Please read my comment again, I didn’t say you said all unemployed

Comment on General Election 2010 Poll Results by David.

Please read my comment again, I didn’t say you said all unemployed people are lazy. I said it sounded like you were suggesting the majority of the 2.5 million are either lazy (work shy) OR not able to take low paid work because they’d basically loose benefits (welfare more lucrative than working).

That’s clearly two categories of unemployed people, not just lazy.

I accept I didn’t make it clear what I meant, I should have said:

“With 2.5 million unemployed are you suggesting the majority of the 2.5 million unemployed could get a job **within 6 months** if the lazy ones wanted to work and the welfare system was harsher so taking a low paid job is better than living on benefits?”

Or I could have used the number 750,000 as that’s the number of people currently unemployed for over 6 months.

So I meant the majority of those who haven’t found work within a reasonable period of time, (6 months) of being unemployed.

Is that what you are suggesting?

I believe you mentioned 6 months of help then insurance should take over? that’s why I’ve used the 6 month time scale, personally I’d see long term as over 12 months.

Implication being you want government to remove support for unemployed people who fail to find work within 6 months?

For a system like that to work two things would have to be in place. First that the vast majority of the unemployed can in fact find a job within 6 months and second everyone takes out unemployment insurance (would have to be compulsory, otherwise people will fall through the system).

If my understanding of your earlier comments were correct: you think most of the unemployed who are still out of work after 6 months either don’t want a job (work shy) or refuse to take a low paid job (not better off money wise than on benefits), by removing benefits at 6 months the lazy ones would be forced to find work and the ones ‘stuck on benefits’ would be forced to take any job they could find?

Based on the FT article I linked to that’s currently 30% of the unemployed would not be entitled to help under your system!

How many of the 30% do you think fall within the work shy or won’t take a job because of benefits categories?

There are currently around 750,000 people who have been unemployed over 6 months.

You can’t believe all of them could find work if they wanted to within 6 months?

At least 5% of the 30% find work within a further 6 months, so I think we can assume they aren’t work shy/stuck on benefits, they couldn’t find a job.

Lets assume it is as low as 5% that are the real long term unemployed (unemployed over 6 months), what are those current ~125,000 (that’s 5% of the unemployed today) people do when it comes to buying food for their kids etc…?

Sarah you seem to be wanting government to remove the safeguards we have so the minority of those who abuse the system don’t get away with it!

I accept there will be those who are work shy and others who won’t take a job because relative to benefits it’s not worthwhile. I can’t see it being a high % though.

From the media I’d got the perception there was a LOT of young people who are long term unemployed and sponging off the tax payer, but the numbers say otherwise! The under 25s are less likely to be long term unemployed than anyone else. If a system like yours was brought in, it would be the over 25s who are the vast majority (96%) of the long term unemployed that would suffer the most.

In your latest comment you’ve confirmed you did mean the ‘stuck on benefits’ part, though not how many of the unemployed fall into this category in your opinion. Please correct me if I’ve misunderstood what you meant.

BTW don’t read me wrong on this, if unemployed people are work shy they don’t deserve a penny of our taxes and if unemployed people are refusing to take low paid work because they are better off on benefits**, again they don’t deserve our taxes.

** If you understood the current benefits system you’d realise it’s now almost impossible to be worse off in work than on benefits. You could argue not being significantly better off working than on benefits for some situations, but I don’t think you’ll find a scenario where a low paid job at minimum wage has a person worse off than on benefits now. Under the Conservatives with no minimum wage you’d have been right when you still lived in the UK.

David