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The Forum > Article Comments > A critical examination of welfare state constructions of income support recipients and addiction > Comments

A critical examination of welfare state constructions of income support recipients and addiction : Comments

By Philip Mendes, published 22/3/2019

A critical examination of welfare state constructions of income support recipients and addiction

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Yes mate, until and unless you've walked a country mile or two in those same shoes! You've absolutely no flaming idea whatsoever!

Just how decidedly damned difficult it is to Move from welfare to work! Particularly where some occupations pay less for forty hours than the dole you could collect on your ass?

Remember one period of unemployment in the eighties where I applied for forty or fifty jobs per week, I was qualified for or over-qualified, for near on twelve solid disheartening months.

When summoned to CES to explain myself took a briefcase crammed to the gunnels with rejection notices from the tiny percentage that bothered.

The official who was girding his loins to rescind my benefit. Looked with sheer disbelief at the mountain of documents from the length and bread of Australia and a few offshore!

Told me if he were in my shoes would seek casual work under an assumed name. to supplement a manifestly inadequate income.

One hears stories almost daily, of single mums forced to turn tricks to pay the electricity bill, the rent or put tucker on the table, and mostly because they come from the less advantaged socioeconomic cohort! Which is entrench by those holding power and privilege.

Imagine if all pensions and benefits were measured by what's good enough for Christer Pine? Who given he retires now? Gets an additional $60,000 per, Or three multiples of the old age pension as the extra padding on his parliamentary pension? Oink oink?

The answer is cooperative capitalism and creches at the workplace! Which could easily include a housing co-op and not for profit industry health insurance!

This same approach keeps our money in the local economy for up to seven times longer, doing seven times more economic work at the local level!

Our approach is to harass and harang, sell our heritage and our economic sovereignty. Export our jobs and industry! Then rebuke those now on welfare! Go figure!
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 22 March 2019 11:50:09 AM
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Welfare is neither gift nor privilege, but a form of compensation.

Wealthy people benefit from the existing social structure and the safety it provides, not only to their bodies, but also to their possessions. On the other hand, those with little or no possessions do not benefit from this structure, in fact they are disadvantaged by it, so what's in it for them? Why should they respect the laws that protect wealth if they receive nothing in return?!

In other words, back to the baseline: in nature, plunder is the rule. What morally allows one to forbid others to plunder what they amassed when it is well beyond what they can physically keep an eye on?

So welfare is the balancing factor: the wealthy get their part of the deal - and so do the poor.

If you break your neighbour's leg, then you ought to compensate them unconditionally. You may have unrelated grievances against your neighbour and possibly the right for redress, but you have no right to use the opportunity of breaking their leg to discipline your neighbour and demand that they change some of their habits which you do not like.

Of all the things that government does with the money they rob us in tax, direct welfare to the poor is the most sensible and just.

While I oppose compulsory taxation, shame on him who is unwilling to open their heart and pockets voluntarily for the sake of the poor, or who forces conditions on them.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Friday, 22 March 2019 12:20:02 PM
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This is where a Flat tax would do a lot of cleansing in the dirty system !
Unemployment isn't caused by no work, it's caused by "expert" advisors to Govt & ignorant Govt Ministers ruining the prospects for employment & even more ignorant voters giving us incompetent Govt & then blaming those who are left to rebuild the economic & social mess.
Stop being stupid at the polling booth & you can stop incompetent Govt from taking the helm !
oppositions need to stop sabotaging good Govt & let it get on with the job !
It's up to us voters to keep showing those in Authority the way by cooperating not by opposing for opposing's sake !
We need to push for referendums when Govt is on the wrong path !
Voters need to be less greedy also.
Posted by individual, Friday, 22 March 2019 5:26:34 PM
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Groan!

Every now and again, some cloistered academic comes on OLO trying to claim that dole bludgers are a minor problem, and that most welfare recipients are genuine. I know from my own personal experience that such an attitude is insanity.

Here is the inconvenient truth.

Allowing for Inflation, the GDP of Australia has doubled from 1965 (25.4 USD Billion) to 1371.8 USD billion in December, 2011. Growth has averaged 4 % per annum in the past decade alone, increasing GDP by 50 %. But something rather interesting happened in the intervening years.

Overall since 1965 the country is 2X richer, while the number on welfare is 5X.

The ageing population would be one explanation, but most baby boomers have yet to retire. Could the answer be that the prime reason for poverty in a wealthy country like Australia, with all of its attendant intractable social problems, is because we insist on importing it?

Aghans alone have employment rates of only 6% after five years of residence. Iranians are the next group most at risk from long unemployment and poverty, with 88% still unemployed after five years. In Europe, 80% of the Muslim population is on welfare benefits.

In 1965, 3 % of the working age population in Australia was on welfare benefits of one sort or another. Now 16 % of adults rely on welfare. This is bad for them, bad for their children and is financially unsustainable – ie bad for taxpayers. Another take on this – in 1965 there were 22 taxpayers for every one person on welfare; now the number is 5.

Extrapolate forward and you see a vision of Greece, Spain, Cypress, and Ireland, with their own national insolvency problems. The populations of these countries and their elected representatives were acutely aware of their financial insolvency, decades ago.

Phillip Mendez had better flash on the idea that Australia must reform it's welfare, immigration, and refugee programs before we become a replica of the nation he fled from.
Posted by LEGO, Saturday, 23 March 2019 6:05:46 AM
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Lego:
You need to learn some very basic economics before you start bagging immigration! Let alone selectively bagging migration from a majority Muslim country!

Migration at the moment is all that's keeping us out of a recession!

Maybe it hasn't occurred to your pea brain that oppressed women might want out from such countries, ditto oppressed an or persecuted minorities! Like those who stood shoulder to shoulder with us when we were there trying to expel the murderous border hoppingTaliban!

Individual:
Absolutely on the money! An unavoidable flat tax of 15% would end so much of the tax fraud and evasion that's rife in this country!?

Moreover, given it would be automatically collected via the banking sector, as funds were transferred. NORMAL TAX COMPLIANCE COSTS (7%av) COULD BE RETURNED TO THE BOTTOM LINE. MEANING THE EFFECTIVE TAX RATE WOULD BE JUST 8%!

And the lowest tax rate in the world. A generous rise in the tax-free threshold would both end bracket creep and allow some income to be quarantined, so that those currently living below the poverty line, would not pay tax.

Couple that to MSR thorium as the energy policy and high tech manufacture/the jobs of the future would be queuing to relocate, as would an army of cashed-up self-funded retirees

Further, if we promoted/preferred and quite deliberately prospered, as government facilitated and funded co-ops for all manner of manufacture and service delivery!

There'd be no unemployment or folk living below the poverty line, except by choice or physical or intellectual incapacity!

Wealth may have increased by 2X but when 90% of it is concentrated in the top 10% of income earners Dummkopf! It self evidently paints (spins) a false picture and deliberately so!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Saturday, 23 March 2019 9:59:10 AM
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People like this bloke have to write this gross garbage, to justify the whole area of academia, that gives then a nice soft living. That it is more propaganda than fact is obvious to anyone who moves in the real world. I would like to sit the fool [or is it smarty?] in the long term unemployed chair in any job network organisation for a couple of weeks.

My lady occupied that chair at a Mission Australia country town office, for 3 years. All enthused with the milk of human kindness, she was going to help these poor souls to a better life.

She organised training courses for them, bought clothes for them, & organised transport for some, all at Mission expense. She found employers who would give them a chance.

Yes she had success stories, but less than 15% of those she found work for, were still working after just 2 months.

She also found quite large numbers who would never attend appointments on say Tuesday or Wednesday, as those were the days of their cash in hand jobs. She was threatened a number of times when she breached some of these cheats.

Disillusioned & becoming depressed she got out of the line of work, no longer the total bleeding heart she had been.

So Philip, give us a break on the bleeding heart stuff. many of us have lived in the real world too long to fall for it
Posted by Hasbeen, Saturday, 23 March 2019 1:10:52 PM
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There are some bosses from hell nobody would work for in a blind fit. And outta there ASAP!

These employers are street angels and hearty well met! But as employers, slave drivers who couldn't ever do what they expect of others and for peanuts.

Just because someone volunteers to administer Mission funds doesn't mean very much until and unless the jobs they find are ones they themselves would do!

As always with "saint hasbeen", the employees are always the problem. And only possible because this flawed individual has in my view, absolutely no normal human empathy. And lives in a bubble that ends at the front gate?

Unfortunately, he has far too many, also alt-right, cobbers and fellow travellers in our parliaments!? And explains the ever-widening gap between the haves and the have nots? The record homeless and unaffordable housing!? And a non-existent energy policy etc, etc.

And covers his complete lack of normal human empathy and competence, by always blaming the victim and his own former employees?
Alan B
Posted by Alan B., Saturday, 23 March 2019 4:30:09 PM
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You are right about just one thing Alan. I have no empathy for the thousands that take the dole, supplement it with a couple of days cash in hand, & refuse full time work when it is offered.

Unfortunately not every one is as brilliant as you like to think of yourself. They can't expect the general managers job as their right. You probably don't understand, someone has to make the product, someone pack it, someone load the truck, & someone actually has to make the deliveries. We can't all be bludgers all our lives.

Next time you decide to make a fool of your self, why don't you do it somewhere where you are not as well known as a ratbag.
Posted by Hasbeen, Saturday, 23 March 2019 11:36:44 PM
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To Alan B.

The only OLO contributor presently showing that he is intellectually challenged, is you.

I am fully aware that immigration can be a good thing as it creates artificial growth in a western world, where European birth rates have declined to the point of non replacement. Provided that our immigration and refugee programs are intended to benefit Australia and Australians, I don't have a problem with it. But our present immigration program is intended to completely replace the European people with people from dysfunctional ethnicities and terrorism advocating religions. So how you can see that as beneficial to Australians is a premise you could perhaps explain?

In addition, the importation of overseas workers has seen the driving down of Australian wages and conditions, exactly as it was intended to do. One may ask, "what the hell is the Party of the trade unions doing supporting that?" The answer is, that the union bosses know that union membership is declining anyway, so they need a new support base. Playing the champions of foreign workers seeking citizenship is a great way gaining future votes to keep the union bosses in parliament.

Meanwhile, we continue to hear stories of foreign workers living in shipping containers, being injured at work while working for ethnic building companies with no Workcover insurance, and building sub standard apartments that develop structural cracks which sees the entire residency evacuated.

As for "persecuted minorities", the idea of allowing those young Muslim women who want to get the hell away from Islam is quite appealing to me. As for others, if you ever picked up a history book, you will see that many of these "persecuted minorities" were doing a bit of persecuting themselves when the boot was on the other foot. Just look at the behaviour of the poor persecuted Sudanese in Melbourne, who were killing each other off in Sudan with gay abandon, but who are now doing the same thing in Melbourne with the good old Aussie taxpayer footing the bill. And robbing, bashing and terrorising Australians for good measure.
Posted by LEGO, Sunday, 24 March 2019 9:24:20 AM
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I don't need to reply to Hasbeen's abuse! Given in his short sharp tirade, he makes all my points for me. Been a boss has, packed stuff made deliveries and all the jobs you rave on about

.And have done some of the toughest, like running and I do mean running beside a track throwing up by hand, green lucerne hay and for fourteen hours a day. loaded and hand trucked ore from a mine and paid by the tonnage! Trimmed off a couple of stone in the first six weeks

Also, hand loaded and bagged then hand delivered 10 tons of coal in a single afternoon and per day when we still used the larger imperial measure.

Single-handedly shovelled all the gravel and sand then added the cement for all the concrete in a couple or three bridges. Again in a seven-day fourteen-hour gut bust. The last for a mouthing foaming slave driver of the first water.

Managed several businesses as manager and owner. The last in partnership with a pokie addict that didn't end well!

So don't tell me about work or how to do it. Had some employees that wouldn't work in an iron lung. But for the most part, folk who would give a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, especially if their boss worked beside them setting the pace and never ever asking another to do what he wouldn't or couldn't!

And I suspect, the difference between us?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 24 March 2019 9:42:48 AM
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Lego, replying to your tirade of half tuths and abuse would suggest I gave any of your, Alt right propaganda, some credence or oxygen!

And I don't!

After the Christchurch catastrophe, only the half witt haters would dare to parade their creditials as you have!? And need to be called out by decent folk everywhere as a racist! Patently hiding behind some far fetched mockery of economic nouse!

Climb back under the rock you were hiding your self evident xenophobia under!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 24 March 2019 9:56:36 AM
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Of course you won't reply to my post, Alan B.

The left has lost the debate. They know they can't convince anybody anymore, so all they can do is to demand censorship. When any ideology refuses to engage in debate and then proposes that the other side must shut up, by force if necessary, then the devotees of that ideology know themselves that there is something intrinsically wrong with their own holy scriptures.

But like so many fanatics or self interested ideologues, they consider that their ideology is the hope and light of the world. The only possible answer. So they ignore it's glaring inconsistencies and just keep plugging the message, while around them their own society falls apart.

This was the reason why so many nations collapsed. They simply could not conceive of their own destruction, so they just kept up a business-as usual-approach until the whole thing disintegrated.
Posted by LEGO, Sunday, 24 March 2019 10:58:51 AM
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Can't believe it Alan.

No one could have done as much as you claim, & learned so little.
Posted by Hasbeen, Sunday, 24 March 2019 12:42:56 PM
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Welfare is way too uneven in Australia. When those who worked, saved, planned & contributed receive less in entitlements than those who didn't care one bit & simply blew it all, then one can easily see where the imbalance lies.
I know people the same age as I who have never been known to work & contribute towards retirement yet they receive $300/fn more than a normal old age pensioner.
If a normal old age pensioner earns more than $162/fn their pension gets cut. Where is the sense in that ??
Posted by individual, Monday, 25 March 2019 8:27:03 AM
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