Tory cuts

[geni]

---

 

[Fiona]

With all due respect, geni: the "withered flowers" theory of unemployment is not really borne out by the facts: but the existence of the theory does perhaps tend to bring its own fulfillment. All that "less employable" actually means is that employers have bought into that idea. But its effect is to further deepen the divides and in the end that harms us all

 

[geni]

The breaking of the link with earnings was one of the nastiest things done by the Tory government: the failure to restore it was a disgrace to the Labour government: towards the end of this decade that could no longer be hidden and all three of main uk parties had pledged to restore it. This is a way to mitigate the effects of that pledge: in other words in time of recession and inflation, when prices rise faster than wages, pensions will rise less than they would have done without this measure.

Only after 2011. By which time its quite possible the economy will have recovered to the extent that we will get locked into unaffordable wage tracking increases.

 

[geni]

With all due respect, geni: the "withered flowers" theory of unemployment is not really borne out by the facts: but the existence of the theory does perhaps tend to bring its own fulfillment. All that "less employable" actually means is that employers have bought into that idea. But its effect is to further deepen the divides and in the end that harms us all

Withered flowers? Err I think that is a rather different theory (being out of work a long time on it's own probably doesn't help your employability but thats a seperate issue).

Some people are less employable than others (if you reject this theory we can get rid of the state pension and much of the DLA).

While the least employable will be picked up by any halfway sane DLA criteria you are always going to get a group that while not disabled enough or in a way that qualifies for DLA are still not very employable. In times of high unemployment it can be argued that it is a better use of state resources to focus on those who are more employable.

 

[Fiona]

From a very cynical POV in the current economy moving the longest term unemployed is actualy a good idea.

After all we currently have an excess of employable people. On average the longer someone is unemployed the less employable they are likely to be. Thus by moving the longest term unemployed away from areas with jobs (to areas with very few jobs that we will call say Bransholme) and the shorter term unemployed towards such areas we provide companies with more employable people.

Withered flowers? Err I think that is a rather different theory (being out of work a long time on it's own probably doesn't help your employability but thats a seperate issue).

Some people are less employable than others (if you reject this theory we can get rid of the state pension and much of the DLA).

While the least employable will be picked up by any halfway sane DLA criteria you are always going to get a group that while not disabled enough or in a way that qualifies for DLA are still not very employable. In times of high unemployment it can be argued that it is a better use of state resources to focus on those who are more employable.

I am sorry if I misunderstood your point, geni. I cannot reconcile these two posts readily. In the first you seemed to be saying that the longer one is out of work the less employable one is likely to be. I did not realise you meant the disabled because they are not usually counted as unemployed: but rather as inactive. You focussed on length of unemployment as a justification for moving people about the country and this seemed to me to be entirely based on a "withered flowers" type analysis.

If you are proposing we should move pensioners and those who are disabled to parts of the country where there is no work I wonder why you would bother? They are not competing for jobs. While there are some places where there is a labour shortage they are surely small pockets: unless you are talking about shortages related to cost of living vis-a-vis wages in particular area of activity: as we have heard, parts of london cannot get enough low paid people because they cannot afford to do those jobs and live there. But the magic of the free market will sort that out, so I don't think we need worry

But the second part of your second post does not seem to be saying that either: it seems to go back to "withered flowers". Clearly that is not what you intend: presumably you are identifying some characterstics which fall short of putting people into the economically inactive box, but yet make people "less employable". It would help me if you would give a few examples because I cannot really envisage that in a way that makes it respectable to me. I fear you are opposed to the anti discrimination provisions which apply to race, gender and disability: because those are the things which spring to my mind when I try to think of what you might mean. If that is what you mean then I think your position is worse than I originally thought when I assumed you were talking of "withered flowers".

I do fully accept that you characterised your position as very cynical: and suggested it is not one you really hold. So perhaps it is not worth going into any further: but if it is one you entertain then I will be glad if you would clarify your stance. Sorry not to have followed you even after your second post: but I am not really sure what you are saying

 

[Fiona]

Only after 2011. By which time its quite possible the economy will have recovered to the extent that we will get locked into unaffordable wage tracking increases.

Well certainly all three parties pledged to restore the link some time after they were elected: I think labour said they would legislate by 2010 and the tories said by 2015: something like that, anyway: can't remember when the libdems said they would do it.

That all three recognised the case for this is gratifying: a great wrong would go some way to being righted and that is rare in politics.

What is "affordable" depends on politics: we make decisions about our priorities and there is no reason at all why this should be unaffordable; not unless you presume that the people can have what is left over when the bankers etc have been fed. I often think it is long past time that the people were a bit more assertive: it would do no harm if our rulers saw the people in the same way as the assertive homemaker was seen in northern music hall comedy in the past: they should be afraid to take a broken pay home to them

 

[geni]

What is "affordable" depends on politics: we make decisions about our priorities and there is no reason at all why this should be unaffordable; not unless you presume that the people can have what is left over when the bankers etc have been fed. I often think it is long past time that the people were a bit more assertive: it would do no harm if our rulers saw the people in the same way as the assertive homemaker was seen in northern music hall comedy in the past: they should be afraid to take a broken pay home to them

The current mess with the banks is a short term issue. Pensions are rather longer term. Demographic shifts mean that even keeping the state pension at it's current level will cost more and more and the retirement age isn't rising fast enough. Now there are ways around this in the short term. We can borrow of course. We can import very large numbers of young people (not something I would be opposed to I tend to feel the UK is under populated). We can raise taxes but since the working population will start shrinking there is a limit to how far you can go with that (and in any case we are back to baby boomers vs everyone else).

Worse still with more and more votes being held by pensioners it will be politicaly impossible to control pension costs.

 

[Fiona]

The current mess with the banks is an inevitable consequence of a particular approach to economics. It will be short term if we choose to make it so: not if we don't.

Pensions are indeed long term: but I do not agree at all that demographics is much of a problem: at least not inherently. We have far greater potential productivity than we had in the past: we can produce more with fewer people: the high level of unemployment demonstrates that we can certainly choose other ways to sustain all of our people: and that is even without the need for importing more young people. We have chosen to do certain things: they were not laws of nature, but political decisions. We are in a mess for now because of the entirely predictable consequences of an aversion to tax and a simultaneous desire for a good society: you cannot have both. We will have to sort that mess out: but I earnestly hope it will not just be a period of austerity and then back to more of the same. That way lies war, at worst: and a horrible place to live at best

 

[geni]

I am sorry if I misunderstood your point, geni. I cannot reconcile these two posts readily. In the first you seemed to be saying that the longer one is out of work the less employable one is likely to be. I did not realise you meant the disabled because they are not usually counted as unemployed: but rather as inactive. You focussed on length of unemployment as a justification for moving people about the country and this seemed to me to be entirely based on a "withered flowers" type analysis.

No I was using it as an admitedly rather crude sorting method.

If you are proposing we should move pensioners and those who are disabled to parts of the country where there is no work I wonder why you would bother? They are not competing for jobs. While there are some places where there is a labour shortage they are surely small pockets: unless you are talking about shortages related to cost of living vis-a-vis wages in particular area of activity: as we have heard, parts of london cannot get enough low paid people because they cannot afford to do those jobs and live there. But the magic of the free market will sort that out, so I don't think we need worry

Moving pensioners and DLA recipients is non viable and in any case would be rather expensive since you would destory their support networks. See the problems with pensioners moving to cornwall.

But the second part of your second post does not seem to be saying that either: it seems to go back to "withered flowers". Clearly that is not what you intend: presumably you are identifying some characterstics which fall short of putting people into the economically inactive box, but yet make people "less employable". It would help me if you would give a few examples because I cannot really envisage that in a way that makes it respectable to me. I fear you are opposed to the anti discrimination provisions which apply to race, gender and disability: because those are the things which spring to my mind when I try to think of what you might mean. If that is what you mean then I think your position is worse than I originally thought when I assumed you were talking of "withered flowers".

Disability is a sliding scale. You would probably be looking at the likes of people with poor academic abilities combined with a disability that doesn't quite tip the DLA standard.

Eh the tories plans to get strickter with regards to DLA standards is only going to make the problem worse.

I do fully accept that you characterised your position as very cynical: and suggested it is not one you really hold. So perhaps it is not worth going into any further: but if it is one you entertain then I will be glad if you would clarify your stance. Sorry not to have followed you even after your second post: but I am not really sure what you are saying

Well I wouldn't support it outright but only because it conflicts with some rather non standard positions I hold in other areas (I favour very large scale house building for example). If you oppose those positions then it remains a somewhat logical alturnative.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

More tinkering around the edges with benefits that won't change anything in particular but will just make the lives of a group of easy targets slightly less comfortable.

The benefits system as it stands seem ideally designed to punish people who do the right thing and reward those who like to game the system.

I really have no idea what I have been paying taxes for and why I should continue to bother anymore. When I worked in a good job I was hammered for tax and NI to pay for things I never used and/or couldn't get access to. I made the grievous error (in the eyes of the state) of marrying someone who wasn't an EU citizen and got stung for thousands for visas etc only to find out that she isn't able to access the same services or get support from the state nor participate in our democracy. My wife is pregnant but doesn't get the same state handouts other mothers get because she's not an EU citizen. Then I get made redundant (thanks to the Tories public sector spending cuts) and because I made the next grievous error of actually preparing myself and saving some money to tide me over I am entitled to an amazing £65 a week in JSA for a whole 12 weeks before I have to start doing 'back to work' courses designed to help those who can't fill in an application form or write their own CV. I then also have to take any job offered whether its cleaning toilets, packing sandwiches or digging ditches (despite having 2 masters degrees) otherwise I lose my £65.

The Council Tax is no better. Over a £1000 a year to get my bins collected on a fortnightly rotation. I recently had a problem with pests in the loft and phoned Environmental Services only for them to send out 2 women in suits without a ladder to tell me they weren't insured for this sort of thing and that pest control could come out to look but they would need paid £50 to send them out. So if I want someone to come and tell me I have a squirrel/rat/mouse in my loft it will cost me 75% of my income for the week!

I was a high rate tax payer so apparently that makes me some rich bugger who doesn't need any help with anything. I live in a mansion and drive a golden carriage pulled by Filipino boys. Except I drive a 10 year old car and live in a 3 bed semi that I only just managed to save the deposit to afford.

Meanwhile when I go to sign on the knuckle draggers who are unemployable are all better dressed than me, driving better cars than me, all own dogs, all have multiple kids, get every benefit/service/handout going, and in return they have to check the papers once a week to see if there are any jobs and are maybe forced to go to an interview to which they turn up in a tracksuit and baseball cap, mumble incoherently and magically don't get hired!

Am I supposed to feel sorry for 'the poor'? If I'd spunked my money away rather than being sensible with it people would be falling over themselves to help. Where is the reward for behaving sensibly? Where is the idea of responsiblity for yourself?

I seem to spend most of my life bailing out people who can't be trusted to look after themselves whether it is bankers, failed businessmen, the unemployed/employable, single mothers, pensioners or just random incompetents. In return I get that smarmy **** Cameron telling me I need to do my bit to help us out of a situation I didn't get us into!!

Why should I bother anymore?

(Rant over. Enjoyed venting)

 

[Professor Yaffle]

The benefits system as it stands seem ideally designed to punish people who do the right thing and reward those who like to game the system.

Never a truer word was spoken.

 

[Darat]

From a very cynical POV in the current economy moving the longest term unemployed is actualy a good idea.

After all we currently have an excess of employable people. On average the longer someone is unemployed the less employable they are likely to be. Thus by moving the longest term unemployed away from areas with jobs (to areas with very few jobs that we will call say Bransholme) and the shorter term unemployed towards such areas we provide companies with more employable people.

Employers won't need even those short term unemployed, they can just move their production to the prisons.

 

[JihadJane]

Only after 2011. By which time its quite possible the economy will have recovered to the extent that we will get locked into unaffordable wage tracking increases.

What makes you think it "quite possible?".

How "quite"?

 

[Fiona]

@ Last of the Fraggles: Interesting and understandable post. However I would take issue with what you have said

The benefits system as it stands seem ideally designed to punish people who do the right thing and reward those who like to game the system.

I am not sure what you mean by that: but if you believe it to be true would you like to explain how you would go about "gaming the system" if you were so inclined? There are some clues in your post and I will make some guesses as to what you mean: but I would like to hear it from you

I really have no idea what I have been paying taxes for and why I should continue to bother anymore. When I worked in a good job I was hammered for tax and NI to pay for things I never used and/or couldn't get access to

I really don't understand how you can say you were "hammered for tax and NI" if you are referring to income tax: it is at a very low rate, even now. NI was, until very recently, capped so that much of a high rate taxpaer's earnings were exempt: I am not quarrelling with that because it is characterised as insurance and so that makes sense: even if it bears little relations to the "actualite"

If you are talking about indirect taxation then I still can't see how you were "hammered" because you pay the same as everybody else: it is a regressive tax and it is the poor who are "hammered". That is what things like VAT are designed to do

It is certainly true that taxation, whatever its source, is used to pay for things you will never access: and things that you will. Unless you wish to go for full hypothecation that is inevitable: and frankly I think it is a good thing. I wonder what it is you pay for that you never use or cannot get access to? Most of the tax we pay goes on things like health, education, social security etc. Did you not go to school? Are you never going to be ill? Will you never need financial help from the state...oh wait. Maybe you dislike the element which goes for defence (I would love to not pay a penny piece for that until we stop this macho posturing which requires us to waste money all over the world in conflicts which are none of our business): but do we not have to compromise? There are those who think that is the most vital part of the state's role and believe it the highest priority we have as a society. I dont' agree: they mostly don't agree with my priorities. I think we have to find a balance we can all live with, really

I made the grievous error (in the eyes of the state) of marrying someone who wasn't an EU citizen and got stung for thousands for visas etc only to find out that she isn't able to access the same services or get support from the state nor participate in our democracy. My wife is pregnant but doesn't get the same state handouts other mothers get because she's not an EU citizen.

I do not know the current situation with citizenship: I do know that before about 1980 (I think) a spouse took full citizenship of the partner when they married. There were a number of changes which were predicated on the spluttering moral outrage fostered by the likes of the daily mail for reasons which escape me: loads of indignation about "marriages of convenience" etc. The result is very likely what you experience now: it is what your fellow citizens voted for. We could do something about that: but good luck in trying to because the demonisation of poor but crafty foreigners is quite well entrenched now. Economic migrants, the lot of them!! Not.

Then I get made redundant (thanks to the Tories public sector spending cuts) and because I made the next grievous error of actually preparing myself and saving some money to tide me over I am entitled to an amazing £65 a week in JSA for a whole 12 weeks before I have to start doing 'back to work' courses designed to help those who can't fill in an application form or write their own CV. I then also have to take any job offered whether its cleaning toilets, packing sandwiches or digging ditches (despite having 2 masters degrees) otherwise I lose my £65.

You are confusing me now: you made provision for a rainy day, and it is raining. So you have to spend that provision? That is what you saved it for so what is your complaint?

Now if you happen to be like me you are opposed to the whole ideology behind that: but if you are then you should surely be opposed to it for everybody. That really depends on a whole plethora of assumptions about the welfare state. The current conventional wisdom is "targetting" benefits on those who need it most. You are not one of those people. I disgree with that notion of what it is all about: I am in a minority and, again, this is what we have voted for. It is part of a package which includes the low rates of tax you were "hammered" with before. We, as a society, have decided you can live on £65 per week, and you only get that because you paid in. If for any reason you did not have a full contribution record you would get nothing at all. Some people think that is fair because of their conception of what the welfare state is all about: many have voted for and argued for precisely that. If you have voted tory or labour or even libdem in the last 20 years you have voted for this. Maybe you didn't and maybe you have always opposed this ideology: if so you are in the same position as me: you are living the life imposed on the "underclass" and the "underclass" is you. Enjoy

The Council Tax is no better. Over a £1000 a year to get my bins collected on a fortnightly rotation. I recently had a problem with pests in the loft and phoned Environmental Services only for them to send out 2 women in suits without a ladder to tell me they weren't insured for this sort of thing and that pest control could come out to look but they would need paid £50 to send them out. So if I want someone to come and tell me I have a squirrel/rat/mouse in my loft it will cost me 75% of my income for the week!

The council tax is a regressive disgrace, yes. Again, until recently, capped for the wealthy and a real burdrn for those who are not the very poorest. Remember how and why that was introduced? It was a mitigation of the poll tax which went before it. Council tax does not just pay for emptying your bins, however. it pays for a lot of stuff: I get a newsletter from my council now and then which tells me what it pays for. Useless things like street lighting and schools and libraries and social housing etc. You should ask them what they are spending it on if they don't actually tell you. And you should have a look at the way costs have been transferred from central to local government and money has not been transferred commensurately: then ask yourself why services are deteriorating and entitlements reduced. Maybe you think that is a good thing: I think it leads to filthy streets and the black death, but I am weird that way

I was a high rate tax payer so apparently that makes me some rich bugger who doesn't need any help with anything. I live in a mansion and drive a golden carriage pulled by Filipino boys. Except I drive a 10 year old car and live in a 3 bed semi that I only just managed to save the deposit to afford.

You get exactly the same help as everybody else. I am not and never have been a high rate taxpayer: I get the same as you on the same terms and for the same period. It is nothing to do with what you were. It is a lot to do with what we have voted for: ask yourself why we have voted for this: I suspect Rawl's veil of ignorance would be instructive if applied

Meanwhile when I go to sign on the knuckle draggers who are unemployable are all better dressed than me, driving better cars than me, all own dogs, all have multiple kids, get every benefit/service/handout going, and in return they have to check the papers once a week to see if there are any jobs and are maybe forced to go to an interview to which they turn up in a tracksuit and baseball cap, mumble incoherently and magically don't get hired!

This is not worthy of a response, and you know it: so I won't.

Am I supposed to feel sorry for 'the poor'? If I'd spunked my money away rather than being sensible with it people would be falling over themselves to help. Where is the reward for behaving sensibly? Where is the idea of responsiblity for yourself?

You are a little confused, I think. What do you imagine the poor without savings actually live on? You took responsibilty for yourself by saving against a rainy day: it is raining but it is not raining so hard on you as it is on those who had no opportunity to save: those who worked minimum wage and got by hand to mouth. When they were made redundant they got a much worse package than you did: they had no cushion: and they have to try to live on amounts of money which are far, far too low. They get the same hassle as you get to find work: they are perhaps less well qualified and so in a more difficult labour market (or maybe not: depends on what is there in the local area). At the risk of sounding to harsh: you are the poor (or you soon will be if you don't get a job). Your attempt to place yourself in some other category is based on a lot of false assumptions, and it is an example of what I was talking about upthread: you do not want to be absorbed into that group. Well tough: we have decided as a society that the only thing that matters is money. Face it and embrace it: or oppose it. But do not expect much sympathy if you take the view that this is fine for "them", but not for "you": Am I supposed to feel sorry the whinging middle class? There is a logic on all of this: if you fund a stupid economic ideology by taking money from the pockets of the poor there comes a time when all that is gone and you move up to the next rung of the ladder and take it from them: that is you. Welcome to what we have wrought.

I seem to spend most of my life bailing out people who can't be trusted to look after themselves whether it is bankers, failed businessmen, the unemployed/employable, single mothers, pensioners or just random incompetents. In return I get that smarmy **** Cameron telling me I need to do my bit to help us out of a situation I didn't get us into!!

Why should I bother anymore?

For all of the reasons I have given above.

I am sorry: I do understand how frustrating it is: I am also once again unemployed and I am not meaning to have a go: but your rant is so full of wrongness I had to address some of it.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

This would reduce the culture of 'it's not worth me getting work / a better job, I'm better off on benefits'.

I don't understand where this culture is located. Every single one of the people I work for (Recovering substance users) want to get off benefits and into work. You simply cannot live on ESA or JS.

 

[Fiona]

I don't understand where this culture is located. Every single one of the people I work for (Recovering substance users) want to get off benefits and into work. You simply cannot live on ESA or JS.

It is located in the fevered imaginations of the right wing press: and the cynical calculations of those who would divide and rule

Real world? Not so much

 

[Darat]

I don't understand where this culture is located. Every single one of the people I work for (Recovering substance users) want to get off benefits and into work. You simply cannot live on ESA or JS.

Well people can live, it is the quality of that life that should be questioned, they are effectively barred from participating in "mainstream" society.

Your post made me think of something that to my mind sums up the schizophrenia in our society, I've read newspaper articles about how prison is so "cushy" that people would rather be in prison, and that means that prison should be (somehow) harsher, it never seems to occur to the folks writing such articles how terrible and crap someone's life has to be that being in prison is significantly better!

The answer is not to make prison harsher, the answer to having a happier, healthier society is not to have a system of support that excludes people from mainstream society but one that embraces us all and ensures we are all part of society.

That is what "the Big Society" should really mean, that we live in a society in which we can all participate, no matter what our circumstances.

We don't have that now, and even worse we have created an underclass that feels (and actually is) excluded from "our" society, and then we are surprised when these people don't behave as we think a member of our society should behave. Of course they don't - we have made sure they aren't members of our society.

In the past the poor were poor but still felt and were part of society, that is why we ended up with all the reforms that made life for the poorest in our society better, from state pensions, to the NHS. Today we would never see something like the NHS being created because the relentless message is that the underclass don't deserve it.

 

[Darat]

It is located in the fevered imaginations of the right wing press: and the cynical calculations of those who would divide and rule

Real world? Not so much

I just don't know what you mean...

 

[richardm]

There are certainly people around here who have had the sums done by the staff at the jobcentre and been told that they're better off on benefits. A lot depends on whether you're expecting to get more than minimum wage, and what benefits you're on, naturally. But the benefit trap is real enough.

 

[Fiona]

There are certainly people around here who have had the sums done by the staff at the jobcentre and been told that they're better off on benefits. A lot depends on whether you're expecting to get more than minimum wage, and what benefits you're on, naturally. But the benefit trap is real enough.

Of course it is real: the marginal rate of tax/benefit loss for a family on benefit moving into work is over 100% in many cases: though that is a lot better since working families' tax credit was introduced.