Should the unemployed be forced to clean our streets? A rubbish idea.

This is reference to the UK conservative party proposition to make the unemployed in the UK clean up the streets in return for their benefits.

'They are a burden on society, A waste of our taxes and they fuel a something for nothing society'  is what I normally hear when this topic usually arises. However, I believe in a society that is predominately influenced by the more affluent in the country that this view is actually distorted from the reality. I admit that a minority of the population are 'benefit scroungers' and will never be shaken off from society unless we completely dismantle the foundations of the welfare state, which implies more cost than benefit. Although, while the minority are what we name 'benefit scroungers' the majority are those which are not and I will explain why such people should not undergo what I feel is slave labour of the current government.

Firstly, I would like to state that some unemployment is not necessarily bad. Although this may seem surprising at first, a society without unemployment is one that is static and immobile. The reason for this is that unemployment can simply be a transition period for many people between one job and another or one career and another. Let me provide an example to show this, take for instance a working family which one of the adults has got a higher paid job in another city. Now the other adult(s), assuming they want to move, are deemed unemployed until they get a job in that city. Are these people scroungers? Clearly not, they are an example of labour mobility and without such cases the economy would be like I said, static and immobile. The aim should be to reduce employment by promoting work and helping people to help themselves, not to achieve full employment to make the statistics look good.

Furthermore, I would like to say that any policy that targets the unemployed to undergo voluntary full-time work in order to receive benefits would limit people in society. Getting people back into work is not a one-size fits all policy as people have different skills, specialities and interests. Therefore, we should help build upon this through skilled based learning rather than funnelling everyone into one role, one job. Those that are unemployed and seeking work need time to find and get a job and making these people work full-time will limit their motivation to do so, thus limiting their motivations in life.

Finally, 'the unemployed should be forced to clean the streets for their benefits' is a statement that is clearly degrading. For the unemployed? No, for those who work day in and day out to help keep our streets clean, empty our bins and provide a nice environment for all whilst also doing a job that many people may reject. So to say that the unemployed should do this job as a punishment for not having a job already is simply degrading to those who already work cleaning our streets putting them on the same scale as the 'benefit scroungers.'