Summations Only

It is good that the unemployed should gain work experience.However ... this is the thing that has not been made clear to me ...What is there to stop a company from saying: "Jobs? No, we have no jobs. We cannot afford to employ anyone. However, we can gain from allowing people to work for us for free, thereby avoiding the awful necessity of us paying actual wages to workers in the conventional sense, so instead let's get workers that we don't have to pay for, thus delighting our shareholders"?Where is the economic incentive for any company to go from slave labor to waged labor?

What makes you think the the Mandatory Work Activity scheme is intended to solve the problem of low aggregate demand? It seems to me to be designed to keep the folks on Jobseekers' Allowance from becoming so idle they're stagnant.

I'm sure nobody has been able to explain that. Largely because nobody has been arguing that's the reason to do unpaid work. We intend to, as long as they keep legitimately trying to find work, and will take steps to ensure they are employable. Downside: risk as initial capital is often needed, there's no guarantee you'll make any money, you might end up bankrupt, meaning getting future loans is difficult etc.If you want to suggest that a solution to being unemployed is for the jobless to become self-employed and somehow know what they're doing. Given we're talking about long term unemployed people we're likely talking about people with poor education and minimal business and financial expertise. Most websites simply don't attract enough attention for that plan to work. Furthermore, you might be interested in maintaining an already existing database, rather than having the capacity to design one from scratch, drum up business to get people using it, website design to keep those you attract and all the other skills needed to get something like this up and running.If you're fortunate enough to be so skilled, finding work is probably not a problem. If you do not possess those skills you canPay for training
Work in exchange for training.
Self-teachYou make it out like the only smart thing to do is self-teach. Maybe that works for you, but I fail to see why we should expect that it is universal. But it isn't like once you are unemployed you are permanently unemployed until that balance shifts. More likely it means something like for every 50 years a person spends in employment, they'll spend 10 years looking for work. It wouldn't necessarily be expected, unless you were simply unemployable, for you to spend several years in a row without a job.I'd rather the bottom of the bottom is employable enough to work six months in every five years rather than just let them build up ever larger difficult to explain gaps in their CV. That problem already exists with people on welfare.

You're simply sidetracking and avoiding the actual issues raised against your position.And aside from mechanics who own their own shops, I am completely unaware of any professional shops in which the mechanics are required to provide their own basic tools. And I am almost certain that no shops exist that require the employees to provide their own car lifts, engine lifts, air compressors, battery chargers, and (especially) replacement parts. I quite possibly did; I don't know. You might want to help me remember by pointing me to the places in my posts where I said "has absolutely never seen an engine, never held or owned a tool, can't get into mechanic school, can't read a book on the subject, and works 20 hours a day leaving no time to do anything else".Do you think you could do that for me? They don't have a "pile of tools", nor a "degree from a technical college in Diesel Engine Repair". And in many instances, neither of those things are requirements for being a diesel mechanic.Anyway; if you're just going to keep avoiding the issue, then there's no point continuing with you. I'm here to have a discussion, not watch you fall all over yourself trying to justify your down-right stupid declaration that people who want work experience are better off if, instead of accepting unpaid work experience positions, they instead go out and have experience for which they not only aren't paid, but for which they have to actually pay.Your position is just stupid.

Have you not met crashfrog before? Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

No, in fact "reduce unemployment" has been the stated rationale from the get-go. I quote from message 5:

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We have a problem with youth unemployment in this country (and across Europe) and I guess that some of those may never have been employed at all. Also there are those who have been unemployed for extended periods (the "long term unemployed") who may have worked at one point but who have lost the "habit" of work and who might arguably benefit from work experience for that reason.

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The problem of unemployment has been the focus from the beginning. I don't see how that would be different in a "work for free" situation. I think the odds of an employer providing significant capital investment in terms of tools, access to materials, and the like to an employee who they weren't paying is just vanishingly small. With no promise of a future paycheck to keep them coming in, what would prevent the "employee" from just stealing the tools and materials? Yes, that's certainly my position. The barriers to entry are lower, the work is self-directed and therefore more appropriate for your specific, individual needs, and you keep all of the results of the work. There's just nothing about this "work for free" nonsense that even comes close. No, you're right, in fact we hope that the pool of unemployed people is constantly cycling through, because the time you spend unemployed has persistent, unrecoverable effects on the rest of your career. Unfortunately what we're seeing in both of our countries is that the people who are unemployed are unemployed for so long that they stop looking altogether, we're in a situation where millions have been unemployed for so long that their unemployment benefits have simply expired; we're not cycling the unemployed like we would be in an economy closer to full employment.And that's the issue - our policies can't just be about re-arranging the deck chairs (you know, on the Titanic.) It's the overall rate of unemployment that we have to target, that's a function of aggregate demand, and the result - as always - is expansionary monetary policy to stimulate demand. I think you'll find that relatively few people are going to quit their jobs so that another person can have a chance at it, and that relatively few businesses are going to spend weeks training an employee just to fire him after six months to start fresh with someone new. Businesses aren't going to fire experienced workers in order to hire inexperienced ones, except under a very narrow set of circumstances. (Circuit City, a major US electronics retailer, did that a few years ago; remember what happened to them?) Yes. It's part of the reason for the decline in aggregate demand - people who go from working income to welfare income reduce their spending. Wouldn't it make the problem worse if their welfare checks got even smaller? Of course it would.

No, I'm addressing the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about. We can't talk about employment using jobs and work conditions that exist only in your mind. Yeah, but you don't know anything about anything, so what you're unaware of is hardly diagnostic. I didn't say you said that. Again - those are restatements of the problems you raised in your post. Then there's quite a bit more standing in the way of their employment as a diesel mechanic than just their lack of experience, now isn't there? Recall what you said:

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Even if experience fixing diesel engines is the only thing separating them from a life of welfare benefits and a life of productive, meaningful employment?

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You were talking about someone whose lack of experience was their only obstacle. Now you're talking about someone who has many obstacles, including their lack of tools and their lack of education. As always, you're changing positions as fast as you can to avoid pertinent objections. But, fine, let's address your newly changed position. Maybe better to solve those problems first, eh? Experience can come during education, and students can frequently get tools for cheap. How does "unpaid employment" get your untrained, penniless individual into schools or get him tools? Be specific.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Well, that's not fair. I always address objections head-on, I state my position clearly and don't change it as I defend it unless I'm genuinely convinced by the counter-arguments, and when I am, I'm explicit in my recognition that I was convinced by my interlocutor's argument. That's more than can be said for many participants at EvC, who frequently alter their position mid-stream and then try to pretend like that's what they were saying all along.Nobody at EvC has admitted to being wrong as often as I have. Absolutely nobody. Seriously, go back through my posts and look at how frequently I admit to being wrong. I think my third post at EvC was an admission of error, and I still remember what it was - I said that birds, in general, adapt to fly or to swim, not both. What a stupid thing to have said - ducks, of course, being the tremendously obvious counterexample. I think admitting when you're wrong is a strength, and it's something I've noted about you, too, CS - you admit when you're wrong. It's earned my respect. I wish it was returned.

But they're not "employable enough" to do that. They're unemployed enough to do that.

I don't follow.

I don't see where it says that these schemes address 'low aggregate demand'. Instead I see these schemes as being useful to address some specific groups of unemployed people: The Long term unemployed and the young. The relative risks are dependent on specific situations. Those persistent, unrecoverable effects on a person's career that the scheme intends to partially ameliorate. The idea is to try and get them back into the cycle. Nobody disagrees with that. I don't see that as really being the topic here though. This isn't about cutting the rate of the unemployed, as great a goal as that is. It's about managing the present unemployed. I'm sure that's what we'll find. How is it relevant to what I was talking about? Is this more simple mindedness?People lose their jobs every day. As business decide to cut their workforce for whatever reasons. Also every day, other businesses decide to expand their workforce. Furthermore there is natural attrition as people quit, get fired, go on long term leave etc., It's an invisible hand, not a mandated turnaround.Some people lose a job, and pick another one up within six months. Great stuff. Others find themselves languishing in unemployment. Once there, the chances of getting employed start to plummet, so you're out of that cycle.There are several possible ways we can try and manage unemployment. We can let it be, let the invisible hand do what it will so to speak. The result of that system appears to be that some fraction of the unemployed become almost unemployable due to their lack of relevant and recent work experience.Another way to do it would be to try and distribute the overall 'unemployment time' between a larger number of people. Move heaven and earth, within the law, to get people who are in danger of becoming long term unemployed back into work - even if their only payment for a while is in welfare benefits. The downside to this seems to me to be a greater number of people in medium term unemployment. Why would their welfare cheques get smaller?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I don't really want to derail this thread into a discussion about the unpleasantness of your responses. You spun my photographer assistant analogy six ways from sideways. You completely twisted the example away from its point towards supporting your own position. Don't you see how you totally avoid the actual issues raised against your position. That is, getting the invaluable benefit of watching how to be a good photographer as an example of getting experience without doing the job.Later when Mod tries to explain this to you, you're all: "How are you gonna watch him while you're at Starbucks?" Again completely dodging the actual point. But rather than honestly try to understand the counter-arguments, you use them in any way you can to maintain your unchanging position. Its as if your trying to turn our positions into being wrong in any way possible rather than just seeing them for what they are trying to be. It comes off as completely disingenuous, and frankly, dishonest even. That's not the charge, though. And that's prolly just a function of the huge number of posts you have. What percentage of them are you admitting you're wrong? I'm not going through almost 19 thousand posts, crash. I do respect your creativity in being able to spin peoples' positions in so many different directions than they intended As far as addressing objections head on, how about replying to Message 79 and Message 92.

If an unemployed person is forced to work for no pay, then the fact that he has done what he was compelled to do doesn't tell potential employers that he's employable. It tells potential employers that he was unemployed, and that no-one wanted to hire his labor for actual money. It's not a recommendation.

It depends on what an employer considers employable. For some 'low-end' jobs that might be as simple as 'Can show that they turn up on time every day, aren't constantly off sick and don't get fired within a few months.'And of course, if you work particularly well, you might even have evidence that you are a particularly eager and bright worker, whose clever idea about where to leave the collapsed boxes saved the company 500 man-hours each year.This of course will only work if you are in fact a decent hard working person. It affords them an opportunity to show others that they have recently experienced working life and that they are willing to work hard for future employers.In some cases someone who has done some recent work is considered 'more employable' than someone who hasn't been in a recent work place for 3 years.As a universal scheme - I have no idea if in practice it is of net benefit. But I see no reason to suppose that it is a bad idea for all people under all circumstances.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I didn't claim that they did. That is, in fact, the problem with these "schemes"; they attempt to address unemployment without addressing aggregate demand, the cause of unemployment. Because it is what you were talking about:

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I'd rather the bottom of the bottom is employable enough to work six months in every five years rather than just let them build up ever larger difficult to explain gaps in their CV.

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How else do you create a rotating system of "six months on, every five years" except by having qualified people leave positions so that unqualified people can take their place? A business that cuts its workforce by 20 doesn't turn around and hire 20 new people, so that can't be a source of the "unemployment cycling" we're talking about. Well... but they don't. That's the problem that causes increased unemployment; businesses reduce their workforces in aggregate, and relatively few expand their workforce. And the businesses with constant workforces are trying as hard as they can to minimize turnover, so there's relatively little hope for "cycling" there. Why "manage" it when we can reduce it? Isn't that what's being called for in Europe? "Austerity"?