Thorn

You expect them to take a job in a fast food restaurant!!? Come now! That's beneath them! They're too proud for that! Eastern Europeans might journey two thousand miles and gladly take a job like that, but these people are destined for greater things!

With lower unemployment than in the US -- roughly the same as in Canada, in fact, and a very generous welfare state willing to provide shelter, food, clothing, and skills training.

I think both would be appropriate for that sort of person.

Fed up? Fed up with what? I think the old guy in the video above was correct. Let these scum go and complain to the starving people in Somalia about their lack of opportunities. I'm sure they'll get plenty of sympathy! The undeniable fact is that not all people are created equal. Some are smarter and dumber than average. Some are kinder or meaner than others. Some think of others, and some care about no one but themselves. In a well-ordered society, the poorer members are cared for to a degree, but also held in line by imposed discipline. Unfortunately, those human refuse in Britain have learned that no one will hold them to account for their laziness and criminality. The police are not permitted to do much, and the courts are extremely lenient. Frankly, no one who is healthy should be given welfare under any circumstances, and those people who took part in the riots ought to spend the next few years on a chain gang planting potatoes and cutting weeds.

But not really supported by much. There are a number of thoughts which come readily to mind which would suggest that the conclusions of the researchers might be based more on their own biased assessments than anything which could be described as scientifically valid. The poor give more to charity as a % of their income? But the poor also pay a higher % of their income for almost everything they do, simply because their income is so small. The 'rich' are less attentive to some conversations? Perhaps, being employed, and having high pressure jobs lends itself to more distraction than one who has no job and little thoughts in his or her head. The rich check their PDAs more often? Perhaps because they HAVE PDAs. They have less sympathy than the poor? To what? Certainly people who have worked hard at high pressure jobs are unlikely to feel much sympathy for those who never put in that effort and so never obtained much. But is that really a statement on their level of empathy?

The CDN$ has risen enormously in the last few years and has been killing manufacturing, particularly in Ontario. For a long time, CDN industry relied on that weak dollar in place of trying to improve productivity with new methods and technology. Ten years or so back a widget could be shipped to the U.S. and sold for US$1. That US$1 was then returned to Canada and translated into CDN$1.40 or so. Now the widget costs the same, but they're only getting CDN $0.97 for it. This helps explain why manufacturing, particularly in Ontario, has collapsed. The government has done little to counter this other than a general lowering of corporate taxes, which not all industry needs. Certainly the resource sector doesn't, though they welcome the added profits. One of the principle benefits of relocating overseas (the only one, really) is cheaper labour. The government could help counteract that by redesigning our taxation system. Eliminating employer contributions would be a major step in that direction. Every new employee costs the employer more in contributions for CPP and UIC. Which is why these taxes are called a tax on employment. I would have preferred to see them reduced or eliminated rather than a general corporate tax reduction.

Would you care to give us some examples of this history? Preferably recent history...

How much power do you believe such people should have or deserve to have? Bear in mind that the U.K. has had a very progressive government for decades now which has done its level best to assist, understand and empower those in poverty, most especially including ethnic groups and enclaves. They have also gone a long way to ease the harshness of law and policing and to force a more cooperative and tolerant approach on local police in their dealings with the 'downtrodden', if you will. None of that appears to have had the slightest positive impact. A sizable number of young people make little effort at their education, binge drink, drop out of school, and go on public assistance with little thought of real alternatives. They don't want to sit in boring classrooms and learn anything. They wouldn't mind a high paying job but have no skills with which to obtain one. Nor, in fact, do they seem to have the drive or motivation even to obtain a lower paying, low skill job. And on those occasions when they do, by chance, their work ethic is so low they can't keep one. So just how much power and what kind of power do you believe such people deserve to have? Don't pretend their actions were a political statement. They weren't. At most, their actions are a statement on the thin veneer of civilization resting upon many of them. It takes little imagination to see where, absent the police, such behaviour would quickly have gone. Rioting, robbery, violence and arson would be followed by more organized violence where gangs would stake out territory, taking and holding it by violence against anyone and everyone, and then, of course imposing their own rules on the residents. It's almost tribal, harkening back thousands of years.

How much of a wackjob are you?

Or to start. I am given to understand that the economic fortunes of immigrants have deteriorated markedly, both in comparison to Canadian born citizens, and in comparison to immigrants who arrived in earlier years. To what do you attribute this given your statement above?

It didn't look deeper. It just pointed out that looters come in different colours. Most are young, most are male. It is an ethnically diverse lot, but from my viewing of the scenes on a variety of shows the majority appear to not be white, but in all likelihood that reflects the ethnic makeup of those poorer areas which are under attack. Most likely these are NEETs, as several articles have pointed out. There is a large body of young Britains who have never had a job, and are not in employment, education or training. Despite decades of the empowerment of the welfare state (or perhaps because of it) there is a large core group of young British people who are shiftless, do not really try very hard at anything, and enjoy fighting, binge drinking, and taking advantage of an opportunity for a free ride. And I could point out that despite what's been said of late about Britain's economic fortunes, its unemployment rate is lower than the Americans, and it has far more robust social services to help people. Further, the cuts discussed earlier have not yet been felt at the end level, so are not the cause of this. These are simply shiftless, uneducated (through choice), largely lazy people taught that they have a right to just about anything they want taking advantage of the lack of law and order to grab whatever they can. You need look little further than that. In ever instance where I've seen riots taking place in western countries the one predictable element is that where the riots continue for some length of time, larger numbers of shiftless people join in to have 'fun'. Had the British police cracked down on the first day that would have been the end of it. But since they held back, more and more young, shiftless people realized they could do as they wished, and flocked to join in. And then as it continued further, its spread to other cities was inevitable. These people apparently have little fear of the police, and little fear of hesitant courts which seem more concerned with attempting to rehabilitate than to punish.

What we seem to have now is Marx's dictatorship of the prolotariate. Unfortunately, the prologariate have turned out to be a lumpish group of disinterested opportunists mostly interested in themselves. What we need is a dictatorship of the elites. But how to define the term 'elite'? IQ tests, as has been stated, are not necessarily an indication of good leadership, as intelligence berift of morality leads to detrimental decisions for everone else. Also, as has been stated, intelligence and leadership don't always go hand in hand. It should not be difficult to determine which youths have natural leadership abilities. Most teachers could probably tell you who they are. If we tested them for intelligence and then put them into special classes where ethics, morality and leadership are taught we ought to turn out a group of superior leaders - though young. Young people rarely have the life experience to produce good judgement, however, as judgement is inextricably linked to life experience as well as intelligence. I wonder if it's a coincidence that most of today's leaders have led lives of relative ease, without danger or challenge. They generally grow up in reasonably well-off families, had good educations, and family connections to ease them into good jobs or politics. The hardscrabble existence (no welfare, no pogey, hunger, death a constant companion in large families, large scale wars) which produced the great leaders of the past is largely unknown. Such junior leaders would thus have to be exposed to life experience before their judgement could be relied upon. A stint in the military or police would be helpful, or perhaps in an emergency room or criminal law court. Such leaders should learn all about the sad reality of life at the bottom, amid poverty and hopelessness, but also learn lessons about economic management and how business works. Intimate understanding of the creation and application of law would be good to have, as well. How many of our current leaders can say they have that varied a degree of experience and knowledge? None, I'm aware of. But a program could be designed to instill such knowledge in these 'future leaders', and then they could be installed in minor positions where they would have the chance to learn and grow, or fail.

Then energy prices will be sky high. But there's not a lot of down side to that as they will by then have moved on to well-paid jobs in the private sector.