And if not, should we just give everyone £80 per week (the ‘Citizen’s Wage’).

If there is no prospect of getting every single person into a job, is it a waste of money and resources to have Jobcentres? Should we simply give everyone £80 a week (the ‘Citizen’s Wage’) and let those who wish to bump along at the bottom on subsistence money do so? If you wanted to start a business £80 would be a handy subsidy. Similarly, if you could only work part time, you would still get your CW plus whatever you could manage to earn yourself. Rich people would get it too, but they pay loads of tax so that’s ok.

I know it’s a charter for lazy people to carry on dossing but I wonder how many are deterred/caught by the present system and how much it costs the taxpayer to catch them? We wouldn’t need as many Jobcentre staff or buildings either.

I haven’t thought about housing benefit yet, eg for old people who have worked all their lives and deserve a rest on the state. Maybe they should get their state pension and the CW. Still on the drawing board with that one.

Sounds good to me. Free fags, booze and heroin. We could get rid of half the police force then too.

no

a capitalist society needs an underclass to survive.

so to keep competition within the market place there needs to be unemployment

Both Stalin and Hitler managed zero unemployment when they were running their respective countries. There were of course a few other faults with their systems but that asect worked fine, so yes it is possible.

It’ll never happen in this country. Too many people who do not want to work.

The trouble with your Citizen’s Wage proposal is that inflation and the cost of living will rise to match it.
By the same principal giving everyone in the country a million quid wouldn’t mean we could all live in luxury.

Easiest way to zero unemployment is the death penalty for those without jobs. But some lefty do-gooders are squeamish about this 😉

It’ll never happen in this country. Too many people who do not want to work.

Very true the bleeding hearts amongst us won’t let it happen and the feckless know it

Both Stalin and Hitler managed zero unemployment when they were running their respective countries

you can in a communist society.

possible? yes – see stalin etc.

likely? / practical? – no.

i like the idea of a citizens wage, £80/week for everyone, it sounds nice.

but i haven’t really thought it through, i will sit back and let wiser people than i explain why it’s a crap idea.

Positive and negative income tax is the easist way to ensure everyone gets a basic amount of money to cover their needs.

Very true the bleeding hearts amongst us won’t let it happen and the feckless know it

Full of Christmas cheer and goodwill to all men I see. 😀

andy7t2 has it.

For this society (liberal western capitalist/democracy),permanent full employment would be a disaster.

It depends who you ask and what other conditions you’re willing to accept as a byproduct of “Full Employment”.

If you ask Ernie, Junkyard or TJ, they’ll say yes out of misguided socialist myopia 🙂 and ignore the fact that with full employment might come rabid inflation and in order to achieve full employment you’d need massive state intervention to the point of oppression. q.v. Stalin, Hitler etc.

The Phillips Curve is at the heart of employment/prices arguments.
http://www.economicshelp.org/macroeconomics/unemployment/phillips-curve.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve

SO the trade off of higher employment is needing to tolerate very high inflation – it also implies that you could use Keynesian policy to manage both. Right up TJs street! 🙂

In the other corner though, monetarists just held that there was a natural unemployment rate and you couldnt engineer away from it even at the cost of inflation.

Im on that side. 🙂

I’ve heard it all now.

In the other corner though, monetaristsRich bar stewards who want to see the lower order fighting amongst themselves instead of fighting them for a crumb just held that there was a “natural” unemployment rate and you couldnt “engineer” away from it even at the cost of inflation.

There, fixed it for you. While full employment is pie in the sky, the more unemployed, the more “competition”.

And onvce again stoner appears able to predict what I would say. Once again he is wrong, once again he shows he does not understand my stance

so did you leave your new-found Keynesian credentials at the door on the way into this thread TJ, or do you like to pick and choose conflicting economic theory?

Im sure you’re well aware that your advocacy of expansion of the state sector in these difficult times is EXACTLY the theory behind the keynesian approach to full employment? Not Taxation.

Or will you flip-flop back next time the argument turns to the coalition governments cuts programme?

The Citizen’s Income (CI) can, and in my opinion should, go further than £60/wk. Here’s an article you may find interesting.

I first became aware of the CI in Germany. The proposed/discussed rate there is around €750/month.

I think before jumping in with a CI, they should tidy up the lower income taxation mess first.

Scrap credits, simplify benefits and raise the personal allowance to 10k.

CI at the equivalent of €750pm in the UK would have a pretty shocking effect on inflation in the short term that would do more harm than good to those on lower incomes IMO. Funny how the CI Trust dont make a single mention of inflation in their site, newsletter or introduction note.

Three Fish: that’s an interesting (long) article. I have skimmed through it but am sorting my bike and will read properly later. However, on a quick skim I think it is more charitable than I was going to be! My idea is centred around not wasting money on people who just will not go to work and the costs associated with trying to make them go.

Would full employment destroy competition for jobs? Dunno, surely people would still want to better themselves or try something different?

Given that our two main political parties are commited to economic liberalism and that the third party will just do whatever they are told, then no, zero unemployment will never be possible as it is not a political goal that a UK govt. will ever strive towards.

From the little I remember of my A Level economics full employment is not possible or desireable, otherwise you can never have mobility in the labour market. As has been said before other have tried it but I don’t fancy living under those conditions thanks!

But when the last unemployed person gets a job the last person at the dole office gets the sack, and so there is somebody unemployed again.

So they have to hire a new dole office clerk, the original guy gets his job back, but there is nothing to do because there are no longer any unemployed people.

And round it goes.

While we always have a quantity of people unemployed at any given time it doesn’t mean that the same people are unemployed year in year out. As much as people like to imagine otherwise the number of people who have been unemployed for more than a year, as a proportion of all the people who are unemployed at any given time is pretty low. Stretch that to two years its very small indeed. So the bulk of out of work benefits are paid to people who are between jobs, not to people who don’t work or don’t want to work. And although the press can always find one when they want to, people who have never worked are very rare indeed.

However at the bottom of the wage scale are irregular, unsecure and seasonal jobs, so its not unusual for the people who do those kind of jobs to be in and out of work and on and off of benefits.

One thing our present government has been very naughty about is discussing out of work benefits and the overall cost of providing benefits in the same breath, as if they are one and the same thing. However out of work benefits are a very small part of the picture.

as someone who is currently unemployed, the money is crap. If you think about how many jobs are now advertised via the internet having a connection is more than helpful but it costs. I was thinking the other day how much a single first class stamp costs, you don’t get to buy that many with a weeks benefits.

But i guess the crap money is meant to dissuade people from trying to live on benefits.

communism seems a good idea, unfortunately it does not take into account human nature

Correct me if I’m wrong (and this is on a slightly different tangent, I know), but in the recent boom, wasn’t there potentially a job for everyone?

So, theoretically it’s possible, but practically not so.

It’s not rocket science, but make the benefits system so miserable for those that refuse to get a job, that they have no choice. It’s been mooted as a nod towards that by the current Government, but it will never be implemented to such a degree that it actually works.

Failing that, send all the jobless to Wales.

I doubt zero unemployment is possible as there are to many who are not employable.

Correct me if I’m wrong (an this is on a slightly different tangent, I know), but in the recent boom, wasn’t there potentially a job for everyone?

minor issues,

where people are and where jobs are, You can say move to the jobs, but if you look at housing costs in the southeast easier said than done. If you have no job, ie no money how do you raise money to move?

Skillset, there may be a job but are any of the unemployed skilled correctly? and if not who is going to train them? Employers would rather employ a skilled person than train an unskilled one.

There is always “beneath me” excuse that crops up regularly, There are people who will always try and evade working.

Thinking, what should be done in the UK is to pay a real jobseekers benefit for a defined period then cancel it. Most people are out of work for a few months so give a decent wage for that period so life can continue.

It was a bit of a trick question really, I don’t think it’s possible to get everyone into work. For a start, people might not live where the job is, nor have the skillset to do the work if they could get there.

My thought was that giving everyone, from the time they are born, a blanket £80 a week would save a load of money. Think of all those forms you have to fill in when you sign on, and the futile visits every two weeks where you have to prove you have been looking for work. Waste of everyone’s time and money. I haven’t yet worked out how I will deal with Housing Benefit when I am Queen.

So, despite what we are told by the government about how they will save all this money by targetting benefit thieves (pot and kettle), and what the redtops say, are there relatively few long term on-purpose unemployed?

The Phillips Curve is at the heart of employment/prices arguments.

No its not Stoner.

Of course it is possible – you could shoot everyone that doesnt have a job. Doubt you’d get ethical approval for that though.

One thing I do wonder about though is what kind of percentage of the population are actually working nowadays compared to say 20 years ago. I am thinking any comparison of unemployed numbers is massively skewed by the increased numbers at uni and gap years etc.

Crawley once had zero unemployment when it was growing fast. Obviously its good for council budgets but it stunted growth and companies struggled to employ staff, particularly skilled and ’employable’ staff. Wages rise due to job seekers being in a strong position, good for the individual, but ultimately would increase inflation which is bad. Its also difficult for companies to retain staff without having to keep increasing wages.

I think the ideal situation is a low unemployment rate, which leaves a small pool of job seekers with a high turnover rate (i.e. job seekers find jobs relatively quickly)

The Phillips Curve and its adaptations and variations* are at the heart of employment/prices arguments.

happier?

* We can do the classical curve, the new keynesian curve, the long run and short run curves, the inflation expectation adapted curve etc etc if you like.

The arguments around full employment and the risk/expectation/desire or otherwise that it will impact on prices has come from Phillips observations originally. I havent said that Phillips’ curve is right, just that that is what people usually argue about.

are there relatively few long term on-purpose unemployed?

of course. Living on benefits is miserable for a short period, soul destroying for a long time. People who find that preferable to work and living wage are massively in the minority. We’re all people who value our leisure time and would happily ride our bikes all day if we could, if life on benefits is that attractive why aren’t we all doing it?

We’re not doing it because living on benefits is paralysingly shit

I dunno . I’ve not been on here in , like 6 months , and now this .
I misunderstood the post .
On a personal level it’s perfectly impossible .
All you need is parents that will give you money whenever you need it . Like when you just need a fiver for petrol , or to pay your Iphone bill .
Just ask our 20 yr old . He does it just fine .
Dagnabbit . I’d have gotten away with it if it wasnt for them pesky kids .

Look , make your minds up . Do you want capitalism , or socialism .
seasy.
I’m sure Hitler / Stalin got a mention earlier . That just about sums it up . well done .
My work here is done .

My work here is done.

You missed a bit.

Karinofnine – if you really want an answer, I’d strongly suggest you sit down and read one of the greatest social documentaries of the 20th Century:

http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/index.html

Zulu – recommending Orwell 😯

Possible only if we can take the greed out of humanity.