George Osborne has recently promised to end the something-for-nothing culture. He doesn't think it's right that people on unemployment benefits should continue to get them in the long term.
He's right about that, of course. It would be far better for everyone if no-one was unemployed in the long term.
So what does he plan to do about it?
Well, when people have been on unemployment benefit for 2 years, he is going to require one of three things from them if they want to keep their benefits. Either they have to do "community work", such as picking up litter, or attend a job centre every day, or undergo training.
Let's look at those in turn.
Making the unemployed do "community work" sounds appealing. It would indeed end a "something for nothing" culture. Maybe we'd all end up with tidier communities as a result. But I'm really not sure exactly what problem it's supposed to solve. Is it supposed to get the unemployed back into paid work? If so, I'd love to know what the evidence is that it will do that. It's really not self evident that giving an unemployed person less time to spend in job applications is going to help them to get a job. I suspect that the real aim of the policy is nothing other than to look tough on so-called "benefits scroungers".
And what about visiting the job centre every day? How does that help, exactly? How much is it going to cost to employ all the extra job centre staff that will be needed? This option sounds completely pointless, unless the point of the policy is merely to make life difficult for the unemployed.
Offering training probably does have merit. But why wait 2 years?
All in all, these policies sound like they are aimed purely as a dog-whistle to core Tory voters who like nothing more than feeling superior to "benefit scroungers", rather than aimed at achieving anything useful.
Unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment, is a terrible thing. But it seems to me that neither of the two main political parties is particularly motivated to do anything to reduce it. Labour have an obvious electoral advantage from having as many people dependent on benefits as possible. Everyone knows that the evil Tories love nothing more than cutting benefits, so anyone on benefits, especially if it's become a long-term thing, has a great incentive to vote Labour. I find it hard to believe that Labour strategists are not aware of that.
I am struggling to think of any positive advantage to the Tories from high rates of unemployment, but on the other hand, I suspect they have little active incentive to reduce it. The Tories, for all the rhetoric, are the party of the rich and privileged. Unemployment is something that happens to other people, in the minds of most Tories, so why should they care?
If any of the main political parties was remotely serious about reducing unemployment, there is a really obvious way to do it. None of the main political parties shows the slightest sign of being interested.
If we want to disincentivise something, we tax it. That's why we tax polluting or harmful activities, such as driving or smoking.
And yet we tax job creation. Employers' national insurance, currently levied at 13.8%, is nothing other than a tax on job creation. Scrap that particular tax, and I can guarantee that unemployment would plummet. The boost to the economy would be huge.
But sadly, neither of the main political parties is interested in boosting the economy as a whole: they are too busy looking after their own vested interests.
You may argue, of course, that scrapping employers' NI is simply not feasible because of the huge hole it would leave in government finances.
Well, yes, it would leave a huge hole, at least in the short run, though in the long run you might find that it's more than made up for by all the extra economic activity it would create. Now, personally, I would argue that the government should spend a lot less than they do, but even if you insist that spending be kept at current levels, then there is an easy way to plug that short-term hole.
There are vast amounts of inherited wealth in the UK. The government could make a huge amount of money in extra taxation by massively increasing inheritance taxes, and closing all the loopholes that so many rich people (for example, George Osborne himself, who has inherited his own millions through a tax-dodging tax-efficient trust fund) use to avoid paying inheritance tax.
After all, we don't want people to get the idea that they can just inherit money, do we? Aren't we all agreed that the "something for nothing" culture is a bad thing?
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I can only add stray comments to this.
I worked in a charity shop and at the end of last year we acquired three gentlemen who had to do charity work in order to get their JSA. We were already at full capacity with volunteers and the work they were doing with us was totally irrelevent to their skills, previous work experience and potential future employment.
Our local paper ran an article from an irate gentleman who was forced to attend a 'job hunting club' for a large number of hours everyday. He said that due to the number of vacancies available he had exhausted the possibilities within the first hour each day and that the remaining hours were spent chatting, smoking and reading the paper whilst waiting for his turn on the few computers available to job search on-line. He had to attend in order to qualify for his JSA (shades of the Full Monty?)
My only experience of claiming benefits recently was when I was ill and had to give up my part time job. I didn't qualify for benefits because I earned so little I hadn't paid NI during the last three years.