A good idea… but… October 11, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy.trackback
Here’s one of those ideas which on some levels makes sense, and yet on others, perhaps not so much. The exchequer is on the point of stopping sending pay slips to retirees from the civil service, some 24,000 of them – for a saving of €200,000. It’s not a bad idea in principle:
Already many in the civil and public service will are issued electronic pay slips, some 33,000 according to the Sunday Business Post, and with about 290,000 in total employed in the area the scope for fairly significant savings are great.
And yet, and yet.
…it is understood that objections have been raised by the Departments of Justice and Education to shifting to electronic payments on the grounds that some gardaí and teachers do not have access to computers.
This is a fair point too. And not just some gardai and teachers, but also general staff and so on whose access to computers would be limited or non-existent. Indeed it’s sometimes difficult to remember that the proliferation of computers societally is more limited than might be expected and within organisations the view from the top may be entirely misleading as regards access to such technologies on the part of many workers within the work context. Distance and detachment tend to characterise hierarchies.
And it raises issues such as the duty of employers to staff. I can access my payroll details on an intranet in work – and IIRC for those who can’t the paper option remains, but I can’t outside of work for fairly obvious security reasons.
If I had limited or no access to a computer then I would be in serious trouble if I needed some information in an hurry (and of course while some of us do use internet banking many don’t). I think an employer has a duty to keep a worker informed about their financial position, but not to generate a situation where they are uninformed.
Again, it’s not that I think the idea is a bad one, quite the opposite, and it’s clearly not impossible to find means of overcoming these issues, but it’s like all these sort of ‘reforms’. Stating that they can be done is easy. Actually implementing them can be more difficult.
Techno-Utopianism is common among the libertarian (freetard) and conservative sets. It’s easy for them to translate the fact that they can afford this tech into a reflection of deserving the advantage through hard work, innate talent etc.
Therefore it’s the mooching poor’s own responsibility for being cut off from basic services.
On a slightly related note, I saw a chap being refused his dole in the PO the other morning because he didn’t have photo ID. He explained that he didn’t have a passport, didn’t drive, had never worked at the sort of job where he would have had a staff card. The woman behind the counter was willing to settle for a bank card, but he didn’t have a bank account. Now, it’s not illegal not to have ID in this country, and yet here is someone denied his entitlements on this basis.
Just as the haves assume that everyone has internet access, there follows a belief that ‘everyone’ has a passport/ bank account/ credit card, a belief that effectively denies you access to all sorts of things – for instance, the most expensive way to buy a rail ticket now is to go into a station and proffer cash
This is becoming something of an obsession with me, just how difficult life is in this society without capital actually is and how indifferent and ignorant those who have even small enough amounts are to this.
Interesting piece in the NLR this month by Wolfgang Streeck called ‘Politics as Consumption’ where he talks about how the model of consumer choice is corrupting the notion of citizenship – citizens are encouraged to see their relationship with the state as that of a customer to a service provider, with ‘a package’ tailored to individual taste. Whereas state provision of services by definition needs to be universal etc.
The corollary – relevant here – is that citizenship in a full sense becomes dependent on access to the internet and to credit; exactly the things that those with most need of the services of the state are unlikely to have. And, as you say, many people are entirely oblivious to this divide.
[...] And never more clear was that statement than the latest news about Bank of Ireland and other banks doing away with ‘free banking’. Funnily enough sonofstan mentioned something along these lines yesterday in comments. [...]