>You might get "on the dole " easily but what you get is not a lot of money. Your "friend" is probably on some sort of long term disability benefit.
>I can never understand why the UK is always the butt of these comments. The UK's welfare payments are some of the worst in Europe.
Yeah, but that's like saying "I own fewer guns than most people in Texas." <s>
>There certainly are a small number of people living in the margins who have never had work and are largely unemployable but its certainly not an easy or profitable life choice. Going from employment to benefits is I would imagine a huge shock for most people.
People actually going to benefits from employment are to be sympathized with and helped in whatever way possible. The idea of a permanent welfare underclass is what I was talking about - for those people a three day work week would be a shock.
Is it true that in many European countries permanent government assistance (at whatever level) is there just for the asking?
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
