British churches have criticized a government plan to remove unemployment benefits from people who refuse to accept jobs offered by labor officers.
“There is a serious danger that people living in poverty will be stigmatized by government announcements that they are lazy or work shy,” said the Rev. Alison Tomlin, president of the Methodist church in Scotland.
Iain Duncan Smith, the government minister for work and pensions, on Thursday (Nov. 11) laid out a new “contract” with unemployed people that would include removing benefits for up to three years from people who refuse to take work opportunities.
This is NUTS! Why should anyone be entitled to live off the public dole if there is a job available that they can do? I realize that I am not quite as hard core as some of those who have posted on this and other forums advocating a return to 18th century government and abandoning the poor. But this is quite different.
If you honestly can’t find work then yes, the government should step in to keep you from being homeless or starving to death. But people who turn down jobs to live on public relief should be stigmatized. And it should not be allowed.
Actually the academic research suggests that people who are out of work have significantly worse health, (including mental health), levels of happiness (including marital happiness) and self-esteem. It is in large part because work gives people purpose.
These bleeding hearts think they are helping but actually they are hurting those at the bottom.
This applies to so much:
I would just change “those at the bottom.” to a more general “those they are trying to help.” and it covers so much.
We may be on a different lectionary, but the epistle this morning at St David’s in San Antonio included: “…this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” II Thessalonians 3:10
It seems quite clear to me that the same issues of able-bodied people declining to work and expecting to be supported by others’ labors is no different now in the many Western welfare states as in the time of the early church.