I never was one for adopting a class analysis of… well, anything. It just seemed to be far too reductionist. But then...
In a time of national insolvency, the Government needs to make extra efforts to see that it doesn't dish out money to the wrong people and ensure that it collects what is lawfully due.
It is estimated that benefits to the tune of some 5 billion are wrongly or fraudulently claimed. It is estimated that tax evasion runs to the tune of at least 50 billion a year. So guess which group the Government intends to pierce with its beady eye?
It is sociologically interesting, how government and society filters criminality to the benefit of some groups but to the gross detriment of others. Yet again, God forbid these suits who break the law actually get labelled as being criminal.
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What I find extra galling in that £5B statistic, is that it combines two sources, yet blames only one.
ReplyDeleteIf DWP know the amount of error they have caused, it will be probable that they have also recovered such monies; and yet the figure of £5B is not corrected down, it remains inflated, to sell the lie of the great burden from the 'thieving unemployed'.
And as for the sensationalized occasions that a deviant minority is caught fiddling their dole, estimated at £1.6B nationally, you can bet their is a similar deviancy among the knowledgeable DWP staff, who secretly make vast larger sums disappear into phantom accounts.
Now considering that there are many millions of honest folk left by profligate society to rot on benefits, and only tens of thousands of DWP workers, guess who harbours the greatest concentration of thieves, and incompetent tax wasters, the DWP, or the unemployed?
Make bigger savings by sacking most of the DWP, and set up a citizens wage account, whereby every citizen is paid a basic quantum, equivalent to JSA, then those who work, do so for a top up wage, which is taxed.
No more pointless signing on, no more employing to government quotas, no more pointless and expensive DWP. Just the free market economy of people working for their personal gain, with the safety net of the basic quantum, for those who choose to be poor, so that others can thrive.
Greed and lethargy in peaceful, symbiotic, coexistence.
Jimmy, what about disability and those who cannot work through ill health? (and those who have become disabled through their grueling and unsafe job environment)
ReplyDeleteIt is also scandalous the amount of benefit that is not taken up, I am not sure of the figures but I know it is a vast sum. Basically because applying for benefits is a full time job in itself and many don't get what they are entitled to, (either because they don't apply or because they don't appeal against wrong decisions etc).
I know this is pedantic but the amounts published by the National Fraud Authority (yes, there is such a beast) we're £1.1bn for benefit and £15.2bn.
ReplyDeleteDavid Gauke (Treasury Minister) recently confirmed the HMRC had spend over £600k advertising to combat Tax Evasion...
Sophie,
ReplyDeleteI think JG is referring to something I think I first came across in the UKIP manifesto of all places, it actually looks like quite a good idea. Everyone gets a very basic allowance, enough to live off (just about and very frugally) and probably about what those on things like disability benefit receive today. However, because everyone gets it, we save all the money we currently spend on paperwork and assessments and all those currently missing out because they don't know they're entitled get the payment anyway.
Every one who can work and wants to can top up their payment with a taxed salary, as now. Taxes would have to be much higher, of course, to pay the "citizen's allowances" but because so much of the money comes back and so much is saved on bureaucracy it is supposed to all work out.
It also means that people who would like to spend a lot of their time on charity work can. And, as JG says, those who prefer to loaf around on a pittance, such as there are, can.
I'm a scientist, so I'd have to see trials and data before I was convinced the numbers add up, but it's a sufficiently interesting idea that I'd like to see it tested.
I read the whole UKIP manifesto, for my sins, that was the sole good thing in it.
Oh, and because you get it from the government, it's entirely tax free and takes the place of the tax free allowance. Anything you earn on top is then taxable, so we lose a tax band and all the associated complexity and costs there as well.
ReplyDeleteIt really does sound like an innovative solution, I'd really quite like to see it tried somewhere.
Free market economics might sound libertarian, but in reality allowed a free reign the market will slash and burn anything and everything regardless of value and necessity to people and society.
ReplyDeleteI was starting to wonder where on earth Jimmy Giro gets his funny ideas from, now I know; UKIP, the ones who love the pound (dollar and pence too probably) above all.
Sophie J,
ReplyDeleteThe free market IS "people and society".
Socialism is the state... we're in.
Markets are places where money goes round. The state is a body (of armed men and women,especially prevalent on demonstrations and picket lines) that protect the status quo i.e minority rule and their privileges.
ReplyDeleteSophie,
ReplyDeleteI don't think the citizens' allowance is an example of "free market economics". Free market welfare would be not giving anyone benefits at all and letting the market decide who is able to support themselves and who isn't.
This is, in fact, an extreme form of benefit where everyone get's a state sponsored salary. It's almost communism, because a significant amount of the money everyone earns get siphoned into a communal pot and shared out equally. Theoretically, that gives everyone the support they need as well as helping charities by freeing people up to work for them for free if they wish.
Unfortunately I suspect that, like communism, it sounds great on paper and that, were we to try it out, some element of human selfishness would mean it won't actually work. All the same, I'd like to see it tried.
A bit like the sugar coating on a bitter pill?
ReplyDeleteCare to expand on that? Why do you say it's bitter?
ReplyDeleteA veneer of reasonableness and equality around UKIP's policies of poor little England save the pound monetarism.
ReplyDeleteBitter pill for the needs of the majority the world over, they are more extreme than Thatcher, and that is saying something.
And as you say all this remains in a mere policy document from a fringe party, around which there is much paranoid fantasy.
Ahhh, I see. It's not citizen's allowances you find a bitter pill: it's UKIP. Fair enough :)
ReplyDeleteAre these politicians, the same lot who were helping theirselves to our money? Answer: Yes!
ReplyDeleteDid we rip the banks off, and cost the country billions? Answer: NO
It was the greedy bankers that ripped us off! It was they, whom told us to borrow, borrow! Did we go to them with a gun, 'give me the dosh', No!
We are 'The People', so the nations money is ours! Who's picture is on the coins and notes, mine, yours? No! 'Theirs'! So have we been hijacked? Yes!