How should Job Seeker's Allowance work?

I was having an argument with a housemates this morning (one day before one of them has her finals ).

The system currently expects job seekers to provide proof that they are looking for work and will chuck out those who provide insufficient proof of this, or who reject suitable jobs without good reason. As a job seeker you are expected to devote yourself to finding work; the job centre will attempt to help you with this by putting courses and forwarding you to recruitments agencies and the like. Money-wise you get around £50 a week. I have a few problems with this system; you are no allowed to volunteer for any more than 16 hours a week and the system is really more of a hindrance to people that have the initiative to look for jobs on their own. I like the gist of the system though.

One of my friends reckons the job centre should provide more money for the 'unemployee' but that said 'unemployee' should also use their spare time doing community service, as job seeking is not something that most people spend a 40 hour week doing.

Another friend believes the proof of job seeking aspect should not be compulsory; there are fewer jobs than seekers so some people are inevitably going to be wasting their time going for jobs that aren't there.

What does CFC think?

 

£50 a week! Can you even live on that in say London?

 

Probably not, though most qualify for other benefits (eg. housing benefit) depending on circumstances.

 

Its total twaddle. I am not allowed to claim over the summer holidays while I am at college.

Everything in this country is geared to make it easy to do nothing but pop babies out

 

Is it my imagination, or does this only become a hot topic when we have tory governments who are trying to establish that the workless are workshy.

Furthermore, that this tends to only become a hot topic when unemployment has soared, and generally this is the result of the free market capitalists having screwed up in some spectacular way.

So this is essentially a distraction to impute the current failure of the system to the people least responsible for the spectacular screwups that have resulted.

At a time when record numbers of people are about to be thrown out of work, someone wants to make the throwees rather than the throwers the villains.

So I don't really want to play. Line up the bankers and the outsourcers against a wall and shoot enough of them so there are enough jobs for everyone else.
Then play this kind of game.

 

If you would please allow me to interrupt your class warfare rhetoric for just a moment, I'd like to explain to you that the people that you blame for the present economic crisis (CEOs, bankers, whoever you happen to have your finger pointing at that day) may perhaps be capitalists, but they are not free-marketers. If your system is anything like ours, some of the biggest businesses support stringent regulations and restrictions because more often than not, they force competitors out of the market and create a tacitly government-granted monopoly.

 

Job seekers shouldn't receive an allowance until they get a job, in which case it will be paid by the company employing them under the name of "salary" or "pay."

 

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure I can claim it this summer in between courses.

Most of my experience with JSA is all my mates claiming it for some extra cash whilst they sort out trying to actually do something with their degree. Fifty quid is not enough to do anything with really but you do get other benefits if that is your *only* 'income'.

 

Certain. While in "full time education" you can't claim anything.

If I dropped out of college I could get JSA, tax credits and my rent paid for me.

The moment I sign up to college, NOTHING.

 

What if there are fewer jobs than job seekers?

 

Be better than the competition.

 

And if you fail?

 

Make job seekers engage in Russian Roulette each time they pick up an allowance check.

 

(Always pleased to be interrupted by an inscrutable son of the chrysanthemum throne, however temporary that might be. )

That's as may be. My point is not so much aimed at the current crisis, as pointing out that this is simply the latest in a long series of crises, and the ones punished are not the ones responsible.

The paymasters both require and contrive a number of unemployed, to allow them to hold down wages.
So any 'omg, they are so lazy and feckless' is unwarranted.

 

First of all the myth is that people on JSA are just lazy scum. Some are, but the truth is that there just aren't enough jobs for everyone, and unless you want people to starve, JSA is necessary. The trouble is JSA dependency and I think people from all perspectives agree on that.

Idea: if you're receiving £50-60 from the government every week, why not be employed part time by the government to do things like clean the streets? 6 hours a week, £10/hour, tax free. There is plenty of unskilled community work that could be done, rather than having people claim their money then just sit around. Perhaps after n months of claiming JSA you would have to take part in this work for the state or go without the money.

Of course, not everyone on JSA is looking for an unskilled job at the end of it, so you would continue providing money to attend courses and get qualifications, as is the case currently.

 

The thing is, the government is so inefficient to actually employ people like that, the cost of bureaucracy would be crippling.

 

I'll guess that friend has never been on JSA themself then? Because when I was on it I would have totally hated being forced to do that.

 

Indeed she hasn't. She also wanted this work to be paid at below minimum wage... we spent a while arguing about that one.

 

Oh Oxford examination times! During my exams the leading debate we had the other day was regarding a real life 28 days later and just what you would do. One of the main arguments was getting guns, swiftly countered by the 'from where?' argument.

I already have an elaborate and fool proof strategy from years of pub based conversation.

 

It's not all politics here. Last exam season we had a long debate about whether Michael Jackson could actually do that bending dance move thing if he had very strong ankles.