Bitcoin Forum

First of all before I begin this post I would like to explain my financial situation. I live in a social assistance building in downtown Vancouver and I collect $541 from the provincial government after paying rent. I filed my taxes and I get a $100 GST cheque from the government every two months. I am currently saving up money to service my Windows laptop and get my projects off that laptop.

A lot of people who live in my building spend their disability cheques on drugs and alcohol. The residents get quite irritable and angry when free lunches are canceled. They push themselves ahead in line when asking for meds, and do a poor job keeping the building secure. Drug dealers roam the building selling drugs to residents because the dealers friend who lives here buzzed them in.

I just think that it's public money not being sufficiently spent. I am one of only 5 people on welfare who work in my building or have any kind of job skills whatsoever. That being said, bitcoin is not hardcore computer science, they could at least buy a cheap netbook and earn from Bitcoinget and other sites to go buy themselves lunch. I suppose begging other people to feed them just sounds easier than planning and working.

Only if we start from the top. Money making money is a concept that must die.

It's easy to say yes to that, but the management needed to decide who really needs it and who is just faking (spending it on drugs) would be ginormous and even then it would not be fool proof.

So yes, but things would have to be different.

It will never die and it can't die at all. You think about giving money to others and getting back more. Stop doing that and no one will lend his money anymore. Big disadvantage for the economy.

On top... when it would be disallowed to take interest then you simply get employees that work for you and you have the same result.

By the way... in some religions it's disallowed. They still found ways to circumvent it.

what proportion of your country's welfare bill goes to these types of people? in the uk half goes to pensioners and a quarter goes to people who have jobs. it pisses me off too seeing money going to these layabout cockroaches but dealing with them alone isn't going to lead to significant savings.

A very difficult call to make as there are many instances where people have to be looked after, either through providing care and or through providing some form of welfare. The system is however so open for abuse and I think this is a major headache in most countries.

Long-term welfare payments should be limited to the disabled and the elderly. Able-bodied adults under the age of 60 should be banned from receiving welfare checks for more than 3 months continuously. Canada is facing a severe shortage of manpower in some sectors (esp. masons, woodcutters.etc). The government should give them job training and compel them to join the workforce.

That's easy to say in an adequately performing economy. The reality is though, not everybody can do well as a mason, or a woodcutter, and some are specialized in certain areas where they are heavily invested in the training they already received for a skill which was valuable a few years ago, which is no longer valuable today.

Just because there is a current shortage of masons and woodcutters doesn't imply that there will be in the next few years, and how much would it cost to train these people, just to have them unemployed again when a different sector of the economy performs less-than satisfactorily in the future?

I personally think there should be less of a barrier to entry for the independent and small business person who wishes to contract for themselves...

I would say about half of the pensioners work. In the building I live in though nobody works. They just do drugs and borrow money from others.

Here where I live in Texas it has become a source of great income for some, you'll hear talk of people aspiring to "get a crazy check" meaning disability which then gives them a monthly check, free healthcare, and food stamps. After receiving disability, the person is then able to visit one of the many shady psychiatrists operating here providing this service as it has become big business - the "patient" will receive suboxone (@ 90) which they can sell for up to $20 apiece, adderall (@60-90) which will go for @ $10 apiece, and valium or xanax (@ 30-60) - the prescriptions are free to fill with Medicaid/Medicare so that alone is an extra $2500 (or about that amount) combined with their monthly government check. Commercials run constantly on television here for disability lawyers as it has become a big business, it is amazing how people have manipulated the system and are profiting from it yet some in actual need suffer.

It is a shame if a 75-year old pensioner is working, as he can't cover his daily expenses from his pension alone, and at the same time a 25-year old is sitting at home and experimenting with drugs as he has nothing else to do. If the government can't give these guys job training, then it should be made mandatory for them to do some sort of community service or volunteering.

the resident must be thinking more about drugs or alcohol.
thinking from where they get money.
necessary more important than drugs or alcohol. this will make country loses.
they money can to buy something to eat, and necessary like daily to take a bath, or education.
not use to not important things.
can distinguish what is important and not important.

Any kind of welfare seldom works as it should. I think the concept of healing it is wrong by itself. That´s obvious that nowadays the state has to keep
it´s subjects from rebelling somehow. Because of that the situation of masses of people begging and dying in the street isn´t acceptable socially(the fist goverment retirement program in Germany ruled by Bismarck had that objective). But let´s be honest with each other - there will always be people who´re going to want to parasite on the society without any reason to justify it. There´s nothing that could be done.

Wow this blows my mind but i believe it... i know a lot of ppl on govt disability in US that shouldnt be

In the Netherlands one gets around $ 1000 welfare if you are single and $ 1500 welfare if you have kids. As a plus you get around $ 90 for healthcare and a large chunk of your rent paid by the state. That does not mean one can sit on his or hers lazy arse. You have to proof that you look for a job and you have to do something back like cleaning the streets or help out at a school or retirement home.

There's a lot of research that shows that people on welfare will not look for or engage in work if the pay for that work doesn't exceed the welfare. We need to match the two...welfare should be paired back to not provide more than minimum wages or minimum wages should increase. The problem with minimum wages increasing is that it motivates prices (and the cost of living) to increase as well.

If welfare isn't linked specifically to the objective of getting people that can work back to work, it will never be successful.

Of course disabilities and addictions need to be handled differently but there should be much more surveillance over the appropriate use of government money...some rights should go away when one welfare.


In NED, what are the income qualifications or unemployment qualifications to receive the welfare? I'm curious where the country sets that bar.

This is exactly what should be done in countries such as Canada and the United States. But what happening there is that people collect all the welfare checks, and stay at home or drug joints to experiment with various synthetic drugs and prescription pills. If they are forced to do community service, then they will spend less time in using drugs.

In NED, what are the income qualifications or unemployment qualifications to receive the welfare? I'm curious where the country sets that bar.
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Should you loose your job, you are liable to get 75% of your last pay from the state from a periode of 3 months to 2 years. Should you not have a job afterwards you get wellfare providing you have less than 5k on your bank, are willing to sell your house and proof that you are looking for a job. If you are under 27 than you are sent to school if you have no qualifications. Wellfare is organized by the state and by the towncouncil. Even beggars can get wellfare if they have a PO box.

Kicking people off welfare isn't enough. All welfare programs should be terminated. They were invented by Bismarck and later promoted by Mussolini. Both fascists looking for supporters. Welfare programs are the greatest inequalities in the world. Nigerians or Ethiopians do not have access to any kind of welfare, and yet they manage to survive. Better than that, their population is growing fast. Sorry to point it out but this proves that the average African is much smarter than the average first world guy on welfare.

Welfare programs are also a strong reason for Africans to immigrate to rich countries, which close their borders very precisely not to let foreigners gain access to welfare. Welfare and borders are the same thing: restrictions to freedom.

Welfare payments are the primary reason for people from the third world nations to immigrate to Western countries. For example, take the case of Afghan migrants. The richest country in the world (Qatar) is nearer to Afghanistan when compered to the European nations. Qatar is also culturally similar to Afghanistan. But still, Afghan migrants prefer Europe. The reason - welfare payments.

Welfare benefits are soon becoming the easy way to get out of working, which is wrong. Of course the elderly and completely disabled should get it, however those who claim they 'cannot find a job' should be found a job by the government and forced to do it properly for their pay or sent into military service. There is always a lack of manual labor in almost every country, forcing those who are too lazy to find a job into those spaces will both help the economy and increase the amount of manual labor done.

Bismarck was no fascist. That was not invented yet.... And old age pension with 65 when most died before the age of 60 well, that's not expensive is it?
Not everyone is allowed to access welfare. Immigrants should work and if they loose their job they are kicked out again. Asylumseekers who are deemed legal are given some kind of welfare. Only when the situation is too dangerous and the refugee can't return only then an asylumseeker is allowed to request welfare.

Actually, we should get more people into the field of robotics and computers. We should develop robots that can handle every job without help from people. The robots should even be built to completely repair themselves, from raw materials all the way to finished products.

Then we all, worldwide, should go on welfare, collect a thousand times more than we would without the robots, travel the world, enjoy every pleasure that we can devise for ourselves, and live a life of ease.

Of course, if anybody wants to pursue an occupation as part of his/her enjoyment, room would be made amongst the robots.

What fun! Can't wait.

:)

You are talking about the state welfare system in the Netherlands, right? I was wondering why that country hasn't received the flood of Sub-Saharan Africans and Syrian Arabs, unlike some of the other European Union countries (United Kingdom, Italy, Germany.etc). And this might be one of the reasons. The PVV has achieved in the Netherlands what the UKIP has failed to achieve in the United Kingdom.

That's what I'm saying. Welfare systems are a magnet for migrants, and migrations have to be stopped for the sake of the welfare state. Imagine a world without any welfare. There would be much more freedom to travel and move, that's what I want.

Right! If you stop the gigantic welfare financial drain across the board (or even reduce it), you'll never get elected a second term. The only way left is to eliminate certain classes of people. Eliminate the ones whose vote is going to affect you the least when they go south (pun intended).

:)

Yes that's true. People don't want to do things that are boring or learn a productive skill but boy will they do a lot to get to a welfare state. If we were to stop foreigners from getting welfare cheques, or as previously mentioned find a job for them and force them to work. It sickens me to se so many lazy people in the world.

People is lazy by nature, you can't change that. Nobody likes to work, you may like what you do, but the borderline between work and a hobby is that by work it means you've to do it even when you're not up to it.
You may then only make people move by necessity, a way to do it pass beyond welfare is by using greed and wave them with a "better life", creating a fake necessity. But this will work only with some, for many and, in due time, for most, as long as you keep their basic needs supplied with welfare, they won't do anything else, never leaving poverty. But, heck! At least they don't need to wake up early morning.

exactly, why put forth the effort to find a job when you have a nice check that comes in the mail for you? there needs to be an incentive to push people to find work; welfare is meant to be a crutch for people that cant find a job, and it should be expected of them to find something within half a year the the very most. cutting people off after a certain period of time seems like a good first step, extensions would be called for in certain extreme cases, but those should be reviewed on a case by case basis.

Completely misleading. Those people stay like this because if they would work, they would have little more for a full time job : simply not worth bothering.

That's why I support a Universal Basic Income.
Ask yourself what you would do with 1000$/month. Yeah you could just sit all day long watching TV and play video-games but would you do that ?

It is not possible to kick people off welfare. This has got nothing to do with compassion and taxpayers do not have a say in the matter, the system simply cannot afford to have too many unbound elements, especially in industrialized countries. Ideally, money needs to be an intrinsic part of the life of every single human being on the planet.

France tried this with maximum income tax. They failed at the end obviously.

I've nothing against human nature, but politicians must answer two questions before starting to purchase votes with welfare:

1. Is it sustainable? Can you keep it 50+ years without bankrupt?

2. Are you up to hold the legit retired people when it comes out you can't continue #1 and therefore also can't pay the legit retirement plans people paid now?

@romjpn

You need to study basic economics man! Society is like a market: what you do is what you worth, what you own is your purchase power.
If you give 1K/month to useless people, then $1000 = $0.
Why? Because you are giving something to people that worth nothing, therefore that something becomes nothing. The initial impact of such measure will be more people sit on their ass, as result goods will become scarce as nobody produces them, and those who produce will have to wage way over 1K - otherwise they won't bother doing it and just pick welfare. So inflation will be massive and you hardly will be able to buy a single potato with those thousand bucks.

It seems most people here are from rich countries. It's really awful how the welfare state appears like the normal thing. I suggest that instead of making cash handouts to the poor, the rich countries would pay them a one way ticket to Ethiopia. There, those folks would quickly learn to make a living, or die.

Yes OK. So just explain that to  Herbert A. Simon, Friedrich Hayek, James Meade, Robert Solow, Milton Friedman and Maurice Allais ;).

https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7

Also, when Kuwait gave every citizen 4000$/month for a year the result was the lowest inflation they knew for several years.

You know, it's more complicated than you think.

I forgot those guys who advocate for a BI :

One of the world's most outspoken advocates of a basic income system is Belgian philosopher and political economist Philippe van Parijs. Other advocates include feminist economist Ailsa McKay, German drugstore magnate Götz Werner, Dutch political activist Saar Boerlage, French social theorist André Gorz, American political philosopher Michael Hardt and Italian Marxist sociologist Antonio Negri, American libertarian political scientist Charles Murray, New Zealand economist Gareth Morgan, Finnish politician Osmo Soininvaara, University of London economist Guy Standing, Brazilian politician and economist Eduardo Suplicy.

Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu.
A nice bunch of stupid people who do not understand the "economy basics".


North European countries have much higher taxes and a biggest welfare. People are OK, the economy has not crashed.

There is a big problem with cutting these benefits. What will you do with these people? Most of them doesn't have any competitive or at least some marketable work experience and skills, this kind of people used to have low work-moral, so even if someone would willing to employ them, they would be a pain in the ass for their employers. Probably keeping them on benefits is the most efficient way to keep them silent and calm. Without benefits many of them would turn to a violent mob or criminals pretty soon.

Then people without food would do what? Starting to steal like in old times?

The goverments plans to solve these things are so poor, it's not funny. They train people in stupid things on jobs that pay so low that it is pocket money. Since they can't simply create jobs that aren't needed.

If it would be so easy to create jobs then every country would do so. If you say these people have to do it somehow then you will create big unrest only.

There is no such easy solution.

Wow, sounds crazy. And the government isn't acting against? I mean at least the police could follow the selling of medicine. And the normal people should push to stop that things.

I doubt that all politicians are that corrupt in your country that nothing can be done.

You can't simply lower the welfare in order to make bad jobs more attractive. The welfare should be a minimum that is needed to life and take part on life. At least in my country that is the case. Though when you take into account that your rent for the flat is paid and your medicals then it is easily more than the average job.

Most people still want to work because they want to feel useful. They want to do something with their life. Maybe we need a change there that these parasites does not look like the heroes anymore but instead like parasites. The problem is, politicians already tried that. And it can't be done without blaming legit persons that can't work.

It really is one of the big problems of mankind that has no easy solution i think.

Then be prepared to a huge social unrest that will kill the country for sure. You definitely can't take that away.

And every party trying that will be dead instantly.

And yes... Ehtiopians are the big example right? I guess you don't care about all the people that die there because of hunger and missing medicine. I doubt you really want that for your country.

Since I don't have a country (I had one but I left it), I want this for the whole world, and people may want it or not, it's coming. Countries which provide the most generous welfare packages are also the countries with the biggest debts.

Where do you life where "is always lack of manual labor"? That is definitely not true. I mean you mean paid labor. Otherwise it would not make sense to take their welfare away and force them to work without them being paid for it then.

No, in my country every work that can be taken is taken already. Even worse, even jobs that only would pay 1/10th of a normal hourly wage has to be taken by force. Otherwise no welfare. In fact it does not help at all.

Interesting. I'm a fan of the basic income too. And it seems practically every party already has thought about it and created their own system. It simply can work when done.

I did not know that kuwait did something like that. Why isn't that taken as a model role for what would happen when a basic income would be paid? I mean there should be many things you can learn from that happening. What happened with the work done. Did they work less or more and so on.

Debt when it is from legal lending institutions (banks) is fake. It is creations of new money. Actually the banks owe the debts to the people. Payments people make in paying off the fake loans are moneys the banks owe back to the people.

:)

Think about this. Work to live life is rather easy. All people need is land and a little help from their neighbors. We could be living the easy life if there were no taxes, and if the government opened up the unused land to the people.

:)

Kuwait could do this because they enjoined themselves to America through big oil. It was the petrodollar that made this work for them.

What's interesting is, this is the same kind of thing the U.S. is trying to make happen in Iraq. It is slowly working. Within the last two weeks, a USDollar is worth about 1145 Iraqi Dinars. Previously it took 1160 to 1190 Dinars to buy a Dollar. This doesn't really predict anything. But it is a trend that might continue... the Dollar dropping in value against the Iraqi Dinar.

This is what happened in Kuwait in the mid '90s. But it happened a lot faster in Kuwait back then than it is happening for Iraq now.

:)

It's a tough call, while there are certainly individuals who have good intents and want to establish a better life for themselves and deserve social assistance just as often there are those who abuse the free government aid to further get themselves wasted on the taxpayers dollar with no respect for money or willingness to take responsibility (Scum)

Social assistance is a good tool to help people get out of tough situations if they deserve it but just as equally it can be exploited which is why its concerning when new immigrants get a job quit or claim injury to their knee when the work is to hard for them then decide to just get government payments by switching between doctors, or saying it was the government that brought them to the country and that they should give them money for doing that. (Sickens me sometimes that sense of self-entitlement when they sure as heck haven't got off their lazy buts to do anything about it)

If they don't want to get off the bootstraps do some hard work and participate in making the country better then I would prefer they send them back, but just as equally those who are down on their ropes and serious about getting back up deserve that safety net.

In summary it depends on how it is used and who uses it just as much as anything else.

That was an one-time measure (which has been revoked long back) by the Kuwaiti government. Kuwait used to receive a huge amount of money (they are still receiving some of it), in the form of repatriations from Iraq. The government decided to handout a part of it to their citizens, as a form of  compensation for their suffering during the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.