Snog "Do you like the fact that young people are struggling to find work? "
Look at what has happened to countries that have gone down similar routes. France has long advocated a 35 hour working week, yet they have higher unemployment than the UK. Please explain this away before suggesting we copy them, let alone go further. Similarly, the EU has tougher rules regarding employment legislation yet has youth unemployment in excess of 50% in some territories - by this measure, youth unemployment in the UK is nowhere near as bad.
"Do you like the fact that the growing gap between rich and poor creates civil unrest and more crime?"
This is a big assumption. The gap between rich and poor has been wider many times in our history AND crime has been higher. The two figures don't correlate. On the whole, I couldn't care less about relative poverty as long as we all get richer together - usually, when the economy expands, we all get richer. Malnutrition, and other diseases associated with real poverty, has been all but eradicated in the UK. We all eat better, are clothed better and, like it or not, capitalism is the magic money tree which has delivered this. Our economy is screwed up at the moment as we don't have growth but this is the fault of bad banking decisions and stupid politicos and is no reason to kill the golden goose. When the government pull their finger out and sort out the economy again, we will all start to get richer once more.
"What would you have us do?"
It helps no one that we have an artificial floor in the cost of labour in this country. I've said it before but the fruit of some peoples labour just isn?t worth the minimum wage. Where we have kids who cannot get a job, it would be in their interests to take a lower paying job in the short term so that they can put some (indeed any) experience down on their CV's. It is experience which leads to better job opportunities, not qualifications. We also need to stop making it so easy to survive indefinitely on the dole. Where people can be long term unemployed and yet still be picky about what job they do says lots about the state of the system. Finally, we need to reduce taxation on businesses. We need to make Britain the obvious territory in the EU to open up factories and businesses. This will lead to jobs and opportunities for all of our people. We could even have flexible corporation tax rates for business depending on where they operate in the country. If they pick a high unemployment area to operate in, they pay less tax.
All of this is achieved with less governmental interference rather than more, and I believe that is the answer.