Do some people really believe that they have a "right to a job"?

Your OP is overlooking tens of millions of people, if not more, who get by without jobs every day.

 

Maybe not, but you did not really answer my question with your limited list of disqualifying circumstances either so perhaps it is.

 

I don't understand how I didn't answer it. My point is that no one should be forced to provide a job to someone else. In this sense no one has a right to a job. Meanwhile no one has the right to prohibit someone else from offering a job with their rightfully acquired resources.

 

So, people without a job have no rights but other people have the right to make jobs?

 

I would ardently disagree with this statement

Yes. You also have the right to make a pot out of clay with your friends.

 

Operating a business is not a right.

 

Please define what you mean by "the right to operate a business", and why it does not exist.

 

Sure they have rights, just not the right to a job. No more than they have a right to create a company. Both have to be earned.

The job must be earned by having the right skills, the right attitude, and to accept the compensation offered.

The company must be earned with the right product or service, at the right price, in the right quantity, and with the right funding to kick the whole thing off.

No.

 

I completely agree that the resources are there, and will probably educate you far better than most teachers out there (in my opinion, our schools are suck literally ALL the fun out of learning new things). That being said, my problem is that those kids who are living in those bad areas are stuck paying taxes that go to those bad schools regardless of how crappy they are. So while they do still have a great chance with all the resources from public libraries and the internet, I don't think it is fair that the government takes their money and inefficiently uses it on schools that they then force the kids to go to (which is probably a bigger waste of time than learning independently in my opinion).

 

Ok, since people on this thread clearly don't know what a right is, let me define it for them. The best definition I found pertaining to this discussion is "A right is a legal, social or ethical principle of freedom or entitlement". With that definition, I will say that you have every right in the world to look for a job (another definition that I think some people don't properly understand, but I'll let you look up that) and work at a job. You also have the right to create jobs as in through a business, so long as that business does not infringe on anybody else's rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness (so you can't open up and assassination business obviously). Governments do an excellent job of preventing people from opening businesses by making them jump through many hoops, and raising the costs insanely (businesses need to pay for lawyers, accountants, permits, taxes, etc. just to start up). You are not ENTITLED to a job. You do not deserve a job for existing in this world. If you want a job, it is YOUR responsibility to go out into the world, figure out a place that needs or desires your skills (which you are responsible for refining), and actually working. If you can't find a place to work, you have some options. Go educate yourself or upgrade your skills with the millions of online and public resources, or you can go beg for money (the last option is to put a gun to people's head and steal the money, or force people to hire you, which is what people who believe they have a "right to a job" really mean when they talk about that right). I choose the former rather than the latter, which is why I currently have a job, lots of money invested in stocks which earn me a healthy profit, and a very good education.

If YOU do not go out and find a job, YOU do not deserve a job...period. Sorry for all the caps, but ignorance frustrates me. If you have 2 or 3 or 10 kids, that is your own fault. As far as I know, immaculate conception only happened once in history (supposedly), so if you have a bunch of kids, you have nobody but yourself to blame. It doesn't give you a right to put a gun to somebody's head and force them to employ you. If you lost your job, it is YOUR responsibility to go out and find another job.

NOBODY, not me or you or anybody else is really entitled to anything more than the freedom to do what they like, so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others, it isn't rocket science. By putting a gun to somebody's head and saying "give me a job that pays me at least this much (which is a completely arbitrarily defined 'livable' wage) or I'm going to take the money from you through taxes or fines." you are doing nothing but infringing on that person's right to not hire you for being a bad worker (which you probably are...if you weren't, they would probably hire you and you wouldn't be complaining).

I'm 20 years old and I have figured this out (it's really not that hard), people need to grow up and take some responsibility for their life rather than blaming everybody else for their problems. Btw, I was not born into a rich family, but I am a very rich kid. I make about $15,000 a year (all of which I earn...but I pay a lot of that to Uncle Sam, and some of it probably goes to the people who hate me for the things that I say, but whatever), and that, for me, is more than enough to be happy. If you ask me, that makes me far richer than a person who makes $250,000 a year but needs $500,000 to be happy.

 

A right is whatever the government tells you is a right, in Soviet Russia a right to work was in their constitution. Other rights are soft rights such as freedom of speech or freedom of religion they are useless if your hungry, sick, ignorant or not safe those are things hard rights cover example right to housing, work, an education, food, water and to be safe from harm by the state in general.

The hard rights are more vital and soft right only are of value when one is in their person modestly comfortable.

Governments do an excellent job of preventing people from opening businesses by making them jump through many hoops, and raising the costs insanely (businesses need to pay for lawyers, accountants, permits, taxes, etc. just to start up). - Simple option ignore the government and do the business anyway if one can do so.

 

So then how do you define government? Since the government defines the rights of the people, then what exactly is the government? This is somewhat rhetorical, as the government of the United States is supposed to be The People, so we have looped back and now we are defining rights for ourselves again. The fact is, the role of the government that the U.S. set up in the constitution was to protect the rights of every individual equally, not to impose rights on some at the expense of others.

My approach to life is that I govern myself for the most part. I don't need the government to tell me not to take a certain drug, I can decide whether I want to or not. Similarly, I don't need the government telling me where I should work, when I can figure that out perfectly well on my own.

 

I would also call freedom of speech and religion is a hard right. Without it, ideas can't be exchanged happiness can't be achieved, and the society atrophies and died (this is what has happened in countries without these freedoms, and that is why the first amendment is freedom of speech and religion...it was to allow people to speak up about things like tyranny, corruption, evil and also to exchange ideas with other people).

 

A government is whatever power structure is in place run by those who hold actual power, and use that power to govern. Not the people in the case of the US but those who wield power the "10%" that always in all government forms hold power. In the USA its corporate elites and those who legislate not the people ultimately, in China its the Communist Party and the Military Leadership and in the Vatican its the Pope and High Ranking Clergy. There is always 10% running things roughly look at Starship Troopers ,book, those that served in the Federation for two years or more mattered not the common civilian who was educated, given a job and expected to behave and be taken care of.

As for freedom of speech without security its nothing the government may or may not allow that much in the USA its largely liberal but in China its not, but China may do everything to give you other freedoms such as an education that is decent and order to live with a good measure of security if one is not a troublemaker.

 

So, basically you are saying that people have rights, but no right to the one legitimate thing they need to survive in the current socio-economic circumstance, which is a job that pays them money so they can live. So, it appears that you are a supporter of the position that the government, which is the defender and enforcer of people's rights, must ensure that people who cannot find jobs are able to survive.

If you are a believer in the right to life this would be a simple extension of you belief. If you are not it can become somewhat complicated but surprisingly enough people who are not right to life supporters seem to be for the government supporting the unemployed sine they mostly vote democratic while those who proclaim themselves as right to life seem to be against the government providing help for people without jobs since they mostly vote republican. It becomes apparent that conceptions of the right to life appears to proceed somewhat arbitrarily after birth.

While I certainly agree that no one has any right to any particular job, there is also no denying that everyone has the right to gainful employment. That is, unless you are a communist who thinks that everyone has a right to a decent life. Oh, wait a minute, right to life, right to a decent life, how far apart is that?

Rights, freedom, liberty, these are not characteristics of the individual. They are environments established by the society that individuals inhabit. They exist only by mutual consent and cooperation. To take a position of selfish disregard that does not defend and extend the rights freedoms and liberties of the social environment but only uses them for selfish advancement is a betrayal and undermining of society that will cause it to change. What it will change into is not completely beyond prediction because one thing will be sure, the mutual trust and cooperation that built the social environment will recede and with them the rights freedoms and liberties of their inhabitants.

The only unemployed should be those who voluntarily choose not to work. All the arguments against the right to work suppose that the unemployed are volunteers. Everyone who wants to work should be employed. If there is no right to a job there is no right to live. This is why the USSR put the right to work in its Constitution.

 

Only unionized employees believe they have a right to have a job.

Non-union people don't believe they have a right to have a job.

Nevertheless, as a little over half of America has discovered, it's more lucrative to be on the government dole, unless a job pays over a hundred grand a year.

 

lol after reading your post like 6 times, I still don't understand what exactly you are trying to say. You used a lot of fancy words, but there doesn't seem to be any real organization to your argument, but I'll try to decipher it and tell you what I think.

I support a negative income tax as a means to survival for people going through hard times, but I am a much stronger supporter of personal responsibility. Most people don't have a job because they refuse to take responsibility for failures and hardships in their life, and so they play the victim game of life, complain incessantly about their situation, and don't get anything done for themselves or society. Many feel that they are entitled to a job, and if they cannot provide more value than they are consuming, that is just too bad because they think that they deserve the quality of life that they are used to. This has led people to feel that they are entitled to a job no matter what, when in reality, government's involvement in these matters only cause more problems because it causes good businesses to waste capital on inefficient or sometimes useless labor (or the government uses taxpayer money on inefficient or useless labor).

As far as rights, freedom, and liberty not being characteristics of the individual, this is just incorrect. First off, this sounds like a line that you took directly out of some Marxist philosophy textbook and put on here without thinking about what it means or is really saying. Freedom and liberty, aside from being synonyms, are inherent characteristics of individualism. I can do anything that I want, from starting a business to buying a product to killing somebody, but there are consequences for each (some are good, like starting a business or buying something and getting something in exchange, some have negative consequences that are decided by society, like killing somebody and going to prison or being put to death. That being said, I have the freedom and rights to do those things, I just need to accept the consequences). The consequences are what are decided by society, and that is where are democracy has come into play. The problem with democracy is that it can be just as oppressive as a dictatorship to some individuals. Most people would agree that killing or harming another individual is something that should be punished, but what about discrimination? Should a company be punished for discriminating against the blind because they realize that it will be a huge cost to them in order to accommodate the blind? Should I be allowed to discriminate against people from Westbro baptist Church for their bigoted views of homosexuals, or do they have a right to a job, and therefore, should I be forced to hire them? What if nobody wants to hire somebody for their beliefs or physical inabilities, should that be legal? The individual has every right to believe what they want (and every right to think and to come up with a way to produce for society), but they also have every right to conform in order to get a good paying job (or accept a lower paying job and be grateful for what they do have in life), and that right to conform or stand up for what they believe in is what liberty and individualism is all about. But you want to put a gun to people's heads and force them to accept other people's viewpoints, which is not individualism, but collectivism.

 

A job is nothing more than an agreement between two parties to exchange labor for money. In order for there to be a "right" to a job, one must have the right to force one's association on another and demand compensation for labor provided even if the labor is not wanted nor solicited.

A right to a job makes no more sense than a right to be married. I wonder if those who believe that there is a right to a job also believe that a person has a right to be married such that the government must force someone to marry a person who has been unable to find a spouse.

 

AWESOME metaphor, definitely gonna steal that and use it when I talk to people who believe they have a right to a job, thanks.

 

The US already has a negative income tax, it is called the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Most people do what they have been led to believe is the right thing and still get caught up in circumstances beyond their understanding or control that causes them to lose their livelihood and any prospect of regaining an income comparable to what they had before. How can the fault be solely theirs? It is unreasonable to blame people, who through no fault of their own find themselves in dire circumstances.

As you say, you can do what you want as long as you are willing to accept the consequences, consequences decided by the society you live in as they are expressed in the laws and carried out by the government. If you disagree, you are blaming society for not conforming to your personal views. Too bad for you. There is a lot of things that society, through its government, decides that many people disagree with but accept because to do otherwise can create social unrest which may lead to wholly unpredictable consequences including violent insurrection, civil war and revolution. These are situations that most people are not willing to entertain.
Social views change over time, and with that the consequences of bucking them. The Westboro Baptist Church's anti-gay rantings would have been right in the mainstream fifty years ago, and still are among a not so small minority despite the increasing general social consensus that all discrimination is arbitrary and wrong regardless of its circumstance. If you can discriminate against a Westboro Baptist you open yourself to be a victim of discrimination that you may view as unjust but will be just as arbitrary.

Living in a large society is all about accepting other people's viewpoints and about bearing the consequences of not conforming to the generally agreed viewpoint, even if it results in a gun to the head. It seems somewhat contradictory that you say that everyone has the right to believe what they want but make an exception for employment where it appears that you want to put a gun to people's heads to make them go to work and be grateful for whatever jobs and wages their private employer chooses to give them, that they conform to some peculiar conception of a right to conform. A conception of rights that is not widely accepted by society, the government, or anyone else outside of a few crackpot charlatans masquerading as eminent economists and political mavens.

 

Ok, so after reading both of your responses, I can tell that you are a philosopher and probably have very little training in regards to mathematics and science, but I will tell you that from an economic/mathematic point of view, giving people a "right to work" will almost never work out to a pareto optimal efficiency for society. There will always be somebody who is the loser if we give EVERYBODY a "right to work". I'm sure if you actually think about it using your philosophically tuned brain, you will eventually understand (although it may take some economic and mathematics education, so I would recommend going and getting a hard science education before coming back on here and discussing these types of concepts with me).

The fact is, I should have a right to discriminate against people of Westbro Baptist Church, and ANYBODY should be allowed to discriminate against me FOR discriminating against them (that may be tough for you to work out as a philosopher, but think hard about it). I understand that many of my ideas are a bit ambitious and some of them are even quite radical, but I accept full responsibility for every word that I say to other people, and every word I type on here. If somebody wishes to discriminate against me on that basis, then so be it. The reason I don't fear that is because I know that I am an intelligent and loving person who really cares about people, although I am not a fan of bigotry and ignorance, and so I don't feel that I NEED to fear being discriminated against. Maybe you need some protection from the government so that if you don't get a job you can blame it on discrimination, but I feel that I am intelligent enough to get a job without government help.

As for your last point, as I said in my OP, everybody can believe what they want to believe, but that doesn't make the belief right. This cuts a close line to religion again, but if people want to have superstitious beliefs that if they are bad, they will go to Hell and suffer for eternity, they have every right to believe that. They also have the right to tell me all about their belief that I should be good or suffer for eternity, but that doesn't make the belief correct. Similarly, while you may think that you have some kind of self evident right to a job, the fact is, you don't. You came in to this world alone, you will leave it alone (at least I hope that I leave alone), and you are responsible for taking care of yourself only. If you want to help people by starting a company that hires lots of people and gives them great salaries even though they may not earn it, that is absolutely awesome, and I completely support it. If you want to go out and raise awareness about racism and sexism in the world, that is awesome as well, and I fully support you. But under NO circumstances do you have a right to put a gun to my head and tell me how I am going hire you and pay you a certain amount just because you have a RIGHT to a job, because the fact is God did not create us all equal, suffering does exist in the world, and it is every individuals responsibility to help those people, not the people who happen to hold the guns. You still haven't given me a single good reason why people have a right to a job. No evidence, no simple, rational explanation for why people deserve it. You have given me a long and clearly deeply thought out response that really doesn't tell me any actual logical facts. Most of what you say is nothing more than abstract philosophy which resembles such ideas as "Are we really here? Does life REALLY exist? From the semantics of you ambiguously defined statement, I have concluded that your contradictory statements are indeed false." Lay out a simple, rational argument for why people DESERVE a job, and I will agree with you.

As for an economic education, I would recommend reading some of the works of Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek (both of whom are Nobel Prize winning economists). I would also recommend taking a course in microeconomic theory and macroeconomic theory as well as some courses in calculus or advanced mathematics so that you will be able to comprehend them.

 

The so called crony capitalism is the consequence of corporatism, corruption, so the Network of Government and corporate businesses.
I absolutely share your opinion as to organizing free markets in order to improve employment conditions and the fundings by companies, which gain fundamental interest in hiring highly skilled workers, what increases professional excellency.
Usually the left parties want to establigh the right to a Job before yapping that low paid jobs are no real jobs and against human rights by violating the dignity of the concerned individual.

 

Excellent point. I actually didn't think about that either, although it is something that I rarely see. One thing that society REALLY needs is some respect for everybody. It really doesn't matter if you work at Walmart or Target, the fact is, without all those low paid employees, there wouldn't BE a Walmart or Target for me to shop at. This is something that I appreciate when I go shopping, but I will admit that I rarely mention this to other people, and something that I really should be talking about a little more. What you are saying is absolutely right, and what frustrates ME is that politicians CREATE poverty by constantly focusing on it. Every politician goes in to office trying to "end poverty" rather than saying "do you people have any idea what you have? How about you guys start helping other people and respecting each other on your own and seeing what that will give you". But instead, they tell all the "poor" people that it is the rich people's fault that they are poor. Then they put the burden on the "rich" people (usually upper middle class Americans such as Doctors, Teachers, Workers, etc. through raising payroll and income taxes), and waste most of the tax money on BS government sponsored corporations.

Fun fact that I found out recently. The NSA spent over 1 billion dollars on a project called Trailblazer, which was eventually scrapped, did nothing for our country, and could have been replaced with a project called ThinThread which was better, cheaper (only $3 million), and would have kept the privacy of American citizens safe. Thin Thread may have also stopped 9/11 had it been implemented (I'm not saying it would have, but 9/11 just shows how much of a failure the NSA has been to us). The reason Trailblazer got made though is because it was done through government contracts with defense companies, and since the government has the idiotic rule that "if you don't use your money, you lose your money," the NSA lined the pockets of these defense contractors with MY money, working on a project that didn't work, and even if it did work, it would have been used to spy on ME. This, is why I really hate the large government that the U.S. is creating.

 

Why are Target and Walmart employees low paid? Because they can't get jobs that pay more. If you are qualified for a $60K a year job, you only work for less until one of those jobs are available. If everyone was earning $60K, that is what Walmart and Target would have to pay.

The right training (in something you are passionate about, and has value to an employer), the right work ethic, and the right attitude about constantly looking for a better job (really better, not better because it isn't the devil you know).

What you earn has little to do with how hard you work. It has to do with what you produce (not what the equipment your run produces). The left loves to complain how much CEO's are paid, because they don't "produce" anything. That is because they have a limited understanding what "produce" means. Being able to make sense our of the business landscape, identifying and pursuing an opportunity, and dropping that opportunity if it doesn't pan out, is beyond the skill set of most. Those that are good at it make a company far more in profits (their "production"), than they are paid.

 

If people don't have a right to a job, why do the women-enslavers force them to be born?