What Would Happen If

[starfighter]

Reduce benefits and increase minimum wage, I do have some sympathy for low skilled workers, benefits pay more so why work? and as useful as immigration can be, immigrants will generally accept a lower standard of living for the same pay. So I see nothing wrong with the government evaluating what the minimum cost for living is and making sure the poorest get paid atleast this amount.

Obviously, we shouldnt stop all benefits, but if you are fit and healthy and there are jobs going you should take it.

Child benefit is the next one, I don't want to see starving babies lining the gutter (nice image for you) but the current system is a joke, it encourages people to have kids for money, it is a career path for many. WTF

After 2 kids they get aborted or taken into care if you are unemployed.

But then we shouldn't have unemployed, after 1 year benefits should stop, so you would either die or get a job assuming there are jobs going. (there are 99% of the time)

 

[Angilion]

Don't really understand. Surely if you are unemployed, you take what you can get?

Only if either or both of the following is true:

i) You will be worse off if you don't take any job that you can get.
ii) Your personal moral code requires you to pay your own way in life if it's possible for you to do so.

(i) is simply not true for low-end jobs. You're better off on the dole.
(ii) is certainly not universal and may even be considered a rather strange attitude.

So the answer to your question is frequently "no".

 

[MikeHunt79]

Child benefit is the next one, I don't want to see starving babies lining the gutter (nice image for you) but the current system is a joke, it encourages people to have kids for money, it is a career path for many. WTF

Don't they have something similar in the US, but instead of getting cash, food vouchers are handed out instead?

 

[Angilion]

That's what I don't get. I'd hazard a guess that at least one of the half dozen supermarkets here is looking for staff to do donkey work- tills, shelf stacking, warehouse work. The pay is crap and the hours are probably worse, but the work is there. There are plenty of jobs out there, but if you were in that situation and had the choice between sitting on your arse getting paid JSA or stacking boxes of cornflakes in Asda, what would you do?

Stack boxes, but I am a bit strange. I like to unlock my door to my house that I pay for and eat my food that I paid for, that sort of thing. It is strange though - I acknowledge that I'd be better off on the dole.

Having said that, it's not that easy to get a menial job nowadays. For example, one of my coworkers went for a crappy picking job in a warehouse, minimum wage stuff. After 4 interviews (no typo - four interviews) they told him he hadn't got the job. My workplace uses two interviews, lasting up to 2 hours apiece, and that's for the small minority of applicants who get as far as an interview. That's also for a minimum-wage job.

 

[Angilion]

It's more along the lines of "Where are the good employees?" when you don't give a good payment/benefits package...

At a higher end, perhaps. For jobs where minimum wage has any relevance, it's more like "bugger the peasants, there are plenty more of them to use" and the idea of a good payment/benefits package is a joke. It'll be subsistance living and a worry that someone will do the job for a few quid less.

 

[meem]

Then quite a few on benefits might actually be able to live off the wages they earn.

One big problem is many people on benefits can't afford to go back to work, realistically can you raise a family on minimum wage?

Most of the people I see on benefits are dossers who would rather sit on their ass / in the pub, regardless of potential income.

And if you can't afford to raise kids, don't have them?!
Having children is expensive, no doubt. Frankly the world hardly needs the extra population - if you can't afford to raise them, you shouldn't be making them....

As for the influx of migrants and how they take all our jobs (blabla)... it's just plainly not true. At the bottom end (where most of them work), they aren't competing with Brits for jobs - they are doing the **** that nobody else wants to do.

My company has a day and a night operation, the night operation is really menial work (warehouse sorting operatives).. it pays over the national minimum wage, and I'm quite sure they would much prefer a majority of English speaking workers (easier to manage and organise), but the reality is only those migrants apply for the jobs.

I work flexitime and so go in the office very early. 90% of people I come into contact with at 5.30am are speaking a different language... the staff working in the spa who sell my newspaper and coffee at 6am have heavy european accents, so thank god for them really.