Showing posts with label benefits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label benefits. Show all posts
Monday, 20 May 2013
Welfare synopticity: How far are benefit cuts damaging to the economy?
If you are retaking unit 3 - read this. It summarises many of the different viewpoints on benefits. It is critical of the Coalition (hardly suprising as it is the New Statesman), but from interesting and unusual perspectives. It manages to be critical of both benefits and cutting benefits.
e.g.
Unemployment benefits play a crucial role in allowing people time to search, not just for any job, but for the right job – one that puts their skills and experience to the best use. Not only is this good for the jobseeker but it benefits the employer and makes the economy more productive. Higher benefits for skilled workers also facilitate a more flexible workforce. By cushioning the social consequences of redundancy, they oil the wheels of economic change.
e.g.
Unemployment benefits play a crucial role in allowing people time to search, not just for any job, but for the right job – one that puts their skills and experience to the best use. Not only is this good for the jobseeker but it benefits the employer and makes the economy more productive. Higher benefits for skilled workers also facilitate a more flexible workforce. By cushioning the social consequences of redundancy, they oil the wheels of economic change.
Saturday, 20 April 2013
How has the coalition reformed welfare?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s02xg
Good stuff in this on welfare reform and benefits and the Thatcher legacy
Good stuff in this on welfare reform and benefits and the Thatcher legacy
Thursday, 4 April 2013
Welfare reform - excellent podcast. Jones vs Young
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/04/the-view-from-22-north-korea-and-asias-arms-race-and-owen-jones-vs-toby-young/
Listen from 13 mins 20 seconds for a debate that sums up many different points of view on the current issue of welfare reform. Very useful for edexcel unit 3.
Listen from 13 mins 20 seconds for a debate that sums up many different points of view on the current issue of welfare reform. Very useful for edexcel unit 3.
Thursday, 10 January 2013
Strivers vs skivers. A false dichotomy?
Skivers v strivers: the argument that pollutes people's minds http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/09/skivers-v-strivers-argument-pollutes
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Universal Benefits - opinion piece in the Times
Thanks to Chappers for sending it through...
Hugo Rifkind in The Times, 8/1/13
My family is a hardworking family. I mean, sure, 50 per cent of us are frankly coasting and don’t even tidy up the Lego box, but the other two of us are in the office five days a week. So I’m pretty sure we qualify. According to the Resolution Foundation, 60 per cent of coalition benefit cuts hit households like mine. And, according to many people, including Ed Miliband and most of the Labour Party, this is bad.
I can’t figure out why. It’s not that I’m saying that they’re wrong. It’s just that I can’t grasp why they think they’re right. Surely you can only be properly annoyed about something if you would be less annoyed about the opposite. Yes? So if “60 per cent of cuts hit working families” is bad, then surely, to Ed Miliband, “60 per cent of cuts hit non-working families” would be better.
Only, I’m not sure it would. In fact, I think it would be worse. Does Labour want the brunt of cuts to fall on people without any other income? Is that what socialism means these days? No. So who should it fall upon? Working people or non-working people? Because it’s got to be one of the two. Because — and I’m sorry to have to point this out, because I fear my tone might be veering towards the patronising — I’m afraid that those are the only sorts of people there are.
Of course, you could say “neither”. You could say that, if the State hasn’t got enough money, rather than cutting any benefits we should simply raise taxes. But in the case of, say, me I don’t really get the point. The particular benefit my own hardworking family is losing is child benefit, which until now has come in at £1,752 a year. Should the State tax me more so that it can keep paying me more? Would that really be sensible? To take a cheque from me every month so that it can afford to give me one back?
Some would say “yes”. Many on the left reckon that it’s vital for me to get money from the State, even if the State has to take it from me first to ensure that I feel an affinity with others who actually need it. The winter fuel allowance, an annual payment of between £200 and £300 that goes to pensioners whether they need it or not, is defended on the same basis. Essentially it’s a bribe, designed to make old folk not mind that they’ve spent their entire working lives paying tax. And it could work, too, but only if we were all faffing morons.
I mean, come on. Who is fooled by this? You want me to feel I’m getting something back for all I put in? Then don’t buy me a handful of discount logs at whatever miserable age it is that you finally let me retire. Buy me a conservatory. Every year. Hell, skip a year and buy me a Porsche.
The pretence that what we get back from the State has any connection to our contribution towards it was threadbare a generation ago and is simply nonsensical now.
If your tax bill came with an itemised statement, it would tell you, roughly, that you work for a fifth of the year paying for other people’s pensions and another fifth paying for their healthcare. And all of this in a country where a future in which other people ultimately pay for your pension and healthcare seems pretty damn tenuous. For another couple of months, more or less, your tax pays for miscellaneous benefits — jobseekers, disability and all the rest.
This is not a whinge. I’m not really complaining about my tax bill, because I’m well aware of how deeply fortunate I am to be earning enough to have one that makes me quite so miserable.
But I would like some consensus, philosophically speaking, about what is going on here. Am I supposed to feel proud about paying tax? Are those who currently need all those pensions, benefits and healthcare supposed to spend their days feeling grateful towards me that I do? The former seems to be a yes, the latter a big no. But doesn’t one entail the other? Why does nobody talk about the fundamentals? How can we hope to have a sensible conversation about tax and benefits if we can’t even talk about that?
The trouble is, different people see the fundamentals in fundamentally different ways. Rigorous left-wing thought would hold that the State has a claim on all my money, is doing me a favour to the extent that it doesn’t take it and has to reallocate some of my own money back to me as child benefit, otherwise I might forget that it basically owned my children, too.
Rigorous right-wing thought, meanwhile, would hold that the State is doing the hungry an enormous favour when it pays for their food and that they ought to exist in a state of extreme gratitude that it does so. Bailing out the poor in this respect is regarded as a bit like bailing out the banks — neither have a right to expect it, but both would cause no end of problems if they truly went to the wall.
Most of our views on tax and benefits squat incoherently and inconsistently somewhere on the spectrum between the two. Mine certainly do. But nobody ever starts there when they have an argument. Mr Miliband thinks that benefits should rise with inflation, but doesn’t say why. George Osborne thinks that they shouldn’t, but he doesn’t quite say why, either.
Never mind the nuts and bolts of thresholds and who should face more or fewer cuts. We’ll get to that. First, I want to know what life Mr Osborne believes the State should provide for those unable or unwilling to provide one for themselves. Then I want to know what Mr Miliband believes. Should every day on benefits hurt or not? Should jobs be a goal or a necessity? Do you, bluntly, think that a non-working family should have a quality of life that matches that of a working family?
Personally, I don’t really think they should. But I don’t imagine they often have that currently anyway. Probably it’s good to support working families but I don’t think the State should worry too much about supporting mine, because frankly we’re lucky enough to be supporting ourselves. But there’s Labour arguing that I should have money when I don’t need it, so that I don’t mind it also going to people who do need it, which is something that I don’t for a moment mind anyway.
I’m lost in tricks and point-scoring. I want to know what these people really think. George, park your shirkers or strivers. Ed, don’t tell me a story about your Dad, or where you went to school. Just come clean, because I simply don’t believe you’re as confused about this as I am. Show me your first principles. And after that all the other things you say about benefits will start to sound like more than partisan shouting. Because right now, they really don’t.
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
Wednesday, 26 December 2012
Splits within the Conservative party over welfare reform: IDS vs. Osbourne
Excellent and plausible analysis of splits within the Conservative party over which wing of the Tories hue moral authority to push through welfare reform......
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9762509/Iain-Duncan-Smith-has-to-win-the-day-in-the-Tory-war-over-welfare.html
Many of the most important political changes are the ones that never get announced. Like a shift in cloud cover that causes the ball to swing and suddenly brings about an apparently inexplicable clatter of wickets in a Test match, nobody notices before it’s too late.
One such invisible disruption has just taken place at the heart of the Coalition: George Osborne, the Chancellor, has quietly added the Department for Work and Pensions to his long list of responsibilities. Of course, Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, remains formally in charge, but his departmental philosophy, finances and – most disastrous of all – the language of welfare reform, are all in danger of falling into the hands of the Chancellor.
An early indication that a takeover bid was in progress came in the Budget last March when the Chancellor announced, without consulting the Work and Pensions Secretary, or for that matter anyone else, that he planned to knock £10 billion off the welfare budget. Then Mr Osborne attempted to replace Mr Duncan Smith with a yes man.
At first, this plan went well. Mr Osborne told the Prime Minister that Mr Duncan Smith should go. David Cameron duly used the September Cabinet reshuffle to offer him another job. Mr Duncan Smith, very shaken, asked to go home and think about the move overnight.
He might conceivably have complied but for the fact that, while mulling over his conversation with the Prime Minister, he chanced to turn on Newsnight, where Daniel Finkelstein, political columnist and executive editor of The Times, was sounding off about the need to find a new work and pensions secretary. Now Mr Finkelstein is viewed around Westminster not only as a clever and charming man, but also as the most important public apologist for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to whom he speaks very regularly and is believed to give advice. (Mr Finkelstein later denied having discussed Iain Duncan Smith with the Chancellor.)
Mr Duncan Smith, having heard Mr Finkelstein vent unfriendly opinions about his job prospects, resolved there and then to stay put. There matters rested for several months. Relations between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions, never warm at the best of times, grew chilly. At the heart of the coolness was a difference in philosophy. Mr Osborne sees welfare reform as an accounting issue. Mr Duncan Smith, by contrast, has a deeper and richer vision.
A committed Christian, he ultimately understands his task in terms of human redemption. He does not believe that people are out of work because of their own fault. He believes that the vast majority are victims of a cruel system, partly created by Gordon Brown, which creates perverse incentives that encourage men and women to stay away from the job market. Mr Duncan Smith believes it is his life’s work to end this monumental tragedy, and to provide the best environment for the unemployed to find work and obtain the human dignity that a job brings with it.
Hence his so-called “universal credit”, a single system of payments to the out-of-work and poorly paid alike, which will end the anomalies and perverse incentives of the system inherited from New Labour, and is due to be introduced next year. It is based on the same principles as the system advocated by Frank Field, another devout Christian who worked briefly at the Department of Social Security (as it then was) in 1997/98 before being politically eliminated by Gordon Brown.
It is fair to say that Mr Osborne now wants to do to Mr Duncan Smith what Gordon Brown did to Frank Field 14 years ago, and for the same reason. The Treasury has always hated the idea of the universal credit, mainly because it is expensive. It is no coincidence that Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, a former Treasury official who served for many years under Mr Brown, is one of George Osborne’s closest allies in this increasingly vicious Whitehall war.
The Chancellor bided his time – then struck once more in the Autumn Statement at the start of this month. Mr Osborne moved on two fronts. The first was financial, with the 1 per cent benefits freeze. I understand that Mr Duncan Smith has reluctantly accepted that these cuts are unavoidable at a time of economic austerity. What dismayed the Work and Pensions Secretary, by contrast, was the unfortunate language used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mr Duncan Smith has been very careful indeed when talking about the workless and unemployed. He has always used the language of redemption, of lifting people off the scrap-heap and giving them a chance to reach their full potential. This is a vocabulary which he developed during the long years when, after being deposed as Tory leader, he toured housing estates, founded the Centre for Social Justice, brooded on the social problems that confront us as a nation and overcame (I guess) some kind of personal crisis of his own.
During this time I used to talk regularly to Mr Duncan Smith, and I noticed that he never once blamed the out-of-work or poverty-stricken for their plight. On the contrary, he went to extreme lengths to identify the causes of their problems, so he could help them find a way out of it. It is unthinkable that he would ever have sought to draw a moral distinction between the working poor and the unemployed – those who stay at home, in the vindictive phrase used by Mr Osborne, “with their curtains closed, sleeping off a life on benefits”.
This distinction between shirkers and workers is now becoming part of Conservative Party strategy. Last weekend, the newly appointed Tory chairman, Grant Shapps, launched a poster campaign with the slogan: “Time to end Labour’s something for nothing culture”, involving photos of idle young thugs, contrasting them with beatific portraits of white, hard-working families.
I am told that when Mr Duncan Smith learnt of this campaign he was, in the words of an ally, “absolutely livid”. After a series of internal rows, the posters are now likely to be ditched. This is, however, very dangerous territory for the Coalition, and it is clear that Iain Duncan Smith is fighting the battle of his life.
I believe it is very important that he survives. There are, at the heart of this Government, only three majestic ideas. The first is the restoration of the public finances, a task to which the ugh Chancellor, strikingly, does not devote his full-time attention. The second is the grand programme of educational reform, masterminded with such admirable courage and verve by Michael Gove.
The third is welfare reform. At the moment Tory high command, egged on by the Chancellor, is trying to take this programme out of the hands of Mr Duncan Smith and use it as a cynical tool to win votes by targeting the vulnerable unemployed. It is time that David Cameron intervened decisively in this rancid Conservative row.
The Prime Minister surely realises that the Tories will never win the argument on welfare if they advocate the cynical language of George Osborne and Grant Shapps. But they would deserve to do so if they stick to Mr Duncan Smith’s far nobler assessment of human motivation. Mr Cameron must remember this: if he lets Iain Duncan Smith’s vision of welfare reform die, the finest part of the Conservative Party will die with it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9762509/Iain-Duncan-Smith-has-to-win-the-day-in-the-Tory-war-over-welfare.html
Many of the most important political changes are the ones that never get announced. Like a shift in cloud cover that causes the ball to swing and suddenly brings about an apparently inexplicable clatter of wickets in a Test match, nobody notices before it’s too late.
One such invisible disruption has just taken place at the heart of the Coalition: George Osborne, the Chancellor, has quietly added the Department for Work and Pensions to his long list of responsibilities. Of course, Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, remains formally in charge, but his departmental philosophy, finances and – most disastrous of all – the language of welfare reform, are all in danger of falling into the hands of the Chancellor.
An early indication that a takeover bid was in progress came in the Budget last March when the Chancellor announced, without consulting the Work and Pensions Secretary, or for that matter anyone else, that he planned to knock £10 billion off the welfare budget. Then Mr Osborne attempted to replace Mr Duncan Smith with a yes man.
At first, this plan went well. Mr Osborne told the Prime Minister that Mr Duncan Smith should go. David Cameron duly used the September Cabinet reshuffle to offer him another job. Mr Duncan Smith, very shaken, asked to go home and think about the move overnight.
He might conceivably have complied but for the fact that, while mulling over his conversation with the Prime Minister, he chanced to turn on Newsnight, where Daniel Finkelstein, political columnist and executive editor of The Times, was sounding off about the need to find a new work and pensions secretary. Now Mr Finkelstein is viewed around Westminster not only as a clever and charming man, but also as the most important public apologist for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to whom he speaks very regularly and is believed to give advice. (Mr Finkelstein later denied having discussed Iain Duncan Smith with the Chancellor.)
Mr Duncan Smith, having heard Mr Finkelstein vent unfriendly opinions about his job prospects, resolved there and then to stay put. There matters rested for several months. Relations between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions, never warm at the best of times, grew chilly. At the heart of the coolness was a difference in philosophy. Mr Osborne sees welfare reform as an accounting issue. Mr Duncan Smith, by contrast, has a deeper and richer vision.
A committed Christian, he ultimately understands his task in terms of human redemption. He does not believe that people are out of work because of their own fault. He believes that the vast majority are victims of a cruel system, partly created by Gordon Brown, which creates perverse incentives that encourage men and women to stay away from the job market. Mr Duncan Smith believes it is his life’s work to end this monumental tragedy, and to provide the best environment for the unemployed to find work and obtain the human dignity that a job brings with it.
Hence his so-called “universal credit”, a single system of payments to the out-of-work and poorly paid alike, which will end the anomalies and perverse incentives of the system inherited from New Labour, and is due to be introduced next year. It is based on the same principles as the system advocated by Frank Field, another devout Christian who worked briefly at the Department of Social Security (as it then was) in 1997/98 before being politically eliminated by Gordon Brown.
It is fair to say that Mr Osborne now wants to do to Mr Duncan Smith what Gordon Brown did to Frank Field 14 years ago, and for the same reason. The Treasury has always hated the idea of the universal credit, mainly because it is expensive. It is no coincidence that Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, a former Treasury official who served for many years under Mr Brown, is one of George Osborne’s closest allies in this increasingly vicious Whitehall war.
The Chancellor bided his time – then struck once more in the Autumn Statement at the start of this month. Mr Osborne moved on two fronts. The first was financial, with the 1 per cent benefits freeze. I understand that Mr Duncan Smith has reluctantly accepted that these cuts are unavoidable at a time of economic austerity. What dismayed the Work and Pensions Secretary, by contrast, was the unfortunate language used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mr Duncan Smith has been very careful indeed when talking about the workless and unemployed. He has always used the language of redemption, of lifting people off the scrap-heap and giving them a chance to reach their full potential. This is a vocabulary which he developed during the long years when, after being deposed as Tory leader, he toured housing estates, founded the Centre for Social Justice, brooded on the social problems that confront us as a nation and overcame (I guess) some kind of personal crisis of his own.
During this time I used to talk regularly to Mr Duncan Smith, and I noticed that he never once blamed the out-of-work or poverty-stricken for their plight. On the contrary, he went to extreme lengths to identify the causes of their problems, so he could help them find a way out of it. It is unthinkable that he would ever have sought to draw a moral distinction between the working poor and the unemployed – those who stay at home, in the vindictive phrase used by Mr Osborne, “with their curtains closed, sleeping off a life on benefits”.
This distinction between shirkers and workers is now becoming part of Conservative Party strategy. Last weekend, the newly appointed Tory chairman, Grant Shapps, launched a poster campaign with the slogan: “Time to end Labour’s something for nothing culture”, involving photos of idle young thugs, contrasting them with beatific portraits of white, hard-working families.
I am told that when Mr Duncan Smith learnt of this campaign he was, in the words of an ally, “absolutely livid”. After a series of internal rows, the posters are now likely to be ditched. This is, however, very dangerous territory for the Coalition, and it is clear that Iain Duncan Smith is fighting the battle of his life.
I believe it is very important that he survives. There are, at the heart of this Government, only three majestic ideas. The first is the restoration of the public finances, a task to which the ugh Chancellor, strikingly, does not devote his full-time attention. The second is the grand programme of educational reform, masterminded with such admirable courage and verve by Michael Gove.
The third is welfare reform. At the moment Tory high command, egged on by the Chancellor, is trying to take this programme out of the hands of Mr Duncan Smith and use it as a cynical tool to win votes by targeting the vulnerable unemployed. It is time that David Cameron intervened decisively in this rancid Conservative row.
The Prime Minister surely realises that the Tories will never win the argument on welfare if they advocate the cynical language of George Osborne and Grant Shapps. But they would deserve to do so if they stick to Mr Duncan Smith’s far nobler assessment of human motivation. Mr Cameron must remember this: if he lets Iain Duncan Smith’s vision of welfare reform die, the finest part of the Conservative Party will die with it.
Friday, 30 November 2012
Link to discussion on welfare issues
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p011v8ky
Tape the three hour special on welfare? Can't face listening to the whole thing?
No matter as the BBC have carved up the highlights. One of them is at the link above.
Tape the three hour special on welfare? Can't face listening to the whole thing?
No matter as the BBC have carved up the highlights. One of them is at the link above.
Wide ranging crit of Coalition welfare reforms
If Beveridge delivered his report now, would we listen? | Polly Toynbee http://gu.com/p/3c7fj
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Splits in the coalition over the benefits cap
Benefit cap is immoral and divisive, says top Liberal Democrat http://gu.com/p/3bqmq
Sunday, 4 November 2012
Friday, 26 October 2012
FROM UNIVERSAL TO CONDITIONAL? Iain Duncan Smith targets families of more than two children for benefit cuts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/oct/25/iain-duncan-smith-benefit-cuts
Work and pensions
secretary warns that parents on benefits should not expect more cash if they have more children.
NB - this won't definitely happen. The LDs will probably block it but IDS would like it to happen.
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