I just heard someone called Jackie Lavin on the Pat Kenny radio show say that unemployment benefits interfere with “the employer’s right to employ people”. That’s an interesting concept, isn’t it? I remember when right-wing lunatics used to just call social welfare an interference in the sacred free market. Now it’s an abrogation of their rights. They are actually being oppressed by social welfare.
I hadn’t known that the wealthy had any special rights – at least not officially – but according to her, one of them is to have other people be poorer so that they’re more affordable. That’s kind of mind-blowing, isn’t it? The rich have a right to poor people. It makes a strange Zen-like sense.
This Jackie Lavin is on the radio because she’s a “Business Personality”, best known for appearing in the Irish version of The Apprentice as mentor to her real-world business and life partner Bill Cullen. Also, for appearing in and writing for glossy Hello!-style magazines, like the one owned by Bill Cullen. He’s an entrepreneur, Fianna Fáil donor and I suppose our nearest equivalent to Donald Trump. These are important people then.
Why not apply this entertainment paradigm to the country as a whole? If the unemployed don’t shape up, we can fire them from their homes – from the whole country indeed. ‘Firing’ is much sexier than that dated emigration idea.
I mean. Fuck this.
2 replies on “The Right To Employ People”
What riles me is that if those rich guys don’t say it you can bet somebody will come after them praising and defending them for being innovators and creating jobs. Dude, if they can’t poach employees from unemployment because of some benefit scheme how can they be considered entrepreneurial geniuses? Their compensation packages lose out to assistance that usually ranks below minimum wage (don’t know Ireland’s case).
What riles me is that if those rich guys don’t say it you can bet somebody will come after them praising and defending them for being innovators and creating jobs. Dude, if they can’t poach employees from unemployment because of some benefit scheme how can they be considered entrepreneurial geniuses? Their compensation packages lose out to assistance that usually ranks below minimum wage (don’t know Ireland’s case).