longweekend58 wrote on May 3^rd, 2014 at 5:04pm:


It's not providing a third non-working option - it's providing in the event the first two are not available...

Rubbish - the dole was available since I was a kid.... just not as often used for the simple reason that people could get work.

BTW - the days of 'full employment' didn't lead to massive demands for pay rises and the 'effect of market forces' on wages - it was all pretty regulated, same as it is now - yet it all worked and the country was prosperous ....

Ah, yes the good old days pre-feminism.....

Grappler Truth Teller wrote on May 4^th, 2014 at 10:45am:


I, too, was wondering just which generation he's referring to.

I'm a 'baby boomer', 1958-vintage, and the dole was certainly around when I left school. But as you point out, we didn't need it because jobs were literally falling out of the trees back then. I started my first job a whole 48 hours after I walked out of the school gates for the final time.

Three months later, I decided that wasn't really what I wanted to do so I left that job. Took me a whole week and a half to start a new one. Left that one too, after about six months, and within three weeks had another.

Never even considered the dole as an alternative. We knew it was there, but always viewed it as what it was originally intended to be - a 'last resort' payment to help for the few weeks it may have taken to get another job, as there were literally jobs for all who wanted one.

And herein lies the genesis of the 'dole bludger' myth which so taints the unemployed to this day... the fact that the jobs were falling out of trees. This led some to believe that it was OK to 'sit' on the dole for a few months as a sort of 'holiday', knowing that they could get a job any time they wanted one. And so, of course, a minority did just that.

The then Opposition used this group to demonise and stereotype all unemployed as being thus motivated and encouraged to not work, as a lever against the Whitlam government. And they've continued pushing that lie to this very day. One has only to read some of the comments posted both here and elsewhere whenever (for example) the question of raising the No-Start payment to something realistic is discussed to see that this insidious and long-term demonization of the unemployed has worked, and worked well.

Fast-forward to 2014, and we have 800k people scrambling for 200k jobs, and any of them are the young. So what's the conservative response? Force the oldies to keep working longer, thereby denying many of these young adults a start in life, while still demonising every unemployed person as a bludger who won't work. The consider things like an internet connection a 'luxury' that the unemployed simply shouldn't be 'entitled to', despite the fact it's almost essential for job-searching. They carry-on about how the dole 'isn't a lifestyle choice', while denying the obvious, namely that for many it IS a lifestyle and one they are stuck in, but certainly not by choice. And it's one you could find yourselves living tomorrow, next week or in six months' time.

With all the will in the world there will still only be a quarter as many jobs as there are those who need them.

And there will still be the ignorant, the greedy, the mis-informed and the just plain nasty to abuse them for it.



*Waits to be either abused or ignored**

Soren wrote on May 4^th, 2014 at 12:20pm:

Thanks for backing me up Soren...

Kat wrote on May 4^th, 2014 at 1:16pm:


Exactly.

Quote:


Exactly!
From what I remember (I'm a Millennial) it was quite a while before I even know welfare existed and I would much have preferred not knowing it existed forever so it never would've entered my mind as an alternative. So when I went off into the defence force and my parents asked "what if it doesn't work out!?" (they wanted to move into the country), I wouldn't have said "Don't worry it will work out! If it doesn't I can always live with X and get payments until I get another job!", biggest mistake of my life.

Not only did it not work out, but I couldn't find another job for ages and didn't have the option of living with the parents because they were in a 1 bedroom cabin trying to run their business' and put something on the land they bought. What made it worse was it was illegal for them to buy something cheap like a Caravan and live on it without paying $1,000s in fees etc.

So in a sense it was illegal for them to get something that would've allowed me to live with them.

Just another example of how a combination of regulation + welfare keeps people from being socially mobile.


Quote:


I'm against welfare as a concept but good point and good post.

It would be much easier IMO if they fired off centrelink and job service providers and replaced it with a negative income tax that could see people receiving from $500/600/700 -> straight to $800 a fortnight across the board actually allowing them to afford higher education. Not to mention they would get their dignity back instead of constantly being interrogated by social workers that are instead of helping people are forced to act as policemen of the poor. (obviously if they ever did a negative income tax they'd have to sort the issue of the lack of unskilled work available)

longweekend58 wrote on May 3^rd, 2014 at 7:29pm:



Shame it's not twenty plus years ago, where I could work two jobs, save up for a year, backpack around Europe for a year, come back and have a choice of jobs the next week. Unfortunately, that's in the past and so are your silly options.

fractalign wrote on May 4^th, 2014 at 10:39am:

Yes - we haven't had full employment since the 1970s.

Yet we still have idiots still stuck in the 1950s who seem to think the only reason people have no jobs is because they are too lazy to get one. Go figure. It is victimisation, pure and simple.

Even basic jobs these days get hundreds of applicants - and by corollary, some people have to apply for hundreds of positions before landing one.

Even worse, the rampant abuse of casual work conditions means that most of the available jobs are casual. Permanent full time jobs that are open to the public are scarce. Very scarce.