Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
How governments created the present welfare mess
2 views
Skip to first unread message
RH
Apr 7, 2013, 3:27:16 PM4/7/13
to
How governments created the present welfare mess
Robert Henderson
The current attempt by the Coalition Government to radically alter the
welfare state by severely restricting benefits is an exercise in
gross hypocrisy. Why? Because the Tories’ (and some on the left
like Labour MP Frank Field) increasingly shrill and uncouth
portrayal of those in receipt of benefits as scroungers overlooks one
very inconvenient fact: it is the actions of governments of all
political hues over the past 35 years which created the welfare
mess we have today. Between them these governments have produced a
situation where millions of Britons cannot either get a job at all
or can only obtain a job which does not pay enough to support them
and their families even meagrely. This has produced the truly mad
situation where substantial benefits are out of necessity paid to
millions who are in work, mainly through tax credits and housing
benefit, because the wages on offer are too low to allow someone to
live an independent life.
Mass unemployment
How did this dire situation come about? Let us begin with the
shrinkage of jobs. Sustained large-scale unemployment did not begin
with Thatcher in 1979 but she greatly increased it. Unemployment was
officially 1.4 million in 1979 and rose to over three million (even
by the dole claimant count) by the mid-1980s (http://
econ.economicshelp.org/2007/03/uk-economy-under-mrs-
thatcher-1979-1984.html ).
Shocking as the 1979 figure of 1.4 million was at the time, it was
primarily the consequence of the oil price quadrupling after in
1973, something over which the Labour governments from 1974-79 had no
control over because North Sea oil was not yet flowing in commercial
quantities. Conversely, the remarkably rapid rise of unemployment in
the 1980s was caused by the wilful economic vandalism of the Thatcher
government which publicity celebrated (yes, I did say celebrated)
destroying much of the UK’s heavy and extractive industries.
Privatisation
Privatisation was the platform which placed large swathes of the
public services into private hands, including the strategically
important providers of gas, electricity, telecommunications, railways
and water. This alone removed several million well paid and secure
jobs from the UK. It also created areas with structural unemployment.
Many of those made redundant in such areas never again obtained
anything other than a low paid job or, worse, never obtained a new
job.
The early big privatisations , such as those of gas and
telecommunications, were unashamed; other parts proceeded piecemeal
through the contracting out of public services to private business.
Later from the 1990s onwards came the Private public Partnership and
Private Finance Initiative which built up massive amounts of public
debt whilst keeping most of it from being added to the National Debt.
Bizarrely, the supposedly Labour governments headed by Blair and
Brown were even more enthusiastic than the Thatcher and Major
governments about using private contractors for public works. The
effect of all these various forms of privatisation was to reduce
manpower and conditions of work radically.
Outsourcing
Privatisation was followed and after the 1980s accompanied by
outsourcing. The Thatcher years broke the back of mainstream
political resistance to laissez faire in both the domestic and foreign
markets. British companies exported jobs to the Third World
incontinently squeezing the available jobs further both in terms of
numbers and pay and conditions. This trait was propelled to a
significant degree by the willingness of British governments of any
political colour to allow British companies to be purchased by foreign
countries. These had even less reason to retain jobs in Britain than
British owned businesses.
Immigration
On top of all this came mass immigration. This really took off from
the advent of Blair as Prime Minister in 1997, with 50,000 net
immigrants in 1997 rising to 250,000 in 2010, the year Labour lost
power (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9713954/
Interactive-graphic-how-UK-migration-has-changed-1964-2011.html). The
British population has increased by a net 3 million from immigration
since 1997 (http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/). This produced
competition for jobs, most of them low-skill or unskilled, but also
for skilled workers especially in the building trade. The immigrants
not only took jobs from native Britons but did so by accepting much
lower wages. The huge influx of immigrants also had the adverse
effect of helping to raise housing costs, both for buying and renting.
The failure to build enough new housing
House prices were inflated by the failure of all governments to
maintain social housing building from the mid-eighties onwards and the
lunatic absence of controls over the provision or mortgages, which
at the height of their absurdity were being offered at 125% of the
value of a property. Come the crash of 2008 no deposit mortgages
vanished and lenders began to demand deposits of 20-30%. The result
was property prices too high for most first time buyers because they
could not raise the deposit and a general weakening of the housing
market as those with mortgages found that they could not re-mortgage
on affordable terms when short term deals came to an end or obtain
mortgages for a new property. The freezing of the property market
meant that more and more needed to rent. Most could not find social
housing so were left at the mercy of private landlords who
relentlessly raised rents to unaffordable levels for large sections of
the employed.
To understand exactly how inflated property have become compare the
prices today with what they were in 1955. Then the average
residential property price was around £2,000. Uprated for inflation
the average price of properties today would be around £40,000. It is
housing costs which are the primary poison in the British economy. If
there was sufficient housing to both rent and buy at the sort of
prices to wages ratio which existed even 20 years ago, much of the
general problem of rising benefit costs would not exist.
The manipulation of the UK’s unemployment statistics
Today the official unemployment figure is 2.5 million. That is
striking enough, but the contrast between the 1979 unemployment
figure (1.4 million) and the one now is even more dramatic than the
bald figures suggest. This was the consequence of the massaging of
the unemployment figures, more pupils staying on a at school after the
age of sixteen and a dramatic rise in those going into higher
education.
Thatcher began the government’s habit of fudging the employment
figures by cynically shifting people from the unemployment registers
to long-term sick benefit. By 2011 2.6 million were claiming such
benefit. (http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?
page=statistical_summaries). In 1979 around 600,000 were doing so
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/19/lax-benefit-rules-not-
responsible-more-disability).
To this distortion of the unemployment level must be added the vast
increases in the numbers in post-16 education. The 1980s saw the
beginning of the governmental drive to have much larger numbers of
schoolchildren staying at school until they were eighteen . By 2011
they had almost doubled from the rate of those staying at school after
the age of sixteen from what it was in in 1980 (see p10
www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn04252.pdf). From 2015 all those
under the age of 18 will, in theory at least, have to be either in
education or training – http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/warning-over-raising-of-school-leaving-age-to-18).
The expansion of higher education was even more dramatic. In 1980
only 13% of young Britons went to into higher education (page F152 –
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/nmg/1468-0297.00102.pdf). More than
forty per cent of British school-leavers are now going on to start
degree courses (The last Labour government had a target of 50% of
school-leavers entering higher education and in 2010/11 47% of those
between the ages of 17-30 were in higher education (http://
www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/419496.article)
The false classification of people as long-term sick rather than
unemployed, the rise in children saying on at school and the increase
in students taking degrees considerably understates the true level of
unemployment. The wrongful classification speaks for itself, while
the extended schooling and increased university participation is
important because it delayed the point at which millions entered the
employment market.
Exactly how distorting these interferences with the unemployment
statistics are compared with those before 1980 is debatable, but its
effects must be very substantial. Those between the age of 16-64
deemed economically inactive were 9.04 million according to the
official figures issued in October 2012 (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/
rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/october-2012/statistical-
bulletin.html. This gives an indication of the huge numbers who
should really be listed as unemployed. Even if the schoolchildren
above the age of 16, the students and the sick and disabled were
discounted, there would be several million left. Add that to the
official unemployment rate of around 2.5 million and the true
unemployment rate could be in the region of 5 million or even more.
But the picture is even bleaker than that because large numbers of
those now counted as employed are on short time. Many of those and the
full time employed are on short contracts and have no security of
employment.
Working tax credits
All of this – the destruction and export of jobs, mass immigration,
and the government driven housing market – produced a Britain which
had become both a low-wage economy and an extremely expensive place to
live. Many people in full time employment could not afford to live on
their pay. As rents soared housing benefit was increasingly taken up
by even those who ordinarily would not have been thought of as being
at the bottom of the income pile. Eye-watering amounts of housing
benefit were paid for those with large families (http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/5663014/Family-claims-147000-a-year-in-housing-benefit-for-seven-bedroom-home.html)
, especially to those in London where by 2013 families in private
rented accommodation were paying 59% of their household income
according to the housing charity Shelter (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
england-london-20943576).
In April 2003, the Blair government tacitly acknowledged that wages
for many were simply inadequate to support life by introducing
working tax credits. (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/start/who-
qualifies/workingtaxcredit/work.htm). This had several pernicious
effects. It acted as a subsidy for employers which allowed them to
offer ever lower wages secure in the knowledge that the taxpayer would
subsidise business by making up their inadequate wages with working
tax credits. The regulations for working tax credits also allowed
people to claim them when they were working less than a full week.
This provided an incentive for employees to work the minimum hours
which were as little as 16 hours for a single parent. The employer
also had an incentive to employ a number of part timers rather than
full time employees because the wages of the part timers could be kept
below the level at which national insurance had to be paid . It thus
became cheaper to employ two or three part-timers rather than one full
timer.
The effects of working tax credits were made worse by the Blair and
Brown governments ideologically driven desire to have every woman of
working age out at work. This resulted in childcare tax credits
(http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/calcs/ccin.htm#1) whereby mothers were paid to
leave their children in the hands of other women while they went out
to work.
The benefits situation needs fixing but the way the Coalition is
going about it is unreasonable. They are not starting from where we
are now and taking regard of the effects of their changes in policy on
people who are already encased in the circumstances of high
unemployment , low paid and often insecure jobs and ever rising rents.
Instead they are using the blunt instrument of cutting benefit
suddenly and seriously disrupting the lives of millions. I
n the case of housing in particular it makes no sense to say housing
benefit will be capped if this makes continued residency in an area
impossible because of rental costs way beyond their means or the
£26,000 cap on benefits. The policy may well drive many people in
employment out of the area in which they not only live but work
causing them to become unemployed. Even if people are unemployed
forcing them to move any real distance will have effects on those
with children at school and take away the informal support mechanisms
of family and friends.
Similarly, the attempt to move those in social housing out of their
properties if they are deemed to be too large for those now resident
there (the “bedroom tax”) is absurd unless there is smaller social
housing accommodation they can move into. If this forces social
housing tenants to move a long way from where they live they will
suffer the same problems that those who move for reasons because they
cannot afford private rented accommodation. If social housing tenants
have to rent from private landlords that will cost more than the
social housing. Such tenants on housing benefit would be more
expensive for the taxpayer to support.
What should be done? The answer is to change the general circumstances
which cause the welfare bill to be so high. This can be done by
creating an economy in which any full time wage will at least
support a person and ideally will maintain a family. This can be done
by adopting these policies although Britain would need to leave the EU
or get the EU to agree to change the rules governing free movement of
labour, goods, capital and services to impose many of them):
1. Cease all further mass immigration.
2. Address the housing shortage by introducing rent controls and much
stronger legal backing for tenure on private rental properties,
engaging in a massive programme of social house building, restricting
all future social house tenancies to those born British citizens.
abolishing Right-to-Buy, banning buy-to-let mortgages, banning
foreigners from buying residential properties and giving private
builders an incentive to build by taxing the land they hold until they
build.
3. Place a tax on employers for every foreign worker already here
they employ to discourage their employment.
4. . Remove benefits from all foreigners to encourage those already
here to return home.
These policies would have short term and longer term effects. For
example, rent controls and strong tenure conditions could be brought
in very rapidly giving tenants in private property both an assurance
that they could continue in their rented property for a long time
with a rent that did not suddenly rise beyond their means. Building
large numbers of new properties would take several years to gain
momentum but there should be a considerable increase in the housing
stock within five years.
Policies such as stopping further mass immigration and incentives
for foreign labour already here to leave like placing a tax on
employers if they employ foreigners and removing all benefits from
foreigners should tighten the labour market . This will raise wages
and make employers use labour more efficiently.
A tighter labour market will produce higher wages and much cheaper
housing will lessen the need for people to draw benefits whilst in
work and the cost of housing benefit should reduce substantially.
That will draw most of the poison from the benefit debate.
Robert Henderson
The current attempt by the Coalition Government to radically alter the
welfare state by severely restricting benefits is an exercise in
gross hypocrisy. Why? Because the Tories’ (and some on the left
like Labour MP Frank Field) increasingly shrill and uncouth
portrayal of those in receipt of benefits as scroungers overlooks one
very inconvenient fact: it is the actions of governments of all
political hues over the past 35 years which created the welfare
mess we have today. Between them these governments have produced a
situation where millions of Britons cannot either get a job at all
or can only obtain a job which does not pay enough to support them
and their families even meagrely. This has produced the truly mad
situation where substantial benefits are out of necessity paid to
millions who are in work, mainly through tax credits and housing
benefit, because the wages on offer are too low to allow someone to
live an independent life.
Mass unemployment
How did this dire situation come about? Let us begin with the
shrinkage of jobs. Sustained large-scale unemployment did not begin
with Thatcher in 1979 but she greatly increased it. Unemployment was
officially 1.4 million in 1979 and rose to over three million (even
by the dole claimant count) by the mid-1980s (http://
econ.economicshelp.org/2007/03/uk-economy-under-mrs-
thatcher-1979-1984.html ).
Shocking as the 1979 figure of 1.4 million was at the time, it was
primarily the consequence of the oil price quadrupling after in
1973, something over which the Labour governments from 1974-79 had no
control over because North Sea oil was not yet flowing in commercial
quantities. Conversely, the remarkably rapid rise of unemployment in
the 1980s was caused by the wilful economic vandalism of the Thatcher
government which publicity celebrated (yes, I did say celebrated)
destroying much of the UK’s heavy and extractive industries.
Privatisation
Privatisation was the platform which placed large swathes of the
public services into private hands, including the strategically
important providers of gas, electricity, telecommunications, railways
and water. This alone removed several million well paid and secure
jobs from the UK. It also created areas with structural unemployment.
Many of those made redundant in such areas never again obtained
anything other than a low paid job or, worse, never obtained a new
job.
The early big privatisations , such as those of gas and
telecommunications, were unashamed; other parts proceeded piecemeal
through the contracting out of public services to private business.
Later from the 1990s onwards came the Private public Partnership and
Private Finance Initiative which built up massive amounts of public
debt whilst keeping most of it from being added to the National Debt.
Bizarrely, the supposedly Labour governments headed by Blair and
Brown were even more enthusiastic than the Thatcher and Major
governments about using private contractors for public works. The
effect of all these various forms of privatisation was to reduce
manpower and conditions of work radically.
Outsourcing
Privatisation was followed and after the 1980s accompanied by
outsourcing. The Thatcher years broke the back of mainstream
political resistance to laissez faire in both the domestic and foreign
markets. British companies exported jobs to the Third World
incontinently squeezing the available jobs further both in terms of
numbers and pay and conditions. This trait was propelled to a
significant degree by the willingness of British governments of any
political colour to allow British companies to be purchased by foreign
countries. These had even less reason to retain jobs in Britain than
British owned businesses.
Immigration
On top of all this came mass immigration. This really took off from
the advent of Blair as Prime Minister in 1997, with 50,000 net
immigrants in 1997 rising to 250,000 in 2010, the year Labour lost
power (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9713954/
Interactive-graphic-how-UK-migration-has-changed-1964-2011.html). The
British population has increased by a net 3 million from immigration
since 1997 (http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/). This produced
competition for jobs, most of them low-skill or unskilled, but also
for skilled workers especially in the building trade. The immigrants
not only took jobs from native Britons but did so by accepting much
lower wages. The huge influx of immigrants also had the adverse
effect of helping to raise housing costs, both for buying and renting.
The failure to build enough new housing
House prices were inflated by the failure of all governments to
maintain social housing building from the mid-eighties onwards and the
lunatic absence of controls over the provision or mortgages, which
at the height of their absurdity were being offered at 125% of the
value of a property. Come the crash of 2008 no deposit mortgages
vanished and lenders began to demand deposits of 20-30%. The result
was property prices too high for most first time buyers because they
could not raise the deposit and a general weakening of the housing
market as those with mortgages found that they could not re-mortgage
on affordable terms when short term deals came to an end or obtain
mortgages for a new property. The freezing of the property market
meant that more and more needed to rent. Most could not find social
housing so were left at the mercy of private landlords who
relentlessly raised rents to unaffordable levels for large sections of
the employed.
To understand exactly how inflated property have become compare the
prices today with what they were in 1955. Then the average
residential property price was around £2,000. Uprated for inflation
the average price of properties today would be around £40,000. It is
housing costs which are the primary poison in the British economy. If
there was sufficient housing to both rent and buy at the sort of
prices to wages ratio which existed even 20 years ago, much of the
general problem of rising benefit costs would not exist.
The manipulation of the UK’s unemployment statistics
Today the official unemployment figure is 2.5 million. That is
striking enough, but the contrast between the 1979 unemployment
figure (1.4 million) and the one now is even more dramatic than the
bald figures suggest. This was the consequence of the massaging of
the unemployment figures, more pupils staying on a at school after the
age of sixteen and a dramatic rise in those going into higher
education.
Thatcher began the government’s habit of fudging the employment
figures by cynically shifting people from the unemployment registers
to long-term sick benefit. By 2011 2.6 million were claiming such
benefit. (http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?
page=statistical_summaries). In 1979 around 600,000 were doing so
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/19/lax-benefit-rules-not-
responsible-more-disability).
To this distortion of the unemployment level must be added the vast
increases in the numbers in post-16 education. The 1980s saw the
beginning of the governmental drive to have much larger numbers of
schoolchildren staying at school until they were eighteen . By 2011
they had almost doubled from the rate of those staying at school after
the age of sixteen from what it was in in 1980 (see p10
www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn04252.pdf). From 2015 all those
under the age of 18 will, in theory at least, have to be either in
education or training – http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/warning-over-raising-of-school-leaving-age-to-18).
The expansion of higher education was even more dramatic. In 1980
only 13% of young Britons went to into higher education (page F152 –
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/nmg/1468-0297.00102.pdf). More than
forty per cent of British school-leavers are now going on to start
degree courses (The last Labour government had a target of 50% of
school-leavers entering higher education and in 2010/11 47% of those
between the ages of 17-30 were in higher education (http://
www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/419496.article)
The false classification of people as long-term sick rather than
unemployed, the rise in children saying on at school and the increase
in students taking degrees considerably understates the true level of
unemployment. The wrongful classification speaks for itself, while
the extended schooling and increased university participation is
important because it delayed the point at which millions entered the
employment market.
Exactly how distorting these interferences with the unemployment
statistics are compared with those before 1980 is debatable, but its
effects must be very substantial. Those between the age of 16-64
deemed economically inactive were 9.04 million according to the
official figures issued in October 2012 (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/
rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/october-2012/statistical-
bulletin.html. This gives an indication of the huge numbers who
should really be listed as unemployed. Even if the schoolchildren
above the age of 16, the students and the sick and disabled were
discounted, there would be several million left. Add that to the
official unemployment rate of around 2.5 million and the true
unemployment rate could be in the region of 5 million or even more.
But the picture is even bleaker than that because large numbers of
those now counted as employed are on short time. Many of those and the
full time employed are on short contracts and have no security of
employment.
Working tax credits
All of this – the destruction and export of jobs, mass immigration,
and the government driven housing market – produced a Britain which
had become both a low-wage economy and an extremely expensive place to
live. Many people in full time employment could not afford to live on
their pay. As rents soared housing benefit was increasingly taken up
by even those who ordinarily would not have been thought of as being
at the bottom of the income pile. Eye-watering amounts of housing
benefit were paid for those with large families (http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/5663014/Family-claims-147000-a-year-in-housing-benefit-for-seven-bedroom-home.html)
, especially to those in London where by 2013 families in private
rented accommodation were paying 59% of their household income
according to the housing charity Shelter (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
england-london-20943576).
In April 2003, the Blair government tacitly acknowledged that wages
for many were simply inadequate to support life by introducing
working tax credits. (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/start/who-
qualifies/workingtaxcredit/work.htm). This had several pernicious
effects. It acted as a subsidy for employers which allowed them to
offer ever lower wages secure in the knowledge that the taxpayer would
subsidise business by making up their inadequate wages with working
tax credits. The regulations for working tax credits also allowed
people to claim them when they were working less than a full week.
This provided an incentive for employees to work the minimum hours
which were as little as 16 hours for a single parent. The employer
also had an incentive to employ a number of part timers rather than
full time employees because the wages of the part timers could be kept
below the level at which national insurance had to be paid . It thus
became cheaper to employ two or three part-timers rather than one full
timer.
The effects of working tax credits were made worse by the Blair and
Brown governments ideologically driven desire to have every woman of
working age out at work. This resulted in childcare tax credits
(http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/calcs/ccin.htm#1) whereby mothers were paid to
leave their children in the hands of other women while they went out
to work.
The benefits situation needs fixing but the way the Coalition is
going about it is unreasonable. They are not starting from where we
are now and taking regard of the effects of their changes in policy on
people who are already encased in the circumstances of high
unemployment , low paid and often insecure jobs and ever rising rents.
Instead they are using the blunt instrument of cutting benefit
suddenly and seriously disrupting the lives of millions. I
n the case of housing in particular it makes no sense to say housing
benefit will be capped if this makes continued residency in an area
impossible because of rental costs way beyond their means or the
£26,000 cap on benefits. The policy may well drive many people in
employment out of the area in which they not only live but work
causing them to become unemployed. Even if people are unemployed
forcing them to move any real distance will have effects on those
with children at school and take away the informal support mechanisms
of family and friends.
Similarly, the attempt to move those in social housing out of their
properties if they are deemed to be too large for those now resident
there (the “bedroom tax”) is absurd unless there is smaller social
housing accommodation they can move into. If this forces social
housing tenants to move a long way from where they live they will
suffer the same problems that those who move for reasons because they
cannot afford private rented accommodation. If social housing tenants
have to rent from private landlords that will cost more than the
social housing. Such tenants on housing benefit would be more
expensive for the taxpayer to support.
What should be done? The answer is to change the general circumstances
which cause the welfare bill to be so high. This can be done by
creating an economy in which any full time wage will at least
support a person and ideally will maintain a family. This can be done
by adopting these policies although Britain would need to leave the EU
or get the EU to agree to change the rules governing free movement of
labour, goods, capital and services to impose many of them):
1. Cease all further mass immigration.
2. Address the housing shortage by introducing rent controls and much
stronger legal backing for tenure on private rental properties,
engaging in a massive programme of social house building, restricting
all future social house tenancies to those born British citizens.
abolishing Right-to-Buy, banning buy-to-let mortgages, banning
foreigners from buying residential properties and giving private
builders an incentive to build by taxing the land they hold until they
build.
3. Place a tax on employers for every foreign worker already here
they employ to discourage their employment.
4. . Remove benefits from all foreigners to encourage those already
here to return home.
These policies would have short term and longer term effects. For
example, rent controls and strong tenure conditions could be brought
in very rapidly giving tenants in private property both an assurance
that they could continue in their rented property for a long time
with a rent that did not suddenly rise beyond their means. Building
large numbers of new properties would take several years to gain
momentum but there should be a considerable increase in the housing
stock within five years.
Policies such as stopping further mass immigration and incentives
for foreign labour already here to leave like placing a tax on
employers if they employ foreigners and removing all benefits from
foreigners should tighten the labour market . This will raise wages
and make employers use labour more efficiently.
A tighter labour market will produce higher wages and much cheaper
housing will lessen the need for people to draw benefits whilst in
work and the cost of housing benefit should reduce substantially.
That will draw most of the poison from the benefit debate.
R. Mark Clayton
Apr 7, 2013, 4:08:23 PM4/7/13
to
"RH" <anywh...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1721986b-7cbe-4584...@r7g2000vbw.googlegroups.com...
How governments created the present welfare mess
Robert Henderson
The current attempt by the Coalition Government to radically alter the
welfare state by severely restricting benefits is an exercise in
gross hypocrisy. Why? Because the Tories’ (and some on the left
like Labour MP Frank Field) increasingly shrill and uncouth
portrayal of those in receipt of benefits as scroungers overlooks one
very inconvenient fact: it is the actions of governments of all
political hues over the past 35 years which created the welfare
mess we have today. Between them these governments have produced a
situation where millions of Britons cannot either get a job at all
or can only obtain a job which does not pay enough to support them
and their families even meagrely. This has produced the truly mad
situation where substantial benefits are out of necessity paid to
millions who are in work, mainly through tax credits and housing
benefit, because the wages on offer are too low to allow someone to
live an independent life.
Mass unemployment
SNIP - long diatribe.
Robert Henderson
The current attempt by the Coalition Government to radically alter the
welfare state by severely restricting benefits is an exercise in
gross hypocrisy. Why? Because the Tories’ (and some on the left
like Labour MP Frank Field) increasingly shrill and uncouth
portrayal of those in receipt of benefits as scroungers overlooks one
very inconvenient fact: it is the actions of governments of all
political hues over the past 35 years which created the welfare
mess we have today. Between them these governments have produced a
situation where millions of Britons cannot either get a job at all
or can only obtain a job which does not pay enough to support them
and their families even meagrely. This has produced the truly mad
situation where substantial benefits are out of necessity paid to
millions who are in work, mainly through tax credits and housing
benefit, because the wages on offer are too low to allow someone to
live an independent life.
Mass unemployment
UK Industry was grossly over-manned* (or its workers under-employed),
greater automation & robots greatly reduce employment prospects. In
addition most jobs these days require basic literacy and numeracy - skills
many of the habitually unemployed lack and CBA to acquire. Similarly most
service jobs require employees who don't steal the takings or assault the
customers. Many of the habitually unemployed have [ongoing] criminal
records for dishonesty and / or violence. Most jobs need employees who are
unimpaired - many habitually unemployed have drink and / or drug problems.
* French agriculture still is.
Mel Rowing
Apr 7, 2013, 4:43:54 PM4/7/13
to
On 7 Apr, 20:27, RH <anywhere...@gmail.com> wrote:
> How governments created the present welfare mess
>
> Robert Henderson
>
> The current attempt by the Coalition Government to radically alter the
> welfare state by severely restricting benefits is an exercise in
> gross hypocrisy. Why? Because the Tories’ (and some on the left
> like Labour MP Frank Field) increasingly shrill and uncouth
> portrayal of those in receipt of benefits as scroungers overlooks one
> very inconvenient fact: it is the actions of governments of all
> political hues over the past 35 years which created the welfare
> mess we have today.
The road to a welfare heaven is paved with good intentions. Almost
> How governments created the present welfare mess
>
> Robert Henderson
>
> The current attempt by the Coalition Government to radically alter the
> welfare state by severely restricting benefits is an exercise in
> gross hypocrisy. Why? Because the Tories’ (and some on the left
> like Labour MP Frank Field) increasingly shrill and uncouth
> portrayal of those in receipt of benefits as scroungers overlooks one
> very inconvenient fact: it is the actions of governments of all
> political hues over the past 35 years which created the welfare
> mess we have today.
since its inception the elfare state has taken on a momentum of its
own.The safety net principle has all but gone through the window and
the question of benefits has become instead a matter of ensuring
adequate lifestyles often indefinitely regardless of whether
beneficiaries work, don't work, are disinclined or willing to work.
They are all lumped together in a heterogeneous group. The system does
not allow judgments. Once the decision is made to "eliminate poverty"
in this manner there is no end to it. Group after group is identified
as being deprived. Every time one turns on a TV or radio discussion
someone is holding a banner for this group or another pleading as to
how they are deprived and disadvantaged. The number of these groups
and the size of them grows every year. Political parties follow the
public mood. In a democracy they'd be foolish to follow any other
course. As the system expands, more and more electors become embraced
in full or more usually part dependence on the benefits system and we
move one step nearer towards the client state.
It's no use berating the political parties over this. These benefit
recipients begin to represent a substantial voting bloc. No party can
do anything if its not in power. He who pleases the dolies wields
power.
> Between them these governments have produced a
> situation where millions of Britons cannot either get a job at all
> or can only obtain a job which does not pay enough to support them
> and their families even meagrely. This has produced the truly mad
> situation where substantial benefits are out of necessity paid to
> millions who are in work, mainly through tax credits and housing
> benefit, because the wages on offer are too low to allow someone to
> live an independent life.
may exercise some influence in the public sector. Otherwise wages are
no more than an arrangement between employer and employee. The
employer may well buy essential labour/skills but only in the
quantities he can afford. If the price is too high then he must seek
cheaper alternatives. His duty to his company is to minimise costs
otherwise he becomes noncompetitive. Attempts have been made by
government to put a floor into the wages market with the minimum wage.
This initiative has not been an an exactly unmitigated success. The
minimum wage comes to be seen as a the "starvation level" that many
refuse to accept and you get statements like "I'm a tradesman! I'm not
working for the minimum wage. (TV interview) Then there are
differentials. A skilled man reasonably expects to earn more than and
unskilled man, a manager/foreman more than a skilled man, the
executive more than the manager and so on. The result of the minimum
floor put into wages therefore serves to push up wages/salaries at all
levels and across all industries since the minimum wage is universal
and employers compete for the various levels of skilled wages in the
overall market. The net result is that jobs are lost.
Andy Wainwright
Apr 8, 2013, 12:29:11 AM4/8/13
to
lot of people who had been sicked for years got back into work.
Unfortunately Labour reverted to the old protectionist model, which
denies the reality of the marketplace. Protectionism can work in some
cases on a short term basis, for instance supporting a new industry.
LebesgueMeasure
Apr 8, 2013, 8:19:19 AM4/8/13
to
"R. Mark Clayton" <nospam...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:TJWdnYuKw8q3T_zM...@bt.com...
an improvement, is it?
> Many of the habitually unemployed have [ongoing] criminal records for
> dishonesty and / or violence.
According to ONS statistics only 5,000 people have been on JSA for a period
of longer than 5 years.
> Most jobs need employees who are unimpaired - many habitually unemployed
> have drink and / or drug problems.
>
>
And the ranks of the long term unemployed are going to grow substantially in
the next few years with hundreds of thousands of disabled people declared
"fit to work" but who are still shunned by employers. 90% of employers have
said that they would not employ someone who had been claiming disability
benefits regardless of whether Atos declared the person fit for work.
So what is your final solution to this problem? Gas chambers?
news:TJWdnYuKw8q3T_zM...@bt.com...
>
>
> UK Industry was grossly over-manned*
>
And now the UK economy is saddled with a large benefits bill. Not exactly
>
> UK Industry was grossly over-manned*
>
an improvement, is it?
> Many of the habitually unemployed have [ongoing] criminal records for
> dishonesty and / or violence.
of longer than 5 years.
> Most jobs need employees who are unimpaired - many habitually unemployed
> have drink and / or drug problems.
>
>
the next few years with hundreds of thousands of disabled people declared
"fit to work" but who are still shunned by employers. 90% of employers have
said that they would not employ someone who had been claiming disability
benefits regardless of whether Atos declared the person fit for work.
So what is your final solution to this problem? Gas chambers?
Ste
Apr 9, 2013, 2:58:57 PM4/9/13
to
On Apr 7, 9:43 pm, Mel Rowing <mel.row...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>
> [... free market dogma ...] The net result [of a minimum wage] is that jobs are lost.
What actually results, arguably, is that poor quality jobs are
excluded from the market, protecting the market for decent jobs and
preventing employers from undercutting them. It might well be that, in
a perfect world, a free market would result in full employment, but it
would be at a zero or near-zero rate of pay.
>
>
> [... free market dogma ...] The net result [of a minimum wage] is that jobs are lost.
What actually results, arguably, is that poor quality jobs are
excluded from the market, protecting the market for decent jobs and
preventing employers from undercutting them. It might well be that, in
a perfect world, a free market would result in full employment, but it
would be at a zero or near-zero rate of pay.
0 new messages