job seekers and the unemployed

The job centre The job centres name suggests that it is a place where you go to get a job, however, my experience with it has been less than positive. Many of the people there are simply ticking boxes and following the system instead of thinking about what is best for the people looking for work. I have also had instances of appointments being made for me that I'm not told about so my claim can be closed to make the numbers look better, requirements to look at websites and papers that do not have any relevance to my job search, training courses that I'm promised never materialise and when they do they are not the course I asked for and an obsession with getting people to use the government website for everything. I am sure that many of these actions are well meaning, as I believe that people on the whole are good but the structure is too inflexible. Job seekers There are jobs that need doing and the recent policy that will force people to work cleaning streets or working for a charity if they have been claiming benefits for a long period of time may be a step in the right direction, but perhaps instead of forcing them to work it would be better to simply offer the work to people. most people want a job, I'm sure there are some exceptions, however, the majority of people on benefits would leap at a job if they where offered one. The solution I have come up with revolves round the job centre as a repository of job vacancies, rather than a bureaucratic office where paperwork gets done for the sake of doing the paperwork. The job centre would offer to all companies the opportunity to have someone who is currently out of work assigned to a position that they make available, the company would initially pay nothing for this labour, the hours done would be equivalent to the amount of benefits being granted to the individual. For example if they receive housing, council tax and job seekers coming to a total of "700/month the position would be for 110 hours/month at "6.31 (minimum wage) and instead of paying the person benefits they would then have a wage and a job. No company would turn up its nose at free labour even if it is a bit unskilled to start with and it would cost no more than the benefits the person would be entitled to if they did not have the job, each position would only be for 6 months at a maximum at which point the company would then have to employ the individual themselves or let them go, and after training them to do the job for 6 months they would be ideally qualified to do that job in a full time capacity. To prevent companies simply using this as the source of all their labour no company should be allowed to have more than 1 person on this scheme or more than 1 for every 10 full time employees (35+hours/week on at least a year long contract) they employ in the UK (whichever is larger). To encourage companies to hire the person after or before the 6 month period they would be prevented from submitting any more positions to the job centre until they have employed the individual with a 12 month cool-down if they decide not to hire the individual. For example a company employs 30 people so they make 3 positions available in the job centre which are immediately filled, these 3 people work for them for 6 months and the company decides to hire only one of them after that period, they can then only submit one position to the job centre, after another 12 months they can then submit another 2, whereas if the same company gave all 3 a full time position after only 4 months they would then immediately be eligible to submit 3 more positions to the job centre. This would solve unemployment overnight and create more jobs and train people to fill them, it would permanently get people off benefit and into a job they actually want, ultimately the system would get to a point where there are many more positions than candidates and companies may offer incentives to attract potential employees thus further reducing the burden on the welfare system. The end result would be a job centre where you go in and look at the job point and there are dozens maybe even hundreds of jobs in your local area that you can choose from rather than spending weeks or months sending CVs to no avail. There would of course be some people that don't want to work but they will be a lot easier to distinguish and target if those that do want to work can. Other benefits "A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members" (pope John Paul II), and in this instance I am referring to the disabled and the elderly, disability benefit among many others should not be the target of cuts unless you want to drag the reputation of the country through the mud however there are a great many disabled people who would like to be able to work and with the scheme above those that do want to work would be able to and as a result these claims would likely also decrease. Computers Vs. people The current policy of making all potential benefit claimants use the website instead of phoning the job centre is quite distasteful and in the long term wont even reduce costs, sure you save money by employing less people to man the telephones but those people will then be unemployed and will claim benefits, this helps nobody, if people want to claim by telephone there is no reason why they should be prevented from doing so. As computers become ever more sophisticated it will become easier and easier to replace people with machines, however this is not a good idea, especially where interactions with 'customers' is necessary as (I could not find a suitable reference source, so simply in my opinion) most people would rather talk to a real person (preferably without a strong accent) than a machine. The distribution of wealth The wealth and power of late has increasingly been moving away from the majority towards an increasingly elite, rich and powerful minority, this needs to be reversed, the whole point of a democracy is to give power to the people. Minimum wage and living wage At present the minimum wage is below the living wage by a substantial margin with over 80% of people saying that the current minimum wage is inadequate (sourced from Wolverhampton TUC) and this needs to be addressed, the sooner the better, as this will also end the farce of it not being worth taking minimum wage jobs for many people on benefits due to the increased cost of travel and food when they are working as opposed to claiming benefits. Imports or exports Imports are currently taxed in a complicated and unwieldy fashion with rates varying from nothing to as much as 85%, however largely the point is not to, in fact, tax these products (in most cases) but to tax money going out of the country to avoid a situation where imports outweigh exports. A large swath of bureaucracy and problems could be avoided by simply doing just that, if the rate is set correctly it would have no affect on genuine business but would hinder people moving large sums of money to offshore tax holes and it would also hit businesses who do silly things with shell companies to avoid paying UK tax. The rate should be scaling just like income tax, the larger the amount of money you try to move out of the country the larger the tax on it, with the first "5000 each year at 0% so it doesn't affect regular individuals going on holiday and such with very large amounts as high as 50% to hit companies that export their profits very hard along with wealthy tax avoiders The richest 1% Once the tax on exporting money is in place it will make targeting the richest in society much easier as it removes their threat of simply taking all their money and leaving the country. Yes some of them would still leave but I don't think that's a serious problem, nobody, no matter how well trained should be worth thousands of times what another person is, and any business can replace their over payed executives if needed with people who are likely at least as good. 10% Vs. 50% If you cut the income of the richest 10% by 50% you could double the income of the poorest 50% and still have a lot left over, surely it makes sense to annoy 10% of your voters to practically guarantee getting the vote from 50% of them? This would allow a doubling of the minimum wage that would mean that coupled with the welfare reforms previously mentioned everyone would have a much nicer standard of living, and frankly nobody needs to be earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a month, most people would be ecstatic to earn that much in a year. I am well aware that this example is extremely radical and would probably cause riots if it was actually implemented however the principle is sound and a more gradual approach at the same thing would do wonders for your popularity among the majority of the populous