Re: OT: Inflammatory Post of the Week


Frithiof Andreas Jensen wrote:
> <bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1132597382.749295.274860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > Frithiof Andreas Jensen wrote:
> > > <bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> > > news:1132495603.728615.161270@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<snip>

> > > > reasonably apply for. For my age-group in the Netherlands, the chance
> > > > that any individual application will lead to a job is less than 0.1% -
> > > > about one in seventy get a job in any one year. I've got a lot more to
> > > > offer than the average applicant, but so far all I've had has been a
> > > > couple of job interviews. One would have got me a job, if the project
> > > > had gone through ...
> > >
> > > The failing of the "wellfare state" - we tax wages heavily to spend
> > > money on "wellfare" which - like the magic cauldron - is alledged to create all
> > > good things like job's. At the same time we tax tobacco and spirits to get
> > > *less* of it ... ??
> >
> > My problem is that I'm 62, and the Dutch suffer badly from age-ism.
> > This has very little to do with the Dutch "welfare state" and a lot to
> > do with some very old-fashioned ideas about what the age-structure of
> > the work-force ought to look like.
>
> Why would they want you, when they can have three for the same price on some
> "work support scheme" (or Ten in Poland or Tjekkia). It's the same story
> here; if you are more than 55 they like you better dead. It's cheaper for
> "society".

They might want me because I know more than any of the three they can
get on the support scheme, or from Poland or the Czech Republic. The
job that I would have got - if the proect had gone through - depended
on my knowledge of phased-array ultrasound, which is pretty specialised
stuff.

> > > It could not be that taxes reduces jobs, which then requires more taxes
> > > to pay for unemployment, which then creates more "wellfare" errr people on
> > > "wellfare" - now could it? Of Course Not, Politicians NEVER, EVER make
> > > mistakes(!)!!.
> >
> > Dubbya being a case in point. In fact there are quite a few high tech
> > jobs around in the Netherlands, and I ought to be a strong contender
> > for quite a few of them, but employers prefer to hire younger people if
> > they can persuade themselves that the kiddies can do the job.
> >
> > > Europe is failing - France is just a precursor - and that's we are so
> > > busy whining over America all the time; It is easier to moan over other
> > > peoples behaviour (which we cannot change) than to do something about one's own
> > > mess - especially when one has carefully created the mess over many
> > > years of dilligent effort.
> >
> > Europe's balance of payments and budget deficits are in much better
> > shape than those of the US. If you want to claim that Europe is
> > failing, you will have to find some evidence to support this
> > idiosyncratic point of view.
>
> Simple:
>
> Look at the number of people living on wellfare compared to the total
> population. And then consider how employment statistics find ways to exclude
> those people in order to meet OECD targets for "good housekeeping".
>
> In Denmark we now have 30% of the population between 18 - 60 living 100% off
> wellfare; yet unemployment is below 3%!? I do not believe that 1/3 of the
> population is disabled; so "they" are cooking the books hoping for some
> miracle to appear or maybe that the *** will hold together long enough to
> make it the opposition's problem.
>
> With all that workforce readily available, *why* would anyone employ any
> people with some "marks & blemishes" on? Immigrants, older people, people
> with minor disabilities e.t.c. There is just no room for them in todays
> labour market with their "110%" efficiency targets. That is *Failure* in my
> book.
>
> I can, by making a phone call, get a young person *right now* with 2/3 of
> the salary paid by the State for six months of "job training" and the young
> person cannot refuse because the State will pull his/her wellfare for "not
> being available to the labour market". That is what you are competing
> against my friend. Paid with your own money too!

I've worked with people getting on the job training - they can provide
useful pairs of hands, but you have to spend a lot of time on training
to make the hands useful.

You wouldn't do it if you didn't expect to hang on to a fair proportion
of the candidates past the six months.

They don't compete with me - they represent a different product. A
sensible employer would hire both of us, and get me to train that young
person ....

And the same system that subsidises the workless young is paying my
unemployment benefit

> All of those people, 1/3 of the population, are pacified and manipulated
> with the wellfare system - all paid for by ever increasing taxation (the
> growth rate of government spending has exceeded the growth rate of the GDP
> for decades and eventually the curves are set to meet. In 2015 or so).
>
> So,
>
> - What will those people do once they finally realise that society actually
> do not want their contribution and probably never will?

Vote for someone who wants them to make a contribution as
cannon-fodder? They may be unhappy, but very few of them are suicidal

> - What will those people *do* should there be a recession so that wellfare
> will be cut below subsistence levels?

Start a revolution - which is why modern governments don't use the
starvation weapon. Granting the awesome productivity of modern
agriculture, they don't have to.

> They will, I.M.O., do the exact same as always in Europe; they will find a
> way to start a war (civil- crusade- or otherwise) to exact revenge on "the
> system" and clear some space to grow in.

Probably not. Europe and Russia have learned that violent revolution
saddles you with truely appallingly inefficient governments. Lenin and
Stalin in Russia, Franco in Spain, Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in
Italy were all economic disasters.

Even the American revolution saddled the country with a crowd of
tax-dodgers, and to this day they still cheapskate on providing
services that are most efficiently provided by the state.

Much as you may dislike the system you've got in Denmark, you can
guarantee that a violent revolution would replace it with something
even less effiicient.

> I worry about it:

Though not to the point of finding out what the alternaitves really
are.

> If one spends some time in factory cafeterias, bier-stuben and football
> grounds one will learn that there is a lot of "combustible material" stored;
> people visibly *hate* the failing immigration policies of Europe and they
> especially *despise* Muslims for they are being seen to not contribute to
> society while vocally making demands from it.
>
> All we need is some event to set it off and some person to feed and direct
> the hatred.
>
> The politicians never go such places, they visit the VIP lounges of airports
> and think that everybody are nice, happy people, with the approved set of
> opinions; they do not realise I.M.O. how close the edge really is.

You haven't met the right sort of politicians. The British Labour party
did have people who worked trade union meetings and other places where
they could run into lumpenproletariat. The Dutch Labour Party (Partij
van de Arbeid) seems to work the same way, and the Dutch Socialist
Party aims to mobilise exactly those working class voters

> They are flying blind, producing one report after another that confirms
> what they believe in the first place.

That is a diagnostic failing of right wing politicians - if they don't
like a report, they'll find another, more congenial opinion, even if it
comes from the lunatic fringe.

> > That France is having the same sort of diadvantage minority riots that
> > the U.S. has been having for many years - Watts comes to mind - doesn't
> > make it a failed state, any more than the Rodney King riots in Los
> > Angles made the U.S. a failed state.
>
> The US, being vastly larger and wealthier, is much more resilient than
> France.

The U.S. is four times larger than France, which may be vastly larger
if it were to come to a military confrontation, but France is big
enough to support the same kind of society as the U.S.. Countries like
a Denmark, Australia and the Netherlands are crucially smaller, and you
can see the difference in the way the country is run if you compare
them with places like Germany, France and the U.K. but you can't see a
real difference between the U.S.and the major European countries -
beyond that imposed by the U.S. money-dominated electoral system.

There is no reason to suppose the French would be less resilient than
the U.S. in dealing with social unrest amongst minority groups, and one
good reason to suppose that they would do better, in that their
politicians aren't drawn quite so exclusively from the ranks of the
rich.

--------------------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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