During the last election Plaid Cymru proposed two policies that I would have expected every decent person to support. The first was for a fair pension, the second was for a living wage rather than a minimum wage. Both policies were opposed and ridiculed, not because they were bad policies, but because they were policies suggested by the wrong party.
I don't understand what the Labour Party has against the idea of a living wage. Surely such an idea should be a core Labour principal!
I don't understand why a Conservative should oppose such an idea either.
If an employee has less than a living wage s/he becomes a burden on the state, and has to have topup benefits out of the state's purse to give her/him a wage – his/her job is subsidies by the tax payer in the same way as his/her unemployment would be subsidised – what's the difference?.
If a person works his or her guts off for 60 hours a week but still needs state benefits to make ends meet, who is the scrounger? The mean employer, or the hard working employee?
There is nothing Conservative in underpaying an employee because you know that the benefit cheque will take up the slack in the wage bill.
The benefits bill needs to be reduced, without a doubt, but it needs to be reduced in a way that looks at the full picture.
I can't see a Socialist or Conservative value that should oppose Plaid's living wage, idea, so why don't both parties welcome Plaid's suggestion as part of the answer to a very big problem, rather than opposing it for opposition's sake just because it is a Plaid proposal?
Showing posts with label Unemployment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unemployment. Show all posts
04/08/2010
Reforming the Benefits System
Ian Duncan Smith has suggested that the Benefits System needs to be simplified. He has said that there are far too many benefits, that the system is complicated and that it puts too many claimants in a benefits trap where it isn't worth their while looking for jobs, because gaining a job will make them worse off!
The knee jerk reaction of the left wing is to moan that Mr Smith just wants to demonise those not in work in order to cut their benefits and save money!
I don't believe that this is so.
There is no doubt that some tabloids do demonise the out of work in a counterproductive way. The Daily Hate Mail thinks that anybody who is on Incapacity Benefit is a scrounger, a shirker and a cheat and takes every opportunity to vilify them. This makes it harder for a beneficiary of Incapacity Benefit to gain employment! Would you offer a job to a scrounger, a shirker and a cheat?
Demonization of those not in work is bad, and the Tories should encourage their supporters in the press to desist from it. Likewise the left should resist from condemning all benefit changes as an attack on the poor, because there is little doubt that the current benefits system is a complicated mess, that is a hindrance to the poor gaining meaningful employment!
With a coalition Tory government that depends on Liberal attitudes to benefits, and which may depend on the votes of sensible people from the opposition benches to offset Neanderthal views from its own benches the benefit system has never had a better chance to be dragged up to date. I hope that it is.
To save the there are no jobs to be had commentators from keyboard fatigue – I believe that the benefits system is in desperate need of reform whether the unemployment numbers go up, down or remain the same!
Making the system fair is as important as taking people out of the system, Plaid, SNP and sensible Labour MP's should seize the chance, to work with Mr Duncan Smith in order to create a benefits system that is worthy of today's circumstances!
The knee jerk reaction of the left wing is to moan that Mr Smith just wants to demonise those not in work in order to cut their benefits and save money!
I don't believe that this is so.
There is no doubt that some tabloids do demonise the out of work in a counterproductive way. The Daily Hate Mail thinks that anybody who is on Incapacity Benefit is a scrounger, a shirker and a cheat and takes every opportunity to vilify them. This makes it harder for a beneficiary of Incapacity Benefit to gain employment! Would you offer a job to a scrounger, a shirker and a cheat?
Demonization of those not in work is bad, and the Tories should encourage their supporters in the press to desist from it. Likewise the left should resist from condemning all benefit changes as an attack on the poor, because there is little doubt that the current benefits system is a complicated mess, that is a hindrance to the poor gaining meaningful employment!
With a coalition Tory government that depends on Liberal attitudes to benefits, and which may depend on the votes of sensible people from the opposition benches to offset Neanderthal views from its own benches the benefit system has never had a better chance to be dragged up to date. I hope that it is.
To save the there are no jobs to be had commentators from keyboard fatigue – I believe that the benefits system is in desperate need of reform whether the unemployment numbers go up, down or remain the same!
Making the system fair is as important as taking people out of the system, Plaid, SNP and sensible Labour MP's should seize the chance, to work with Mr Duncan Smith in order to create a benefits system that is worthy of today's circumstances!
28/09/2007
Renting to reduce unemployment?
There is little doubt that two of the major problems facing Wales today are the ability of local people to afford housing and the large number of people who are economically inactive.
The way that the Assembly Government intends to deal with the housing problem is mainly through building more of what are called affordable houses; houses that lower paid workers are able to buy. But a member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee suggested last night that this sort of policy might actually be counterproductive to tackling unemployment.
In a speech in London yesterday Professor Danny Blanchflower said that there is a correlation between high levels of home ownership and long dole queues and that the answer to both unemployment and housing problems might be encouraging more of us to rent rather than buy. Of the major industrial nations Spain has the highest unemployment and the highest rates of home ownership and Switzerland the lowest unemployment and the lowest rate of home ownership
Professor Blanchflower suggests that a possible reason why higher own ownership raises unemployment is because it reduces labour market mobility. Because it is too difficult and too costly to move to where jobs are because of the ties of an owned home, fewer of us are willing to try for jobs that might necessitate moving home.
Not being an economist like Prof Blanchflower our own Prof Dylan J-E, I can't comment on the validity of these arguments, but they sound interesting and I would suggest that looking at significantly increasing the number of decent homes built for the rental market might be something that the Assembly should seriously consider as an alternative to adding to the number of homes to buy.
The way that the Assembly Government intends to deal with the housing problem is mainly through building more of what are called affordable houses; houses that lower paid workers are able to buy. But a member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee suggested last night that this sort of policy might actually be counterproductive to tackling unemployment.
In a speech in London yesterday Professor Danny Blanchflower said that there is a correlation between high levels of home ownership and long dole queues and that the answer to both unemployment and housing problems might be encouraging more of us to rent rather than buy. Of the major industrial nations Spain has the highest unemployment and the highest rates of home ownership and Switzerland the lowest unemployment and the lowest rate of home ownership
Professor Blanchflower suggests that a possible reason why higher own ownership raises unemployment is because it reduces labour market mobility. Because it is too difficult and too costly to move to where jobs are because of the ties of an owned home, fewer of us are willing to try for jobs that might necessitate moving home.
Not being an economist like Prof Blanchflower our own Prof Dylan J-E, I can't comment on the validity of these arguments, but they sound interesting and I would suggest that looking at significantly increasing the number of decent homes built for the rental market might be something that the Assembly should seriously consider as an alternative to adding to the number of homes to buy.
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