Is this really what people want?

[mcmooncup]

I don't post much on the threads about benefits but here goes......I'm going to start.

I have a company that works in the Work Programme with long-term unemployed people. Over the last few weeks / month I have seen a dramatic shift in the provision of benefits.

Many many many many more people are being sanctioned (i.e. their benefits are being taken away from them) for missing an appointment, calling in sick for an appointment or not filling in forms correctly.

If you make a mistake with ANY of these 'obligations' under the Jobseekers allowance contract, you, from Monday, can have your benefits taken away for 3 months for the first offence, 6 months for the second and 3 years for the third.

So, I can recount a few stories for you:
Severely dyslexic man provides his job log sheet to the jobcentre and has filled out as much as he can. The jobcentre is not happy with this and sanctions him, probably for 3 months. His response....."I'm going to go homeless, I can't stand this anymore"

Man goes to an interview for a job instead of turning up for an appointment with his WP provider, called in to tell them this. Sanctioned for 2 weeks for not turning up for the appointment. Message was never passed on, and despite phone records showing he called, he was still sanctioned.

Man sanctioned for 6 months for missing an appointment because he was poorly. He is a single parent. He is thinking of suicide.

Is this really what people want?

Homelessness? Suicide?

Do people really think it motivates people to get a job? Because to believe that you have to believe that people like being on benefits, I guess?

What am I missing?

We need some new ideas here. It is possible to exist without money in an exchange economy, for example - though that's one of the oldest types of system that is communism what happened in Russia, China, Cuba, Korea IS NOT communism but state capitalism. Sorry I linked to some really digestible marxist economics.

Claig, the nobles indeed hate the bourgeois, the rising middle classes dispossessed them of the land and wealth, quite rightly so. Can you not see that the next logical step in the evolutionary chain is the workers dispossessing the bourgeois of his wealth and power. The elite that you speak of claig are all capitalists. Capitalism is fantastic in it's creativity, driven by human spirit, just a stop gap though in the great scheme of things.

In our so-called capitalist democracy, the rich get more say than the rest of us and keep telling us that it is trickling down ...

If we had a democracy that worked, we would not have so many bullies exploiting the rest of us.

I take back what I suggested about religion, btw - I was thinking of camels, rich men and needles. But it was a silly suggestion, since it hasn't ever stopped people from bullying others.

X posted Mini, but yes, thanks for the link. I will definitely read it.

The capitalist class is not the elite. The capitalist class is a business/merchant class and in the days of Ancient Greece and the British Empire, this merchant class was looked down on by the real elite - the hereditary nobility who felt they were above grubby commerce.

The capitalists, the merchants, the traders, the middle classes, grew in power and wealth and their investments and earnings sometimes dwarfed those of the land-owners who had few business skills and whose wealth sometimes stagnated because of it.

The gap between the nobles and the serfs narrowed.

The real elite feel they are above commerce, trade and industry, they are not capitalists. They want zero growth and a reduction in business (which helps ordinary people gain employment). The real elite are conservationists and conservatives who want zero growth and a halt to progress. They want to go back to their "good old days", when the "plebs" knew their place and doffed their cap.

The capitalist doesn't care who you are or where you went to school as long as you can turn a profit. The capitalist admires talent, not privilege.

'Can you not see that the next logical step in the evolutionary chain is the workers dispossessing the bourgeois of his wealth and power'

No because the workers want to become bourgeois too. We are all the same. We are "in it together". There is no divide and rule or class war among the working and middle class, except the divide and rule that is created by the elite that thinks that both working and middle classes are just "plebs".

The capitalist is anti-racist and anti-sexist. America takes people from all over the world into its industries, it doesn't care about sex, colour or creed. There are more women CEOs of American corporations than of any other country.

The capitalist cares not who you are, but cares only what you can do.

The elite are different. They look down on "plebs" and think they are better than the people across the planet. They care about who you know, not what you know.

I think we need new terms of reference in the 21st century. We're not talking nobles and serfs, elites and workers any more, although it is interesting to get a historical overview.

We're talking about those who are most, more and least-motivated by money. Haves and have-nots are still relevant terms (though they leave out the have-a-bits, the have-more-than-is good-for-uses and the I-want-to-have-what-you-haves among us).

What's happening now has been made possible by technological innovations that could never have been imagined by previous economists. It might not be possible simply to adapt the old ways of doing things to a completely new set of circumstances.

Who are these people claig? this elite.

And why does it matter if they look down on us?

I don't know who they are, but I do know that they are not capitalists.

'And why does it matter if they look down on us?'
Because they are sometimes in positions aof power and influence policies that may not be to the interest of the public.

The whole history of democracy is that the people have fought for a representative government that reflects their wishes.

Claig the whole of history has been about class struggle, the nobles though are no more. They have been dispossessed of their wealth and power thankfully. I don't think little queenie wields much power these days.

If you want to talk about the type of elite class that are above all others these people are still capitalists. Rothschilds are not nobility, they lent money to the nobles in the 18th and 19th centuries and then dispossessed them through massive interest and crooked dealing, they were knighted and feted, these people though, this very elite 0.1% are not however nobility. The nobility went into decline in 15th century. In the 19th the working class upstarts became the bourgeois when they CREATED the means of production under industrialisation. The Bolsheviks looked at what the results of industrialisation and capitalism were in western Europe and started a revolution that sought to bypass capitalism. doh.

I am not sure that the nobles are no more. The Rothschilds are rich but I don't think they are the elite.

When we look at the world, we see that

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

We see many actors, players and puppets e.g. the Bolsheviks, but we never see their masters.

Illuminanti ?

I haven't heard of them, but I have heard tales of the Illuminati, which I think are rubbish.

As I understand it, the Illuminati were a Freemasonic group from Germany at around the time of the French Revolution. That may well be the case, but I don't think they are or were the elite.

I don't know, what I do know is that Rothschild (anshel) was in Germany working as a Goldsmith at the same time! That is not a matter of conjecture but a fact.

Yeas, but so were millions of other people. That doesn't mean anything.

Indeed. So we are now left with precisely what.....or rather who?

oh the other one has bells on hear no see no Claig !

Nobody knows, but in my opinion they are not capitalists and they are not Rothschilds.

In my opinion, capitalists and bankers like the Rothschilds created and spread wealth to ordinary people through commerce and investment.

I think that capitalism is a force for good and gives opportunity to ordinary people and that is why zero growth and negative growth elitists do not like it.

I think that many of the failures of the banking system today are nothing to do with capitalism, just as I don't believe that swindles and scams are to do with capitalism. They are to do with people and lax regulation.

By zero and negative growth elitists, do you mean people who feel that enough is enough and all this so-called 'growth' only affects them negatively? For example the person who wants to protect green field sites from 'development' and who wants to house people in all the properties left empty by absentee landlords who are just using them as investments while waiting for the prices to go up before they sell them on?

Or were you talking about the people who can see how when one section of the population 'grows', another shrinks.

Or those who believe there is only a certain amount of money in the world. For A to have more than her fair share, B has to have less than his.

I get the anti-growth bit. But why do you call them elitists?

'Indeed. So we are now left with precisely what.....or rather who?'

We know that their puppets are communists, but we don't know who pulls their strings.

I don't mean ordinary people who have fallen for blanket propaganda that is pushed by the media. Of course many people will be influenced by the arguments that they hear and see day on their TV screens.

I mean the people who made the decisions to disseminate that information originally back in the late 60s, early 70s and before.

'But why do you call them elitists?'

I think they are elitists because they think ordinary people are "plebs". I think they want zero and negative growth in order to halt the people's progress. I believe that they are just the inheritors of the Malthusian tradition that want to limit the growth of ordinary people. I think that they are against capitalism primarily because it is teh one system that has lifted people out of poverty over the past few centuries.

Why would anyone want that, Craig?