workfare is fair

[speling bee]

If I wasnt heavily taxed to pay people to do nothing, then I might have the money to employ a cleaner, others might employ a nanny to help raise their children rather than having them dragged up in expensive child care.

We'll find out how it will work soon, as the way things are going even if tax was 100% it wont be enough to pay for those who do nothing. Obviously the system will collapse long before that point thank goodness.

But in a recession you (or most people in your situation) would probably put the money aside and hang tight. And anyway, this doesn't explain peaks in unemployment.

The time to be hard is in the good times, when there are jobs to go into.

[escapeUK]

The time to be hard is in the good times, when there are jobs to go into.

The good times were fictional, they were purely based on people borrowing and inflating the prices of assets.

The total amount of money that has been borrowed by the general public in the last decade is close to £1,4000 billion. The additional amount of money that has been borrowed by the population of Britain in the last eight years is well over £800 billion or more than £100 billion per annum.

The mean GDP of the UK has been about £1,000 billion per annum over the last decade. This is a rate of borrowing of 10% per annum. The British Government has also been borrowing very heavily in the last few years. The British Government admits to a borrowing of £500 billion. If the British Government admits to this number then the real figure is much higher. Businesses have also borrowed very heavily in the recent past because money was so cheap and readily available. Combined these borrowings represent a total UK borrowing level of well over £2,500 billion.

This would give a borrowing rate of over 20%. This will prove to be about the same as the real gross rate of inflation between 2000 and 2010. This shows where the 'growth' in the UK economy has come from since Labour came into office. There was never any growth, there was just borrowing.

[vetran]

That will reduce public spending, but it won't create jobs (but hang on a minute.) Look at the mass unemployment of the 1930s within the context of lack of benefits and other provisions. People didn't work because there were no jobs.

Now, there is a hard core of people who won't work, no matter what. I have known some of them. The time to address this is in times of low unemployment, but it is always politically convenient to hammer people when unemployment is high to distract from the real causes of the economic mess.

too true.

It would make so much sense when there were surplus jobs to pass legislation to hammer benefit abusers, it might not take effect until the bad times come but it would be there.