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The frightening reality of the welfare state
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by Martin Durkin
February, 2014, 12:44am
CITY A.M.
It is about the transformation of a once independent, prosperous people into a demoralised, dispirited, lumpen mass. It explains why we marry less and divorce more (and the terrible human cost).
The cost is huge in money terms. “Benefits” alone account for about £200bn a year – more than the combined GDP of 30 African countries. But the result of this Niagara of handouts is not contentment. The real victims are those whom welfare is supposed to help. It has created legions of single mothers, fatherless children, and jobless boys and men. For them, the welfare state hasn’t given, it has taken. It has taken their savings, dignity, independence, initiative, pride, it has denied them full lives as productive economic agents.
And don’t mistake the leftist apologists for big-hearted fools. Behind the welfare state is the cancerous growth of a self-interested bureaucracy – the vast, tax-eating, paternalist, public sector “New Class”. These people must justify their existence, to us and to themselves.
http://www.cityam.com/article/1391561081/frightening-reality-welfare-state-we-re
So true. Nothing really more to add. Decades of a failed social policy resulting in widespread poverty and disillusionment. Who has really "benefitted"? No doubt those administering the welfare state. I don't see how anyone with a conscience can continually justify keeping hordes of their fellow citizens in penury and despair.
February, 2014, 12:44am
CITY A.M.
It is about the transformation of a once independent, prosperous people into a demoralised, dispirited, lumpen mass. It explains why we marry less and divorce more (and the terrible human cost).
The cost is huge in money terms. “Benefits” alone account for about £200bn a year – more than the combined GDP of 30 African countries. But the result of this Niagara of handouts is not contentment. The real victims are those whom welfare is supposed to help. It has created legions of single mothers, fatherless children, and jobless boys and men. For them, the welfare state hasn’t given, it has taken. It has taken their savings, dignity, independence, initiative, pride, it has denied them full lives as productive economic agents.
And don’t mistake the leftist apologists for big-hearted fools. Behind the welfare state is the cancerous growth of a self-interested bureaucracy – the vast, tax-eating, paternalist, public sector “New Class”. These people must justify their existence, to us and to themselves.
http://www.cityam.com/article/1391561081/frightening-reality-welfare-state-we-re
So true. Nothing really more to add. Decades of a failed social policy resulting in widespread poverty and disillusionment. Who has really "benefitted"? No doubt those administering the welfare state. I don't see how anyone with a conscience can continually justify keeping hordes of their fellow citizens in penury and despair.
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Published in the City A.M.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_A.M.
"The news section is primarily made up of corporate, financial and economic stories, as well as political and regulatory stories relevant to its readership"
"The paper’s philosophy is broadly supportive of the free-market economy, of capitalism, of private enterprise and of the City of London and those who work in it"
"Allister Heath (Editor) has argued that London and the south-east should be entitled to a greater rebate of UK tax revenue and has approved of the principle of London's becoming an independent city state."
Article written by Martin Durkin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_%28television_director%29
"Hostile to the National Health Service, he attacked Danny Boyle's Olympics Opening Ceremony 2012 - which had included a tribute to the health service and its staff - as "dim-brained leftwing history" and Boyle, "a miserable northern socialist"
"In 2010 Durkin made a programme called Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story for Channel 4. Ostensibly about Britain's national debt, the film makes a case for lower taxes, a smaller public sector and a free-market economy"
About a book written by James Bartholomew
http://www.thewelfarestatewerein.com/about
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/james-bartholomew/
"He originally trained as a banker in the City of London"
Do you think an agenda might be in play here?
Quote from the article (which you left out)
"Bartholomew is a Redbull double-espresso to Iain Duncan Smith’s limp chamomile tea."
Actually I agree with that. However it should be kept as small as possible and not grow into the behemoth it currently is ruining lives.
Essentially the bureaucracy has created a massive slave plantation where all the benefits claimants are the slaves.
Known as: 'The Maggie soft-shoe-shuffle'.
I'd would put high import tariffs on anything (not food) from places that have low wages and conditions for their workers.
what would his lordship deem acceptable :kitty:
behemoth, huh, you have no idea how hard it is being on benefits, i admit some take the you know what but most struggle , i would rather be working than be on benefits but right now i have no choice
For it to be "as small as possible" there needs to be enough jobs for everyone, and well-paid jobs at that.
Many people in work are claiming benefits - working tax credit, child benefit, housing benefit, council tax benefit, etc - because their wages are so low.
This government might have reduced the unemployment figures a bit over the past few months, but what they don't tell us is how many of those are people who've been forced off unemployment/sickness benefit and into low paid jobs - zero hour contracts, back to work schemes, training schemes, employment agencies - all paying the basic minimum wage.
Short of a revolution, I don't know the exact workable solution, but I do recognise the large scale of the actual problem.
But as things stand, the removal of welfare for people who genuinely need it is certainly not the solution.
It's just typical of Tory policy/tactics.
Make the rich richer and everyone else poorer, then try blame the even poorer people for the reason why everyone else is getting poorer.
Without a welfare state there would be penury and despair.
The article sounds like a bad news day on Fox's Hannity show.
The reality is that capitalism has stopped working - except for a few select people at the top who continue to get richer in a recession. As the alternative economic models have also collapsed, and government is unwilling to make big changes, there is no policy answer to this. The mega rich no longer try to maximise their profits, invest, innovate, or build businesses. Many are detached from the real economy - except in the sense they act like a black hole taking money out of circulation. They gamble in hedge funds, carpetbag in private equity funds, spend their money on art, antiques, houses,and yachts - and the richest put most of it overseas - beyond the reach of taxes. Most big companies don't maximise profits, take risks. or compete for customers - they maximise returns for directors, satisfice, and reduce costs by moving jobs and profits overseas. Neither government or companies have any ambition to do anything well, or to grow a successful modern economy - the focus is on meeting arbitary targets for cuts instead of growth, and ensuring short term bonuses - rather than building and innovating.
Welfare expenditures inevitably go up. More pensioners, more children, more people living longer, more sick people surviving, more alzheimers, new expensive treatments, care in the community, and smaller families, and rising rents, inevitably mean more demand for services and support. Conversely, lower real wages, more unemployment, declining social mobility, negative savings returns, tiny annuity rates, rising taxes and stagnant stock markets, and artificial housing bubbles, all mean that the vast majority of the population have less and less capability to look after themselves in their old age or extremis.
£110 Billion of which is pensions, £23 Billion of which is housing benefit, the rising cost of which is down to government policy - when house prices go up, so do rents, interesting that the former is great and the latter somehow the people in need of its fault.
Another £40 billion or so goes to working people.
So tell me cloudy, who as a banker is in a job due to the biggest welfare payout in the country's history, which of those do you think should be cut?
If you all want to live in a land of low wages and high housing costs, then this is where you pay for it.
Think on that next time you are cheering another 8% property rise.
I think you need to go and look up government spending, its over £700bn.
Maybe the problem isn't the welfare state but the way the corporate sector operates in this country.
You go and look up the definition of the following words first
'Total welfare spending'
Its the subject of the thread if you are stuck.
I have a suspicion that the OP is well aquainted with the benefit system and is very likely in receipt of many of the benefits available. His posting history is that of a troll.
Blimey, you turned against your capitalist overlords then Cloudy ?
UK welfare spending: how much does each benefit really cost?
So, maybe it we provided more affordable housing that might help cut the bills right ? Oh wait, I forget house prices going up is a good idea. So up goes the housing benefit bill.
I assumed that was a given ? Dont tell me people fell for his "I'm a banker" line...
Germans pay 20% of their salary into compulsory insurance which covers them for unemployment, pension, healthcare and old age care.
They still have a debt problem though its almost as bad as the UK's.
Here's a link for you,
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/
Welfare+Healthcare = £240bn
So false. I'm researching my family tree at the mo. More than one died in the workhouse, that's the alternative.
And people on benefits are not "in penury", can you get nothing right?
So where is the money going?
Someone must be making a tidy packet out of the Govt spending and the debt of over a trillion.
Maybe we should get some of that money back, eh?
they havent recapped there banks
they are sitting on huge losses from the club med countries
about 400 billion? france is probably in the same boat
greece owes 300 billion that will NEVER be paid back mostly to france and german banks