I apologise for not posting on the blog for so long. Truth be told, I’m just bogged down with work. Not in the normal sense of  ‘hey, big project deadline coming up’. No, I wish. More like ‘OMG, I’m going to lose my job, let me work my pants off’ type.

About 6 weeks ago, I was asked to take voluntary redundancy. I really didn’t see it coming. In fact my colleagues got the call, but it didn’t seem to register in me that I would receive the same call. You easily get stuck with the ‘it’s never gonna happen to me’ mentality. Anyway, I did. Another lesson in humility for me.

Fortunately voluntary redundancy is better than mandatory redundancy.  You’re given the option of resigning, and offered a ‘package’ upon leaving.  Upon consulting a few brothers and speaking to a honest recruiter, I decided it was the worst thing I could do. Not only are good jobs vanishing into the mist, salaries are being heavily undercut by the long lists of educated unemployed fighting for the few available positions.

So I still have a job, but I’ve been alerted that I’m in the firing line for the mandatory cuts that are just around the corner.

All in all, I don’t feel that bad. If I do lose my job, I’ll just move back with my parents. I don’t have any dependents and my savings will help me get by. Most importantly, Allah is Ar-Razzaq. The money I earn, to the air that I breathe is a provision that is granted for me. No need to feel depressed, or worse, to think about dodgy (read haraam) ways of trying to earn money.

The problem that people have is that the loss of a job actually means the total loss of security. In this society, you rarely own anything. Nor can you exercise independence in controlling your livelihood. Your house is likely owned by a landlord or a bank. Your right to water, electricity and fuel is at the mercy of privately controlled conglomerates. All of these need to be paid for; lose your job and you can’t ‘just get by’.

Or you can, but only just. That’s what welfare support from the state is supposedly for.

I dread welfare though.  Only once in my life did I take a jobseekers allowance. True, it is a little embarrassing walking into the local Jobcentre plus*, but it shouldn’t be from the worry of auntyjee catching sight of you holding out for your giro, but because you are ashamed about not earning your rizq. After all, the Prophet (saw) advised us that the best of earning is through our own two hands.

On many levels though, the idea of state welfare support is wrong. The key word here is state welfare support. I’m also primarily referring to the Capitalist countries.

For one thing, it’s easy to abuse. Given that rampant individualism and morally vacuous concepts exist aplenty, some people are easily inclined to switch to a mode of living for welfare. Stereotypical Asians trying to scam the system for income support come to mind here.

Next, is that leveling a price value for welfare payments distorts the market for jobs and disincentivises the want to work. If your welfare allowance provides you with £250 a month, then regardless of how honest and hardworking you are, why bother taking a job that only offers £240 a month? There are many reports in the UK of citizens unwilling to work manual labour jobs (and preferring illegal immigrants to do it instead).

Then we come to the whole issue of how welfare support is actually paid for. It is paid for by taxes (unless the government wants to take ‘quantitative easing’ to another level). Taxes are the price we pay for government services, and amongst many of such services one of them is welfare support. The question about welfare support though, is if the tax was removed and so thus welfare support also stopped, would I actually ever need support for my welfare?

The answer lies in everything I’ve talked about Islamic Economics in the other posts of this blog. I’ll post a more comprehensive blog post soon insh’Allah, but the summary is:

Welfare support is primarily the duty of the family, then your neighbours, then the local community, and then the (Islamic) State. Islamic economics does not exist devoid of the other relationship elements of society.  A strong family unit means that no man is an island – able or disabled.  The Islamic culture nurtures a collective sense of responsibility over your fellow brothers and sisters, something Capitalism cannot cater for, and thus in the Capitalist societies welfare support is relegated to the role of the state. This extra burden for the (Capitalist) state is handled via the raising of extra taxes on its citizens. A vicious cycle is now created. The application of crushing taxes, reduces the availability of disposable income. The very income that would allow people to ensure welfare for themselves, at the very basic level, by owning their own property. Due to the cyclical boom-bust nature of the Capitalist system, when the bad times roll, and people are caught short. They have no family or community to provide a helping hand, thus they resort to the state for support. The growing number of people seeking state support forces the state to increase taxation….and so the cycle continues.

*Non UK readers. The Jobcentre in the UK is also where you go to pick up your dole.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Economics, Islam, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.