And if I was in your situation, I would look for employment in a restaurant. Tons of those, not much need for education or experience, and they have meal plans for employees.

That’s the dumbest law I have ever heard of.

In the US we have child labor laws. A lot of people think they were put into place to protect the children. They weren’t. They were put into place so adults could find work.

Allowing kids to get paid less than adults is a ridiculous idea, and it’s not capitalism. In capitalism, your paid your worth. Age has nothing to do with it.

Yea... that makes it a lot harder.

What Mafoo said. This is not capitalism, this is the result of government intervention. Capitalism simply copes the best it can and takes advantage of the "best" solution the business can find. This law is simply dumb. It is full of the bad unintended consequences government actions usually have, in this case, you can't find a job.

We have child labour laws in the UK, too. Up until 15 all you can really be is a paper boy. 15-16 you are limited in what you do. 16-18 you can pretty much do anything but there's a lower minimum wage (as long as you have left full time eduction).

I personally don't agree with it, but there you go.

btw, NintendoMan, you minimum wages are outdated. Minimum wage for children has stayed the same, but for adults it's gone up to £5.73

It’s actually socialism applied poorly. I am for the minimum wage, and it’s a socialistic program. Minimum wedge is the government putting a minimum value on your time; it’s so extreme capitalism cannot exploit workers.

You should pick a value that you think everyone’s life (in the form of time) is worth, and set a standard rate. To make it variable based on conditions you can’t control, is the government saying some people are intrinsically worth more than others.

What a horrible thing to do.

I was not arguing against minimum wage laws (That is another debate...) I was saying that paying a child ~£2/hour less than an adult is the stupid law. It has the unintended consequence that the just out of college crowd with no experience (like NintendoMan) has a vastly harder time to find a job.

In summary, I agree with you. One standard, for all people.

mafo- you presuming there are restaurants and things, believe me i have tried to get a job, the problem is i am restricted to a bus timetable for working hours as a bus is my only means of transport (so i cannot start till 8.20am as thats first bus that arrives in town from where i live, and the last bus leaves at 6pm so i can't work past then, unless my employers want me to sleep at work itself)also i am competing against cheaper students and the the recently unemployed who all have better references (i presume, seeing as they had jobs) and who have experience. anyway, back to capitalism - seeing as how i am at the extreme end of poverty. socialism would improve my life alot, however, i am guessing i am the exception the rule and as such i am unlikely to be convinced by capitalism in anycase. One thing that is true however is that capitalism has just as many bad points as good and a world without money would be a nicer world indeed.

Well dude i can see it is hard for you, but like others said you cannot blame the system nor the government in a current form. And if i ofended you in my previous post then im sorry.

The ironic thing is it sounds like a lot of your problems are due to lack of Capitalism, not because of it.

You said your PM sold off all the flats. What were they doing with flats in the first place? In the US, the government owns very little housing, and the worst housing is all rental property. The US government does not give you a pool of properties to choose from, they give you money, and you spend it. This puts the power back into the consumer’s hands, and drives prices down. This is an example of the US using capitalism economically, to fund a politically social program. You would have no problems finding something close to work to live in. There are two trailer parks in the town I live in. To live in one, cost $150-$300 a month, and it’s worlds better then where you live (well, in the sense that you would be eating better), living in a trailer park is not the best, but it’s not bad either.

What you need, is more Capitalism, not less.