They're taking our jobs... really?!

Rikter8

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There are many here that don't want to work as long as they can receive unemployment and/or welfare. Sad...but true.

It's become a way of life for many people living in Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, and many small rural towns. Easier to learn how to work the system than it is to earn an honest living.

Thats why they should chop the welfare system to only those with physical disabilities and put the rest to work the fields.

What about using prisoners? At least get something for our tax dollars.
 

B_VinylBoy

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It's become a way of life for many people living in Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, and many small rural towns. Easier to learn how to work the system than it is to earn an honest living.

Thats why they should chop the welfare system to only those with physical disabilities and put the rest to work the fields.

What about using prisoners? At least get something for our tax dollars.

That's an entirely different can of worms that has its own share of corruption, fueled by corporate greed and shielded by polarizing, class war politics, especially in the private sector. Some owners of private prisons such as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Geo Group, which benefit from unjust drug and immigration laws, get a healthy amount of money for every prisoner they maintain in their custody per year. In total, the 200+ private prisons in our country can collectively receive up to $5 Billion a year in government funding just for keeping their prisons full. Worse case scenario - a person who is arrested for marijuana possession at the wrong place & time can find themselves not only locked up for an obscene amount of time, but now be sold for cheap labor to a corporation that no longer has to worry about maintaining humane work regulations, comparable salaries and the like. And with prisons stuffed to capacity in so many places these days, that means a very abundant supply of "workers" for companies to choose from and less adequate paying jobs for other free, law abiding citizens.

Do we really want to give these people even more money without doing something about immigration reform and ending the "War on Drugs" first?
 
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223790

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Yeah, I think you got stiffed there, or you were a little ignorant.

If you were working legally, you could have claimed all your tax & any superannuation back!:cool:. It's pretty standard in all Western countries that you are not a resident for tax purposes if you live or work in a country for a year or less. (You are meant to declare it in your home country - but who does that - you were backpacking!:smile:)

Therefore, you voluntarily subsidized them.


Get your facts straight before calling anyone ignorant because the same could be said of you - only it would be true.

I went to the tax office in OZ after I finished working to see if I could claim anything back. If anything, I was told that I didn't pay enough tax and that if I filed, I would owe (this happened to a friend of mine who had a collection agency in Canada chase her because she owed tax money in OZ after filing). Again, someone has to support the welfare bums who feel they are too precious to work even though they have less than a high school education.

I can't say with any certainty how it works in the U.K. as I have never worked there (even though I'm a U.K. citizen and have a passport), so I will have to assume what you said is correct. Assuming what you said is true, this brings me back to my previous statement - it's little wonder the U.K. economy is in the shitter. Better you suffer than me from the austerity measures being imposed by the U.K. gov't. Have fun digging out!:biggrin1:
 
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223790

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I always find this rather amusing. The one thing there absolutely is for homo sapiens, is a free lunch. We ride along on a wave of free energy and raw materials. All we have to do is dig it up. The only question is how we distribute what we get free.

The argument I have seen is that there is no net benefit to the UK economy of cheap labour coming here. The reality is that cheap labour comes with extra infrastructure costs and takes its money away with it eventually. Meanwhile the unemployed labour here still has to be fed and housed.

It is not a question even of whether it is moral to ensure that everyone in society has a certain minimum standard, but rather that all those enjoying a high standard benefit because the poor feel included in society and play along by the same rules as the rich. When they do not, we get what is called crime. People who do not see the rules of society benefiting them, naturally break them. We are clever apes and understand what benefits us.

No, individual employers reckon the easiest and most profitable way for them personally to run their companies is to use cheap foreign labour imported into the country. No one goes round checking whether this is also good for society. There are plenty of examples where it is not.

For example, the british chocolate indutry cadbury's just got bought up by Kraft. They instantly abandoned their pledges to keep production in this country and have transferred it elsewhere (where labour is cheaper). Cadbury's was perfectly profitable using expensive UK labour because it has a captive market and understands it. Because it was willing to use technology so that it had fewer employees and maintained overall productivity. But the easy option is to run to the cheap labour alternative. This is absolutely BAD for the UK. And funnily enough their chocolate has been rising steeply in price lately. They know they have a captive market who want their product. The example is all the more galling because cadburys was originally a quaker company, whose founders believed in the principle of paying their workers generously and the company had always been run on those lines.

THIS is what is bad for the UK economy. A company which was socially minded, even now, and has been bought out. Kraft will not continue this same principle of running the company mindful of the needs of society and the entire world will be poorer overall because of it.

Damn right. I do not believe in operating a 'race to the bottom'. The aim should be to push up living standards. The point is that we do not benefit from it. The person who accepts very low wages is not beneftting, the person who refuses low wages and is on state aid is not benefiting and society overall is not benefiting. If Canada is running well it is not because they have a policy of exploiting cheap labour. Perhaps because they have a policy of preventing over-exploitative banking. Which turns out to be the right policy.

There is someone willing to do the job because where they come from general living standards are so bad that it is better for them. We are not aiming to reduce our own living standards to that level. Or I assume we are not? Most people who have power to change society do not have any personal incentive to look out for the benefit of the bulk of society, and it inevitably conflicts with their own collection of wealth. Thats a fact. Either they have to believe it is morally right to spread wealth around or they have to be forced to do it anyway. That is what democracy is for.


What you are saying is that a lot of jobs are underpaid. Obviosuly so, if they are jobs which no one wants to do. How come the jobs people like get paid more than thoes people do not like. Thats very odd.

The UK by no means has the most socialist attitude to wealth of various nations. But some of us are horrified to look at the example of the wealth gaps and lack of care for society in certain other places. US health care is a scandal.


I live in Canada, not the U.S. - a soverign country. Again, I'm not surprised by the state of the economy in the U.K. if your opinion is common. You are definitely a left leaning socialist seeking a Utopia that doesn't exist. Canada has a progressive tax system meaning the more you earn the more tax you pay. We also have socialized health care meaning that we pay nothing to receive medical services. The bill does to have to be paid at the end of the day though. You can put your head in the sand and deny it all you want, but that is a plain and simple fact. The state of several European economies (including the U.K.) is iron clad proof of that fact.
 

vince

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I was a Resident Alien in the US for 17 years and moved back to where I came from. You're welcome to have my job.

My boss never did find anyone to replace me. :biggrin: