The latest idea from the Socialist Party in Germany: Compel the long-term unemployed to work for zero pay, in order to prevent their children from growing up to be unemployed themselves.
Many thanks to Nash Montana for translating this piece from Compact online:
SPD planning shock therapy for children of unemployed parents
Unfortunately, this is not satire: By way of humiliation of recipients of Hartz-IV [the final stage of a series of government reforms in German unemployment and welfare benefits], their children will be injected with a maximum fear of unemployment. A slave project from the house of the SPD, the idea is that the “ineptitude” of their parents must not be “inherited” by their children!
Last year the minister of employment Andrea Nahles (SPD), tried to top her ridiculous idea of the one-euro job by offering 80-cent jobs to refugees. And now for the coming year, this cynicism will be surpassed with a brand new ridiculous idea: With the cooperation of the Department of Labor (BA) in Bremerhaven, Nahles wants to start a pilot project in 2018: 3,000 long-term unemployed people will have to work for the common and the corporate good! Hourly pay: Zero cents!
You read that right: These slaves will have to work for three years without a claim for compensation, for the value of the Hartz-IV amount [€391 per month for a single recipient]. State-sanctioned existence on a pilot light as compensation for hard work. Whoever refuses to do so, will have his “basic insurance” stripped down. Nahles’ partner in this project is the head of the department for labor, Detlev Scheele. It’s probably interesting to note that he also is a bona fide member of the SPD.
The managing director for the Department of Labor, Susanne Ahlers, loudly propagandized that unemployed people can be integrated back into society through these slave jobs. That in this manner they could also proudly show their children: Look here, I, too am adding to the general well-being of the common good!
What happens if the offspring should ask why the parents aren’t being paid for their work?
Wrong question, since the uncompensated slaving away — as we further learn — is meant to prevent the children of unemployed parents from growing up to be unemployed as well, so that the need for Hartz-IV cannot further — verbatim — be “inherited”… Unemployment, a result of failed policies, therefore is now defined as an inheritable genetic defect. Such discrimination through the biological use of metaphors and imagery has not been indulged in around here since 1945.
The main thing is the message that is being conveyed to the children of these slaves: If you do not accept whatever dirty undesirable job that comes along, then we will make an unpaid worker out of you, a slave, like your worthless father or your worthless mother. It is economic shock therapy for the little ones. And since children often identify with their parents, they will be broken and be beaten into spineless human capital.
That said, this new slave project has additional advantages for the “free” market: Because of course corporations will save money in wages. They don’t even have to pay the ridiculous “basic insurance”. No, because that’s what the Job Center pays for — which of course means, the taxpayer pays for it.
And this is where we have arrived after the installment of job-creation measures for first generation Hartz-IV recipients — who can still remember the idiotic “I&AG propaganda”? — we now have arrived at bare bottom: For the unemployed it’s going to be hell, and for the still-employed it’s a threat to tremblingly endure Germany’s metamorphosis into a low-wage country.
This pilot project by the SPD isn’t even a betrayal of their clientele — it is instead an outright spitting in their faces. But there is reason to be concerned that even this perversion, should any protest against it remain silent, will be surpassed by yet another, even more insane, one…
I don’t think that unemployment is genetic but I do think it is environmental.
Here in the US we see multiple generations of welfare recipients.
I think it was the state of Alabama that recently changed their law regarding food stamps. Now, if you are able bodied with no dependents, in order to receive food stamps you must work 20 hours/week or be enrolled in a training program or be a confirmed volunteer at some approved entity. From what I read food stamp use dropped dramatically. I think that is probably due to so many people working for cash and collecting benefits as if they are unemployed. In other words, fraud.
Um, is this a progressive, liberal blog?
Those people won’t be on ZERO wages, they will receive their welfare benefits.
This conservative idea has often been floated around often but it usually gets shut down by liberals: if people are on benefits and are capable of working, they must work for benefits. This should weed the leeches out of the system.
Right?
My political opinions are irrelevant to this. Nash is a dedicated, hard-working translator. She wanted to translate this, and did, so I posted it.
Maybe she’ll show up here later to explain why the story made her so furious.
This is not a “conservative idea” that’s floating around Germany. There are no conservative ideas floating around in that country.
Although I decided to translate the Compact mag version, there are numerous other articles on the same original article posted in the TAZ, the daily Berlin newspaper. So this is legit.
Also the people will not be receiving wages. They will receive minimum living allowance and basic insurance. That’s what people get in prison. Food and water and, maybe, shelter.
[ad-hominem redacted].
I also have to disagree with Compact being a leftist publication. They have enough edgy articles in every daily issue that show me they are anything but left. Maybe liberal at times… for advertising money purpose, but hardly left.
One of their latest articles is about the systematic dumbing down of German women who chose African and middle eastern lovers and have had extremely bad experiences.
They have an interview posted with an AfD woman who pleads for Germany to stop being so preoccupied with serving the whims of LGBT etc and worry more about German children’s future.
They repeatedly speak against the infringement of free speech in Germany and Europe.
The terrible futures of Germany’s “rainbow children”.
How Merkel is homosexualizing the CDU.
How the country is in danger of imminent civil war.
How hopefully the Gutmenschen who help smuggling people into Europe will soon face prison
Etc etc etc.
Nothing liberal there. End of story, and I’m sticking to it. 🙂
I can only agree with Nash about Compact: This is one of the very few patriotic and pro-worker mags out here. Note that there is a difference between pro-Labor and Socialism. Socialism only pretends to be the voice of the working class. In reality, they are promoting the secret Goals of a small intelligentsia.
😉
About the socialistic SPD: Back in the days when the GDR still existed, the SED(totally dominant socialist GDR party) and the SPD frequently had talks. Now I know what they were about: Exchange of Ideas how to implement the force to work in the GDR to whole Germany
This work force was lended by the state to the VEB(people’s own factories). The VEBs were owned by the GDR. Now these “VEBs” are multinational cooperations and Enterprises owned by the local administrations. For the worker there is no difference in this case for whom they are working.
😉
My point is about the idea itself. Not whether, in Germany, it comes from conservatives or not. Or who it has come from in Germany in this case.
Nash Montana, I disagree with your statement that they won’t be receiving wages. They will be. Your statement is hyperbolic. You can complain that they are not as high as you want them to be but they are wages by definition. Since when did something have to provide more than subsistence and ‘basic insurance’ to be classified as wages? Never.
Now: can people discuss the idea on the merits? Hyperbolic CLASSIFICATIONS of the idea (like slavery) is something I associate with the left, because they are always at it.
So are ad-hominems something I associate with the left. On the right, people are expected to argue on the merits.
This isn’t slavery either. By definition. Nor is it prison. By definition. All that is hyperbole.
Now, I see the merits of the idea. Do we have any arguments against the idea here? Any ARGUMENTS? You know, that conservative thing called an argument, a set of reasons?
Hey Cautious Billy-Bob,
here in Germany, social security works in a different way: It basically is a mandatory insurance. Pensions, health care, invalidity: You are MANDATED to pay into it.
Thus in case you need the insurance, you must be paid an INSURANCE BENEFIT, not a wage.
(Invented by the Uber-Marxist Otto von Bismarck ;-))
And did you notice that the work for their Basic Needs is compulsory, you CANNOT choose your employer. Freedom of work choice is a basic human right. Typically disregarded by socialist government. If you cannot choose your employer, you are a serf. Or a slave.
Put National in front of Socialist Party and what do you get in German?
Nazism and Communism are the 2 sides of the leftist coin of the realm. And people wonder how they make common cause with the Islamists……
…will be surpassed by yet another, even more insane, one…
The next step will likely be the erection of a string of standardized work camps (Standard Lager, Stalag) where those lazy unemployed will perform forced labor, under the banner “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work will set you free)
For those ingrates who refuse to work even in the camps I’m sure the highly efficient German industry can supply modern gas fired (low CO2) ovens to deal with that problem and to keep the camps neat and tidy.
Wouldn’t that be a novel solution?
…Though… novel?… hmm… forget I said that.
I wonder if immigrants are going to be affected by the rules.
I’m going to go on a limb and guess that free riders were not a big problem before Merkel began importing hoards of unskilled, low-IQ, sociopathic Africans and Middle Easterners whose only interface with authority is to accept the checks and make sure police cars stay out of the sharia zones.
Since immigrants are more-or-less exempt from most laws anyway, one has to look for a political purpose in the crafting of the law. My guess is that it’s another way to make the native German population feel oppressed and under the heel of government bureaucrats. Germany for a long time has claimed to provide a safety net for its citizens. Now, the government is telling its (productive) citizens that should they be unlucky enough to ever need assistance, they will be even more at the mercy of the welfare bureaucrats than they imagined in their worst thoughts.
Doubtful. They’d riot and beat the authorities to a pulp and burn the place down. I don’t think she has a clue of what to do with them except throw money at them to placate them.
It’s meant for the natives. Merkel wants to break them. Every authoritarian regime has to do that to retain power.
Ah… May I suggest you re-read my posting?
In my opinion, not all unemployment can be blamed on laziness or is the fault of the recipient. Much unemployment in our day and age is structural, the consequence of automation making many blue collar jobs redundant, or due to financial manipulation of entire economies which results in the destruction of wages and surplus income in the hands of consumers, therefore reducing demand for products and services.
Not everyone can be retrained to be an information technology worker either, and those jobs are next to disappear too, when the information revolution catches up to and starts nipping at the heels of the upper class white collar worker. The real wild card is the effect AI will have upon the workplace when it finally makes its debut. At that point, all jobs will be redundant (except politicians, who will pass laws banning AI from political office, leaving government securely in the realm of fools and incompetents).
I believe the elite solution is to foment war or plague, and kill most of us off, leaving the survivors in a kind of high-tech feudalism. Automation and AI would make most humans redundant, and expendable as useless eaters.
I would ban automation or heavily tax it to make it so there was no cost difference between employing humans or machines to do a task. And force a return to sound money, so economies could not be manipulated at the whims of central banks. Corporations who close factories and move them to slave labor jurisdictions on the other side of the world while continueing to sell the finished products back to the countries whose workers they impoverished would also receive my attentions. My issue is that they privatize the profits while imposing tremendous costs on the taxpayer for social services for their former workforce.
Anyway, I could rant for quite some time, but my point has been made. Not all the unemployed are unemployed because they are lazy.
The Baron joined the ranks of the unemployed after the Depression of ’08. And he’s never been lazy.
This website, started by him as a way to stay in contact with me while he was on long-distance commutes, grew incrementally into what it is now. Only in looking back can we see what a Garden of Forking Paths it has been…
I agree with your assessment of current banking schemes and the movement of labor to what are essentially slave states. That is not how a genuine free market works. But AI is another story…we will “progress” as long as humans continue to innovate. It’s in our nature. What may happen is that education and our views about the nature of “work” will evolve. There are no more stables or liveries – nor is there manure in the streets. But when that change came, people fought hard against the horseless carriage…
The only constant is change…
Possibly you are right regarding AI. But I doubt it. If a sentient machine can do a job better, faster, and cheaper than a man, then it will, to the loss of those previously employed, and those who depended on them for support.
The danger is in a machine which replaces the mental effort and creativity of a real human, to the detriment of humanity. When machines can do our thinking for us, and do it better than us, then what purpose will we have? Creating a machine that is capable of being more intelligient than us is playing with fire.
There are entire families which welfare has transformed into problem families.
I know of someone who is working for a community centre who has recently had to deal with a 14 year old vandal. His 17 year old girlfriend is expecting their second child, he is also known to police for violence and theft.
He still lives with his parents who are both on welfare and also known to the police.
We have families here where we’re up to about the sixth generation who are on the benefit and where next to no one in the family works and they have children at young ages.
There are single mothers on almost six figure incomes because the more children they pop out the more welfare they get. This is two to three times the amount that most working people get. One example I heard from several years ago was a maori woman with 20+ children and nearly all to different fathers.
I have mixed feelings about “work for the dole” schemes.
One way it could prevent corporates from taking advantage of such workers is that the workers are paid a full wage by the company but the money goes to the government (queue howls of indignation). There could then be a bonded scheme whereby workers who prove their value over the period will get a lump sum payment at the end. This is similar to what happened with indentured servants.
Welfare, aside from penalizing productive people, is extremely dysfunctional for the genetic makeup of a society when based on the number of mouths. The people you cite are perfect examples.
I’m very reluctant to give government the ability to select people, but I do have a proposition for welfare. My ultimate preference would be for government to get totally out of welfare. But, if you have to have government participation, then provide different levels of welfare.
Have a low-level welfare for people out on their luck. They look forward to getting on their feet and having families which they support. They would receive minimal benefit: beans and a cold-water flat.
Have a luxurious welfare for people who accept the condition of permanent sterilization. They will have ample money for tv, cars, or whatever: but only after permanent sterilization. This scheme will appeal to people who are present-oriented, which is exactly what we want.
Future-oriented people could always opt out entirely by paying unemployment insurance. This again puts the emphasis on future orientation.
Notice I’m not using IQ, race, productivity, or any other criteria for paying for people to be sterilized, other than being on welfare and not caring enough about their future fertility to forego a lifetime windfall in the present.
You cannot stop full automation. This is waht every philosopher and Scfi buff has warned us all about for years. An uncle of mine in the Tweed industry refused to automate what was largely a home spun industry in the Scottish Isle. When some pushy corporate oik told him to “modernise” he retorted “What is the point of industry if it does not assist humans to live and feed themselves and their families? That is the whole point of work surely?”
We need a Butlerian Jihad…
Ah, a fan of Herbert as well as Heinlein!
Good to know there are other “humans” who read this blog!
I might translate “Ich-AG” as “Self Incorporated”, except that lacks the idea of people selling shares in themselves.
This will be another scheme to improve the Labor Department’s statistics. If you can not find jobs for people, then create them by fiat.
If I were king, I would change the incentives. I would reduce the Bremerhaven civil servants’ salaries to zero and then proportionally increase them to 100%, if and when they reduce the child poverty rate to something reasonable. (Currently 40% of Fischtown’s children are supported by government benefits, the highest percentage in Germany.) That might inject some life into the department, and teach accountability to the little ones. 🙂
Bureaucracies by their nature grow bloated and unaccountable. Many are captured by the very people they are supposed to regulate. Costly, intrusive government is historically associated with large, mature empires or nations.
The only way to reform a bureaucracy is to eliminate it.
«The latest idea from the Socialist Party in Germany: Compel the long-term unemployed to work for zero pay, in order to prevent their children from growing up to be unemployed themselves.»
I’m completely for! 85% of Muslim in Europe are unemployed, now SPD gives them what they deserve. Hurrah!
I’m sure they have not thought this :)))))
very right, Bob! The€391 that Nash mentioned are the cash the recipients get!
This adds to free accomodation, health care ( €350 p.m . for an employed person) and energy/ water supply.So unlike me , they do not worry about utility bills. The fringe benefit compared to a low income is a quantité négligeable.
as for the muslims, I totally agree, though it might take rigid masters to make them work.It will be an unpleasant job that requiers a certain degree of sadism.
And second, it is not for zero pay.As I mentioned above, the entire subsistance is being paid for on the level of a lower income recipient.
I would welcome such a concept in my country, and to my knowledge the German welfare is much more generous than ours and there are plenty of people abusing it as well. The basic idea of welfare is: you finish school, enter a job, work for some time and loose your job (for what reason ever) -> you receive welfare from the state until you find a new job. Or you receive some support from the state during parental leave, to support your children, etc.
Logically, people who never entered the work force shouldn’t be receiving any such support.
But that’s not how it works. And there are tens of thousands of people in my country (so I guesstimate easily hundreds of thousands, if not milions of such people in Germany) who never worked and have no reason to work because they receive so much on welfare.
FYI a person who worked for at least a year is elligible for five months of unemployment support from the state for five months. Afterwards you get nothing and can earn so little on a part time job, that every selfrespecting person would want to start work again ASAP.
How the system can be abused is, I assume, well known to every single one of you, considering the social support migrants get in Germany, Sweden, France, etc. Except over here we have a semi-native enthic group that abuses it. There’s a white minority who does as well, we call them all the same word. I’ve never seen an Asian person on welfare and funnily enough heavily religious Christian families with lots of children seem to make do on their own, even though they could receive tons of welfare on children benefits and housing benefits.
Those who abuse the system are not interested in work. Like never. Those are the people that won’t work or will work secretly (getting paid on hand, paying no taxes or health or social insurance).
So why should a person, that has never paid anything into the system, be able to receive the same benefits as someone who does? The idea behind paying health and social insurance is that if you loose your job or need medical help, the money you paid will come back to you through those services.
Nobody is against injecting pensions with some of that money or stuff like that, supporting disabled people, etc.
But I see no problem in cutting off those, who are perfectly capable of working, from welfare so generous they won’t have to work.
Alternatively, if they want to keep their welfare, they’ll have to work for the respective city, by cleaning the streets or whatever. I really don’t see how that could seem like a problem to anyone but a special snowflake. No work = no money, wanna keep the benefits? Work for the city. Want more money? Find a proper job. Simple as that.
Easily explained to the children as well.
Or do you think children of parents who only lay around the house all day will have healthy working habbits? It’s the same parents who usually don’t care too much if their children go to school or how they’re doing there. Again, not a good background to land a good job, or any job in the first place. Only a fraction of children is dedicated enough to want to get out of that cycle on their own and even less are actually able to, so even if it comes as a shock first, it will be better for them in the long term (don’t forget you have to force children into a lot of things before they become natural to them, like bathing).
‘Lose’, not ‘loose’. ‘Loose’ is when you lose weight and your pants don’t fit anymore.
‘Habits’, not ‘habits’.
I mean ‘habits’ not ‘habbits’. Sorry, my habit is to spell habit correctly.
and how is your spelling in three different foreign languages? Excuse the pun.
Well…wish you had something better to say about my post than going grammar nazi on it, but thanks, I guess, English is not my native language and I’m mostly self-taught, so spelling errors like this sometimes occur 😀
The problem is, bureaucracies such as welfare administrations become self-perpetuating and are also subject to public choice theory. Public choice says bureaucrats will try to maximize the amount of money and subordinates they control. This means welfare bureaucracies have a built-in incentive to get as many people on welfare as they can.
Trying to build incentives in for bureaucrats to keep welfare costs down will not work for the reason that there is no political constituency to save money.
I made the case above that welfare recipients should have the choice of a basic beans-and-cold-water welfare, or a quality of life welfare on the condition they accept permanent sterilization. There would be no point to having more children, as getting sterilized would provide them with a comfortable life, and additional babies would only mean more beans for welfare recipients opting out of sterilization.
I’m sorry but I don’t quite understand the reasoning behind that. In my opinion, only a person that has previously given some money into the system should be allowed to receive any kind of support from the system (which is what’s worked for Europe for decades). Those who never put anything into the system, should simply not receive a penny (the disabled, who are unable to do so, aside).
However, I don’t see any logic in, for example, a mother having to depend on welfare, but in order to receive a good enough welfare, she should be prohibited from having more children.
This kind of thing would be plausible in case-by-case scenarios or in situation where the mother/family already has at least three children (but then again if the parents have never worked, I don’t see any reason why the state should support them in the first place, as opposed to a person that is working on a daily basis, possibly with two jobs, and has to feed several children as well).
I think it’s better to promote a “work and receive benefits to live a good life” type of thing, instead of a “get sterilized and live well without having to do anything” or “the state has to take care of everyone without exceptions” type of thing.
It seems to me that the people being required to work for their 391 euros per month welfare payment are actually salaried employees earning 391 euros per month working for the local government. There is dignity in work regardless of how menial the work may seem. However, shock treatments for children of long term unemployed parents is going too far. If the parents are forced to do some useful work for their welfare payment, the children will not perceive them as unemployed.
as I mentioned above, €391 is the cash in addition to full subsistance in form of flat, utility bills and health care.
It doesn’t need to be a disaster. I think calling it ‘zero wage’ is politically not strategic though. I do agree that children need to see their parents working, at least part time.
A selection of minimum wage, part time jobs in each community that would give people what they are currently receiving as welfare, with the same rights as any other employee, would be good. No community wouldn’t benefit from some more workers for many things, eg. street cleaning, planting and plant care, childcare, visitor information, road safety [in Japan people have jobs carefully showing people past building sites, for instance. Japan is proud of having some kind of a job for everyone.]
About automation: this was a big, happy dream in the 7os: Work less, get machines to do the boring work, have more leisure time. I don’t really understand why it has to be viewed so negatively now. I like only working part time and would probably do worse emotionally if I didn’t at least have some work.
Japan might be proud of providing jobs for everyone, but at the same time their society frowns upon people who work part time or don’t do the typical salaryman jobs. Especially the generation that is now parenting graduating children and doesn’t quite understand their economy bubble already bursted years ago (it’s a complicated issue with many facets and this isn’t the place to dive into that).
And they actually still invest a lot in automation, while refusing imigrants. They’re rhetoric is “once we let other people in, Japan will stop being Japanese”. Truest words! Look what backlash Hungary is getting for the same words. Though the US put a lot of presure on Japan because of it, they just don’t make such a commotion about it (I guess it’s hard to play the racist card against a non-white country). But anyway, Japan doesn’t worry about birthing less children, instead they want to improve the work process, so that less workers are required. And nature works in cycles, once a population gets low enough, two or three generations will have passed and the next one with birth more children again. It’s not like Germany always had over 80 millions citizen and yet the country (or the states which are now part of it) were always doing pretty fine economically.
I agree that putting less strain on the workers should be each company owner’s goal (happier workers do more work and tend to be more loyal to the company), but sadly the opposite is true for most.
I posted something here yesterday which was both in relevance and civility well-within the bounds of what I have come to know passes at GoV.
Always. Except now. It was the first time such a post of mine was rejected. I wonder why? Is Nash Montana perhaps being spared the vision of the impact of her ideas on the marketplace of ideas?
As far as I know, none of your comments have been deleted.
My post wasn’t that long. It was about the surreal experience of experiencing this article, with the ‘socialists’ taking the conservative side and Nash Montana responding like a liberal. I’m 95% sure I waited to see the ‘your comment is awaiting moderation’ message, so the problem wasn’t just the equivalent of a ‘send failure’ across the internet.
I just checked the trash can going back six days, and none of yours is in it. I don’t know what happened, but it was not deleted.
I trust you. Some glitch.
I could probably reproduce it close to word-for-word but I haven’t the energy to bother. Maybe God, not the Baron, has decided to spare Nash Montana the full vision of the impact of her ideas on the marketplace of ideas. 🙂