Moving people from Benefits(Welfare) to employment

Moving people from benefits (welfare) to employment Not just a British problem.

A big problem in year 2023 is going to get bigger by 2050.

It is understandable that the British government wish to move 1 million people from total reliance on benefits ( pensions are not a benefit) and into some form of paid employment. Any sensible governing body would seek to do this.

BUT

The aim, the wish, the intentions, have to be conditioned by reality. Are there 1 million jobs available? Are these jobs within physical (geographic) reach of those totally reliant on benefits? By definition these are people with low incomes ( state benefits) and zero assets, so they probably do not have their own mechanised transport- in fact the same governments are imposing green policies on their populations which are deliberately aimed to reducing the ability of the less well-off having private means of transport and only a government bureaucrat will assume they can use public transport- they assume this because they personally do not need to use it or do not live in areas devoid of public transport.

Are these totally reliant people capable of doing the work that is available? Will employers be willing to take on “reluctant” staff? Who will decide- and what terms of reference will they use, - who is capable of doing what work? State bureaucrats are simply not in a position to judge if a person is suitable to do a particular job of work; only the employer has the knowledge necessary to make that judgment. Is the intention to make employers take responsibility for whether a person gets benefits stopped?

Like so many governmental policies ( from all political parties)- they rely on advice and support from their civil servants- Bureaucrats - who seem to have very little real-world sense. All spheres of the political spectrum fall into this situation, they want a solution to a “problem” and they rely on advice from people who are not actually equipped to provide it. A degree in political science, or a lifetime working in government offices are not much use when it comes to solving unemployment problems.

Automation and Artificial Intelligence are only just beginning to be active, over the next 5 to 30 years they are going to remove the necessity for unskilled and limited skill labour. This will apply to administrative tasks as well as physical labour.

One effect of the British government announcement is that employers will be expecting a million more people being forced into seeking work and so they can hold down wages at a lower level than before. If the government then try enforcing a higher minimum wage, they will speed up the automation of the work and so increase unemployment.

The unpleasant reality is that, in the long term ( defined as 50 to 500 years) the only way to avoid having over 10 million unemployed (that estimated number is only in Britain-- way more in the rest of the world) Is to reduce the size of the population. This will also take the pressure off the environment, but how to do this is one question to be answered Another is are the political systems and the abilities of their administrative staff, going to be capable of dealing with this?

These are social as well as economic problems, it is also a fact that automation and mass production requires an ever-increasing number of “consumers” to make the investment justifiable. So, we will be in a position of wanting to reduce the population to cope with the social and economic problems, caused by unemployment, while at the same time needing larger numbers of people to buy products which are made by the very processes that cause the unemployment. Every solution creates a new problem, just as every problem requires a new solution. We are on a circular path to nowhere.