Should the Tories freeze benefits

[spicy]

Why should they get equal to the minimum wage ffs. The idea is to make work attractive.

It doesn't seem to have attracted you - you have a lot of time to spend on here.

I work from home that's why.

What's your excuse

[Guest]

People that havn't paid anything in, shouldn't get anything out.
There are old people who have worked all of their lives and cannot afford to turn the heater on in Winter. (some even die from the cold).
There are also people who have come to Britain, have 5 or more kids, father drives around in a Jag and have never paid a bean into any pension-pot.
I bet that they have their heaters on at full power,
probably in the Summer as well.

You want EDL/BNP members to starve?

[spicy]

What Ravy says is true.

I see one of my true posts did not even get a look in.

[Ali]

People that havn't paid anything in, shouldn't get anything out.
There are old people who have worked all of their lives and cannot afford to turn the heater on in Winter. (some even die from the cold).
There are also people who have come to Britain, have 5 or more kids, father drives around in a Jag and have never paid a bean into any pension-pot.
I bet that they have their heaters on at full power,
probably in the Summer as well.

So those 18 year olds who can't get a job for love nor money shouldn't get anything?

What about those with kids, do you advocate kids having no food or clothes because their parents can't be arsed to work, because Ravy, that is what you seem to be saying.

[Guest]

Yes except for carer's they don't even get the minimum wage and are taken for granted. Public Sector workers are having to take a pay freeze my husband has not had an increase in years, it's only right that even people on benefits should take a hit as well.

Just on a basic 40hr week carers get under £2.50 an hour

40% of minimum wage

[Verum]

Why should they get equal to the minimum wage ffs. The idea is to make work attractive.

It doesn't seem to have attracted you - you have a lot of time to spend on here.

I work from home that's why.

What's your excuse

Do you offer...ahem...full body massage?

[Cannydc]

[wutang]

Ah the old 'generous benefits encourage unemployment' arguement. Shame reality proves this to be bullshit:

In addition, it is worthwhile to note that the right-wing assumption that higher unemployment benefits and a healthy welfare state promote unemployment is not supported by the evidence. As a moderate member of the British Conservative Party notes, the "OECD studied seventeen industrial countries and found no connect between a country's unemployment rate and the level of its social-security payments." [Dancing with Dogma, p. 118] Moreover, the economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald "Wage Curve" for many different countries is approximately the same for each of the fifteen countries they looked at. This also suggests that labour market unemployment is independent of social-security conditions as their "wage curve" can be considered as a measure of wage flexibility. Both of these facts suggest that unemployment is involuntary in nature and cutting social-security will not affect unemployment.

Another factor in considering the nature of unemployment is the effect of decades of "reform" of the welfare state conducted in both the USA and UK since 1980. During the 1960s the welfare state was far more generous than it was in the 1990s and unemployment was lower. If unemployment was "voluntary" and due to social-security being high, we would expect a decrease in unemployment as welfare was cut (this was, after all, the rationale for cutting it in the first place). In fact, the reverse occurred, with unemployment rising as the welfare state was cut. Lower social-security payments did not lead to lower unemployment, quite the reverse in fact.

Faced with these facts, some may conclude that as unemployment is independent of social security payments then the welfare state can be cut. However, this is not the case as the size of the welfare state does affect the poverty rates and how long people remain in poverty. In the USA, the poverty rate was 11.7% in 1979 and rose to 13% in 1988, and continued to rise to 15.1% in 1993. The net effect of cutting the welfare state was to help increase poverty. Similarly, in the UK during the same period, to quote the ex-Thatcherite John Gray, there "was the growth of an underclass. The percentage of British (non-pensioner) households that are wholly workless -- that is, none of whose members is active in the productive economy -- increased from 6.5 per cent in 1975 to 16.4 per cent in 1985 and 19.1 per cent in 1994. . . Between 1992 and 1997 there was a 15 per cent increase in unemployed lone parents. . . This dramatic growth of an underclass occurred as a direct consequence of neo-liberal welfare reforms, particularly as they affected housing." [False Dawn, p. 30] This is the opposite of the predictions of right-wing theories and rhetoric.

Also the term freezing benefits is misleading. Inflation erodes the value of income - if your income increases less than the rate of inflation then that is a pay cut - so by freezing benefits the value of them will infact further erode, not stay the same as the term freeze implies.

[wutang]

Was gonna start another thread for this but it fits in here:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/slow-painful-c ... 44130.html

Remember when the Gov said "dont worry about us sacking all those public sector workers, the private sector will come to the rescue"? turns out it was bullshit, just like when Thatcher made the claim in the 80's. Unemployment is gonna keep rising because all the saked public sector workers means more people after fewer jobs.

Of course this would make one ask why would the Gov cut benefits when unemployment isnt gonna improve?, well as I pointed out above the link to benefits and unemployment is bullshit. The reality is that in capitalism the unemployed are the reserve army of labour... they exist to discipline workers by threatening their jobs. When the Boss tells you to work even harder (generating him more profits) for longer (generating him more profits) while he pays you far far less (generating him more profits) he can point to the millions unemployed and say "if you dont they will... and you will be dumped on the scrap like them". The tactic is even more effective if the unemployed as suffering the harsh effects of poverty.

[Fletch]

I would hardly class Old age Pensions as a benefit.
A lot of people work all of their lives and have paid into the Pension fund.
They are getting back a pittance of what they paid in.
Not very benificial Ali!

So no different to tax paying folk (all taxes) getting something back then?

Pensions come under 'welfare spending', as does many, many other things such as pensions credits, winter fuel allowance, maternity leave and so on. The fact that the media, or certain parts of it, like to portray out of work benefits as the only costs under 'welfare' says it all really.

[Fletch]

As for the question, no they shouldn't freeze benefits.

They are only increasing by inflation, that will leave those already at the bottom no better off anyway.

Just remember, 5% of bugger all is still bugger all.

[spicy]

Yes except for carer's they don't even get the minimum wage and are taken for granted. Public Sector workers are having to take a pay freeze my husband has not had an increase in years, it's only right that even people on benefits should take a hit as well.

Just on a basic 40hr week carers get under £2.50 an hour

40% of minimum wage

Diabolical - When you think how much they are saving the state in carehome care etc.

[Guest]

Yes except for carer's they don't even get the minimum wage and are taken for granted. Public Sector workers are having to take a pay freeze my husband has not had an increase in years, it's only right that even people on benefits should take a hit as well.

Just on a basic 40hr week carers get under £2.50 an hour

40% of minimum wage

Diabolical - When you think how much they are saving the state in carehome care etc.

That's why successive govts have failed carers for decades and decades.

[spicy]

Why should they get equal to the minimum wage ffs. The idea is to make work attractive.

It doesn't seem to have attracted you - you have a lot of time to spend on here.

I work from home that's why.

What's your excuse

Do you offer...ahem...full body massage?

[spicy]

Yes except for carer's they don't even get the minimum wage and are taken for granted. Public Sector workers are having to take a pay freeze my husband has not had an increase in years, it's only right that even people on benefits should take a hit as well.

Just on a basic 40hr week carers get under £2.50 an hour

40% of minimum wage

Diabolical - When you think how much they are saving the state in carehome care etc.

That's why successive govts have failed carers for decades and decades.

Nice to agree sometimes