Basically, yes. So most of us have been conned. Or bought off with small change. Also, "scroungers" serve as object lessons, so they must be painted with fear and loathing.
Indeed. As I'm arguing downthread, a lot of this is driven by sensationalist media and TV reporting that tries to use the most extreme cases to smear everyone else. Very few people who aren't on benefits have an accurate idea of how the system works and how obstinate it is.
Wasn't the lesson of Trump's election that the rich and powerful don't have significant influence over the media that people actually consume (social media) anymore?
Yes, Trump is rich (and powerful, now that he's president), but he doesn't control the media in the sense that the person I was responding to was referring to. I think they had someone like Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, in mind.
He might not control the media in the traditional sense, but we have to give him credit for how he manipulated it into giving him endless free coverage and exposure. He turned the lack of media control INTO the powerful position.
We don't plan to be poor, and all wish to be rich.
When someone claims that extra £30 a week we feel it's our money because we can visualise it in our minds.
When a rich person finds a way to not pay tax, it feels more like it's their money to begin with and it is taken from them, and we ourselves wouldn't like to lose out on millions.
Especially given that benefit “cheating” isn’t nearly as widespread as people tend to think it is. The percentage of benefit payout errors (not just fraud but overpayments for other reasons including fraud) in the US is typically in the single digits, whereas public perception seems to be that anyone using any sort of welfare program is cheating and doesn’t deserve it.
> whereas public perception seems to be that anyone using any sort of welfare program is cheating and doesn’t deserve it.
I think this is it. Even being on benefits in the first place is considered scrounging by some.
I'd much rather see someone on minimum wage manage to get a free medical card than someone making £100k a year find a way to avoid paying tax on their holiday home. I find it hard to believe I'm in the minority.
And the poor would use those loopholes just as eagerly as the rich if they could. You read the rules and obey them, in such a way to minimize your tax bill. Would anyone deny that there are very few sentient people who does not do this or send ex gratia payments to the tax authorities? Suspected infringements are a matter a) for the courts and b) for lawmakers to revise the evidently lax (if so it's thought) legislation .
There's probably also a touch of Milton Friedman's truism that “Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as they spend their own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as they use their own”. I guess there are a few exceptions to 'nobody' but cynics would say that most politicians probably don't qualify.
As the article states, a lot of this is to do with the characterisation of the ultra-rich as 'hardworking', vs the characterisation of benefits claimants (legally or otherwise) as not. This narrative plays depressingly well with a lot of people in the UK, especially with those who are in the socioeconomic classes just above recipients of benefits.
A lot of that barely-scraping-by class see themselves as aspirants to the middle and upper classes, which is equal parts laughable and understandable. The term generally applied to this phenomenon is "False Consciousness", as opposed to Class Consciousness.
If they want to identify a parasite class in society, they should be looking up, not down.
This is precisely true. The ideological currents within bourgeois economy and politics do so much to promote false consciousness. On the other hand, most people do not view themselves as ideological, but is that not the paradox? To accept ideology, it must first be presented as non-ideological. The reader of the bourgeois papers, the person who is apathetic to his society's material conditions, the voter, the buyer of Starbucks because for each cup they give a few pennys to some improvished farmers. Their ideology is in fact simple: that they live in a post-ideological world.
I think the parent may be referring to some of the ideas of Slavoj Zizek. The class consciousness / false consciousness concept he is replying to is a Marxist theory.
It is incorrect and contemptuous to say it is laughable that they think they will go into the upper middle class. See posts elsewhere in these comments showing with data that they do have a decent shot.
There is a huge amount of income redistribution that is built in to the system. You have to be earning about £30k to even be a net contributor. We are all parasitic to a certain extent. And a lot of higher earners are dependant on the government in ways that should make a conservative blush.
Seperating ourselves into contributors and scroungers is self deception at every level. It makes it impossible to set tax or benefit levels that people will consider "fair". Everyone feels a sense of grievance and gets to be angry at other groups. Greate for pushing a political agenda!
Why do you say "depressingly well?" Charitable people from the upper classes tend to have a naive, cartoonish vision of the noble poor. As someone who has been poor, who has family members who still are, I can tell you that it's a mixed bag. I know lots of people who could be characterized as benefit "scroungers." They're not bad people. They don't deserve to starve. And I'm happy they're getting the help they need.
But I wouldn't describe any of them as particularly hard-working.
Clearly not. In fact, I went out of my way to say as much in my comment (in anticipation of responses like this one). But I guess there's almost nothing you can say to prevent this response (which is unfortunate, because it's a significant impediment to productive discussion).
No. I've now answered your question twice (three times, if you count my initial anticipation of this question). What is this weird impulse? What are you trying to accomplish here?
I don't think anyone was describing anyone as hard-working. I'm sure the rich are also a mixed bag when it comes to how hard-working they are. If it skews more in one direction or the other depending on which group we're talking about, I'm not sure it matters. The perception matters more than the reality, at least for this discussion.
I'm not saying that all rich people are not hard-working, or that all poor people are, I'm saying that the narrative is that that is the case, and depending on how right-wing your newspaper, it can be pretty black and white. Given the scale of damage done by tax evasion by the rich compared to benefits fraud by the poor, this characterisation undermines attempts to try and match the amount of effort spent reclaiming taxes from the rich versus identifying benefit fraudsters to the revenue that could be reclaimed from each approach.
Yup, you have both kinds. You have some people who are trying their best, and you have some people like a relative of mine: doesn't bother to get any jobs he sees as beneath him, has been to jail for dealing cocaine, lives with his mom into his 50s, and molested one of his nieces.
Because the billions aren't lost to the rich. They ain't spending it, so there is no real resource drain. It's just numbers in a bank account. Essentially the rich saving has the same economic effect as taxation. Hit them with remittance taxation and it will just sit there 'offshore' doing largely nothing other than making the rich feel rich, even though they can't spend it.
The 'scroungers' however are draining real resources for nothing apparently in return. Not that they can provide anything because there aren't sufficient jobs for them.
In other words they are not 'scroungers', they are just the 1 in 20 people who can't get a job under neo-liberalism because it requires about 5% permanently unemployed to control inflation.
What we do get annoyed about are the 'idle rich'. Those who appear to get their money 'for nothing' the same as the 'scroungers' and then flaunt it by buying expensive stuff.
There is no reduction in public service capability by the rich having vast sums of money 'offshore'. The government is never short of money - as they demonstrate everytime somebody they don't like needs bombing, or a set of new nuclear submarines need purchasing.
> Those who appear to get their money 'for nothing' the same as the 'scroungers' and then flaunt it by buying expensive stuff.
How someone got their money is irrelevant, but it's much better for the economy that they spend it, even on garbage, than let it sit in a brokerage account. Every person with a trust fund spending $400k on an Aston Martin is sustaining (not creating) jobs and distributing wealth to some degree.
"but it's much better for the economy that they spend it,"
Generally it isn't - because that tilts the economy towards producing goods and services that are wanted rather than those that are needed. Trickle down has been shown over the last 30 years to be largely a myth.
For example if you have public healthcare and private healthcare and there is a shortage of doctors then the wealthy "crowds out" the public healthcare system by purchasing private healthcare. Essentially they are using their wealth to jump the queue. Like the 'priority queue' at a theme park.
I think there were talking more about the velocity of money than trickle down. If money is in the market and it sits, there is no taxation on it (yet). If they buy a car, that money pays people and parts and taxes are paid. They spend what is left to other people who also pay taxes, etc. So money can be taxed multiple times as it powers the economy instead of sitting in an asset that is deferred.
Which should have a corresponding increase in quantity of housing. Why that doesn't happen in some places is hard to discern, but the investments by the rich does make the economy grow.
Literal cash and similar assets are the only dead money in the economy.
Even low and zero interest savings accounts are used by banks to back loans.
So for example, when someone buys gold or bitcoin, they are isolating that money from the productive economy. When they buy a share of a business, they are participating in the financial backing of that business (they generally aren't actually directly contributing to the business, but the business can do some types of business against its value on the stock market).
When somebody buys gold or bitcoin, they are giving money to somebody else, who will almost certainly spend it, or, failing that, at least put it in the bank.
> Even low and zero interest savings accounts are used by banks to back loans.
Only if banks have more lending opportunities than deposits, and that hasn't really been the case, (depending on which country we're discussing) since the crisis.
That money might well be invested in Aston Martin providing them with needed liquidity to run their business. I'm really not sure which is more productive.
I suspect what parent is talking about is the rentier class that has grown substantially in the UK over the last decade. 10% of the population now own at least one rental property.
There is nothing wrong with renting your property. Not sure why this is sold as a vice every time this discussion comes up. Somebody has to pay to buy lands and build a home.
Also these people need to answer what they think about infrastructure bonds, which is more or less the same as renting a home.
It's become a problem in the UK because housing supply is so constrained, there is a whole class (or generation) that is getting fat on the back of this constrained supply and has been voting for policies that continue the situation.
This isn't buying land and building homes, it's about people leveraging their existing housing to out bid people just looking for a home.
This has led to the age of a first time buyer reaching 32 and left many people with a precarious housing situation.
No, that completely depends on in what economic climate they'd be in. Exuberant spending in 2009 creates jobs, but in 1999 crowds out more sensible use of resources.
otoh there are bridges literally falling down and the country doesn't provide universal healthcare...so it seems government's pockets aren't infinitely deep.
Obviously military expenditure is a problem, but so are effective corporate tax rates of 2% and the 0.01% storing vast sums of wealth in brokerage accounts.
Building bridges and providing healthcare takes real resources, not just money. Real resources are of course scarce but money to the US government isn't.
This is why it doesn't matter (to the government-owned bridges at least) what some number in a brokerage account shows.
While you are right to take a materialist viewpoint, this is not correct. For instance, US industrial capacity is estimated to be at about 75% utilization. We are FAR richer than we pretend to be. Why is it underutilized? Probably because of monetary reasons.
The UK does provide universal health care, although we have a problem with potholes our bridges aren't falling down and our military spending is probably a little on the low side.
"There is no reduction in public service capability by the rich having vast sums of money 'offshore'. "
There is a reduction. The U.S. government runs at a deficit. Thus money is borrowed and thus interest is paid on the borrowings. This reduces public service capability since the government's borrowing capacity is finite. Plus this borrowing is in some sense a robbing of future generations.
There has never been a time in the last 150 years in which unemployment was 0%. What does having a percent of the population unemployed have to do with neo-liberalism?
I think you have a gross misunderstanding of economics. The government doesn't just issue bonds. It sells them to buyers. It will have to pay interest on those bonds to the holders of those bonds. There is a fiscal capacity for the nation in terms of repaying bonds. Things like tax policy, public policy, and projected GDP growth come in to play when buyers look at the risk of buying U.S. Treasury bonds. Risk in the form of interest is set and bonds are purchased. The paying of interest reduces the capacity of the government to spend on other things because the government absolutely does not have an infinite capacity to sell bonds. And saying, we'll just print more money is not helpful because if too much is printed then massive inflation can take hold which reduces the capacity of the government to spend.
> There is no reduction in public service capability by the rich having vast sums of money 'offshore'.
This is a strawman. While technically correct, it's completely ignoring the fact that NEW money entering that 'offshore' state is taxed extremely low and is thus in fact draining the system.
Thanks for participating. Are you saying that we should pretend like 'offshore' money doesn't exist, and print an equal amount of new money for each 'lost'?
False optimism? Old article, but probably still true today: 19% of Americans think they are among the top 1% of earners and 20% more think they will be one day [1]. When you introduce a plan that hurts "the rich": 39% of people think they're the target.
I think it is a combination of people expecting to move up financially over time, and wanting to keep as large a gap as possible between themselves and the next rung down on the financial ladder.
This isn't false optimism. It's a surprisingly accurate self-assessment.
It turns out that 12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.
People should be considering wealth though, not income.
When you're looking at the "rich," income doesn't tell you very much, since most "rich" peoples' wealth exists in (and continues to accrue via) non-income vehicles.
If you earn a high income for only a few years, you won't have the extensive advantages (tax havens, etc) of the truly wealthy, and you certainly won't have all of the hereditary wealth squirrelled away into offshore accounts and invested into capital that's busy appreciating.
> Although 12 percent of the population will experience a year in which they find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, a mere 0.6 percent will do so in 10 consecutive years.
When you ask someone whether they will one day be in the top 1%, I don't think they are interpreting that question as "will you be there for a brief moment?" The question implies some level of permanence. So 38.4% are fooling themselves.
38.4% still think they are the target. If their dream is to be in the 1%, they may not want to add new penalties or rules for their potentially future selves.
If you take a period of time, and judge yourself by your best performance over small fractions of that time, then you are very far away from an accurate self-assessment.
Spending a year in the top x% isn’t what most people have in mind with their false optimism. They expect to make it to that bracket and stay there. One-time windfalls that put you in a certain bracket temporarily don’t make low taxes on that bracket net benefit you. You’re still getting screwed all the other years in your life
The top 20% of income distributions in America is so absurdly vast that this is essentially meaningless. At $100k, breaking into the top 20% is barely comfortable living in some parts of the country. This pales with what the top 1% and 0.1% earn.
While I think most people have a fantasy of being in the 1% or 0.1%, that's not really the "American Dream." The American dream is roughly a decent suburban home in a safe neighborhood.
This fixation/hatred towards the 1% or 0.1% is really not something most people I know care about, at all. They may not articulate it this way, but they don't see the economy as a zero sum game. They don't see Steve Jobs making billions as something that keeps them from making tens or hundreds of thousands, or even millions if they were fortunate.
The problem is not that Steve Jobs made a billion dollars. The problem is that Steve Jobs pushes for all sorts of negative things that screw over "the little guy" so that he can make another $100.
> The American dream is roughly a decent suburban home in a safe neighborhood.
I dunno, that's pretty sad. Maybe I'm showing my age, but that used to be the expectation, not the dream. The American Dream is (or used to be) extraordinary economic mobility--making it big. How far we've slid where now the American Dream is merely "a decent life".
>For many in both the working class and the middle class, upward mobility has served as the heart and soul of the American Dream, the prospect of "betterment" and to "improve one's lot" for oneself and one's children much of what this country is all about. "Work hard, save a little, send the kids to college so they can do better than you did, and retire happily to a warmer climate" has been the script we have all been handed.
Essentially, the American Dream is the idea that hard work and dedication will result in a better life for yourself and your children. It has nothing really to do with "making it big."
They are globally. I put my salary into a global salary calculator once and found that I was in the top 0.4% of humanity. I don't feel it because I live in Orange County CA which is one of the richest in the USA. We measure our status relative to other people and I'm surrounded by even wealthier people.
also could be a sign of drive and passion to make it. I would take that over being defeated and complacent.
I lived in soviet block as a kid and everyone had this defeated attitude which is such a contrast to american optimism. Although, things are changing in America now, more and more people feel hopeless and defeated here too.
It's not defeatist to be realistic about who you are, to make the most of resources you can afford, we need much more of that if we're not going to implode with pressures from overpopulation. Do you know the tale of the Ant & the Grasshopper?
If you 'make it' (produce something that brings great worth to society) first then you're welcome, IMO, to use a little more than your fair share of resources. You don't get to do it the other way around as the majority of Western society appears to be doing (other regions maybe are too, I don't have an informed view on them).
It would be good if it were true. Obviously it would be great if somehow everyone could live as comfortably as the rich (ignoring that it wouldn't be possible for a variety of reasons).
The problem is that it's not true. A majority will never be rich, and a disappointingly high number of people will only ever barely scrape by.
That's a cynical way to put it. A more positive spin on the same idea would be that we encourage ambition and hope for the future.
If my child wants to be a billionaire, should I say "Sweetie, you probably won't be a billionaire, so don't get your hopes up." Or should I say "it'll be tough, almost impossible, you'll need to work hard, study hard, be smart, etc."? I know which lesson I'd prefer to give.
So a basic problem arises when this belief causes people to vote against their interests for policies that benefit the actually-rich to their own (incorrectly expecting that they will be rich next year) detriment. Tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, dismantling programs that benefit the poor and middle class, defunding various public institutions, etc.
It's fine to strive to achieve as much as possible and earn a bunch of money, but the core of the issue highlighted by that quote about "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" is a sort of class-affinity with the rich that is unwarranted for most people.
I'd say that this is an argument that you should vote for systems that treat people fairly regardless of class. Even if you have no chance of becoming a millionaire or billionaire, it seems to me you should still try to treat such people fairly - according to sound principles that you would be willing to apply to yourself if you were in their position.
Likewise for the very poor. I hope to never be very poor, but I still wouldn't vote for systems that mistreat or exploit them. This is not because I'm trying to protect myself in the circumstances that I become destitute, but because I think morality requires the consistent application of principles to people regardless of their economic wealth.
The idea that "Hard work" will make you a billionaire is largely a myth, but a nice-sounding one because it implies anyone can do it. Hard work might get you from the bottom 20% to maybe the next 20%, but it's not going to let you crack the 1% club. If my kid tells me she wants to be a billionaire, I'm going to tell her to find the rich kids in school, make friends with them and introduce me to their parents. Entry into the top 1% is a function of the quality of your contacts list, not a function of work.
I never suggested that hard work would be sufficient to make someone a billionaire. I do suspect hard work might be necessary, assuming the "inherit" case is ruled out. Hard work will likely improve the chances of one becoming a billionaire, and therefore it makes sense to advice it to aspiring billionaires.
To me, this a common (logical) error: confusing good existential directives with good political programs. As they say, hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
Having stayed in the US for a while and returned to my native country(India). I have to say its a little hard to not feel like that, if you had the opportunities, freedom and the overall ecosystem there is in the US.
Thats such a disgustingly sneering sentiment that belittles the judgement of those without money.
Perhaps we should consider that those without means have little expectation that they will be able to successfully extract favor from an organization that doles out trillions for broken fighter jets that are intended to kill people of color in distant lands.
H.L. Mencken once defined puritanism as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having fun. Based on my interactions with conservatives in the U.S. who are religious I've modified Mencken's quote:
Religious conservatism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve.
No. I think your logic may be off. If I say all A have property B this does not imply that no other type of object can have property B. For instance, it is true that all living men have cells that reproduce. But men aren’t the only living humans with this property.
Also it’s clearly just meant to be a witty statement and not to be taken as a formal definition.
It was a question, not a conclusion; I think you'll find the flaw with your own logic, comprehension, or both.
>"Based on my interactions with conservatives in the U.S. who are religious [...]"
This strongly implies you only find the given characteristic, greed, amongst the religious subset of conservatives.
I was thus enquiring so as to establish whether, for example, you found all those without religion to be devoid of greed. You strongly implied it was only non-religious conservatives who were immune to greed; do you care to comment on those who aren't conservative, do you find the same result.
Of course my question was loaded: I expect your position to be based primarily on prejudice rather than science but would be happy to be corrected.
FWIW I'm not religious, not conservative, not USAmerican, but am often greedy.
My statement does not imply what you say it does. My statement is about religious conservatives and defining a characteristic of such people. It does not define greedy people. My statement isn't even about greed it's about a subset of the people who have the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve. This isn't the same thing as greed.
When I say that religious conservatism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve, I am defining a characteristic of the set of people who are religious conservatives. That set of people may have other characteristics and, here's the important thing, the set of people who have the haunting fear that I described is itself not described. Other people may have this same haunting fear and not be religious conservatives. I have merely posited that the set of religious conservatives is a subset of the set of people with the aforementioned haunting fear. A Venn diagram may be useful.
If I had said that one has the haunting fear if and only if they are a religious conservative then you'd be correct in your interpretation. But I did not say this. I did not make any claims about non-relgious conservatives or any other group. Therefore any conclusion on what I believe about these other groups is not logically supported by what I wrote.
Again, clearly the statement was merely an attempt at wit and not meant to be taken literally. It's hyperbole.
For some reason, people can't wrap their heads around the fact that every enterprise needs some degree of "shrinkage" to keep functioning effectively. Try to get those margins to zero and everything starts going haywire.
Without expressing an opinion one way or the other, the reason is very simple to explain. Taxes are seen as taking something away from you. Benefits by contrast are something that somebody else is giving to you. Having less taken away from you is going to be seen as less of an issue than somebody else taking more from other people than they 'deserve.'
There's plenty of lost nuance in this view, but if you try to empathize with people who feel this way - it's not hard.
A lot of the people in the UK you hear complaining about benefits are pensioners, the pension budget dwarfs that for benefits, it's the largest part of our welfare state. They don't complain about that gift from the government.
The reality is we have had a rather rabid right wing press for some time, this has led to some people having a distorted view on these things. There was a survey recently which asked people how much is lost to benefit fraud, the answer people gave was 25% when the reality is 0.7%. I don't know about the costs but I can imagine you couldn't get lower than that without spending more than the return.
I try and empathise with their attitudes but I don't want it affecting policy.
'gift from the government'?! These are people that have worked their whole lives from times when benefit scrounging was not a viable life plan. There's plenty of poverty in retirement.
Also quite apart from fraud there are peversely generous incentives for people not to work, and thus we end up with the spectacle of multiple generations having never worked, and having no intention to do so.
Incentives not to work: a real problem. The only way out of that is methodical reform of the system; what Universal Credit could be if it wasn't a disaster being run by IDS.
Anecdotally, the people I know that complain the most about benefits also are on some form of benefits themselves (pensioners as you say, but also oddly enough some people I know on SSDI and Medicare / Medicaid).
Generally speaking, the complaints tend to be tribal oriented. I wouldn't be surprised if tribal-type attitudes are involved in the Guardian poll (eg a sample person might think tax loopholes as themselves sneaking in less taxes, but might think of benefit loopholes as others stealing money that comes out of their pocket.)
The thing is that, though, I feel that a lot of these people actually do care about the "billions lost to the rich" too. With this recent round of populism, there indeed has been a strong "anti-elite" sentiment. Unfortunately, too often, the "anti-elitism" is masked in the same sort of tribalism that typically fuels a lot of anti-benefit outrage, so it's not necessarily focused (MHO) on the right places that it should be. But it's there.
I don't care - we need to counter the cynicism at both ends of the scale. For example, it cannot be right that someone that pays into the system their whole lives can then be refused housing in favour of an able bodied person that has paid in nothing and caused their own homelessness by arriving in the UK without a job or means to support themselves. Needless to say the tax avoidance is also disgusting.
There are some very strange situations in the UK at present - for example when a person would actually be worse off by going out to work, or when someone's (viable) career plan involves having a child in order to get a house and benefits.
Given my political views I'm consoled by the fact that the level of welfare spending is unsustainable in the long term. The UK is already going deeper into the red every month, despite supposed austerity.
But if you come from the EU you do not need a visa, do you?
>Reducing this means either an expansion of employment in run-down areas like Blackpool, or reducing benefit levels and hoping that people die quietly.
Not reducing means that the country eventually goes bankrupt. And then there won't be any benefits for anyone at all, will there? To put it another way, if your principle holds true, why don't we just increase benefits until they are 100% of the economy?
There are other ways of closing the gap, such as addressing tax avoidance. It's not that the UK is a poor country, but it's an increasingly unequal one. And a lot of the Crown dependencies operate as tax havens.
Women are always first in the queue and they do indeed house women that have never worked. Just because you quote that page doesn't mean that's the policy that's followed.
You honestly think that tax avoidance is the cause of the deficit?
Point is, it's not an either or. Let's follow up whatever ways we can find of eliminating the deficit - it's still utterly shameful and wrong that someone should be able to get themselves pregnant and be supported by the state in relative comfort whilst someone that has paid in for decades is refused housing. Your defence is to avoid addressing this and instead deflect by talking about generalities.
(are we still talking about EEA nationals or have we gone back to the old Tory demon of "single mothers"?)
> "get themselves pregnant"
I hadn't realised there was such a problem with parthenogenesis among women in this country, that pregnancies were happening without men being involved at any point.
So, what's your solution? Mandatory abortions? Divorce ban? Women with babies in homeless shelters? Living in cardboard boxes on the street? What's an acceptable fatality rate for the children in this scenario?
I'm talking about specifics, the extremely brutal ones of what exactly is required for people to remain healthy in these circumstances.
A person presents at the benefit office holding a baby. She is homeless. What specifically should the response of the system be? What questions to ask? Why? What outcomes are acceptable?
Come on, we need to start being honest about things if you truly want to see positive change: if a woman decides to get pregnant she can pick up a man for sex at the drop of a hat, tell them she's on birth control - reasonable chance of becoming pregnant. Women have much more control than men over reproduction - a man can use primary birth control but can't injunct a woman to use an abortifacient, for example. A woman can hide her (non-)use of contraceptives (eg coil, pill, cap) whilst a man generally can't. A woman may lie about where she is in her menstrual cycle.
A man can ordinarily choose to avoid pregnancy (covertly with vasectomy; or condoms, withdrawal) but not too initiate it.
Presumably you knew all this but chose to be a dick about it.
There seems little point anyone trying to debate with you about sensible policies if that's your starting point.
What does your first paragraph have to do with anything, though? Are you saying that in those circumstances the father has no responsibility at all? Have we forgotten the decade or more when the Child Support Agency was trying to make fathers partially responsible for their children in order to reduce benefits cost?
(also this thread started with "able bodied person that has paid in nothing and caused their own homelessness by arriving in the UK without a job or means to support themselves", and I'm not sure that being born is what's meant by "arriving in the UK without a job".)
My experience of those on benefits (being such myself) is not extensive but I've still come across those who've chosen to have a child, as a single mother already with children, with no long term partner, and no family income except welfare. They end up in a larger home, seemingly with more money. I can't believe I just happen to know the few people in my area who have done this.
It may no longer be a major problem as it was 20+ years ago when my mother would tell me about which of her school pupils had chosen pregnancy over working in a factory (I would have!) but it seems undeniably to be a problem.
Women can and do choose independently of men to have a child and use men only for the procreative act. Women on benefit do it, clear in the knowledge that they can get a better standard of welfare accommodation and more income that way. There are often emotional reasons too, we all desire for someone to love us.
Quips about parthenogenesis don't address that problem. That was my rather verbose point.
Yes, feel free to return to the point at hand. Treatment of immigrants with children fits in to a broader picture and can't be divorced from how we treat the native population.
> For example, it cannot be right that someone that pays into the system their whole lives can then be refused housing in favour of an able bodied person that has paid in nothing and caused their own homelessness by arriving in the UK without a job or means to support themselves. Needless to say the tax avoidance is also disgusting.
To me the biggest benefit of UBI is we might be able to get rid of this attitude. It's hard to criticise a benefit when you are a recipient of it yourself.
And with an actual free lunch the group handing it out is losing something. That doesn't change the fact that to you, it is free, and how is that a bad thing for you?
Maybe were talking past each other. I definitely see why someone wouldn't want to pay for the system but I took OPs comment as complaining about being given money which I cannot understand
I'm not talking about supplying the money. I'm talking about being given something. If there was a Ubi system you presumably wouldn't be able to stop paying taxes for it just because you didn't want to receive the payment, so in that case why would you be upset about receiving the payment
Again, I feel like we're talking past each other. The way I interpreted OP was him saying he didn't want the UBI payment if there was UBI implemented. If UBI is implemented you don't just get to opt out as that gets rid one of the major benefits of the system which is low administrative costs. The OP may not have meant his statement the way I interpreted it, but my interpretation of it definitely separated the taking from the giving
They won't be that person that pays for it and they're still against it! It is truly mind boggling.
If someone proposed a policy where everyone who makes under $1M gets a free sandwich, that everyone who makes over $10M pays for, the only people who sensibly should be against it are people who make over $10M or people who think they might one day make over $10M. Nobody else would ever have to pay for it--why would they be against it?
Because there isn't an infinite supply of money, it has to come from somewhere.
It's the flaw in democracy that I'm surprised has taken this long to come about. People are inherently greedy, as you are pointing out, and will generally vote for whatever candidate will benefit them the most. They don't care about how it will effect the economy or where the money would come from, just that they get it. And with how hard it is to remove entitlements once they're passed, it's a constant snowball.
Money is only useful while in motion. Money paid to poor people is immediately spent on, mostly, necessary goods and services. Local economies benefit from the extra liquidity.
Give it away then. I can't fathom how being given a free thing is bad for you. It's going to be a number in a ledger as well so it's not even like a particularly bulky gift you have to find a place for, and everyone is getting it so there won't be any envy from your neighbors.
Something interesting that I noticed while living in the US Midwest: A lot of people who are currently, or have been on welfare systems are strongly against it. They need it because they are in a bad spot, but everyone else that uses it is just lazy and is abusing the system. (Note: I don't agree with this mindset, just explaining it)
I agree it's harder to criticize a benefit when you receive it, but people still do that all the time.
The other day I was listening to a clip from Jordan Peterson, and he said something that I found a bit surprising/shocking, but this articles seems to confirm it: people on the left who claim to side with the poor don't actually care about the poor, they just hate the rich.
This article is basically just hating on the rich people.
I think it's rather easy to understand what this author is puzzled by: people want to keep their money. If you've earned your money and you want to keep it, I can empathize with you. If you think you deserve to take other people's money, I can't empathize with you.
It's a bad thing, because it shows the minimum wage isn't enough and zero-hours contracts aren't keeping people out of poverty.
But people in work who do over sixteen hours per week and who are claiming eg working family tax credits are not free-loading.
This is one of the mechanisms that's designed to get people back into work. There's a benefit cap in place, and that cap is removed if you work more than 16 hours per week.
I think most people just have this plan of working hard until 65. They're deeply unhappy with this. They sacrifice joy, comfort, relationships, and family to live this dream of survival. They value others who suffer similarly.
Benefit scroungers have some level of comfort without the hard work.
I don't even tell people I live comfortably freelancing anymore because people have such a negative perception of it. I may work 20 hours a week at double the effort but all people see is that I'm being lazy for not doing a full 40 hour week.
Whereas people have this perception of a rich person working weekends, waking up at 4 AM, getting divorced to make their company work. And so people empathize more with the corrupt rich.
In the UK I don't think it's "people empathize more with the corrupt rich" - I think it's simply that most people aren't aware of the amounts of money lost to the Treasury by benefit fraud and tax evasion.
In one case someone wants you to work harder so they can work less, in the other someone worked hard (or smart) and doesn't want to give up as much of what they earned to others so they can work less.
Yes, I know what they both are - and I don't approve of either.
However, looking at the simple finances of it (because that's what actually impacts public services) tax evasion is about 30 times bigger a problem than benefit fraud.
>> I think most people just have this plan of working hard until 65. They're deeply unhappy with this. They sacrifice joy, comfort, relationships, and family to live this dream of survival. They value others who suffer similarly.
I think that's a reasonable explanation, but I don't understand how anyone would think all it takes to get filthy rich is hard work.
I find that especially hard to understand relatvie to the UK society (which the article is about), where there's still a class of hereditary rich people (e.g. the queen, who I think owns the largest amount of property in the country, though I might be wrong). On top of that, the culture reveres people who "made it" without any particular merit- like entertainment stars.
"The rich" have more education, political and media influence and resistance to accusations as advertisers, potential litigators, owners, etc. Many people are not critical thinkers and lap up media as gospel without a second thought.
I think this is a question everyone who is anti-austerity should ask themselves. It seems like every program labelled 'austerity' marginally cuts social services and benefits instead of actually cutting bloatware programmes (construction, military) that send money to the 1%. And then is declared (usually by the left) to be a failure of the concept of ending deficit spending.
This raises the question of the importance of the consumer in our economy. Scroungers still spend money, and often spend most of the money they get, which puts money in the pockets of companies, which they then spend on payroll and other things. If the money they get is being put back into the system, then how is it draining?
There is nothing to manage at least from the perspective of monetary assets, things would disappear too fast for you have a chance to 'manage' them; also it's the opposite, the poor are very efficient with the limited resources they have -- you kinda have to be wouldn't you? Lest you end up from just being poor to being a corpse. Below a certain breakpoint money only functions as a means of consumption. With what they are bringing in they will never be able to save enough to make any investments that will have a net positive in their lives and a negative shock will very quickly wipe out whatever progress they make. From their perspective it is actually logical to buy lottery tickets and gamble since the price of admission is low enough for them to afford; the calculus for them is shifted in a way that is different from your experiences. When you have an abundance of resources you are in a completely different position since you don't need to be concerned with survival anymore -- also you get many chances since your eggs won't end up in the same basket. It's not impossible but the chances that somebody who is poor can execute the process for a legitimate means of making money outside whatever formal arrangement they are in as opposed to brewing meth (which can be considered a 'side project' depending on your frame of mind) is unlikely given the context they find themselves in. The prior statements also hinge upon the unlikely event that someone can escape the cess pit of proletariat culture in the first place. It's structured to be this way, the range of choices somebody can make at the bottom of the socio economic ladder is much more restricted -- why do you think there are such stringent drug and prostitution laws in certain places? It's to reduce the actions that poor people can take outside the game that a relatively small group collectively decided we need to play -- when you reduce people's agency enough you can get them to do absolutely anything through a 'legit' channel: like taking a bullet to the head in some far off country, doing back breaking work in a kitchen, or something else that is equally unpleasant. A certain fraction of the population needs to be meat for the grinder to do it's job.
At least in the US, the rich tend to be the biggest beneficiaries of government hand-outs, to an even greater degree than people on the dole. It's just not as visible, so not as easy for the public to vilify. Not sure if it's similar in the UK, but I suspect it might be so--the UK seems like US-lite when it comes to governance.
because we, mere thousandaires and paupers alike, live in a separate reality from the ultra-wealthy. The rich and poor-and-middle-class might as well be living on different planets. When a benefits cheater somehow gets free housing or spends foodstamps on lobster, we ordinary citizens can see that and relate to that. "That could have been my house or my dinner!" We can see the cheaters on the street and imagine ourselves in their place. We can relate.
But when a faceless corporation we've never heard of hides umptillions in a place we've never heard of, somehow the impact is lost. Ask an average joe on the street the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion and you will be answered with shrugs. We don't see how that money flows from one holding company to another and we fail to connect that to the broader economy, and this illusion has been perpetuated by hidden class of venal, remorseless, well-educated and very smart mercenaries beholden by law and their shareholders to accumulate every last speck of capital.
Maybe it's a matter of staging and perception. Every quarter Social Services audit their books, and the local fishwrapper features the County Executive and the Sheriff grandstanding with their arrest record over overclaimed benefits.
Now if you did like Mohammed-bin-Salman and paraded with the most brazen tax evaders payment morale at the top would increase quickly.
I think the answer is because you tend to compare yourself to people that are close to you in terms of attainment. So you don't compare yourself to the Queen of England or a malnourished farmer in Africa. A middle class person compares them self to the person who lost his job, and the person that is doing a bit better in their town or neighborhood.
Focusing on the "scroungers" is a way to hate what you are afraid of becoming, or what you sacrifice to avoid.
This seems to be the central data point of the article:
> less than half (48%) thought that legal tax avoidance was “usually or always wrong”.
> By contrast, more than 60% of Britons believe it is “usually or always wrong” for poorer people to use legal loopholes to claim more benefits
I think there are two reasonably simple explanations here:
First, I don't know what a legal loophole to claim more benefits is - either you qualify for a given payment, or you don't. Perhaps I'm not paying attention, but I don't recall having heard much debate on legal benefits loopholes, just regular fraud. There's a risk that some portion of respondents heard "fraud", even though the question was about legal loopholes.
The other factor is that there is a significant moral difference between arrangements for paying less tax on money that you legitimately earned, and arrangements to receive more money that you didn't, but which are provided to you to help you become your situation is considered precarious.
Yes, there are people (legally) receiving unreasonable amounts of income that they didn't "earn", in many cases from public budgets, directly or indirectly, through various kinds of cronyism. This, not which rate of tax is paid on such income, is unethical, basically a crime, but I believe that the way to deal with it, is in a first class way, not through the tax code.
> There's a risk that some portion of respondents heard "fraud", even though the question was about legal loopholes.
Isn't that the point? People see tax avoidance but don't see it as fraud; people see legal benefit maximisation and see it as fraud.
> First, I don't know what a legal loophole to claim more benefits is - either you qualify for a given payment, or you don't.
A benefit claimant's benefit is paid by the secretary of state for the department for work and pensions. That person is obviously busy, so they employ decision makers who sit in benefit centres across the UK.
There's no way to interact directly with a decision maker. You can only ever interact with them via forms and postal letters, and those letters and forms go through an intermediary.
A decision maker looks at the details of the person's claim. They apply the various acts, statutes, statutory instruments, and case law to the person's claim. All that law is scattered across various places, and so decision makers have a couple of handy guide books.
> DWP decision makers now use Advice for decision making (instead of the DMG) for decisions that involve:
> Universal Credit
> Personal Independence Payment
contribution-based Jobseeker’s Allowance and contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance for people who are eligible for Universal Credit
I think all the rest use the decision makers guide.
Have a look at the guide. Have a look at the page numbers listed in each volume. The decision makers guide is 14,000 pages (fourteen thousand) long. And there's no index.
It's impossible for ordinary people to work out if they're really entitled or not to a benefit. And the quality of decision making is, frankly, piss poor.
So, a legal benefit loophole might be a skilled benefits adviser who helps claimants make claims by helping them fill in the forms and gather evidence, and then helps them attend the independent medical assessments, and then helps them write the letter for mandatory reconsideration and then follow up with an appeal.
My argument is that I don't think that's what people hear when you ask them about "legal loopholes".
And so the survey accidentally, implicitly ends up comparing "legal tax avoidance" with "benefits fraud" which is apples to oranges. If the questions instead had been "working with your accountant to minimise you tax liability in legal ways" vs. "working with your benefits advisor to make sure you receive the benefits you legally qualify for", I suspect the result would have been different.
If you want to write the article the author actually did, the more relevant question would probably have been "tax fraud" vs "benefits fraud". I'd be curious to know what those numbers are.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 255 ms ] threadWhen someone claims that extra £30 a week we feel it's our money because we can visualise it in our minds.
When a rich person finds a way to not pay tax, it feels more like it's their money to begin with and it is taken from them, and we ourselves wouldn't like to lose out on millions.
I think this is it. Even being on benefits in the first place is considered scrounging by some.
I'd much rather see someone on minimum wage manage to get a free medical card than someone making £100k a year find a way to avoid paying tax on their holiday home. I find it hard to believe I'm in the minority.
If they want to identify a parasite class in society, they should be looking up, not down.
Seperating ourselves into contributors and scroungers is self deception at every level. It makes it impossible to set tax or benefit levels that people will consider "fair". Everyone feels a sense of grievance and gets to be angry at other groups. Greate for pushing a political agenda!
But I wouldn't describe any of them as particularly hard-working.
That's feel-good nonsense.
The 'scroungers' however are draining real resources for nothing apparently in return. Not that they can provide anything because there aren't sufficient jobs for them.
In other words they are not 'scroungers', they are just the 1 in 20 people who can't get a job under neo-liberalism because it requires about 5% permanently unemployed to control inflation.
What we do get annoyed about are the 'idle rich'. Those who appear to get their money 'for nothing' the same as the 'scroungers' and then flaunt it by buying expensive stuff.
There is no reduction in public service capability by the rich having vast sums of money 'offshore'. The government is never short of money - as they demonstrate everytime somebody they don't like needs bombing, or a set of new nuclear submarines need purchasing.
How someone got their money is irrelevant, but it's much better for the economy that they spend it, even on garbage, than let it sit in a brokerage account. Every person with a trust fund spending $400k on an Aston Martin is sustaining (not creating) jobs and distributing wealth to some degree.
Generally it isn't - because that tilts the economy towards producing goods and services that are wanted rather than those that are needed. Trickle down has been shown over the last 30 years to be largely a myth.
For example if you have public healthcare and private healthcare and there is a shortage of doctors then the wealthy "crowds out" the public healthcare system by purchasing private healthcare. Essentially they are using their wealth to jump the queue. Like the 'priority queue' at a theme park.
What about the externalities of destruction of the environment due to consumption?
Who has the authority to define what is needed?
Assuming you're in favour of a modern democracy, rather than a technocracy, an epistocracy, or the wild west.
> Assuming you're in favour of a modern democracy, rather than a technocracy, an epistocracy, or the wild west.
This argumentation is pettifoggery.
Very often on the asset side of a foreign central bank which they then use to discount into their own currency (hi China)
Even low and zero interest savings accounts are used by banks to back loans.
So for example, when someone buys gold or bitcoin, they are isolating that money from the productive economy. When they buy a share of a business, they are participating in the financial backing of that business (they generally aren't actually directly contributing to the business, but the business can do some types of business against its value on the stock market).
Only if banks have more lending opportunities than deposits, and that hasn't really been the case, (depending on which country we're discussing) since the crisis.
No. The loans are made out of nothing. Saving is the end of the loan process, not the beginning. That has been made clear by the Bank of England. http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte...
I suspect what parent is talking about is the rentier class that has grown substantially in the UK over the last decade. 10% of the population now own at least one rental property.
Also these people need to answer what they think about infrastructure bonds, which is more or less the same as renting a home.
This isn't buying land and building homes, it's about people leveraging their existing housing to out bid people just looking for a home.
This has led to the age of a first time buyer reaching 32 and left many people with a precarious housing situation.
So yes, there is something wrong with it.
Obviously military expenditure is a problem, but so are effective corporate tax rates of 2% and the 0.01% storing vast sums of wealth in brokerage accounts.
This is why it doesn't matter (to the government-owned bridges at least) what some number in a brokerage account shows.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/03/donald-trumps-disgusting...
The problem is US politics, not the US dollar.
http://beta.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-kelton-pony-for-...
There is a reduction. The U.S. government runs at a deficit. Thus money is borrowed and thus interest is paid on the borrowings. This reduces public service capability since the government's borrowing capacity is finite. Plus this borrowing is in some sense a robbing of future generations.
There has never been a time in the last 150 years in which unemployment was 0%. What does having a percent of the population unemployed have to do with neo-liberalism?
http://beta.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-kelton-pony-for-...
Here's an explanation of how things actually work, from an actual economist: http://beta.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-kelton-pony-for-...
This is a strawman. While technically correct, it's completely ignoring the fact that NEW money entering that 'offshore' state is taxed extremely low and is thus in fact draining the system.
http://beta.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-kelton-pony-for-...
1: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hop...
It turns out that 12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-...
When you're looking at the "rich," income doesn't tell you very much, since most "rich" peoples' wealth exists in (and continues to accrue via) non-income vehicles.
If you earn a high income for only a few years, you won't have the extensive advantages (tax havens, etc) of the truly wealthy, and you certainly won't have all of the hereditary wealth squirrelled away into offshore accounts and invested into capital that's busy appreciating.
> Although 12 percent of the population will experience a year in which they find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, a mere 0.6 percent will do so in 10 consecutive years.
When you ask someone whether they will one day be in the top 1%, I don't think they are interpreting that question as "will you be there for a brief moment?" The question implies some level of permanence. So 38.4% are fooling themselves.
You attribute that to false optimism, but where's the actual evidence?
Here's a more recent article, backed by empirical studies (you can buy the books if you wan't to): https://www.aei.org/publication/evidence-shows-significant-i... .
And the standard point that Thomas Sowell has been making for decades:
An absolute majority of the people who were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 have also been in the top 20 percent at some time since then.
This fixation/hatred towards the 1% or 0.1% is really not something most people I know care about, at all. They may not articulate it this way, but they don't see the economy as a zero sum game. They don't see Steve Jobs making billions as something that keeps them from making tens or hundreds of thousands, or even millions if they were fortunate.
I dunno, that's pretty sad. Maybe I'm showing my age, but that used to be the expectation, not the dream. The American Dream is (or used to be) extraordinary economic mobility--making it big. How far we've slid where now the American Dream is merely "a decent life".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream
>For many in both the working class and the middle class, upward mobility has served as the heart and soul of the American Dream, the prospect of "betterment" and to "improve one's lot" for oneself and one's children much of what this country is all about. "Work hard, save a little, send the kids to college so they can do better than you did, and retire happily to a warmer climate" has been the script we have all been handed.
Essentially, the American Dream is the idea that hard work and dedication will result in a better life for yourself and your children. It has nothing really to do with "making it big."
I lived in soviet block as a kid and everyone had this defeated attitude which is such a contrast to american optimism. Although, things are changing in America now, more and more people feel hopeless and defeated here too.
If you 'make it' (produce something that brings great worth to society) first then you're welcome, IMO, to use a little more than your fair share of resources. You don't get to do it the other way around as the majority of Western society appears to be doing (other regions maybe are too, I don't have an informed view on them).
The problem is that it's not true. A majority will never be rich, and a disappointingly high number of people will only ever barely scrape by.
Do you really think most people are unaware of this basic fact?
If my child wants to be a billionaire, should I say "Sweetie, you probably won't be a billionaire, so don't get your hopes up." Or should I say "it'll be tough, almost impossible, you'll need to work hard, study hard, be smart, etc."? I know which lesson I'd prefer to give.
It's fine to strive to achieve as much as possible and earn a bunch of money, but the core of the issue highlighted by that quote about "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" is a sort of class-affinity with the rich that is unwarranted for most people.
Likewise for the very poor. I hope to never be very poor, but I still wouldn't vote for systems that mistreat or exploit them. This is not because I'm trying to protect myself in the circumstances that I become destitute, but because I think morality requires the consistent application of principles to people regardless of their economic wealth.
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
Commonly misattributed
Perhaps we should consider that those without means have little expectation that they will be able to successfully extract favor from an organization that doles out trillions for broken fighter jets that are intended to kill people of color in distant lands.
The bottom 10% are wealthier than the top 10% were 100 years ago.
Religious conservatism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve.
Also it’s clearly just meant to be a witty statement and not to be taken as a formal definition.
>"Based on my interactions with conservatives in the U.S. who are religious [...]"
This strongly implies you only find the given characteristic, greed, amongst the religious subset of conservatives.
I was thus enquiring so as to establish whether, for example, you found all those without religion to be devoid of greed. You strongly implied it was only non-religious conservatives who were immune to greed; do you care to comment on those who aren't conservative, do you find the same result.
Of course my question was loaded: I expect your position to be based primarily on prejudice rather than science but would be happy to be corrected.
FWIW I'm not religious, not conservative, not USAmerican, but am often greedy.
When I say that religious conservatism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve, I am defining a characteristic of the set of people who are religious conservatives. That set of people may have other characteristics and, here's the important thing, the set of people who have the haunting fear that I described is itself not described. Other people may have this same haunting fear and not be religious conservatives. I have merely posited that the set of religious conservatives is a subset of the set of people with the aforementioned haunting fear. A Venn diagram may be useful.
If I had said that one has the haunting fear if and only if they are a religious conservative then you'd be correct in your interpretation. But I did not say this. I did not make any claims about non-relgious conservatives or any other group. Therefore any conclusion on what I believe about these other groups is not logically supported by what I wrote.
Again, clearly the statement was merely an attempt at wit and not meant to be taken literally. It's hyperbole.
There's plenty of lost nuance in this view, but if you try to empathize with people who feel this way - it's not hard.
The reality is we have had a rather rabid right wing press for some time, this has led to some people having a distorted view on these things. There was a survey recently which asked people how much is lost to benefit fraud, the answer people gave was 25% when the reality is 0.7%. I don't know about the costs but I can imagine you couldn't get lower than that without spending more than the return.
I try and empathise with their attitudes but I don't want it affecting policy.
Also quite apart from fraud there are peversely generous incentives for people not to work, and thus we end up with the spectacle of multiple generations having never worked, and having no intention to do so.
Multiple generations never having worked: very rare, this is a common piece of anti-benefit propaganda that's rarely rooted in fact. https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/are-cultures-worklessness-pass...
There is no test for having worked your whole life needed to get an old age pension. Unemployment benefit claimants get a National Insurance stamp.
Isn't there? I think that you need to have shown at least 10 years of national insurance contributions to get the pension: https://www.gov.uk/new-state-pension/your-national-insurance...
Granted, 10 years is not "your whole life", but there is a test.
You may get National Insurance credits if you can’t work - for example because of illness or disability, or if you’re a carer or you’re unemployed.
No there are not, and claiming such shows how ignorant you are of the current benefit system.
Name one situation where someone is better off on benefits.
Generally speaking, the complaints tend to be tribal oriented. I wouldn't be surprised if tribal-type attitudes are involved in the Guardian poll (eg a sample person might think tax loopholes as themselves sneaking in less taxes, but might think of benefit loopholes as others stealing money that comes out of their pocket.)
The thing is that, though, I feel that a lot of these people actually do care about the "billions lost to the rich" too. With this recent round of populism, there indeed has been a strong "anti-elite" sentiment. Unfortunately, too often, the "anti-elitism" is masked in the same sort of tribalism that typically fuels a lot of anti-benefit outrage, so it's not necessarily focused (MHO) on the right places that it should be. But it's there.
There are some very strange situations in the UK at present - for example when a person would actually be worse off by going out to work, or when someone's (viable) career plan involves having a child in order to get a house and benefits.
Given my political views I'm consoled by the fact that the level of welfare spending is unsustainable in the long term. The UK is already going deeper into the red every month, despite supposed austerity.
Is this actually possible? People claim it happens a lot, but without being specific on what they mean. Note that most UK visas involve "no recourse to public funds" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-funds--2/p...
> the level of welfare spending is unsustainable in the long term
Reducing this means either an expansion of employment in run-down areas like Blackpool, or reducing benefit levels and hoping that people die quietly.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1117/161117-austerit...
>Reducing this means either an expansion of employment in run-down areas like Blackpool, or reducing benefit levels and hoping that people die quietly.
Not reducing means that the country eventually goes bankrupt. And then there won't be any benefits for anyone at all, will there? To put it another way, if your principle holds true, why don't we just increase benefits until they are 100% of the economy?
http://www.housing-rights.info/02_4_EEA_workers.php#housing-...
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-rules-to-stop-migrant...
There are other ways of closing the gap, such as addressing tax avoidance. It's not that the UK is a poor country, but it's an increasingly unequal one. And a lot of the Crown dependencies operate as tax havens.
You honestly think that tax avoidance is the cause of the deficit?
Point is, it's not an either or. Let's follow up whatever ways we can find of eliminating the deficit - it's still utterly shameful and wrong that someone should be able to get themselves pregnant and be supported by the state in relative comfort whilst someone that has paid in for decades is refused housing. Your defence is to avoid addressing this and instead deflect by talking about generalities.
> "get themselves pregnant"
I hadn't realised there was such a problem with parthenogenesis among women in this country, that pregnancies were happening without men being involved at any point.
So, what's your solution? Mandatory abortions? Divorce ban? Women with babies in homeless shelters? Living in cardboard boxes on the street? What's an acceptable fatality rate for the children in this scenario?
I'm talking about specifics, the extremely brutal ones of what exactly is required for people to remain healthy in these circumstances.
A person presents at the benefit office holding a baby. She is homeless. What specifically should the response of the system be? What questions to ask? Why? What outcomes are acceptable?
A man can ordinarily choose to avoid pregnancy (covertly with vasectomy; or condoms, withdrawal) but not too initiate it.
Presumably you knew all this but chose to be a dick about it.
There seems little point anyone trying to debate with you about sensible policies if that's your starting point.
(also this thread started with "able bodied person that has paid in nothing and caused their own homelessness by arriving in the UK without a job or means to support themselves", and I'm not sure that being born is what's meant by "arriving in the UK without a job".)
It may no longer be a major problem as it was 20+ years ago when my mother would tell me about which of her school pupils had chosen pregnancy over working in a factory (I would have!) but it seems undeniably to be a problem.
Women can and do choose independently of men to have a child and use men only for the procreative act. Women on benefit do it, clear in the knowledge that they can get a better standard of welfare accommodation and more income that way. There are often emotional reasons too, we all desire for someone to love us.
Quips about parthenogenesis don't address that problem. That was my rather verbose point.
Yes, feel free to return to the point at hand. Treatment of immigrants with children fits in to a broader picture and can't be divorced from how we treat the native population.
THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN.
The money is coming from somewhere. It may be free to you, but it's someone else's money.
If someone proposed a policy where everyone who makes under $1M gets a free sandwich, that everyone who makes over $10M pays for, the only people who sensibly should be against it are people who make over $10M or people who think they might one day make over $10M. Nobody else would ever have to pay for it--why would they be against it?
It's the flaw in democracy that I'm surprised has taken this long to come about. People are inherently greedy, as you are pointing out, and will generally vote for whatever candidate will benefit them the most. They don't care about how it will effect the economy or where the money would come from, just that they get it. And with how hard it is to remove entitlements once they're passed, it's a constant snowball.
How would this be a bad thing?
I agree it's harder to criticize a benefit when you receive it, but people still do that all the time.
This article is basically just hating on the rich people.
I think it's rather easy to understand what this author is puzzled by: people want to keep their money. If you've earned your money and you want to keep it, I can empathize with you. If you think you deserve to take other people's money, I can't empathize with you.
Do you "empathize" with the person referred to as "PH" there? Why not?
If you think about it actually more reason to hate on free loaders. They cause tragedies like this.
We know this from the number of people who are working and claiming benefit. (I think these now outnumber people not working and claiming benefit).
For how long do they claim benefits?
This could actually be a bad sign.
But people in work who do over sixteen hours per week and who are claiming eg working family tax credits are not free-loading.
This is one of the mechanisms that's designed to get people back into work. There's a benefit cap in place, and that cap is removed if you work more than 16 hours per week.
I think most people just have this plan of working hard until 65. They're deeply unhappy with this. They sacrifice joy, comfort, relationships, and family to live this dream of survival. They value others who suffer similarly.
Benefit scroungers have some level of comfort without the hard work.
I don't even tell people I live comfortably freelancing anymore because people have such a negative perception of it. I may work 20 hours a week at double the effort but all people see is that I'm being lazy for not doing a full 40 hour week.
Whereas people have this perception of a rich person working weekends, waking up at 4 AM, getting divorced to make their company work. And so people empathize more with the corrupt rich.
However, looking at the simple finances of it (because that's what actually impacts public services) tax evasion is about 30 times bigger a problem than benefit fraud.
I think that's a reasonable explanation, but I don't understand how anyone would think all it takes to get filthy rich is hard work.
I find that especially hard to understand relatvie to the UK society (which the article is about), where there's still a class of hereditary rich people (e.g. the queen, who I think owns the largest amount of property in the country, though I might be wrong). On top of that, the culture reveres people who "made it" without any particular merit- like entertainment stars.
Scroungers are just taking and draining the system even if it's a "smaller" amount.
But when a faceless corporation we've never heard of hides umptillions in a place we've never heard of, somehow the impact is lost. Ask an average joe on the street the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion and you will be answered with shrugs. We don't see how that money flows from one holding company to another and we fail to connect that to the broader economy, and this illusion has been perpetuated by hidden class of venal, remorseless, well-educated and very smart mercenaries beholden by law and their shareholders to accumulate every last speck of capital.
This state of affairs is not new in America- Kurt Vonnegut recognized the phenomenon 50 years ago https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158414-america-is-the-wealt...
If you say "so and so company avoided paying 1 billion in taxes so all of us will have to pay it instead" that means nothing to them.
Now if you did like Mohammed-bin-Salman and paraded with the most brazen tax evaders payment morale at the top would increase quickly.
Focusing on the "scroungers" is a way to hate what you are afraid of becoming, or what you sacrifice to avoid.
If the poor don't trust the government, even the poor will agree that the rich should pay less taxes.
I really believe that's how things lead to anarchy.
> less than half (48%) thought that legal tax avoidance was “usually or always wrong”.
> By contrast, more than 60% of Britons believe it is “usually or always wrong” for poorer people to use legal loopholes to claim more benefits
I think there are two reasonably simple explanations here:
First, I don't know what a legal loophole to claim more benefits is - either you qualify for a given payment, or you don't. Perhaps I'm not paying attention, but I don't recall having heard much debate on legal benefits loopholes, just regular fraud. There's a risk that some portion of respondents heard "fraud", even though the question was about legal loopholes.
The other factor is that there is a significant moral difference between arrangements for paying less tax on money that you legitimately earned, and arrangements to receive more money that you didn't, but which are provided to you to help you become your situation is considered precarious.
Yes, there are people (legally) receiving unreasonable amounts of income that they didn't "earn", in many cases from public budgets, directly or indirectly, through various kinds of cronyism. This, not which rate of tax is paid on such income, is unethical, basically a crime, but I believe that the way to deal with it, is in a first class way, not through the tax code.
Isn't that the point? People see tax avoidance but don't see it as fraud; people see legal benefit maximisation and see it as fraud.
> First, I don't know what a legal loophole to claim more benefits is - either you qualify for a given payment, or you don't.
A benefit claimant's benefit is paid by the secretary of state for the department for work and pensions. That person is obviously busy, so they employ decision makers who sit in benefit centres across the UK.
There's no way to interact directly with a decision maker. You can only ever interact with them via forms and postal letters, and those letters and forms go through an intermediary.
A decision maker looks at the details of the person's claim. They apply the various acts, statutes, statutory instruments, and case law to the person's claim. All that law is scattered across various places, and so decision makers have a couple of handy guide books.
These are available online.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/decision-makers-gu...
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advice-for-decisi...
The advice for decision making is for:
> DWP decision makers now use Advice for decision making (instead of the DMG) for decisions that involve:
> Universal Credit
> Personal Independence Payment contribution-based Jobseeker’s Allowance and contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance for people who are eligible for Universal Credit
I think all the rest use the decision makers guide.
Have a look at the guide. Have a look at the page numbers listed in each volume. The decision makers guide is 14,000 pages (fourteen thousand) long. And there's no index.
It's impossible for ordinary people to work out if they're really entitled or not to a benefit. And the quality of decision making is, frankly, piss poor.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/30/stagge...
here's a judge from a first tier appeal panel saying the decision making is terrible: https://sirhenrybrooke.me/2017/11/08/poor-decision-making-pe...
So, a legal benefit loophole might be a skilled benefits adviser who helps claimants make claims by helping them fill in the forms and gather evidence, and then helps them attend the independent medical assessments, and then helps them write the letter for mandatory reconsideration and then follow up with an appeal.
And so the survey accidentally, implicitly ends up comparing "legal tax avoidance" with "benefits fraud" which is apples to oranges. If the questions instead had been "working with your accountant to minimise you tax liability in legal ways" vs. "working with your benefits advisor to make sure you receive the benefits you legally qualify for", I suspect the result would have been different.
If you want to write the article the author actually did, the more relevant question would probably have been "tax fraud" vs "benefits fraud". I'd be curious to know what those numbers are.