Uhh, something really ought to be done about unemployment

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... e-low.html

Look, I understand the point that some of you are affluent and securely employed, but there is one thing I think people have forgotten about high unemployment rates combined with a lack of support services. Well, it's really quite simple actually. People really ain't too keen on being broke.

In fact, it makes them angry and violent.

The article specifically states teen unemployment, which is often not simply a matter of poverty, as teens are rarely primary sources of income.

That being said, what do you want to do to alter the rate of unemployment?

The Daily Mail is a worthless shit-sheet and specialises in scare stories. Nothing it publishes should be taken seriously.

Here are the causes of cancer, according to the Daily Wail:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2 ... noscript=1

Last edited by Cornflake on 03 May 2011, 7:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's also quoted from the Daily Fail, which is the equivalent of a Scientist referencing a Creationist website for facts. Only about 1/6 - 1/8 of my friends will be able to get a job over here, and I'm quite sure their first thought won't be "Oh no, I have no job. Let's wip out the knives and carve up old women!! !".

*EDIT; ah, I see cornflake bet me to the failbash

It's a filthy job, but someone's gotta do it...

There is nothing I find less interesting that weak correlative data. It doesn't tell you which way the causation goes; if people who take aspirin are more likely to get cancer, it doesn't mean that stopping popping pills will make you less likely to get cancer.

I hope I don't have to publish trash like that for my fourth year thesis.

The Right loves unemployment because they push NAIRU and the reserve army of labour to keep those wages down yet they enjoy threatening to kill that army of unemployed. Kind folk, aren't they? Self-defence is in order to deal with such a threat.

I was not intent on discussing poverty. I was intent on discussing adolescent unemployment.

It happens that I live in a city, and there was a robbery two doors down from me just the day before yesterday. Some opportunist pulled a truck with a trailer hitch into someone's back yard and drove off with thousands of dollars' worth of equipment. This is supposedly a safe neighborhood.

No, I'm not intent on discussing poverty because it's really an abstract kind of concern for me if someone far, far away from me doesn't have enough to eat. I know in my head that I should be as concerned about it, but somehow it doesn't strike home the way a robbery in the house right next door does.

Take away all of your rights and create a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Jeez, man, if I really had so many bright ideas, why would I create an OP where I bring up this topic without actually submitting any proposed solutions of my own? Maybe I wanted an open discussion.

I don't see why a bunch of idiots showed up to lambast the Daily Mail. I am aware of the Daily Mail's semi-tabloid quality as a newspaper, but I wasn't intent on using it to prove anything. My intent was to use it to open up a discussion.

You guys seem to be in a hurry to find some way to dump on my ideas, whatever you have assumed they are, but y'all's ideas on how to handle youth unemployment so far have revolved around your opinions of the Daily Mail and conservative-bashing.

Maybe ideas like maybe local ordinances giving businesses a tax credit or something for keeping positions open for youth. Just throwing an idea out there. Anything that actually has something to do with addressing the problem sounds fine to me. I'd love to hear about measures of any kind that have actually worked in practice.

You know, my father's drinking buddies are conservative-minded Jessie-crats, but they start suggesting some pretty interesting ideas if you can get a little Crown Royal into them.

They would start talking about actual concrete examples of ordinances they have seen in use, in their practical experience, if you proposed this as a topic. And then one would intervene and say, "I understand that the commission had a study done on that, and the reason they stopped using it was for reason so-and-so." And then another one would jump in and say, "I'm sorry, but I've never heard of such a study," and then it would be, "Okay, to clear this up, let's call up the comissioner and ask him whether..."

A gaggle of half-drunk rednecks can have a more intelligent, productive discussion than I ever see around places like this. That's sad. Really, have any of you people ever bothered to make eye contact with any actual member of your government? Have ever bothered to actually see what goes on at your city council meetings? Have you even once in your entire lives written a letter to your representative about something that actually mattered?

Draft the Unemployed into an army of street sweepers and ditch diggers.

ruveyn

Is this the New New Deal?

WilliamWDelaney, I was all ready to point out how unemployment has been dropping sharply ever since our conservatives took control of the lower house last november and prevented a scheduled tax increase. Then I realized you were in the U.K., not the U.S.

For what it's worth, specific short term tax incentives for hiring did not work here in the U.S. - we had them last year, and unemployment stayed high. Businesses don't hire based on short term incentives. What did work was an extension of lower overall tax rates for two years. Apparently two years is long enough for businesses to feel comfortable making hiring decisions, and overall lower tax rates, rather than breaks specifically targeted at hiring, are more helpful in giving businesses the confidence to hire. I've posted with more details in other threads.

Your tax system works differently than ours, so I don't know specifically what policies you need. Plus, your conservatives are actually conservatives, while our conservatives are actually closer to classical liberals - libertarians. Perhaps you need something like our Tea Party rebellion within the conservative ranks to get your conservatives to adopt policies that will actually help the economy.

Then the issue is simply bored teens.


I really don't know. I say what I did mostly to say that I don't know of many ideas. Make-work programs *could* work, but they'd more likely end up being taken by non-at risk teens, even further, they'd almost certainly last beyond their efficacy.

Hiring tax-cuts also *could* work, but... they'd probably also last well beyond their point of efficacy as well, which would undermine their usability. Even further, if the rules are improperly designed, they could also fail to impact at-risk teens, as the political incentives are to help middle-class teens find jobs, as at-risk teens are... less seen other than as crime statistics.


Ah.... this is what I get for not reading the entire thing through. It looks like you put forward the same kinds of ideas I did. I actually don't know what has been tried in the past, as anything that would be tried, would have to probably focus on at-risk teen employment, rather than general teen employment.

It is either draft the unemployed (who cannot find employment after much looking) or the Dole.

Idle hands are the Devil's tools.

ruveyn

I've heard that illegals take a lot of jobs that young people use to take at one time. I think that there is an element of truth to it but from what I've seen, a lot of older people in general have been taking those jobs. I dunno how to fix it, lower the barriers to entry whatever those may be.

Solution: Offer each private employer who hires a person and keeps him at least two years a tax credit against future business taxes on business income.

ruveyn