AP story here:
Can the government force people to work?
Should the government force people to work?
Are flesh & blood citizens merely servants to the non-corporeal persons who exist amongst us, via state control?
Where’s the line? Where should it be?
In Canada, if you are on unemployment the government will require you to consult a career coach during the period of unemployment, and it can be multiple times. I was unemployed for four weeks and was required to attend a session. (I got out of it because my job called me back the week I was supposed to attend.)
The governor’s motives are problematic, but I don’t have a problem with this specific proposed solution.
Would you say that you support the idea of 100% of citizens being forced to work by their government?
Did the Canadian government force me to work by requiring me to go to a career coach? I don’t think so. Unemployment only pays you if you are looking for work, it’s right in the rules.
I don’t know; I’m really just asking a few questions in the OP and none were about this specific proposed policy, but about the larger policy issues of considering corporeal citizens as merely servants to the non-corporeal persons (that’s corporations, if it was unclear).
China, of all places, is grappling with a movement that denies that they owe the state their labor:
https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/
And now we have an American politician saying ridiculous things like “Jobs help create great financial independence for Nebraskans and their families, giving them the dignity to achieve their dreams.”
A job doesn’t give you dignity. It doesn’t give you anything. You earn whatever you get and that isn’t dignity; it’s money.
But the flowery language is there to sway and motivate and convince, and what he’s trying to convince people is that they are required to labor for the benefit of the state.
I’m asking if people here agree with that premise and to what degree.
All depends - can they find me a job that will deal with my wheelchair, chemo and radiation schedule, bloodwork schedule, doctor’s office visits? How about the issue I deal with having to prove that the lumps of calcium that are supposed to be my lumbar spine will not magically regenerate into a spine every damned year before the insurance company will fork over for stuff [took me 2 years to get my damned wheelchair replaced after it went crispy in the house fire because ‘it was not replacement time for the durable goods schedule’]
Last job I held was in a ‘handicap accessible’ building where I had to call the janitor to remind them to shovel and salt/sand the ramp, and the only pushbuttons were on the ground floor ladies room and mens room. Good luck getting into any office without calling ahead and asking someone to open the door for me. And that is not uncommon - the lack of accessibility is a major barrier to employment. Personally I would adore a 100 percent work from home position, but I haven’t found anything that didn’t require the employee to work in the office until they prove they are able to do the job.
It seems like they could incentivize people by making it more beneficial to work and they have instead opted to make it more “uncomfortable” not to.
Also, the “career coaches” - will there be enough? will people be kicked out of the system because they were unable to schedule a meeting with a “coach” who has an overfull calendar? what’s the overhead? who will pay them? has someone run a cost analysis to find out if paying unemployment will be cheaper than paying to recruit, train, manage, and pay the new coaching staff?
Also, looking at those numbers - they don’t make sense. 50K jobs, but only 20K working age residents without employment? Did 30K working age people up and leave Nebraska since the pandemic started? Or did Nebraska’s economy suddenly boom and now there are more jobs than people? There’s something fishy there. Even if the mere 4000 (and to be clear, 4000 is paltry) who were on the unemployment roles each took 2 jobs a piece, Nebraska’d still have 40K unfilled jobs.
That’s kind of the way I feel about it; if you’re actually reasonably able to work, and you choose not to, then that’s your business, but you shouldn’t expect the government to foot the bill for your housing, food, medical care, etc… either.
I mean, if you have enough money, or generous enough spouses, friends and/or relatives to be able to choose not to work, then more power to you.
But if you can’t afford all that stuff without having to rely on the government for some part of it, then you should absolutely be expected to work.
I would say that I don’t think they should press you into the Navy, or into a chain gang or otherwise compel you to work against your will, but they’re well within their rights to withhold services if you’re merely unwilling (not unable) to work.
I think I’d also carve out an exception for caregivers of disabled/medically needy people. I mean, that lady in the article with the ill and autistic children shouldn’t be expected to work outside the home, and in fact should probably get some aid for what she does. Not for her own sake, but for her children. Same thing for primary caregivers of elderly people with dementia, Parkinson’s, etc… Or other medical situations requiring similar care needs.
But it sounds like the Nebraska governor has subscribed to the idea that the reason they have staffing problems is because people are just choosing to not work and sit around. Which doesn’t jibe with the idea that they’re also seeing the lowest unemployment numbers they’ve ever recorded. Clearly people are working in other jobs than they used to and not merely staying home, and people don’t want to go back to the cruddy low-wage ones.
Something like this has happened in the past. I believe Bernie Sanders ran for president on a similar concept.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA ; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency, employing millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.
Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA supplied paid jobs to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States, while building up the public infrastructure of the US, such as parks, schools and roads. Most of the jobs were in construction, building more than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 km) of streets and over 10,000 bridges, in addition to many airports and much housing. The largest single project of the WPA was the Tennessee Valley Authority.
At its peak in 1938, it supplied paid jobs for three million unemployed men and women, as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA employed 8.5 million people (about half the population of New York). Hourly wages were typically kept well below industry standards. Full employment, which was reached in 1942 and appeared as a long-term national goal around 1944, was not the goal of the WPA; rather, it tried to supply one paid job for all families in which the breadwinner suffered long-term unemployment.
WPA was not about forcing people to work, it was about providing some minimal employment so people would not starve in breadlines. They were largely doing public infrastructure projects, not in service of corporations, and my sense is (although I do not have a cite) that most folks who got these jobs were glad to get them, at least as a stop-gap until they could get a regular job that paid better.
As for unemployment, the only way that the requirement to look for (and accept) available work could be regarded as forcing people to work for the benefit of corporations is if you think the government owes everyone a living wage whether they want to work for it or not. Is that what OP is proposing? Because that is a different debate than this mess.
I don’t follow this; can you explain, please?
If the choice is between a) looking for work while you are getting unemployment, and then accepting work if you can find it and going off of unemployment, or b) not getting unemployment compensation (or other wage replacement money), then a) is not the equivalent of forcing people to work. Your argument seems to be saying that it is equivalent. In other words, as others have already said, in order to get unemployment benefits you agree to follow the rules, which include looking for and accepting work.
If on the other hand you are saying that people should be given a living wage even if they don’t want to work, then that is a different sort of proposition and should be its own debate.
I really haven’t made any arguments and I haven’t advocated for a position, although I agree that one is strongly implied in my posts. I have asked some questions, but so far no one has answered those questions.
I haven’t said anything about a living wage, or unemployment. I’ve talked about forcing people to work.
This could involve a penalty for not working or it could involve a withholding of assistance. It could involve prison time and thus really forced labor. That’s why the OP ends with:
If we are forced to work, who are we working for? Who is this country meant to benefit, and how are we free?
Governor Ricketts says flat out: “if they’re not working for whatever reason, get them back into the workforce”. This indicates to me that, to him, there is no reason for anyone not to work. No one gets to make that decision for themselves: you must work.
I’m asking what people think of this concept and if they don’t fully agree, to what degree should a government force its people to work.
Maybe - or maybe not. It could also be that a lot of the “missing” people were working by choice and not because they had to and therefore didn’t get another job. I work for a state government agency and a huge number of people have retired since the pandemic. Thing is, most of them could have retired well before the pandemic - they had more than enough years in and were old enough to collect their pensions ( and in some cases old enough to collect Social Security ). They weren’t working because they needed the money - they were working because they waned something to do or because their spouse couldn’t retire yet. There are people like my daughter, who quit her job when her employer decided to end remote work in September 2020 - she hasn’t looked for another job because it’s not worth it to her to have to 1) arrange childcare and worry about the other parents sending sick kids to child care or 2) try to get a remote job so that she and my son-in-law can try to work remotely while also caring for two kids when all four of them can live in my SIL income.
When I look around and see that businesses are understaffed, it’s really only certain types of businesses. I’m sure there are plenty of businesses that are understaffed even though it’s not immediately obvious - but certain businesses such as retail and foodservice attract a lot of people who don’t actually need to work* and those are ones that reportedly have the worst labor shortages. It’s not surprising that some of them have decided that the benefits of working in those businesses no longer outweigh the disadvantages.
It doesn’t indicate that to me, not when there is not a single mention of hm doing anything other than requiring people to work with job coaches to receive unemployment benefits. And not when I can’t find any of those quotes anywhere but in that article, which suggests to me that it was not a press release or speech but rather a comment given to a single reporter, perhaps in a context that was strictly about unemployment benefits and didn’t address any other people who do not work at paid jobs. It’s not at all clear that this is an example of what I think you are actually talking about and I think linking it is confusing things.
Should a government force people to work who don’t have a financial need to ? I’m going to go with no - partly because it is difficult for me to imagine a society that needs simultaneously needs everyone or most people to work and also has people wealthy enough that they don’t need to work.
Since unemployment runs out, and is intended to support someone while looking for a new job, isn’t government more or less forcing people to work now? If the question is about more forcibly getting people to work, will government supply jobs or not force people to work on scam jobs?
This sounds reasonable but it’s actually full of hidden potential inefficiencies. If it ends up costing the government more tax money to cope with the problems of homeless and starving and ill people who “are reasonably able to work but choose not to”, then I’d definitely rather the government just kick in for everybody’s subsistence-level housing and food and medical care up front, irrespective of whether they’re working or capable of working.
Most people, even if they aren’t starving or homeless, are adequately incentivized to work by the desire for material goods above basic subsistence level. (For instance, look at all the millions of teenage dependents who get all the food and housing and medical care they need provided free by their parents, but nonetheless seek employment to support their discretionary spending.)
Sure, many people prefer to put up with some level of inconvenience from unemployment rather than subject themselves to working really shit jobs. ISTM that the solution to that is to replace really shit jobs with ones that aren’t so shit.
There’s always the Starship Troopers approach, I suppose: you must have a job to receive benefits, but the government must also supply a job which you are capable of doing. In the book, it was voting rights contingent on Federal Service, which was usually military but could be other civil jobs for those unsuited for military service. One could imagine here make-work jobs of last resort, even negative productivity ones (manual envelope stuffing, say).
I would be interested in knowing your reasoning behind your assertion that earning a living does not produce a feeling of dignity. You seem to feel that (at least as far as “dignity” goes) there is no difference between having a job and being a slave.
Are all people who do not “earn a living” lacking dignity? Dignity is “the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.”
Eric Trump has a job; do you think he is dignified?
Saying a job conveys dignity is just a way to convince people that they should suffer; that it’s noble to do so. Jobs are nearly never truly collaborative efforts where everyone profits commensurably; they are exploitative in nature in our society. I’m naturally suspicious of attempts to paint state-sponsored exploitation as somehow beneficial to the people getting the least out of it.