I’ve been thinking about this one today and it is a head scratcher. On the one hand people aren’t owed anything and have to take care of themselves. On the other society has developed in such a way that you really can’t take care of yourself if you are on the bottom rung of the social ladder. I think I have decided that society is not required to provide you with anything but opportunity, however it must provide everyone with opportunity to prevent itself from being destroyed by rebellion/crime/other crap.
There is surprising movement off the bottom rung of the ladder. I’ve been there, and I can tell you from my experience what government should and shouldn’t do at this level:
It should do everything possible to provide services that help you find jobs. Employment offices, job training, services to allow you to get a haircut, clean clothing, and reasonable food and shelter (for example, for young single people there’s no reason dorm-style housing can’t be provided for those who can’t or won’t work, along with centralized computer facilities and access to fax machines, meeting rooms, and other things needed to kickstart a career).
Government should provide families a basic level of income if they cannot work. You shouldn’t break up families, and therefore they need to be allowed to stay together even if there is no job. But this has to be a painful enough existence that people have a strong incentive to get out of it. You’d be surprised how much poverty persists just because people are comfortable enough in it that they just won’t take the steps necessary to get out. I grew up surrounded by such people.
Government should be more generous with the truly unemployable. People with significant mental or physical disabilities that prevent them from working. We should give them reasonably comfortable lives if their families cannot afford it. This is a reasonably small number of people, and there is no moral hazard. So let’s be generous.
What government shouldn’t do is simply give people money merely for being citizens, whether they truly need it or not. That means no welfare-without-requirements, and it means no refundable tax credits to people who already have jobs. These create perverse incentives that will not serve the poor well.
And we should always make sure that the recipients don’t think that whatever benefits we as a society choose to offer are somehow a ‘right’. Recipients of public money should feel about it the way I’d feel if I had to borrow money from a friend or relative to pay the rent - grateful, and determined to repay the favor and in turn to help others in the same way when I was in a position to do so.
Again, you do the poor no favors by encouraging an attitude of entitlement by framing benefits as ‘rights’. They become angry, and you give them a good reason to blame anyone but themselves for their condition. You wind up with bitter, disaffected communities of people, separated by geography or class envy.
The OP didn’t bound the question to civilized society. You’re responding to a completely different question.
Short answer: yes, I believe everyone is “owed” a job.
I think anyone who is willing to work ought to have a job. I don’t understand why so many people disagree with this. Maybe it takes having to go through the process of looking for a job for months without success for most people to understand how frustrating and unfair it is.
Actually you should go farther with this , start by creating national service database. Work with the boom/bust cycle and have thousands of adults shipped from BC to PEI as needed. Instead of paying them by the hour, give them a per diem and a payout every year equal to what an average factory job would pay.
Mandate universal child care , and the familys that you are paying to stay at home, have to billet kids.
No , I disagree with the underlined. Pay them enough to cover their rent/mortgage and basic food supplement and leave them leeway to earn money elseware.
On the first we dont have to , simply find out who they are and rig the super seven or 6/49 so that they [air quotes] win [/air quotes] a million bucks and let them pay into the system by spending.
On the second , warehouse them , its time to stop downloading that onto lesser govts in the mistaken belief that they can be main streamed.
I differ on this , in regards to rights. I think what you are refering to is people who grew up on the dole and two generations later believe it to be a right. Unlike say me ,who every check sees money going to pogey, and I persume what ever money Ontario collects off me , goes to workfare. Tapping into that it is a right as far as I am concerned , as its temporary in nature.
I noticed this as I read your post and I am kind wondering if you do know that there is several sub genres of what you would call poor. Other than the natives , do we have a class of people that lives on the BLS (basic living stipend, david weber). I know this thread is basically going to touch on Americans, but I would be interested to know of the basic breakdown of how the BLS gets applied in Canada.
Declan
Yes it does. Answering such a loaded question seems almost redundant.
Who is it that owes you this job?
My thoughts exactly. I got an education that got me a job/career and worked hard to get what I have, so should everyone else. No free lunches, so to speak. I don’t expect a handout from anyone, nor do I think anyone else should either. Yes, there are times when people need WIC, food stamps, unemployment compensation or welfare, but not as a lifestyle, just as a helping hand to get you by for a while.
Although, I do believe that there should be some sort of universal health care coverage available to children (under the age of 18).
You’re free to try that right now. Might be your last voluntary act this lifetime, particularly if you pick me, but you are welcome to try.
To the OP: Nope. World owes you diddly squat.
The way I see it, we are born into a game, and the main rule is simple: you get to enjoy all of the cool stuff that society produces (everything from TV sets to the food we eat and the medical care we receive) but in return you have to contribute to the system.
It’s pretty simple to do this – you set aside 40 hours of your week to serve the system and you are awarded tokens, which can be redeemed for cool stuff. Everybody wins – you get to enjoy all the products of modern society, and society continues to produce more of this stuff.
When a person wants to contribute but is unable, and therefore cannot receive any cool stuff, then the system has failed in this instance. Both parties lose – the individual can’t get the cool stuff, and the society has lost a contributor. This cannot be allowed to happen too often – not only will individuals suffer and even die if they are shut out of the game, society will no longer be able to produce all of this cool stuff if a large enough percentage of its members are no longer participating.
So it’s in everybody’s best interest to see as many contributors as possible. If we are not all “owed” a job, then we are not being allowed to live up to our end of the bargain, and things fall apart.
Really? You’re getting all postury over my tongue in cheek posting? :dubious:
I guess we’ll have to organise a game of Rochambeau just to settle the issue.
And I want my diddly squat now, thanks. 
I don’t think there’s anything incompatible with saying that no one is owed anything, but that we still need to do our damnedest to try to structure society so that all people can find a way to live well.
If we suggest that people are “owed” something, we are basing our society on a lie, since it’s just not true. We started off as animals at the mercy of nature, and we’re only a little further along now. We want to structure society so that we’re animals who live comfortably, but suggesting that any of us is owed anything by anyone is a pretense and can’t lead to long term sustainability for anyone.
Yes, we are all “owed” a job or a means to contribute to society in exchange for it’s services. Our society is so large and complex that it is impossible for us to live a self-contained agrarian hunter/gatherer lifestyle where we each provide for our own needs.
That’s the big question, isn’t it? I mean does your employer have the right to simply terminate your employment because they feel like it? In many states they do. On the other hand, should a small business owner be forced to keep on an incompetant employee? Probably not.
The problem is that a “job” is usually not a prize (like in The Apprentice and other reality shows) or a life fullfilling careeer choice for most people. It is work that society more or less extorts from them through the threat of homelessness and starvation. And that implied threat and power diferential often leads to all manner of abuses from employers. Anything from the trivial such as calling you to start a project Friday at 4:58 to real physical, mental or sexual abuse.
For the most part our system does work though. People who want jobs can generally find them, even if it isn’t their dream job (no one owes you that). It’s at least a little better than a fuedal land barrony system where you have to toil for the landlord or lose your home. There are a lot more options for you if you don’t like your job.
At least until the system doesn’t work. When you have all the skills and still are unable to find work, that certainly is frustrating.
I hire you to build a shed and pay you a wage while doing so. After it is complete, that’s it. It’s complete. I don’t need to pay you any further. Is that unfair?
When companies lay people off, it’s because it is no longer cost effective to keep you, or the work needed to be done is complete.
“Have you stopped beating your wife” is a loaded question. This question essentially asks, are you owed a job? Do I owe you a job? Do companies owe towns of people a job? I don’t see the trick in the question, such as the wife example.
I kind of like the Gates Foundation motto that what everyone deserves, is a healthy and happy life. To me that means you should have access to clean drinking water, a country that isn’t torn apart by war and pestilence, access to education etc… It does not mean you should be guaranteed a job and income at birth.
So in short-reasonable necessities like not being maimed by a landmine and not having to wear a tent (unless you want to) and equality of access to a good education? Yes. Guaranteed pass to bitches and beamers? Earn it.
Except that it finally occurred to the financial/industrial class and the government that mass layoffs make boom/bust cycles worse, by depressing consumer demand. In Japan for example, after the 1990 bust the corporations kept millions of employees on in underpayed makework positions rather than have the social catastrophe of a 10% unemployment rate.
I think the unemployed should be offered equivalent shelter/food/employment/healthcare that we offer our convicted criminals in prison- you get at least that much. You want better, find better. I don’t believe in our current exploitable system.
No.
I personally know at least three people who would never leave the house if you threw in television, and I personally don’t want to help support them with my taxes, and I have known and liked them for more than twenty years.
One actually verbalized to me as an adult that he didn’t want to do anything except sleep, eat, and watch television, ever, for the rest of his life.
And then he put it into practice back at his mom’s for the next seven years.
For those of you saying that since modern society doesn’t let you live off the land, it owes you a job, what would you be owed if you were allowed to live off the land?
Do you really feel that the people who absolutely can’t find any job would be willing to go out and gather food, hunt, build their own shelter and would survive at it? If the government agreed to open up land for this, would anyone owe it to you to make sure you survive? What about the -30° winter weather, or snake bites, or drought? What about if the area of land you have access to won’t support the numbers of people that want to live off of it, even if that number is just you?
As for if people are owed a job, no. If you are capable of having a job and chose not to, that’s your issue. This includes people who act as if the available jobs are beneath them. If you have to dig ditches to make a living, then you better find a shovel. Now, having said that, there are groups that my society has decided to support one way or another, and I’m in agreement. But that isn’t an issue of being owed a job, it’s a societal decision to support certain people.