Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Saede Riordan]

They're relevant because that attitude of entitlement appears across all groups in society.

Where? Provide evidence?

And their existence is a problem, a number of >0 is a problem. Because these people are not invisible. They don't live in a vacuum.

What? And? What is their negative impact?

Other people in the community see the refuseniks, and it is massively, massively demoralising.

They're still slavers, and still a cancer on society.

Wat? There is no evidence of that at all.

Okay, I'm sorry, but you've lost me, that just didn't make any sense at all.

[lallara zhuul]

The solution of 'citizen allowance' has been waved around as means of getting the unemployable to do some work.

Basically untaxed income for all citizens of a nation that would not be counted as income when it comes to taxation, hopefully leading to less grey and black employment when those with low income or living on government cash could do odd jobs to boost their income.

(At the moment I think in the First world countries, if you are on government money, anything that you make will be taken out of that so you work for most of your time on a minimum wage job 'for naught'. Leading to grey and black income.)

In Finland there is a way around the government cutting down on your income, if you are a student.
You will get your student allowance from the government and you can make like 10k a year on top of that, without any taxation.

Moving after work is more about a personal choice than a fiscal issue.

EDIT: Niki/Saede/whatever, the refuseniks are enslaving the rest of the population so that they can live lives of leisure without any input into the society.

[Casiella]

Please avoid the ad hominem attacks and purely emotional appeals, Louella, because they contribute nothing to any reasonable attempt to improve matters.

[Saede Riordan]

EDIT: Niki/Saede/whatever, the refuseniks are enslaving the rest of the population so that they can live lives of leisure without any input into the society.

I understand what the idea of a leech is. But I have failed to see thus far is:

1. Evidence that fixing black and grey employment would not solve the issue of people leeching off the government because its easier.

2. Evidence that people who chose not to participate in the consumerist process at all, don't take government money, and dumpster dive for food, have a real, negative impact on society.

Those are the statements that the people on the other side of this arguement are currently trying to claim, I would really like to see actual data on them.

[Ulphus]

I've been unemployed. I was able to get a shift at a local hot-dog place working silly hours of the night, in return I got $80 a week, which was taxed at 33%, and my unemployment benefit was reduced by 50 cents for every dollar over $50. It was reduced by 70 cents for every dollar over $80 per week, which meant that if my boss needed someone to fill in a shift for him, my marginal tax rate was 103%

That meant that when a regular second shift came up, I couldn't afford to take it, because 2 shifts a week wasn't enough to live on, and the second shift earned me nothing.

The benefit (combined with one shift a week) paid me enough to pay my rent and my food. I couldn't afford new clothes, I couldn't afford to go to the dentist. I didn't live badly for all that, but it wasn't exactly what I'd call luxury.

Now, many years later, I'm earning a good salary and paying a reasonable amount of tax, and I don't begrudge the people currently on the unemployment benefit. Because I've been there.

We have politicians saying that they want there to be a certain amount of unemployment to maintain "labour market flexibility". When unemployment gets too low they bemoan the upward pressure on wages. We have 1200 people lining up in the rain to get a chance of 5 positions stacking supermarket shelves on minimum wage.

I don't believe that those unemployed people are all on a benefit because they don't want to work. Sure, someone applies for a few hundred jobs and  doesn't even get an interview, and maybe they tell themselves "I didn't really want a job anyway". Maybe they really start to believe it. But I don't really think its entirely their fault.

And from a selfish point of view, I want people who can't find a job to have enough to live on without having to break into my house and take stuff to sell. I want people on minimum wage to be able to go see a doctor when they're sick so that when I buy a burger off them I can be reasonably sure they're not contagious. (yes, I've known people, without sick-leave provisions in their job, keep working serving food when they had campylobacter )

If not because of empathy, consider self interest as a reason to look after your unemployed.

[Louella Dougans]

Ulphus, I have no problem with people that are unemployed and want to do something.

The problem are the people that do not want to do anything.

Their actions cause problems for everyone in society.
Example: When most of the Jobcentre's staff time is frittered away on people that don't want to work, then people that do want to work, don't get the support they need.


Minimum wage won't do anything without there being some method to also ensure housing is available at rents that are affordable.

[Casiella]

And again, as someone who's been there & done that, and had family members in the long-term unemployed, I have seriously never run across someone who can work but prefers to depend on the government rather than find a productive place in society.

We can't generalize from my anecdotal evidence any more than from yours. But the point is that experiences vary and that's where statistics and studies come in. Otherwise it's just straw men everywhere.

[Saede Riordan]

The problem are the people that do not want to do anything.

Let us quantify that statement a bit shall we? The problem isn't that people 'don't want to do anything' its people that want to do nothing other then live off of government support. Just to clarify. People without jobs who don't ask for government support are not a problem. People who don't bother with jobs because having jobs affords them no standard of living increase over welfare are also not the problem. The problem people are the ones who have the ability to find work, would be better off by having jobs, and still just sit on welfare. And I have yet to see real evidence at all that these leeches you claim exist do so in sufficient quantity so as to actually be a problem.

Minimum wage won't do anything without there being some method to also ensure housing is available at rents that are affordable.

I agree. I think that at current, the way housing rights are handled is quite FUBAR'd. In the united states, there are 18.6 million empty houses. That is what the census says. Andrew Leonard in Salon notes that it is a bit misleading, that "4.7 million are for "seasonal use" only, the Census tells us -- unoccupied vacation homes, in other words. 4.1 million are for rent, 2.3 million are for sale, and the remaining 7.5 million "were vacant for a variety of other reasons." The census also lists the total number of homeless in America as 759,101, so there are 24 empty houses for every homeless person in America. I agree that just raising the minimum wage won't fix things. In fact, I don't think there's any one thing that can fix things, but if minimum wage is tied to inflation like the democrats want, then it will at least help to alleviate the issue until better solutions come along. It will buy us time. But really, the only thing that will really fix things is to just totally rewrite the whole system from the ground up.

[Vikarion]

Ok, there were quite a few posts since my last, and many of them didn't seem to read the line where I noted that I was not referring to welfare for those who cannot help themselves. I'm perfectly willing to argue against the morality of that, too, but I wasn't. My concern, if you will, is with the idea that those who work should support those who will not, as per Saede Riordan's comments.

Now, while it is true that some tribal societies are egalitarian, tribal societies also tend to lack technological progress, and tend to have a high level of conflict with other tribes. The tribal model allows egalitarianism because members of a tribe are likely to be related to you genetically. However, tribal models cannot compete with more complex societies, and tribal societies do not offer participants the optimal chances of having their genes passed down. It should also be noted that even "egalitarian" tribes are usually not free of social status, ostracization, and violence. Indeed, the farther we have moved away from the tribal model, the less violent towards each other we have become.

My central idea, however, that genetic evolution requires ultimately selfish behavior, has not been challenged, except by reference to a girl being raised by wild dogs. Wild dogs, I assure you, are also selfish organisms. Raising the young of another species is a misfiring of maternal and paternal instincts, not evidence of the universe being charitable. As well, a child adapting to life as a wild dog is merely an incident of an organism seeking survival by any means.

The problem is not that you cannot convince some humans to try to be angels, the problem is that our universe is constructed in such a way so as to make self-sacrificial behavior an ultimately extinctionist enterprise. Consider the following problem:

Suppose that the population consist of 50% willing layabouts (that is, those whose are willing to stop working if they can), and 50% hard workers (who will work no matter what). Now suppose that we institute a rule whereby a basic and comfortable standard of living is guaranteed for the entire group, the cost to be born by those who work. The layabouts will promptly proceed to not work, because work requires an expenditure of energy that, in this case, they need not expend. Therefore, the hard workers no longer bear the burden of their own lifestyle, but now, two times the burden. This effectively penalizes working, especially when, by joining the layabouts, you can survive without having to work 8-16 hours a day. How long do you suppose hard workers will continue working?

Those who do make a study of human economic behavior generally agree on one point: it is overwhelmingly self-interested. That's not to say that humans can't or won't help others, but rather that they are first and foremost concerned with the comfort of themselves and their direct family.

Again, a thought experiment: if you do believe that every human has the right to a house, a living, and food, and that materials to provide it should be taken from those better off, why have you not sold your computer and other luxuries to provide for those badly off in, say, South America or Africa? At the very least, you could sell all your entertainment materials and other unnecessary accoutrements.

As for the instincts for violence, survival, and competition, it's quite easy to acquire knowledge on the subject. Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene, makes most of these points. He is not inclined to like them, however, and exhorts his readers to "rebel" against their selfish genes, a demand that was met with some level of ridicule for an otherwise excellent book. Michael Shermer has some excellent work on the subject, and there are enough books on economics and human behavior, from The Wealth of Nations to Super Freakonomics, that I think I need not describe a library. Suffice it to say that the motive of self-interest on the part of humans and other organisms is now considered a settled proposition.

Now, while humans will not always do things "just" for profit, it is also a settled proposition that you can increase or decrease the rate of certain behaviors by the amount of economic benefit a behavior provides. Jail, for instance, is above all an economic proposition. Your time, which you normally may spend according to your desires, is dedication to sitting in a cell. This is an example of an extreme disincentive. On the other hand, making millions of dollars playing a professional sport is an incentive to continue participating in professional sports. It may be that there is a champion tether-ball player out in the world, but I doubt he is as motivated as Michael Jordan was.

Human nature is inherently greedy, but I agree that it is the environment that is to blame. That is to say, it is the environment that has molded our genes to operate using a model of limited resources. Again, however, to argue that resources aren't limited is to contradict the evidence of the world around us. There are limited resources at any one time, and we all (or almost all), even billionaires, would like to be more comfortable, more entertained, have higher social status, and more be wealthier than we are now.

However, I am not one to say that we cannot be "better", or at least "different". I'm a trans-humanist, and I want - desperately want - humans to transcend the needs of flesh and bone and earth. I think that a space-faring civilization of human brains that have been copied into electronic mediums would have fewer problems with scarcity. It would still exist - our universe has a finite amount of matter in it, according to most theories, but it would be greatly reduced. But we won't get to that point by trying to live tribally or denying our genetic heritage.

But, and lastly, I would like to ask, why is it moral to see that everyone survives? I don't consider that to be morality. It seems to me that it's a borrowing of Christian ethics, which I do not accept. I don't think every life is precious, nor do I think that a society should consider every member worth preserving. In fact, I can think of several members of the human race that the rest of us would be better off without - should those persons come to need saving. By what standard would you demand that the competitive and capable sacrifice for others, even if you were right? What makes egalitarianism a good thing? Ciarente can make arguments for my helping others out of my own self-interest - which, incidentally, I wasn't arguing against. But Casiella and Riordan, you seem to believe that we should give because it is "good". I do not. Can you show me why I should think otherwise?

[orange]

I would like a graphical representation (side-by-side is fine) of 1) where empty homes are, 2) where homelessness is the highest, and 3) where unemployment is highest.

The reason is that the data is of interest in the discussion is that national census data fails to tell the whole story.

Empty homes can exist where homelessness/unemployment is relatively low (Census Data).  Utah for example has 14.6% of Rentals Vacant (highest of any state) and has 6% unemployment (lower than the average), New Mexico has the second highest Rental Vacancies and 6.7% unemployment.

I would be interested to see a survey of those who are unemployed in Nevada or Rhode Island and their willingness to move to Utah or New Mexico, which have the most available rental space or to North Dakota or Nebraska which have very low unemployment.

A national solution is to move unemployed to where jobs/tasks are (Resettlement Administration).

[Khloe]

As an aside, I'd like to see how human society handles the obsolescence of the human worker. Current high tech manufacturing has already taken care of this in the United States, and with the exponential growth rate of the human race the need for people in the workforce is only going to drop further. Will people need to work for a living? What jobs will we need in the future?

[Syylara/Yaansu]

I think the "lazy people" threat is about as real as the "voter fraud" threat that gets thrown around.  Interestingly, there is as little data to support the latter (actually a wealth of data pointing to how miniscule the problem is) as there is the former.  Also not surprising that the efforts to address both problems end up negatively impacting more legitimate voters/hard working people living in poverty than those who are supposedly the problem.

We'll disenfranchise 10s of thousands of voters in a single state by removing them from the rolls or institute requirements they aren't able to meet in order to address the dozen or so instances of voter fraud across the entire country.  We'll dump 1.8 million people off of nutritional assistance programs when 1 in 5 households are struggling to afford groceries in the midst of a drought to address a few thousand (maybe?) people who abuse the system.

Indeed, the farther we have moved away from the tribal model, the less violent towards each other we have become.

At first I was going to say something along the lines of maybe agreeing with us being less "overtly" violent, but then I remembered WW-I, WW-II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq...you can see where this is going, yeah?

But back on that "overt" violence thing, we certainly inflict harm on others through exploitation quite well.  The west's electronic garbage is baked in chemical baths in the far east where they have no proper disposal system and end up poisoning their own ground water supplies.  We beach tankers and haulers in Africa rather than do proper ship-breaking and their once pristine white-sand beaches are now tar-like pits of oil, hydraulic fluid and asbestos strewn about with jagged bits of metal causing open wounds that then lead to chronic or terminal infections due to the aforementioned substances.  We happily infringe on sovereign coastal fishing waters in countries that lack the ability to properly patrol them and deprive the local populace of their own sustenance.  We fund resistance groups to go into other countries as insurgents to destabilize them when it suits our foreign policy interests.  We prop up oppressive regimes that brutalize and kill their own populace in the name of "bringing stability to the region."  We even engage in "foreign aid" where we pretend like we're being altruistic and helping a developing country, but really we just loan them sums they can't realistically pay back and then force them to accept harsh penalties afterwards while the money actually ends up right back in our pockets building infrastructure or providing services they needed the money for to begin with.  There is more slavery in the world today than ever before, including 250 million child laborers.  A child dies of starvation at the rate of once every 5 seconds.

We condemn a man who commits murder, but for inflicting conditions that lead to death for thousands you get to drive around in a limo and wear $5000 3-piece suits.  For some reason, we're unable to see the violence in some actions.  Depraved indifference is no less damaging than enraged physical assault.  The root term of violence implies a violation of another person, and this takes place routinely.  Some highly connected heads of global financial firms played fast-and-loose with the rules and in the process caused millions of people's lifelong efforts to secure a comfortable retirement to be replaced with the prospect of destitution and poverty, dumped millions of people in dozens of countries into a state of severe austerity.  Not that things were particularly better for a majority of the world's population when things were going just fine, mind you.

As for direct, non-technologically aided violence (i.e. weapons), I don't agree we are "genetically oriented" towards it, not one bit.  We are not designed for it, we have no thick padding, no natural weapons and many organs located in highly vulnerable locations.  We are designed for herd protection, which implies cooperation and mutual reciprocity.  We are born premature in part do to the expansive prefrontal cortex, from which we derive our abilities to make decisions and judgments.  A human being cannot even survive the initial stages of life outside of the womb without being touched or acknowledged and there is a correlation between physical and social contact in those stages and later capacity for cognitive development.  That's without even going into our inability to meet our immediate nutritional and environmental needs.

We are not designed for conflict in the way you imagine.  We have socially adapted to operate in such ways when the environment requires it.  More to the point, even when the environment doesn't absolutely require it, but we are lead to believe that it does, the results end up the same.  When we are placed in a position where less is provided than is truly available or made to feel as though we are in some non-tangible state of deficit through debts and other imposed obligations, then we compete with one another through various direct or indirect means.

Many of the most extraordinary feats of human accomplishment have been the result of collaboration and consent, when we share a unified vision for some goal.  The pursuit of pure self-interest is not in the best interests of humanity.  Should we not alter the course of our present behavior (which is not "inherent" or "genetic"), it will result in our ruin, and possibly our extinction.  The problem is that we have replaced societal interest with monetary interest, and there is no monetary interest in solving many of our societal problems ("there's no profit in that").  In fact, in many ways, there's monetary incentive in causing more societal problems, since you can drive people to the need to turn to you for the solution...which you naturally charge an exorbitant fee for.

[Syylara/Yaansu]

As an aside, I'd like to see how human society handles the obsolescence of the human worker. Current high tech manufacturing has already taken care of this in the United States, and with the exponential growth rate of the human race the need for people in the workforce is only going to drop further. Will people need to work for a living? What jobs will we need in the future?

We need thinkers, problem solvers and visionaries.

Sadly, these types get looked down on in American culture, by and large we don't view thought as work, because it doesn't involve physical motion or ambulation.  "He looks like he's just sitting there staring off into space, get his ass to work."

Even for those disciplines that do get acknowledged, the brain drain has been underway for a decade or so.  Wall Street now hires the best quantum mathematicians to make their trading schemes.  They've recently started adding Physicists as well, along with hardware and software engineers so they can better algorithms and computers to engage in high-frequency trading so they can scoop pennies and nickels out of the stock market millions of times a day.

Meanwhile, science and engineering firms (you know, where they make shit the majority of people might actually benefit from and not worthless pieces of paper/bits of data with no real value) can't spend the kind of money the investment banks can and so our rate of innovation has severely stagnated.

[Kala]

And again, as someone who's been there & done that, and had family members in the long-term unemployed, I have seriously never run across someone who can work but prefers to depend on the government rather than find a productive place in society.

We can't generalize from my anecdotal evidence any more than from yours. But the point is that experiences vary and that's where statistics and studies come in. Otherwise it's just straw men everywhere.

I agree re: anecdotal evidence demonstrating experiences vary - particularly from place to place.  I was going to point out that my experiences and Louella's aren't so different (ok, not the bin-divers, that just seems a little...odd.  especially as a life-choice) but certainly some people give the impression of not only wanting to remain on benefits indefinitely but to increase their benefits and know how to game the system accordingly.  We're both in the UK though, which might explain the similarity of our anecdotal evidence/opinion  but given she's in Scotland and I'm in England, our experiences are probably going to differ somewhat too.   

Note: This 'impression' does certainly not apply to everyone who is on benefits. 

I'm curious how these studies would be carried out though.  No ones going to say "yeah, I'm a workshy scrounger" to anyone doing a study.  (though I have heard similar things being said amongst themselves. I can produce more anecdotal evidence  ).  I suppose you could get the statistics of how many long-term unemployed there are and extrapolate from that, but that still doesn't demonstrate intent - that they will not and aren't trying.

Ok, there were quite a few posts since my last, and many of them didn't seem to read the line where I noted that I was not referring to welfare for those who cannot help themselves. I'm perfectly willing to argue against the morality of that, too, but I wasn't. My concern, if you will, is with the idea that those who work should support those who will not, as per Saede Riordan's comments.

Yes, but you didn't offer a definition or differentiation between what you meant by "cannot" and "will not" in your original post - whether you meant something permenantly debilitating (cannot) or temporary misfortune (cannot right now) or both.  Also, as someone pointed out earlier, something like severe depression might be medically considered "cannot" but viewed as "will not" by others.  Further, it's very difficult to prove that someone simply will not, or if they're trying and there just isn't the work for them.  As I mentioned above, even if they are wilfully dodging work, they're very unlikely to admit it.  So is it just people you assume will not work, and what is your basis for that assumption? (similar to mine, overheard conversations etc?) how far can you generalize from that?

Again, a thought experiment: if you do believe that every human has the right to a house, a living, and food, and that materials to provide it should be taken from those better off, why have you not sold your computer and other luxuries to provide for those badly off in, say, South America or Africa? At the very least, you could sell all your entertainment materials and other unnecessary accoutrements.

Hehe.  I used to think that as a kid.  They'd show all those starving African children adds on the tv (which would always prompt my mother to tears) and I'd just be like, what the hell?    we have all this stuff...everyone I know has all this stuff...why don't we just redistribute things evenly? THERE ARE PEOPLE STARVING, DAMMIT!

But then you realize some other aspects.  I just kind of assumed they were naturally starving, rather than there being other factors.  Such as people in African countries exporting all their food to pay for debt or were run into the ground by corrupt regimes.  (massive generalizations here too mind, but still starting to form a more complex view than the adverts presented)

And it's also a question of scale.  You might feel a warm fuzzy feeling for being benevolent and philanthropic, but overall the contribution of one individual isn't going to make much practical difference - you'll just sleep better at night.  Get many individuals doing it and you'll see more charity that may save lives but it's still probably not going to make a world of difference in terms of real change.

However, I would be more than happy if all the big companies dodging tax in this country - which amounts to billions - were made to pay up and that went on humanitarian aid.  I would also be more than happy to see third world debt cancelled.

As for the instincts for violence, survival, and competition, it's quite easy to acquire knowledge on the subject. Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene, makes most of these points. He is not inclined to like them, however, and exhorts his readers to "rebel" against their selfish genes, a demand that was met with some level of ridicule for an otherwise excellent book.

Hrm.  Not sure why that was met with ridicule, tbh.  It seems perfectly reasonable to suggest overcoming  our instincts, as if we were simply our basic drives all men would be rapists, no?    To suggest we can't act contrary to these drives seems like biological determinism to me.

But, and lastly, I would like to ask, why is it moral to see that everyone survives? I don't consider that to be morality.

Less morality and more empathy, I think.  Without which, we are psychopaths    (I was going to bring in The Psychopath Test earlier, as it's kind of interesting to note the checklist where someone is diagnosed as a psychopath contains many things that would actually be beneficial in the business world and there were more psychopaths in roles such as CEOS than in other areas of society.  But the conversation moved on  ) 

That said, there's also the monkeysphere which suggests our caring and empathy is mainly expended in our immediate social group as everyone outside of it is more abstract.  Which I think is totally true and probably goes back to the earlier discussion of tribalism, but also perhaps how we're innundated all the time with information globally.  There's only so much care we can give.

The other aspect of it is pragmatism - taking the wide view it's neither moral or practical to ensure everyone survives, given we have an overpopulated planet that we're merrily plundering for resources.  From that side of things, we need a cull >.>

[Jev North]

My central idea, however, that genetic evolution requires ultimately selfish behavior, has not been challenged, except by reference to a girl being raised by wild dogs. Wild dogs, I assure you, are also selfish organisms. Raising the young of another species is a misfiring of maternal and paternal instincts, not evidence of the universe being charitable. As well, a child adapting to life as a wild dog is merely an incident of an organism seeking survival by any means.

Oh, fine. Two objections:
1) What? No. Evolution requires descent with modification. That's it. Dawkins called it "The Selfish Gene" because altruistic behaviour can be interpreted as selfish from the point of view of your genes. Pure economic self-interest and genetic success often conflict - procreating at all is a rather risky investment, for instance.
2) Even if genetic evolution requires selfish behaviour, what requires us to evolve genetically, again?