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DanS
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Kickball Capital of the World
Jan 1970
time: 00:17
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Unemployment benefits last for such a short time anyway, although they are generous in amount compared to most countries. Depends on the state and where in the business cycle we are (an unwritten rule). You might be able to get away with minimal documentation.
Last edited by DanS on 18-04-2005 at 07:07
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Bereta_Eder
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A good deal of it is structural unemployement that's why you'll hear many voices about the "need fopr a flexible market place". That basically means the trimming of social security, insurances to the workers, no layoff pay etc. So one can be excused for not wanting "a flexible work market". Now of course no matter what laws are in place the companies will do what they want and simply violate the laws with the tolerance of the state.
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Lawrence of Arabia
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of the Gulag Archipelago
Apr 2001
time: 06:17
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here is NBER paper no 6111 by Abowd, Kramartz et al. They studied the effects of the minimum wage increases on youths in both France an the US.
quote:
"To check for an effect of the minimum wage, the authors tracked the employment of workers whose wage, just prior to the increase, was above the previous minimum wage but below the new higher minimum wage. For French men aged 25 to 30 who were in this marginal category, an increase of 1 percent in the minimum wage reduced their probability of keeping their job by 4.6 percent."
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quote:
In France, the minimum wage has been rising in real terms in the last five decades. Between 1951 and 1994, the French minimum wage rose from 1.95 francs an hour to 6.92 francs an hour in 1994, both measured in 1970 francs, an increase of 255 percent. The French minimum wage in 1994, measured in 1997 dollars, was over $6.50 an hour. |
from these conclusions, we can draw to implicit conclusions
1) unemployment and the minimum wage are strongly corrolated
2) the higher the minimum wage, the larger the effect of a 1% change in the minimum wage is.
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Provost Harrison
LoA, you are out of touch of reality. There may be a hardcore few who really do want to avoid work and they should be clamped down upon, but are you honestly ignorant and stupid enough to believe that all people are willfully on the dole and it is totally their decision whether someone employs them? |
It's not what he thinks.
He thinks that if you have employement benefits, you won't be threatened of immediate starvation, and thus you won't happily take the first crap job somebody generously offers.
If you had no unemployment benefits during that time (and no other form of financial support: family, charities...), you'd have accepted the first MacJob or janitor job that you'd have encountered.
Besides, if there was no minimal wage, employers could freely offer jobs with extremely low wages (the extreme low-wage market is mostly inexistent in the EU15), and thus you'd have much more choice among terrific jobs like shoe-cleaner.
As it is, because of the unemployment benefits and minimal wage, you would have never accepted a job that barely provided the survival minimum, and that was out of your branch. In this logic, it shows there's a problem with you (you're a lazy bum, that is even demanding when he should beg for any source of money, not that you're specifically to blame, because everybody who gets benefits does so), and there's a problem with the market (it can't offer survival-wage jobs, and as such, many people are unamployed instead of filling their natural place in the market).
I hope you understand that I find this ideology ignoble and dangerous. It is ignoble because I consider that, in our rich societies, any person who works should have acceptable standards of living (minimal wage argument), and that we can afford not to let our unemployed starve to death (benefits argument).
Besides, even from a libertarian standpoint, I think this idea goes completely against freedom: freedom is to choose your course of action without unbearable pressure and coercion. When the economic situation forces somebody to become an underpaid tomato-picker, he is not free, even though the coercion doesn't come from the big bad state (something the libbies seem to have an unhealthy fetish about). When you have the choice between accepting the first source of income you encounter, and starving, you have no valid choice. To say the contrary would be akin to saying "when the State forces you to do something or threatens to execute you if you don't, you have a valid choice"; it's false, and the libbies understand it when it comes to the State. They'd be greatly served to understand that it can come from non-State related situations as well.
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Drogue
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Omnipresent conscience
Oct 2002
time: 05:17
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While LoA is largely right, in that less unemployment benefit means more people accept the worst, lowliest job that comes along quickly, in terms of economics this can be a very bad thing.
Jobs are sticky - it's quite a bit of hassle to change jobs, so people won't change immediately that a better offer becomes available, as unless they were actively looking for a job, they wouldn't know it had done. Would you rather someone finds a job 2 weeks after being made redundant, that pays $20 000 per year, or would you rather they waited for 2 months until one that paid ~$40 000? If they choose the first, they'll probably stick with it for a while, as they have less time to search for another one, will probably only look in their area and thus may well have it for a year or so before they find a better deal.
6 weeks extra unemployment, in that case, would mean a better job for a year. That year's pay would be ~$33 333 in the better job, or ~$19 200 in the less well paid.
Accepting the next job that comes along isn't always in societies or that person's interest. Indeed, unemployment benefit for those extra 6 weeks, even to the level of the other job, would cost a just over £2000, whereas they'd pay more than that in extra tax over the year.
Unemployment benefit can mean that everyone benefits, and it paying for itself.
Last edited by Drogue on 19-04-2005 at 20:25
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Drogue
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Omnipresent conscience
Oct 2002
time: 05:17
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Exactly 
Even that still doesn't take the personal cost into account - most people would enjoy working in a job that gives the responsibilties, worth and something they've studied for (in the case of grad jobs). The personal cost of someone with a good education and previously in a very good job having to work in McDs to survive would be huge.
However long term unemployment is a big problem. I mean, I can understand for many people without qualifications, having the option between earning a low wage and getting virtually the same on the dole it isn't the best incentive.
The only solution I've thought of is to pay everyone the unemployment benefit. That way if you're unemployed, you can just about survive, however *any* work will make you better off. It'll mean average earners pay ~£50 a week more in tax and get ~£50 a week more from the government. SO yes, tax would need to rise to pay for it, but most average people would get the same back. Obviously higher tax-payers would pay more than they get, and lower earners, like the unemployed, would pay less than they earn, but it gives an incentive for those right at the bottom of the earnings scale to work more, and guarantees a minimum quality of life - survival.
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18-04-2005 06:54
) than as a burger-flipper. He benefits as a whole from having a job in his branch, and society as a whole benefits from the greater wealth he produces.
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