: The quandry: Most people who are poor work hard - very hard - at jobs that require low skills. No one will do these jobs if the pathetic pay to be had from them can be gotten for free from the government.: The solution ought to involve some sort of 'workfare', where people who make low wages can be subsidized by the state in the form of a dole/raise, based on hours worked. The money would help businesses as well, by helping them retain their workforce. This might be what the government is attempting, with slouchers trying to sidestep the spirit of the law by declaring themselves "musicians", or "artists", or some other self-employed vocation that is almost impossible to verify.
*Of course, it also means that legitimate artists waste their time working behind a bar or washing dishes.
: Meanwhile, highly skilled people make huge amounts of money by doing very little, albeit working at things that only they can do. They aren't particularly pleased by the prospect of being penalized for their high level of talent or competance. In the interim, people starve or sell drugs.
: If you've a solution to this nasty dilemna, I'm all ears. This, and not the 'exploitation of the masses', is the real problem that capitalist systems will be forced to come to grips with in the 21st century. So far, socialist fixes have only delayed the inevitable resolution of these issues, and in some cases excaberated the underlying problem (welfare, for example).
: Thoughts?
: "Doc" Cruel
*I tend to agree with your point that this is going to be the major challenge to Western capitalist society in the coming years - I can't see a proletarian revolution coming (possibly the Fabian Socialists have done their job too well in making capitalism bearable). But you never know....
However, I disagree with some of your other premises. I think that the overwhelming majority of people would rather be working for a pittance than to be receiving that same pittance from the govenment. The fact that there are always plenty of people to work these crappy jobs even in countries with fairly generous unemployment compensation, eg Australia, is evidence of this.
As for the highly skilled and highly payed being "penalised" I assume that you mean that they will resent having to pay a greater amount of tax to pay for a welfare state. I think that this is entirely dependent on the propaganda they are subjected to. In the US it seems that people are less willing to pay higher tax and that lower taxes are used regularly as a carrot at election time. The same is generally true in Australia. However, Scandinavian countries, with the highest tax rates on earth, have re-elected high tax governments over and over again because of the social beefits they see as a result. Over all I think that people are willing to pay higher taxes if it can be shown that this will be of benefit to those worse off. Personally, I get pissed off that the government assumes that I would rather pay less tax than see adequate benefits go to the unemployed - I'm not that heartless and I don't think most people are.
At present, the Australian government is embarking on a 'cut welfare to cut taxes' regime. This raises the interesting situation where we effectively decide to give less money to those who need it and more money to those who have enough - both in the name of encouraging people to work harder.
We also have a situation where in a time when huge numbers of people can't find work or are working in low pay, insecure jobs, those with full-time work are working longer and harder than ever before.
What we really need is a way to share the work around. Those who work should not feel that they have to work themselves to death and those who want to work should be given the opportunity. This system of punishing the unemployed for being so while making those with work work harder does not really achieve anything.
*Job sharing?
*Reduced working week?
*Government payment for volunteer work? (and even artists)
I think people are willing to pay a little bit extra for solutions that work. I know that I am.
None.
