuation incomes being taxed?
Somehow, a culture of general dependency of civil society upon the state has evolved in most western liberal democracies, one that was never the intention of its architects (I'm thinking here of the essentially 'institutionalised' liberal tradition from J. Stuart Mill through to J. Maynard Keynes that we see around us today). Only a philistine would confuse welfarism within this liberal democratic tradition with socialism, and so be blinded as well to the cancerous danger of ever-growing societal dependency upon the state. Dependency empowers the state, leaving it less cause every day to keep up its contract to always strive to maximise our personal freedoms. When you see disaffected dole-bludgers rioting and looting, ask yourself, who do they really want to upset: their own neighbourhood that they're damaging, or the authorities responsible for protecting it?
(Note: We employed somebody around 8 months ago now who'd been on the dole for 16 years. In 8 months he's earned himself over 2 months of accumulated personal leave and workers compo leave, 3 formal written warnings for not following trained procedures, plus half a dozen verbal 'reminders' about not letting his act slide along the way. He's coming around slowly but surely, and is even beginning to display the first signs of autonomous intelligence these days. I actually have some hope of rescuing this one from the prison of dependency mentality, but it's going to be a long and testing road for his co-workers, his supervisors and his directors, without any doubt.)
I completely agree. It is easy to say "take the dole off the druggies" etc but in turn they will beget crime to pay for their habits or needs.
And I also agree - as I look out the window at the 120+ Dept Housing units sitting right on the beachfront in CBD Newcastle ... That block of absolutely prime dirt is worth tens and tens of millions - surely they could sell it up and buy better housing in a more (ahem) appropriate location. How come they get to rent for $50/wk right next to Nathan Tinklers $8mil pad?
However, I do strongly believe that we need to get rid of middle class welfare - if you're not on the poverty line then you get nothing, IMO. How can someone earning $100,000/yr still get a welfare payment? Welfare is not longer the "safety net" ... it is a lifestyle choice. It needs to revert back to the option of last resort.
Because 'it would be inhumane and unAustralian to force welfare recipients to move from dwellings that they have lived in for 40 years'
Mate, you Nouvocastrians haven't got a thing on Syringe Central here in Surry Hills. Sydney Harbour views from 2 bedrooms 10 floors up on rental assistance no less, with Clover Moore hosting parties for the annual survivors in the park below, and not a single sucessful stockbroking job application among them. It's a desert for pick and pack postions in these parts, just ask any lawyer on the street here!
It's got everything to do with voting ALP and Greens.
The Howard Government got tough on dole-bludgers, should I remind you?
The only people supporting more and more welfare are left-wing political parties. After all, unions = centrelink = same thing.
Frankly it doesn't even matter any more - ALP are finished any way. And this left-wing riff-raff called Gillard will probably be knifed by an independent or Rudd/Smith before I can finish typing this post.
the howard government also entrenched middle class welfare.... with tax rebates, baby bonuses and first home owners grants. welfare should be for people who need it..... not just a way to buy the votes of the "battlers"
you're very patient.
after 16 years on the dole you lose even the most basic work skills. like turning up. not calling the boss a female organ, showering at least once a week, etc.
I'd rather give tax cuts to the middle class than pay welfare benefits to those that don't work.
