Banjo wrote:
"How do you set up a scheme where the unemployed do meaning full work in return for social security, easier said than done"

Change the fools in power with people of real intelligence!
Quite simple really.

Just think for a minute if we had smart people running the show, how many programs could be started where the unemployed could be put to good use and even pay them more than they get now and we all win. If they don't want to work, give them nothing, they don't deserve it anyway.

And yes, even I agree with Belly this time :)

Banjo nothing comes without effort but it could be done.
Right now in fact for 30 years I have had part of the answer.
Let us just look at the NSW RTA, once it was the DMR, now some fool has come up with the idea changing its name again will help?
Contract out every position above Foreman, yep no exceptions.
Ask why very high placed people take the golden hand shake then come back, to their old jobs, on contracts paying more.
Consider this if out door staff do not work, if they are the problem and they are not managment is failing and it is,just maybe ,no certainly better management can make any work force work.
Unions, yes some only visit big shops, I would drive any distance on any day, to visit one single member.
But if others will not? all unions pay once lost lost forever members are the oil that unions run on.
Last but important, a contractor has won a contract to do one government workers annual out put.
that work grossed $55.000 a year contractor got $154.000 for one year, sublet the work to another hight tec contractor, he got $18.000 in total to do job.
Not over yet, it was a trial, so government worker stayed in job too.

Belly and SM,
Over the years from Whitlam on, I have seen various schemes tried by both parties in government and none were very successful.

I remember one about the late 80s where local government employed them with Fed funds. Here they put teams on rural roads, trimming overhanging trees. They had to hire chain saws, cherry pickers, trucks, etc. and had two blokes with stop/go signs at each end of the work area.

In my opinion, the only benefits were to the hire people who hired out the equipment. Pretty poor value for money, a bloke with an excavator would acheive a thousand times more.

I would like to see a scheme that works and maybe before I die I will see such, but not counting on it.

I reckon the main beneficeries of the insulation and solar hot water schemes were the overseas manufacturers of the batts and water systems. We certainly stimulated their economies.

RawMustard,
The saying goes, 'pay peanuts', 'you get monkeys'!

If you want 'top of the class' polies, we have to pay much more than what they receive today.

I have mates with butcher shops who make many times that of the PM with limmited educational backgrounds.

I have always said that we should have less people in polotics and pay them much better than we do.

As for belly's comments, we have many wasted opportunities in this country. We could value add so much more, yet we choose to pay people to stay home and sell far to many raw materials, only to buy them back as 'value added' products, all because of 'cheap overseas labour'.

We should build public owned factories, create jobs, subsidise the wages and prosper, instead of taking the easy option.

One small example; All excess food could be harvested, instead of being wasted. We could then process that food and send it overseas as 'aid', rather than sending dollars, as money simply ends up in the hands of the 2% of the population that owns 98% of the wealth in the poor countries.

Live export is another well beaten example of a wasted opportunity to create jobs for the jobless.

We have just seen three abbittors close in QLD due to being unable to compete. It's a 'no brainer' if you ask me!

Yabby, your CEOs as magicians argument isn't working. Like people in any other line of work, they basically copy what the person before them did. Often, they take gambles. For every CEO that you name who guessed correctly, I could name five who stuffed up and still got the big money.

Ah Benk, all you have pointed out is how difficult it is, to find
a good CEO!

Yes, many crappy ones have been appointed and cost shareholders
billions. I agree, pay should be performance based. That is what
more and more CEOs now have in their contracts.

What changes is that once somebody is appointed CEO, he has to
start thinking more like an entrepreneur, then as an employee.
So its a whole different role and there are no manuals to read,
to tell him how to do it.

But lets take an example, the disaster that was Coles. I remember
years ago, when Woolies was on the ropes and nearly broke, all
that eventually changed with good management. Coles kept on being
badly managed, corruption set in.

So when Wesfarmers bought it, Goyder virtually had to start again.
He's brought in some great talent for the various divisions and
slowly things are turning around. But he had to look globally for
that and you are not going to hire globally great talent, by
offering to pay 200k$, or 500k.

So my point is that indeed great talent can be found, it can make
or cost shareholders billions of $. That 1 or 5 million or whatever
hardly matters, in situations where billions are at stake.

Now according to you, Kloppers is just doing what was done before.
Not so, changing commodity pricing from annual contracts to
market based pricing has been his baby for a while. The hard part
has been in convincing his competitors, as in Rio and Vale. It
sounds to me like he might have finally achieved that, earning
BHP billions. So how much should he be rewarded for that?
A gold watch perhaps? Think about it.