Is it moral to make unemployment benefits conditional?

[Ruskin]

The idea is if an unemployed person doesn't meet some requirements in their job search they sanctioned for a number of weeks in which time they receive no money from the state at all. It sounds fair in theory as there are people who would rather live on benefits than work but then if you were to give someone literally no money for say a period of 4 weeks they're going to be in dire straights to say the least. Also there's always a risk that some who is genuinely seeking employment will be hit with one of these sanctions. So would it be better to just say "If you want to live on benefits then here you go" and give a small amount of money for food, heating and what have you? Bear in mind prisoners don't have food given to them conditionally they have to be fed by the state funded by the tax payer. Are unemployed people in effect treated worse than prisoners seeing as no money amounts to no food.

[LuckyR]

The idea is if an unemployed person doesn't meet some requirements in their job search they sanctioned for a number of weeks in which time they receive no money from the state at all. It sounds fair in theory as there are people who would rather live on benefits than work but then if you were to give someone literally no money for say a period of 4 weeks they're going to be in dire straights to say the least. Also there's always a risk that some who is genuinely seeking employment will be hit with one of these sanctions. So would it be better to just say "If you want to live on benefits then here you go" and give a small amount of money for food, heating and what have you? Bear in mind prisoners don't have food given to them conditionally they have to be fed by the state funded by the tax payer. Are unemployed people in effect treated worse than prisoners seeing as no money amounts to no food.

Firstly, there is no right or wrong here rather a series of weaknesses and strengths that the programs you mention, possess (prisons, UE benefits etc). Whether one system is described as "moral" or not depends less on true morals and more one what are the actual goals of the program and whether acheiving those goals robustly (their strength) is worth the known negatives of the program (their weaknesses). Ten different people will answer that question ten differnt ways.

For example, if I say that avoiding hunger in the unemployed is my highest goal, them I may tolerate the weakness of the program of lazy folks taking those benefits without really looking for work. OTOH if avoiding giving benefits to the "undeserving" is my goal, then I may tolerate some honest unemployed going without benefits.

Personally in the specific case of 2015 America/Northern Europe I think there is enough wealth in the society such that no one should go hungry, whether they look for work or not. Personally I would consider that minimum as a better situation than that of a prisoner in 2015 America.

[Alias]

Morality has nothing to do with this. It's politico-economic situation. A money-based economy skews everything to suit the requirements of money rather than the requirements of people.

It takes four weeks to process the paperwork through a byzantine maze of safeguards against cheating the government out of $25? Well then, you wait four weeks for your food stamps. (It takes a two-second rubber stamp to reinstate an expired tax exemption on profits over $2 billion a year. There, done; let's go to lunch.)

It happens that some people want a break after working the absolute minimum of time required by the system at the **** jobs nobody wants to do, and without which the whole system would sputter to a halt, and then live for the minimum allowed time on the minimum allowed income. It also happens that some people risk their lives to enter the system illegally and work at those same **** jobs for less than minimum wage, and without access to unemployment insurance, so they can never, ever afford to quit. It will cost the taxpayers (who have jobs they can bear to do for years at a time) $ many billions to build a wall to keep the second bunch of people out. It's several magnitudes cheaper to give the first bunch time-out on unemployment insurance every three months. Therefore, it's a good idea to make [cheap] unemployment insurance hard to get, while making [expensive and ineffective] gestures against their [even cheaper] rivals.

Who says capitalism isn't the most efficient way to make things work?

[Belinda]

Alias, I expect you agree with me to balance the incentive to do unpleasant paid work against the incentive to idle.

That being accepted labourers of all grades need to be kept sound and healthy, as crime free as possible, and able to do work when required including perhaps in defence emergencies. I say this remembering the economic uses of outlaws who were tolerated in medieval England because they formed a reserve of soldiery against future need.

Therefore Ruskin's idea is sound and I'd add to Ruskin's my preference for centrally administered free health, legal aid, and all levels of education for all social classes regardless of whether they are tax payers or not.

[Sy Borg]

The idea is if an unemployed person doesn't meet some requirements in their job search they sanctioned for a number of weeks in which time they receive no money from the state at all. It sounds fair in theory as there are people who would rather live on benefits than work but then if you were to give someone literally no money for say a period of 4 weeks they're going to be in dire straights to say the least. Also there's always a risk that some who is genuinely seeking employment will be hit with one of these sanctions. So would it be better to just say "If you want to live on benefits then here you go" and give a small amount of money for food, heating and what have you? Bear in mind prisoners don't have food given to them conditionally they have to be fed by the state funded by the tax payer. Are unemployed people in effect treated worse than prisoners seeing as no money amounts to no food.

Well said, Ruskin. The economic system requires that a pool of unemployed be maintained, with 5% generally considered around optimal, so there is a moral imperative to provide support for at least that 5% (not including those not able to work). To do otherwise is not only unfair and cruel, it also fosters crime, providing organised criminals with many desperate young people who are bitter at society's neglect to work as drug mules and sex workers.

[Ruskin]

Sanctions are really more a tool the government can use to make it look like they have cut the numbers of officially unemployed people at any given time so they can say things like "unemployment has fallen by 100,000 in the last 3 months". They only count the people who are claiming benefits as being officially unemployed not anyone they sanction and remove from the benefit system. Anyone who is sanctioned won't be "strongly encouraged to find employment" seeing as instead of looking for a job and handing employers CVs they will just end up like this guy and go into a "survival mode".

[Alias]

Alias, I expect you agree with me to balance the incentive to do unpleasant paid work against the incentive to idle.

Sure. People don't really want to be idle - they're too volatile and easily bored; forced idleness wrecks their self-esteem; prolonged idleness prompts them to mischief. (Grandmother was right - again!) What they want is to do something meaningful and be appreciated. If we devalue and despise them, they'll retaliate in any petty way they can. If we deprive them and put legal subsistence out of their reach, they have no choice but crime. Also, of course, hardly any work needs to be as unpleasant as it's made by profit-boosting.

That being accepted labourers of all grades need to be kept sound and healthy, as crime free as possible, and able to do work when required including perhaps in defence emergencies. I say this remembering the economic uses of outlaws who were tolerated in medieval England because they formed a reserve of soldiery against future need.

I'm fine with emergency recruitment. In fact, what with all those floods, hurricanes and oil-spills coming, it might not be a bad idea to require able-bodied unemployed to take some kind of training. Defense, I'm not so sure. Isn't the US military [securing distant venues for capital] already harvesting unemployed youth [rendered so by mobile capital]?

Therefore Ruskin's idea is sound and I'd add to Ruskin's my preference for centrally administered free health, legal aid, and all levels of education for all social classes regardless of whether they are tax payers or not.

What's wrong with a guaranteed basic income for everyone? Better yet, a viable social organization?

[LuckyR]

Alias, I expect you agree with me to balance the incentive to do unpleasant paid work against the incentive to idle.

Sure. People don't really want to be idle - they're too volatile and easily bored; forced idleness wrecks their self-esteem; prolonged idleness prompts them to mischief. (Grandmother was right - again!) What they want is to do something meaningful and be appreciated. If we devalue and despise them, they'll retaliate in any petty way they can. If we deprive them and put legal subsistence out of their reach, they have no choice but crime. Also, of course, hardly any work needs to be as unpleasant as it's made by profit-boosting.

That being accepted labourers of all grades need to be kept sound and healthy, as crime free as possible, and able to do work when required including perhaps in defence emergencies. I say this remembering the economic uses of outlaws who were tolerated in medieval England because they formed a reserve of soldiery against future need.

I'm fine with emergency recruitment. In fact, what with all those floods, hurricanes and oil-spills coming, it might not be a bad idea to require able-bodied unemployed to take some kind of training. Defense, I'm not so sure. Isn't the US military [securing distant venues for capital] already harvesting unemployed youth [rendered so by mobile capital]?

Therefore Ruskin's idea is sound and I'd add to Ruskin's my preference for centrally administered free health, legal aid, and all levels of education for all social classes regardless of whether they are tax payers or not.

What's wrong with a guaranteed basic income for everyone? Better yet, a viable social organization?

I don't disagree with the premise and direction of this post, though there are some pretty moderately sized errors in the assumptions use to bolster the arguments.

For example, it is true normal society does poorly when idle, but there is a not insignificantly sized group who seek out idleness. You can see them in the urban centers of just about any city at any time. A sizeable minority (not an overwhelming majority mind you) of the homeless population are not so because of unemployment and the lack of affordable housing. Some will refuse jobs when offered and shelter as well.

Similarly, the US military is downsizing and is not interested in untrainable hard luck cases. We are moving to a small, agile, high tech military with no use for cannon fodder.

Lastly, if there is anything I have learned, nothing worth having should be free. Everything should cost something, even $0.25 is fine. Once things are free, there is a psychological disconnect between cost and value, which is detrimental to the system as a whole.

[Londoner]

I'd say we always start thinking about such questions by forming a mental image of the unemployed person. Then we conclude it is only right to apply pressure to that lazy scrounger, who is probably dealing drugs and beating their wife - or sympathising with and wanting to support this decent person who is suffering for no fault of their own.

Of course in reality there is no such thing as a generic unemployed person, so there is no one answer. We need one answer because benefits are dispensed impersonally by the state, rather than by people who know the claimant as an individual. But we may still assume the state system is still preferable, because it is fair - it is governed by rules. We are afraid that if benefits were administered on an individual basis this would allow the administrator to indulge personal prejudice.

But do we really know this is better? It might be that the unfairness perpetrated by a 'one-size-fits- all' system is actually worse than the unfairness that might be exercised by benefits officers exercising personal discretion, sometimes badly.

I think one could make the same point about all forms of sanctions; the withdrawal of unemployment benefits to an undeserving individual and also to punishments generally. In criminal matters we think that the same crimes deserve the same punishments - but also understand that individual circumstances should be taken into account. For some people, it is evident that they will not react to pressure in the same way as we imagine we would do in their place; if somebody already leads a chaotic life, applying extra pressure is likely to make their behaviour even more chaotic.

So I think the treatment of benefit claimants would benefit from some philosophical 'deconstruction'. I think we ought to recognise that some of the things we expect from the system are unobtainable because they are contradictory. So when thinking about it we should be suspicious of introducing abstractions like 'fairness' because they suggest we can solve the problem by an appeal to absolute abstractions, which is not the case.

[Ruskin]

What's wrong with a guaranteed basic income for everyone? Better yet, a viable social organization?

Potentially there are millions of people who would claim a guaranteed basic income rather than work particularly if their work is low paid and/or unsatisfying. The government would have to find the money from somewhere meaning greater tax burdens on those who do work and/or heavy borrowing and debt. So there has to be some kind of a balance between giving people an incentive to work but not throwing unemployed people out on the street to starve either.

[Alias]

You don't necessarily need new revenue for BI; you roll in the old age security, family supplement, welfare, food stamps, housing subsidies, retraining allowance and unemployment benefits. You save a bundle on all the various administrative and supervisory costs and waste by streamlining the operation under a single agency. The math's all been done http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.php by both conservative and progressive thinkers http://www.basicincome.org/basic-income/

Potentially there are millions of people who would claim a guaranteed basic income rather than work

Potentially, there are also millions of people who would rather do volunteer work than nothing. Let's give out neighbours a tiny bit of credit for not being so much worse than we are ourselves.

[Ruskin]

You don't necessarily need new revenue for BI; you roll in the old age security, family supplement, welfare, food stamps, housing subsidies, retraining allowance and unemployment benefits. You save a bundle on all the various administrative and supervisory costs and waste by streamlining the operation under a single agency. The math's all been done http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.php by both conservative and progressive thinkers

It isn't necessarily the case that everyone should receive the same equal share of benefits some people will need more money to depend on to live than others that's why there are multiple different kinds of benefits to suit different people. So I don't agree with giving everyone a basic income because you're giving money to people who may not need and not giving money to those who need it more. It's better to have a way of giving people a motivation to work but not by threatening to remove all their benefits from them, there people who have been made homeless or have even died because of sanctions. Apparently it isn't a denial of human rights to do this even though it would be in the case of allowing a prisoner to starve so that seems like an odd double standard. I heard a story about someone who set fire to his local jobcentre so he could be arrested and then fed.

Potentially there are millions of people who would claim a guaranteed basic income rather than work Potentially, there are also millions of people who would rather do volunteer work than nothing. Let's give out neighbours a tiny bit of credit for not being so much worse than we are ourselves.

Volunteer work counts as donating to charity though you're donating your free time rather than money. I don't think anyone who doesn't want to work particularly wants to give up their free time to anyone.

[Wilson]

We have to provide enough for everyone to live on, including those unworthy souls who would prefer living on the dole. I have some sympathy for those folks, sad that heredity and life circumstances made them that way, but I don't respect that attitude. Still, we don't want people starving, we don't want people sleeping on the streets, out of basic human kindness as well as the aesthetic unsightliness of it.

So for me, what you want to do is provide enough food to get by, minimal shelter, but zero frills. Make it survivable but slightly unpleasant for the lazy ones, a bit better for those who are there through no fault of their own, but in any case make it barebones enough that a normal person would prefer working so that he or she (and their children) would have a more fulfilling and pleasant life.

I think that for the lazy, undeserving poor, a barracks to sleep in and a meal room with simple, nutritious, boring food. For those more deserving, move to small individual rooms and better food. For those of good character, willing to work but unable to for whatever reason, decent accommodations and meals.

Of course the difficulty would be in deciding who goes into each group, and in getting funding for such a system.

I realize that this is a little different from what the original poster was asking, more having to do with welfare benefits in general. But in the US, unemployment isn't all that different. The system allows you to claim that you looked for work to qualify, and nobody checks, so many people cheat, and get unemployment checks regardless. I'd like to see more government watchdogs, not only for unemployment benefits but also for income tax, medical claims, and financial activity. If nobody's watching, the temptation to cheat for the ethically challenged (and even average people) is strong.

[Belinda]

LuckyR wrote:

Sure. People don't really want to be idle - they're too volatile and easily bored; forced idleness wrecks their self-esteem; prolonged idleness prompts them to mischief. (Grandmother was right - again!) What they want is to do something meaningful and be appreciated.

My agreement is based upon my feeling that useful work brings self esteem, including when this is unpaid voluntary work. The work has to be not the forced work of slaves or peons but work undertaken with a sufficient measure of choice. I don't know what the 'sufficient' would be. Perhaps it varies with expectations.

I am perhaps too prejudiced by my Protestant work ethic background. Maybe there are no conservative aristos in philosophy club forums so they can present the other side of the argument.

[Ruskin]

So for me, what you want to do is provide enough food to get by, minimal shelter, but zero frills. Make it survivable but slightly unpleasant for the lazy ones, a bit better for those who are there through no fault of their own, but in any case make it barebones enough that a normal person would prefer working so that he or she (and their children) would have a more fulfilling and pleasant life.

If say there was a charity that provided people who do not want to work with the "bare bones" as you describe it would that be a charity you would voluntarily give money to? Would there be more deserving people out there you would prefer to give your charitable money to? Or would you prefer all the people who would not like to fund this lifestyle choice be forced to fund it by the state through taxation system?