At what point does right wing just mean racist/d1ck/heartless baxtard?

K-9

Sand wrote: »

It really doesn't. We're not talking about a manned mission to Mars. If the rent is tight with two salaries before children are on the horizon, then they cant afford the child care.

I've no problem with funding the care of children. Its an investment in the future. I'd rather the next generation was educated, law abiding and not crippled with easily preventable diseases. My objection is to the sense of entitlement that everyone else has to fund someone having kids they cannot support despite all the advantages and options available in Ireland. That is a corrosive idea.

My mother recalls a woman she knew of in her childhood who had 10+ children. That woman didn't have the same education, rights or options that people today have. It is not 1950s Ireland anymore, the same excuses don't wash.

My overall point is with costs like that having children is a middle class thing and even many would struggle at that.

Families with 4 or 5 children are the exception these days, need to get away from that mindset Sand. Figures show those are a very small part of lone parent family stats and are divorced families anyway.

ancapailldorcha

As someone who used to work in Europe's largest social housing project, I would question the idea that people should be entitled to have as many children as they want while being entitled to years and years of funding from the state. It's not a viable long term strategy and is just going to result in an increase in welfare dependency. I'd rather see the state fund things like sexual health clinics, apprenticeships and other opportunities to help people get out of poverty and support their own families.

K-9

That's another thing, we can't judge life situations on extreme examples, the 5 or 6 kid family on welfare eg.

Jayop

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

That's an area we need to have a whole other debate about. I'm open to it and it's not an area where I'd be on sure footing with because I don't really know where I'd stand. While people are free to do what they like, should people be allowed to take the piss out of the system?

You may feel having one child is taking the piss, I feel having 5 is.

Junkyard Tom

Two Tone wrote: »

she can't be stopped from doing so.

Yep. There are women who have had 5/6/7 kids and had every single one removed and put into care in a matter of months (due to neglect and absent Fathers) and although this seems incredibly permissive of society the alternative is far worse.

Two Tone

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

As someone who used to work in Europe's largest social housing project, I would question the idea that people should be entitled to have as many children as they want while being entitled to years and years of funding from the state. It's not a viable long term strategy and is just going to result in an increase in welfare dependency. I'd rather see the state fund things like sexual health clinics, apprenticeships and other opportunities to help people get out of poverty and support their own families.

I don't think anyone with any bit of sense would disagree with the second part or would argue that people should be entitled to have as many children as possible supported by benefits - just that it's something which is impossible to stop completely.

Earthhorse

Jayop wrote: »

I really don't understand your posting style. It's like you want to score points rather than debate the topic and it's causing us to go around and around.

Sounds to me like you perfectly understand his posting style.

ancapailldorcha

Two Tone wrote: »

I don't think anyone with any bit of sense would disagree with the second part or would argue that people should be entitled to have as many children as possible supported by benefits - just that it's something which is impossible to stop completely.

It's not about stopping it per se, it's more about changing the circumstances. As has been noted, letting someone claim welfare for well over a decade isn't a solution, it's a stopgap and a poor one at that. Of course interfering with someone's bodily autonomy is an unacceptable violation of their human rights but subsidising the unemployed to have swathes of children isn't a solution, it's a problem.

joe swanson

The same question could be easily applied to left wingers. Anti western ie us, Israel, jewish etc. Bordering on racism. And god forbid anyone disagree with them.

KomradeBishop

The solution to pretty much all of the welfare problems that are at the heart of a lot of right-wing moralizing, are jobs - and particularly, achieving permanent Full Employment.

Even seemingly unrelated things like childcare and associated supplements are affected by this, because if you create a suitable environment where parents are found and provided with suitable work to pay their way, with support for childcare, that helps give them 'a hand up rather than a hand out' of whatever troubling financial situation they're in.

Permanent Full Employment is possible, just not by the private sector alone - and right-wing economic policy is inherently against any use of public money for holding up Full Employment - but it is quite manageable/possible, and provides a solid answer to pretty much all right-wing moralizing over welfare and general economic policy.


Fighting against achieving that, is a class-based thing though: It would stop the gravy-train, that persistent economic crises and permanent high-unemployment provide, in allowing advantaged people and sectors of the economy, to 'squeeze' the 'economic pie' in their favour (we've seen an incredibly fast acceleration in wealth/income inequality since the crisis - that's a feature, not a bug... - that's why policies are advocated/sustained, that prolong crises and high unemployment).

ancapailldorcha

KomradeBishop wrote: »

The solution to pretty much all of the welfare problems that are at the heart of a lot of right-wing moralizing, are jobs - and particularly, achieving permanent Full Employment.

How would this work though? How do you employ the entire population of say, Roscommon? What would you have them do?

Two Tone

joe swanson wrote: »

The same question could be easily applied to left wingers. Anti western ie us, Israel, jewish etc. Bordering on racism. And god forbid anyone disagree with them.

I relation to some on the far left, biggggg time. The anti America thing is hilarious. Anti capitalist with a whole load of tech from Apple too.

KomradeBishop

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

How would this work though? How do you employ the entire population of say, Roscommon? What would you have them do?

Look at the US and many countries like e.g. Germany in the 1930's: Massive infrastructural development is one area, and this is something that would not happen overnight either, we'd need to be prepared for this to take time to ramp-up to Full Employment.

Climate change pretty much demands a complete infrastructural redevelopment for all countries in the world, to bring down carbon emissions, and we've barely even started - there is a staggering amount of work that needs to be done here - and this is just one area of work.

I'm not advocating putting all unemployed people to work on this either - the program can be as diverse as you like (and the nature of publicly funded projects, means they do not need to return a profit - things are often explicitly publicly funded, in order to prioritize social benefit over profit, and this is a good thing), so you can work to create jobs that match up with peoples skillsets, or otherwise provide social benefit.


The most common response against this policy, is the 'perfect solution fallacy' - where a poster takes a rhetorical stance, of acting 'unconvinced' until a perfect solution employing every single person is presented - and discounting examples given that lead to mass-job-creation, in the process.

Past historical evidence shows that policies like this, have led to enormously successful job creation programs, so the precedent already exists - so my openness to outlining the range of possible jobs that can be provided, depends on how much I feel the people asking, are acting 'unconvinced' for rhetorical effect.

Geuze

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

How would this work though? How do you employ the entire population of say, Roscommon? What would you have them do?

Full employment simply means low unemployment, approx 5% unemployment.

Using that definition, several countries have full-employment now, e.g. Austria and Germany.

Geuze

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

How would this work though? How do you employ the entire population of say, Roscommon? What would you have them do?

Full employment does not mean all adults in employment.


Getting more adults into employment means increasing the Labour Force Participation Rate, LFPR.

I suggest that as well as lower unemployment, we need higher LFPR in Ireland.

ancapailldorcha

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

As someone who used to work in Europe's largest social housing project, I would question the idea that people should be entitled to have as many children as they want while being entitled to years and years of funding from the state. It's not a viable long term strategy and is just going to result in an increase in welfare dependency. I'd rather see the state fund things like sexual health clinics, apprenticeships and other opportunities to help people get out of poverty and support their own families.

But that would cost money its more spending by the state and its the spending by the state that the RW have an issue with.

Geuze

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

What do you mean by genuinely disabled?

People not pretending to be disabled to avoid work, or to avoid being on JSA and facing more questions/interviews.

Many try to get onto the disabled benefits, as you're not questioned as much as those on the Live Register.

Geuze

Jayop wrote: »

From that 1.5 million how many are claiming benefits? You're including people not working but not unemployed that we discussed in that too. I think that in general people over estimate the amount of truly lazy feckers who don't work because they couldn't be arsed.

That's a good question. I'll try to get the data.

---

2006

---

2013

Total recipients = 1,004,000

---

1,467,918
Total beneficiaries = 1,507,000

---

2,273,000----half the population

JSA = 75,801

---

295,077
JSB = 50,542

---

55,000

OPF = 83,081

---

78,246, falling due to age reforms

Carers Allowance = 27,474

---

57,136, huge increases here

DA = 83,697

---

106,279, big increases

IB = 65,774

---

59,000

ancapailldorcha

Fair answers there. The term "Full employment" does suggest 100% of adults working though.

steddyeddy

Ireland was close to full employment during the boom so I'm guessing we haven't that many chancers.

KomradeBishop

People who advocate the Job Guarantee policy (what my previous posts are based on), tend to dispute the normal definition of Full Employment - I think that even when economies are supposedly at 'Full Employment' by the mainstream definition, that there usually still are a fair number of people on unemployment, who legitimately can't find a job.

Job Guarantee advocates, often consider 'true' Full Employment, to be around 2% - and a proper Job Guarantee, would aim to make this number as low as possible, so that unemployment only counts for frictional unemployment (or any other small expected contributions to unemployment).

ancapailldorcha

mariaalice wrote: »

But that would cost money its more spending by the state and its the spending by the state that the RW have an issue with.

The right wing isn't a homogeneous entity. I'm fine with spending as long as it'll improve things.

Geuze

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Fair answers there. The term "Full employment" does suggest 100% of adults working though.

Sorry, yes, I see your point.

Full employment is defined in economics as where you just have a natural, or normal amount of unemployment, e.g. people between jobs.

That amount is estimated at maybe 5.5% of the labour force in the USA.

So you can say the USA has full-employment if the unemployment rate is at or below 5.5%.

Note that the rate can be different in other countries.

Geuze

steddyeddy wrote: »

Ireland was close to full employment during the boom so I'm guessing we haven't that many chancers.

Yes, we had low unemployment. but we still have many, many non-employed adults.

Too many.

Not classified as unemployed, but they were jobless.

Geuze

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

The right wing isn't a homogeneous entity. I'm fine with spending as long as it'll improve things.

I agree.

If abolishing JSA and OPF and replacing them with a Job Guarantee and much more subsidised childcare costs more, then fine by me.

The_Mac

As much as there's an extreme anger coming from right wing people, I've never met someone so smug as an extreme liberal. Because they campaign for "social justice" there's an immediate moral high ground that they take, and shout over you constantly to get their point across.

ancapailldorcha

Geuze wrote: »

I agree.

If abolishing JSA and OPF and replacing them with a Job Guarantee and much more subsidised childcare costs more, then fine by me.

I'd disagree on both counts there. I'm not sure how a job guarantee would work but subsidising childcare will just encourage price gouging. I'd much rather see the regulation and occupation licencing either scrapped or severely cut back.

Jayop

Geuze wrote: »

That's a good question. I'll try to get the data.

---

2006

---

2013

Total recipients = 1,004,000

---

1,467,918
Total beneficiaries = 1,507,000

---

2,273,000----half the population

JSA = 75,801

---

295,077
JSB = 50,542

---

55,000

OPF = 83,081

---

78,246, falling due to age reforms

Carers Allowance = 27,474

---

57,136, huge increases here

DA = 83,697

---

106,279, big increases

IB = 65,774

---

59,000

Not sure what the figures really mean there. Are you saying that in 2013 half the population received some benefit? That seems amazingly high even taking pensions into account.

Geuze

Geuze wrote: »

Full employment does not mean all adults in employment.


Getting more adults into employment means increasing the Labour Force Participation Rate, LFPR.

I suggest that as well as lower unemployment, we need higher LFPR in Ireland.

This an interesting point, is you point that a family with one person in employment for 35 hours a week and say a partner and two children at home is bad for the economy or is a man in his fifties who was made redundant,is unemployed and lives with his wife who works 30 hours a week in retail, is there something inherently bad with that arrangement?.

Do you want to raise retirement age. What about the working week which had creep down from 40 to 39 or 38 hours for a lot of people is there something wrong with that, should all women who work part time or stay at home with children be forced to work full time?

Geuze

Geuze wrote: »

I agree with much that you say.

I wish to abolish JSA and OPF.

But I want to move the people on JSA and OPF into paid employment.

They would be earning more than when the receive JSA and OPF.

They would be better off, and their children would be better off.

Am I heartless??

No you are not heartless but I think you need to take a look at the CSO statistics which I posted yesterday, over 63% of lone parents with children aged over 11 are in employment. Everyone should be working to support themselves and public policy should be aimed at achieving that, unfortunately that is going to cost money as the biggest barrier to lone parents working is the cost of child care not laziness.

As for the antidote about the poorly educated woman living in shared rented accommodation, sharing a room with her baby who seems to have no support. There is an infinitesimally small amount of lone parents in the situation.