Benefits Wreck The British Work Ethic,, A DUH Moment

[bonnie]

Wonder if the light bulb will go on in America. Wonder how educated you need to be to come to this very obvious conclusion

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...udy-claims.html

Britons have become reliant on the benefits system, according to a new study

Britons have become reliant on the benefits system, according to a new study

The stigma that once went with claiming benefits rather than working for a living has been lost, a study has claimed.

The work ethic that inspired successive generations has ebbed away in the face of the welfare state.

Over the past decades each generation has seen more and more people milking the benefit system, which has sapped their will to work, the research from the Centre for Economic Performance said.

The findings come at a time when both major parties have committed themselves to cutting numbers who live on incapacity benefit.

There are 2.6million adults who claim the handout meant for the sick and incapable, with around 20 per cent thought to be fully able - but unwilling - to work.

The report said: 'It has long been recognised that generous unemployment benefits create moral hazard - workers are partly protected against the consequences of being unemployed, so they are less likely to search for jobs with the same intensity.'

Most economists point to oil price shocks and the collapse of the post-war system of fixed exchange rates in the 1970s for the decline in employment.

Subsequent blows such as housing market collapses or banking failures are also blamed.

The report in the journal CentrePiece said: 'A decline in the work ethic, induced by the expansion of the welfare state, is key to understanding European unemployment.'

Researchers looked at answers from countries across Europe to the World Values Survey, a regular poll carried out in more than 90 countries since 1980.

They examined numbers of people in different age groups who said they thought it was never justifiable to cheat to get benefits.

They found that people in their 40s - born in the 1960s - are 12 per cent more likely than those in their 70s - who were born in the 1930s, before the days of all-encompassing welfare states - to say benefit cheating is justifiable.

For those born in the 1970s, those who would never falsely claim benefits were 19 per cent fewer than those born in the 1930s.

For people born in the 1980s, the gap rose to 24 per cent. The report said the rise in numbers prepared to cheat the benefits system held good regardless of the political views or educational level of the individual.

'This decline in the work ethic could be one of the major factors explaining the evolution of unemployment since 1945,' Mr Michau said.

'When workers from the baby boom generation entered the labour market in the 1970s, they had a weaker work ethic than their parents and the moral hazard problem of unemployment benefits became much more severe.'

In Britain, unemployment grew in the 1970s and 1980s, a decade during which many of those without jobs chose to sign on for sickness benefits instead of less generous unemployment payouts.

At least half a million incapacity benefit claimants are thought to have no real disability.

Both Labour and Tories now plan to test those who claim they are unfit to work, and to use state support schemes to persuade claimants to take jobs.

[bonnie]

HEY BONNIE

WOW how to get people to not work live off

the government

dgrimm60

We have done a excellent job of producing parasites on society since LBJ and his big war on poverty

[Ted Oplinger]

The light bulb was banned under Bush. All we have now are CFR bulbs, and many of these take much longer to come up to full brightness, compared to their incandescent counterparts.

By the time our lights are burning brightly, we'll be wondering like the Brits how we came to such a mean estate...then Cap and Tax says there's too much carbon dioxide in the air, so the power plants have to shut down...and well, off go the lights again....power comes back on, then it takes a while to get bright again, then...well, you get the picture...