"One in three households across Britain is now dependent on the state for at least half its income, it emerged today."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=W...02/12/nwelfare12.xml

These figures are confirmed by Corrie.

Here's one person's answer to that problem:

"Abolish all benefits and drastically cut taxes; introduce a Right to a humane method of suicide. At least then those who aren’t good enough to survive on their own can have the choice of a quick death rather than dying from starvation, exposure or illness, and paying for someone to overdose on barbiturates cost less than keeping them alive for a life time. You can’t force people to pay the price of survival (working even if it means doing a menial, low paid, low status job)but a humane society should try to do whatever it can to help alleviate the worst of the consequences of them not doing "

Above from the same article.

"The report is scathing about how New Labour welfare policy has been designed to create beholden voters rather than independent people".
(From JR's cited article.)

We all look back with profound regret to the good old days, when birth control was illegal and the only welfare program was the workhouse. This was very, very good; the periodic population surpluses produced a favorable negotiating position for those who were buying labor. But when conditions were too crowded, contagious disease would sweep through the dirty areas, and the surplus population, malnourished as rabbits in a peak year, would die. This only became a problem when the population of the labor pool became so small that it became a seller’s market. So plagues were A Good Thing, in general, but like all Good Things they could go too far.

And the working classes were extremely tough and resilient. They could survive living several families to a room! And there was no problem with that, because when you’re sleeping you don’t need much room; and children over six and all adults had to spend fourteen hours a day in the mills and factories in order to pay their share of the rent and buy some bread, so the only ones in the tenements during the day were the younger children. These were locked in, unsupervised, while the older ones were at work, which was sad when a tenement fire broke out, but, oh well, god’s will be done.

Mind you, there were some drawbacks. During World War I, recruiters complained of the poor physical condition of many of the men. They were short and thin, and suffered from chronic diseases such as tuberculosis, and were not even fit for cannon fodder.

And for some reason overpopulation seemed to be accompanied by an increase of sin! Much pulpit thunder was directed at the pickpockets and child prostitutes of the cities, yet threats of hellfire didn’t seem to touch their hardened hearts at all!

The poor health, small stature, and propensity for sin was of course a mark of the innate inferiority of the working class.

This idyllic period came to an end when ‘do-gooders’ began to complain of the conditions of the working poor, and the even worse conditions of those who could not find work. There were beggers in the streets, and in the mornings, especially after a cold night, those who had sheltered under the bridges and died of malnutrition and exposure were hauled away to be buried at public expense. And anyone who went to the workhouse was likely to die there, since the only way to earn release was to find a job; which was difficult to for someone confined to a workhouse.

So welfare was made freely available, birth control legalized, and what do we see? Only one to three children per family instead of the families of ten to fourteen previously seen. And welfare has made them unwilling to work except for wages they choose to accept!

So since we won’t be blackmailed, we have to accept immigrants from even worse hellhole-countries to do the work which is beneath our own poor.

Is this a “good thing” in the big picture?
- The overall health of people is better if they are housed and well fed.
- People from worse-off countries get a chance to improve their lot.
But
- There are ethnic tensions that lead to social unrest
- The system becomes a caste system
- There is no incentive to be self-sufficient, if you are satisfied with subsistence level.

So it seems there are more people in the world than jobs.

(Personally I believe no one should have more than one child, two at most if you are in a stable monogamous relationship. And you should need a licence to reproduce. To be eligible, you should
- Be free of heritable mental or physical defect
- Have a stable work history for the previous five years
- Have assets enough in reserve to support the family for one year in case of economic or health problem
- Have no criminal record whatsoever, as a juvenile or as an adult
- Have been certified by a qualified board that your level of maturity is such that you empathize with your spouse, and refrain from abusing your childen)

“Eugenics! Fascist! The pope would never approve.”

Not surprising: nine out of ten British people are entitled to 'tax credits'. (That's a rather misleading title because it is not necessary to be paying any taxes in order to qualify for the payments)There are two: child tax credit is payable to almost everyone ( ninety per cent ) who has a child.Working tax credit is payable only to those who are working more than sixteen hours a week and a) are responsible for a child or B) are disabled and so are hampered in obtaining and maintaining a job or c) are over 50 and have recently returned to work after a substantial time in unemployment and claiming benefits.It is intended to top-up low incomes.

Considering the fairly generous nature of these payments and other benefits the claim does not surprise.

It is surely obvious that many people live in such a way that they cost in and spend the child tax credit, regardless of what their income is.Those who pay the top rate of taxes are just as entitled as those who don't.

This is quite different from 'the dole' ( JR's heading here " Brits on the dole") which is our slang term for money paid to those out of work.This is 'job seeker's allowance' , JSA,and is as its name suggests. (There have been headlines this week because the government has said it will refuse benefits to those unemployed whose first language is not English and who have not made efforts to learn English. Proof of taking lessons will be required). The amount paid under JSA depends how much you've paid in total National Insurance Contributions when you've been working in the past (that's a levy paid by the employer and the employee on the wages paid )There are rules for those who have not yet worked and so not made or had contributions.

Those who are above average income regard benefits such as child benefit as just a form of tax rebate.It's something to which parents are entitled.(In the same way,most of us don't think to use private medicine either: we think of the National Health Service as something we've paid for and expect to use, not as some form of state charity.So, therefore,we don't budget for health insurance or private health care and cheerfully spend the money we might have spent there on something else)

By the way, the political stance of the Daily Telegraph is such that the paper probably thinks that the workhouse was a good idea. I don't think they've ever recovered from the election of a Labour government after WW2 Civitas is likely of the same stripe.