re immigartion we have the same thing with eastern european workers here.Personally I would have a look at the employers who want to pay people as little as possible and on worse terms than the local population.
you can never blame people for economic migration – where would you live? where you are or Mexico, uk or eastern europe?- but employers are the ones employing them and breaking the law.

Both sides here have a point imho but I would never take a big stick to “welfare shirkers” unless we have full employment as it serves no purposes.

Yeah, but even with full employment, a big stick isn’t going to get results from some part of the shirkers—they have always been with us and always will.

Guys–it’s been fun, but have to sign off and get my focus back to work–it’s so easy to get caught up on these threads.

Yeah.. I was thinking your username was becoming nicely ironic there 🙂

Keep busy busydog.

NB

but even with full employment

With full employment, unsurprisingly, you don’t get any unemployed. But when was the last time there was full employment in the US ? In the UK it was probably the early seventies.

@ernie_lynch
Can’t stay away–had to make one last check.
I don’t think the US has ever had full employment. Even when the unemployment rate was almost nil, there are always a certain number of people not working (either intentionally or unintentionally) or working off-the-radar to avoid taxes or in positions of nefarious intent–can you say growers of good weed.

yes you can say growers of good weed but can i be the judge of whether it is good 😉
We may always have feckless individuals but we need to do what is right not get at the tiny minority whilst hurting other genuine folk in the process
Or in other words, better to give to too many people than to too few as molgrips notes earlier.

I think the judgement process would require a panel to fully make an assessment 😆

ernie_lynch – Member

But when was the last time there was full employment in the US ? In the UK it was probably the early seventies.

hundreds of thousands unemployed then. Not full employment.
the “workshy” re a product of mass unemployment – its one way of keeping some self esteem

hundreds of thousands unemployed then. Not full employment.

OK go back to the late 60s then. In a labour market of several millions, you will get some people not working – between jobs, school leavers waiting for their first job/training, etc. But we have had what is defined as ‘full employment’.

Of course today nothing terrifies the neo-conservatives (as opposed to the old fashion social-democratic Tories) more than full employment. It tends to make the workforce rather bolshie and pushes up wages. Hence unemployment is used as a very effective tool to discipline the workforce, and why it always goes up under modern day Tory governments. Who then of course blame people for either being lazy, or not accepting a wage cut/worse conditions.

Never thought I’d say this 😉 but that is an interesting point, ernie 🙂

http://www.canfieldbrothers.com/the-chris-canfield-fund

(shamelessly lifted from a proper thread about him on the other side, made me think of this thread.) Didn’t see a Dan Atherton fund/appeal last year. 😕