[Gllug] OT!!! Re: VACANCY: Junior Systems Support

[general_email at technicalbloke.com]

Hari Sekhon wrote:
> The solution being? Remove benefits and make it an even playing field to 
> encourage people to work hard and compete. This would also allow people 
> who have worked hard to actually be financially better off rather than 
> some getting free property and others struggling their whole life to get 
> one by paying for it, which would be much fairer on the decent folks.
>   

I find most of you free-marketeer types incredibly naive, I mean you're
quick out the gate with this sweeping rhetoric but what do you think
would ACTUALLY happen if you just removed the entire benefit system? For
a start it wouldn't be long before the NHS was overrun by hordes of
desperate and malnourished proles so would you axe the NHS too? The
police would no doubt be stretched a bit by the increase in crime and
civil unrest from the millions of people who's income you've just pulled
out from under them - is it 'fair' to make 'decent folks' have to pay to
quadruple the number of police we have? build hundreds of new prisons
for them? personally suffer the dramatic and massive increase in theft
and violent crime it would cause? And since when does removing all
financial support for the country's poorest families help their children
get onto your 'even playing field' and improve their lot?

If I understand you correctly (and there doesn't seem to be much grey
area here) you seem to be suggesting that the best solution to all the
world's problems is to be unremittingly selfish, methinks you have been
reading a bit too much Ann Rand.

Have you even considered the fact that forcing full employment can be
bad for an economy and that all capitalist countries have made peace
with the fact some unemployment is necessary to restrain wages and keep
inflation under control? Have you considered that the cost to the
economy of keeping some people on benefits is less that the cost to the
economy of ensuring they are employed or do you think that every
unemployed individual currently on the dole would actually add value to
some company somewhere? Have you looked to history for examples to back
up your hypothesis? Was life better or fairer in the past when there was
no social protection or was it squalid, demeaning and brutal in the
extreme? I didn't think so. And anyway, you ought to start at the
beginning and check your assumptions before spouting, I think you will
find that more competition != always better outcome for society && flat
(regressive) taxes != fairer on balance.

The solutions to big problems are never as simple and perfect as you
make out otherwise we'd be doing them already. Do you think that the
millions of minds who've asked these questions over the years have just
been too stupid to realise the key to fairness and progress for a
country is to abandon all social protection? Every man for himself?

Your back of a napkin manifesto above is just bilious, ill considered
dogma and if that truly sums up your viewpoint I feel sorry for you. I
don't think you should be allowed to vote, but I feel sorry for you.

Sincere apologies to the rest of the list for veering so OT!

Roger.
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