By Andrew Baker and Peter Saunders:
There are two ways to reduce “poverty”: increase the value of welfare benefits faster than the value of wages, or move substantial numbers of people off welfare and into full-time jobs. Anti-poverty campaigners invariably emphasise the first option and neglect the second, but the first actually undermines the second……
The real solution to poverty: J-O-B-S, J-O-B-S, J-O-B-S | The Centre for Independent Studies.
I can agree that the way to fix poverty is to give people a job. I can agree that just giving benefits to poor people simply increases GDP in the local mall’s. However you need to try to understand the causes of truentcy and drug dependants before you can fix them. sadly again we have a qualified expert who yet again will not list what these jobs might look like, as opposed to vague references to infrustrcture
And pay fair wages, limit mergers and acquisitions, increase tax and stop being pro big business who less and less for a country.
I am beginning to sound like Chris: Do all that and where would the jobs come from?
Colin
Beginning to sound like me , now there is a scary thought ,or an inevitability, Sorry just could not resist an opening like that 🙂
I cannot believe the simplistic response from both left and right. We seem to be debating what Keynes and Hoover did in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Hey guys the world has changed immensely since then.
When I did my National Service in the 1950’s, there was a young 18 year old named George who was practically innumerate and illterate and obviously had a pretty low IQ. We all loved George, but he never should have been conscripted into the army, he was a danger to himself and others.
When we asked George what he did for a living, he replied “I work in an Ink factory filling up ink bottles”. In those days even somebody like George could get a job. This is no longer true, I venture to say that there are no possible jobs these days for the young Georges of today.
Let’s start by dropping the fiction that there are jobs for everybody, I don’t care what your idealogical position is I defy anybody to find jobs for the proportion of the population in the lowest IQ quartile of the population, such jobs do not exist today and they are not going to reappear.
That leaves 3 quartiles of the population left to work. Are there meaningful jobs available for all of those people. I don’t know, but I don’t think anybody else knows. The mantra is that productivity improvements inevitably leads to the creation of new jobs. I’d like to see a decent study to determine if this is merely old rhetoric from a previous age or whether it’s another of those statements believed by economists, with no credible backup.
I believe that most people would prefer meaningful empoyment to living on welfare. Let’s have a real debate about how we might go about creating such jobs for all but a few members of our society, not starting with the assumption that new jobs created can be both meaningful and able to be done by the those currently out of work.
Les Morrow
Good post Les,
What was the minimum wage that George earned in the 1950s? As we lift the minimum wage the number of available jobs shrinks — and imports rise as the lost jobs shift to Asia.
As pointed out by Dwight R Lee, the issue is government interference in the economy for short-term political gain. Government interference increases the number of rents seekers, increasing the level of government debt required to sustain the growing number of rent seekers required for the government to remain popular and with an increasing level of distortion to the economy. As identified by Romney, 47% of Americans “are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”. This path leads in one direction – Greece.
Lee
I am not sure what the term” rent seekers ” is , but I am guessing that it is a reference to people who are for some reason with out sufficient income to pay the rent. So putting aside the fact that many of those receiving government payments have actually paid into those schemes how would you resolve the fiscal cliff if the government was to cease those payments.
Chris, See Wiki: rent seeking
Lee
Thank you for clarifing what a “rent seeker” is.However you then went on to conect the term ” rent seeker ” to the 47% refered to by Romney in his speech. It seems to me the “rent seekers” are any one who uses thier power to lobby for more than thier efforts create.In my point of view the Wall street lobyists in Washington recieve far more than the “47%” and argably do far less in terms of effort.
“Many current studies of rent-seeking focus on efforts to capture various monopoly privileges stemming from government regulation of free competition.”