Cut all the benefits/welfare, fix the economy

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They've been open in saying that volatility is what they want and their lobbying has caused the deregulation that has promoted volatility. The volatility inevitably causes crashes of this sort, but as they have captured governments they have nothing to fear but everything to gain.

Those who say it's wrong to deny the super-wealthy owners and controllers as much as they can grab forget a very important point. Money is power. The more money, the more power, particularly when one has so much that it can't buy further experiences. What it can do is buy the government. Power is a zero-sum game. If they are gaining power, everyone is losing power. This is fundamentally anti-democratic. Democracy is the element that Western countries and leaderships use to claim moral superiority over what they call dictatorships. It's an important part of how governments claim legitimacy - to claim plausibly to represent the People. The transfer of power to the super-rich is something that erodes the legitimacy of the governments that run Western countries. At that point, all that remains is the rule of force. We're more or less there now. It's just a dictatorship - power comes from the barrel of a gun.

Just to be clear, I'm not disparaging your desire to earn money, or do well in business, or even avoid relying on the state if at all possible. Those are laudable aims, commendable and sadly all too rare. What I take issue with is your belief that the very limited experience you have had of business/employment/unemployment is enough to make sweeping generalisations about the working conditions and capabilities of millions of people, or your equally misguided belief that because you are smarter than the average 16yr old (Not so very hard. Plenty of them are pig-shit thick, hence the rarity of business-running ones.) you can be as knowledgeable about the subject as people who have been in the system often for as long as you have been alive. You have never signed on, and thus never had the experience of dealing with Jobcentre employees or DWP procedures. You have not worked for the same company for twenty years, then been thrown onto the dole after your bosses decide its cheaper to outsource to Bulgaria. You have not spent months on a training course requisite to retaining your position, only to be told 6 months after passing it that you must take another different qualification because the previous one has been made obsolete, and had to repeat this futility for a decade. You have not had the ENTIRE trade you have worked in for thirty years be removed overnight, with no similar trade to replace it.

I could list dozens, hundreds of things you have never experienced, be they work related or otherwise. Many of them are things you would not want to experience. Most of them are things which would influence your opinion on the matter of unemployment.

Again your worst flaw has appeared though. Despite me telling you exactly why I mentioned legal age limits on drinking and smoking (as examples of things that you can only do above a certain age) you insist on thinking I mentioned them because they are some kind of important adulthood ritual, more so than marriage or childrearing. You aren't old enough to watch 18 Cert Films either.

Your arrogance is showing again. For one, "looking older" is no surefire way to get served. The way you behave, what you order and how you order it are all huge clues to your age, to name but a few examples. For two, were you to be caught purchasing alcohol whilst underage, you risk costing the establishment in question its license, and the employees within their jobs. Great way to keep people off the dole, that is. Likewise, you might want to actually try moving out and getting married at 16 before you start claiming its a great show of adulthood. Legal it might be. Its anything but simple. Its certainly no indicator of responsibiliy or maturity. If anything, its a greater mark of a responsible adult that one can go out, drink, come back again and not get in a fight or break the law. Getting someone pregnant at 16 is the very reverse of "responsibility". It certainly isn't a measure of adulthood.

So, again: Run your little business, make money, and I wish you the greatest of success. But wait until you have experienced a little more of real life before suggesting a frankly genocidal unemployment policy.

Since we're just going around in circles here, I'm gonna go back to saying we should end this discussion.

But I don't believe I'm any smarter than an average 16 year old at all, and I believe your sweeping generalisation that "Plenty of them are pig-sh** thick" is entirely incorrect. I'm around these people every day and many are smarter than me. Not that having a level of intelligence greater than mine is exactly a hard thing to do, but still, many are very smart, if immature.

BTW, for anyone who wants more info on the originial topic of this thread, check this programme out, it puts a good case forward: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/brit ... -story/4od

I agree with nearly everything xenon13 says. I don't really post too much in threads like these because I couldn't make the same points as calmly and eloquently as he does. Plus, I realise how intransigent both sides are on this debate.

Whilst I admire the actual entrepreneurial spirit of someone like Asp-Z and many others like him, I actually agree with xenon13 that the more you get into capitalism, the more you realise how sick it is (in terms of encouraging an unhealthy mentality).

Part of me wishes I was more like Asp-Z when I was his age...I was actually a very lazy teenager who kept getting fired from retail jobs, but thankfully the economy back then was good enough that I could get them in the first place. I worked part-time in cleaning for years, whilst I was studying. The thought of starting my own business would've given me a migraine. Now I work in education, albeit in the private sector. The fact that I've spent my whole working life (although it's not very long or illustrious) in the private sector, means I know a bit about wage-slavery. I'm a much more hard-working, ambitious person now than when I was younger...but I still think the actual mentality of capitalism is sick. There is something very wrong with putting profit before everything else in life.

I think Asp-Z proposing what he does in the OP, it's because he does not see the problem of unemployment the same way as someone with different life experiences would. Unemployment is a symptom of the sickness that is the neo-liberal economic system. To him, the system itself is healthy and the symptom is the disease. Our opinions are irreconcilable.

You attend a college. Its a fair bet that some of the students are going to be reasonably intelligent. Go and hang out in your local Jobcentre or any bus stop in a large town after dark and you can meet plenty of the shit-thick variety. Do you have a local market? Market stalls when they aren't being used are a great place to meet stupid children. Failing that, whatever local boozer has the slackest door policy will furnish you with a plethora of dumb-asses of teen years. Its all about where you stand.

Well I'm sure I could walk around at night and see a fair few stupid bumbling drunk adults, too.

Yes, there are some stupid teenagers. In fact, there are quite a few. But I don't believe they're the majority.

NO amount of welfare cuts will benefit any citizens of the UK, given that the amount of money we are loaning to Ireland happens to be the same amount we are "saving" on welfare cuts. It wont even benefit the Irish people, because they STILL have to live through a crippling austerity budget.

Macbeth is right, welfare cuts are the surest way of causing more problems. I won't accept a cut and I'll take my tirade all the way to Nottingham's County Hall. The place that deals with all things disability in Notts. They don't want to f**k me off. But they will, so they'll just have to deal with the consequences of their stupid actions.

Nor did I say they were the majority. I just said there were plenty of them.

Just as there are plenty of stupid adults.

So we're in agreement.

One often begins as the other. Still doesn't give you a greater insight into jobseeking.

Never said it does. As I said, that conversation's now over.

Quite. And having established that your knowledge of the working world is not as comprehensive as it might be, and considering all the other information that has been presented in this thread, where do you stand now on your suggestion for a War on the Poor? Are you still insistent on the idea that genocide is a sound financial manoeuvre for a nation that just gave away all the money its going to save by cutting benefits? Is a nation which does such a thing actually capable of a "sound financial manoeuvre."? Does this ridiculous "bail out" not invalidate your belief that any cuts in the welfare state would be returned to the taxpayer? The first of the savings that have been made are now going to benefit the banking system of a nation that has its own tax-payers. Why would any of the other savings go back to the British?

Also, where do you stand on contribution-based benefits? After all, many people pay A LOT of money into National Insurance specifically to provide a welfare safety net in the event they lose their jobs. Its not even an optional payment. They are FORCED to pay for it. Should they then lose that safety net? After all, ANYBODY can lose their source of income, even a precocious under-age entrepreneur.

What if the government suddenly decide to bring back concentration camps, and throw people with disabilities into it this time? That really scares the s**t out of me. And if it did happen, I'll be the only one out of my whole family who gets thrown into one, because they are all NORMAL.

Whenever you have over 50% of a country not paying taxes, that country will eventually implode. One of the reasons I'm against abortion is it devalues human life.