So we are back with a vengeance to notions of the undeserving poor. Electronic cards are to ensure that the poor can only spend their benefits on basic necessities like food and clothing, and not on a lifestyle of alcohol and illegal drugs.
Having lived a rather spectacular life encompassing both ends of the social spectrum, I can state with utter conviction that consumption of illegal pleasure-giving stimulants is far higher among the very wealthy than among the very poor. The notion that only the rich should be allowed to have any enjoyment in life is deeply offensive. It is fine for the Bullingdon Club to get plastered on Krug and cocaine and smash up restaurants. That is all jolly japes and high spirits. For a desperate man to seek solace in four cans of Tennant’s strongest or a bottle of Buckfast is however a dreadful sin and sign of social irresponsibility.
The high streets of our poorest towns are strewn with betting shops, bargain booze outlets, pawnbrokers and payday lenders. For anybody to believe that state compulsion of the patrons is the answer to the problem is the ultimate counsel of despair. Forget giving people a better hope, a greater chance, more socially useful pleasures. Just ban the little solace they have now. We have a government which holds a large section of the population in contempt; which cannot imagine that given a different birth, these people might have been sitting next to them in the Bullingdon Club; in short, which has no notion whatsoever of human dignity.
This latest move against benefits claimants is consistent with the entire development of the modern British economy. High wage economies generate a self-sustaining high domestic demand which keeps the economy growing. Our three main political parties postulate a low wage economy, with a minimum wage below the level which can sustain a family. The low wage economy is defended as a guarantee of strong international competitiveness and thus export performance. In fact Britain’s low wage model is entirely different, and the vast majority of those on low wages have no relation to exports. What Britain has developed is a model where a thin layer at the top are on extremely high remuneration. This of course includes bankers and the financial services industry, but also through the cult of managerialism, CEOs and directors have vastly increased their remuneration. For the multiple between the highest and lowest paid in a company to be 70 – the cleaner on 15,000, the core level majority on 20,000 and the CEO on 3,000,000- is now absolutely routine.
Even the public sector is ruled by this pretence that executive work is harder, more stressful, more uniquely difficult than core work. Well, I have been an Ambassador and a barman, and I can tell you which was hardest work. University vice chancellors are on over 300,000. Local councils regularly have a score of people on over 100,000.
We have no media willing to take on the triumph of greed. The most “left wing” of British newspapers, the Guardian, pays its editor total remuneration of over half a million per year and “star” columnists 300,000, while exploiting interns and junior staff, and squandering 35 million pounds a year of C P Scott’s great endowment in losses – straight into its senior staff’s pockets.
Britain has developed a new kind of low wage economy – one where the bulk of those on low wages work to provide services to those on very, very high remuneration. In a sense it is very old. We have become a helot society. It should be stressed that low wage is a deliberate policy. There is absolutely no reason why those in work could not be paid more. The economy would not crash. In Norway the median wage of the lowest 10 percentile is over 20,000 pounds, while the multiple between the lowest ten percentile and the top ten percentile is less than one third what it is in Britain. The UK’s astonishing and accelerating wealth gap is a result of deliberate ideological policy, founded on a notion that those at the top are possessed of rare and extraordinary abilities – whereas in truth, in the UK more than anywhere, their main achievement was usually to be born into the right family.
The concomitant of that worship of the rich is the belief that money measures worth; that if you have a low income then you are scum. That is the attitude that underlies these benefit smart cards. It is truly disgusting.
So Thatcher was a libertarian, like Rand Paul, Ba’al? 🙂
People get what they vote for. Unfortunately, most voters are either brainwashed beforehand, or have the life scared out of them with horror stories at the time of voting. With a “free” media, owned and controlled by the elite, brainwashing has become commonplace and unquestioned; it is part of modern life. The Scottish referendum showed what a lively discussion could do to counteract brainwashing, but scaremongering still delivered the goods.
“People should not fear their government. Government should fear their people.” Thomas Jefferson.
Phil; How can one make the average person believe they have the power?
As a start to the conversation you seem to want….
” The most “left wing” of British newspapers, the Guardian, pays its editor total remuneration of over half a million per year and “star” columnists 300,000, …..”
…., not to mention their CIA bonuses
Excellent blog.
The cards are purely to demonise those on benefits, whilst presumably cutting benefits for all so as to afford to pay their buddies in the private sector to set up this ridiculous system. No prizes for guessing only a few big supermarkets that have made rather large political party donations will be the ones that can accept these benefit ‘cash cards’, finishing off the last few remaining local shops.
Cards for none or cards for all I say, including child benefit – wonder how many of Camerons pals might not collect child benefit if it meant a benefit card and a trip to Lidl’s.
I’ve never understood how many everyday folk in normal, i.e. low(er) paid, jobs are quite so happy to join in this benefit “scrounger” demonisation. I’ve also worked at many different levels in the private sector over last 20yrs and in recent times have been astonished at how wide the gap management level renumeration is to the “workers” not just regard salary but also annual bonus (a much higher percentage of an already much higher salary), healthcare and sickness allowances. I believe the theory of the free market economy survives because the “have nots” want & think there’s a chance of one day they might just get that job which results in the big house, fast car etc etc, like the lottery “It could be you”. But many must fail to see the alternative “It could be you” scenario where they are one long term illness/injury or redundancy away from temporarily needing state benefits but being let down and demonised instead. This blogger struck a chord with me – http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/open-letter-to-andrew-marr.html
A quick internet search suggests taking anything this Ulfkotte character says seriously is a bad case of confirmation bias.
That the intelligence services are influential upon the media is long certain. That the media is bias is long certain. We don’t need dicks to make a fortune by selling us the bleeding obvious.
Once the U.S. got rid of conscription after the disaster of the Vietnam War and turned to a volunteer military, once Communism collapsed (after capitalism’s other competitor, fascism, had already failed,) Anglo-American capitalism no longer had to be on its best behavior and revealed its true face.
“People should not fear their government. Government should fear their people.” seen on the back of an ‘Anonymous’ T-shirt Ben.
Expect Us!
Delivering the goods for the 1% and impoverishing everybody else may be good for the 1% in the short term, but it is bound to fail in the long run. As the spectacular final chapter in G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World brilliantly argues, the true reason for the collapse of the Roman Empire was precisely such policies: first democracy in the Greek world withered and died by the actions of the Greek rich and the Romans, and then the ruling class in the Empire (the 1%) had to impoverish the rest of the population, up to and including the equivalent of the upper middle class, to replace the income the 1% had been getting from slaves (as there were fewer slaves as the Roman Empire reached its natural limits), so that in the end only the 1% and the soldiers had an interest in preserving the Empire, which then collapsed.
“Across the UK millions of people are facing a Winter where they will face the bleak choice between heating or eating and many will not be able to afford either.” Yes, Mark, but they will still vote for this disgusting government and its war on the poor. We are caught up in a revival of the Protestant Work Ethic (Thatcher’s dad knew all about that), where poverty is seen to be a moral vice punishing those who spend their benefits on booze and drugs and letting their children starve and freeze as a result. The righteous work and are rewarded. Except that they aren’t, a disparity easily overlooked by people who cling firmly to the hope that eventually justice will be done, however obviously it isn’t. You just have to keep the faith…or learn how to cheat.
“got rid of conscription”
Kissinger has been raising his rotten melon above the parapet again. He’s been pushing for a mercenary military force, rather than nations. we’ve already privatized the military with the revolving door from mil to Blackwater/academi. Tax dollars train for the transition.
Next up; privatized law enforcement, already augmented with ex-mils and military surplus war machines.
I agree Craig.A Hungarian associate of mine set up a British Company 2 years ago because of how low the minimum wage was.When I was in Wales last year they had people working in this factory/warehouse doing heavy labour, 40 hour weeks for 900 pounds a month.
It is short sighted nonsense tho’.The working class have long been the only part of society that seems to pay the going rate in income tax.When they are reduced to the tax threshold then what’s left over for the Exchequer ?
If the poor aren’t buying drugs and alcohol then tax receipts on ciggies and booze decrease or move across the channel.Osborne used the estimated illegal drug sales as part of the UK’s GDP not so many months ago.He’ll kill that too.You can’t squeeze from both ends forever. Something has to give.
“Expect Us!”
Mark; What is the methodology for communicating to the masses? Belief is a large portion of intention, isn’t it?
Speaking of conscription and de Ste. Croix, one of the things he points out in his book is that the Roman army gradually developed from a conscript to a volunteer one in the last decades of the Republic and the early decades of the Principate (early Empire).
“A Hungarian associate of mine set up a British Company 2 years ago because of how low the minimum wage was.When I was in Wales last year they had people working in this factory/warehouse doing heavy labour, 40 hour weeks for 900 pounds a month.”
If the minimum wage had been higher, so you indicate, your associate would have gone to some other country to set up a company and the British workers he employs would be out of a job. So what is your conclusion? That the low minimum wage is a good thing as it enables people to work, or the minimum wage should be higher so that more people are forced onto welfare, or what?
Greek democracy, on the other hand, arose as a result of opposite military developments. With the increasing importance of the hoplite heavily armed infantry over aristocratic cavalrymen, aristocratic rule in Greece was replaced first by tyrants (i.e., populist strong men), and then by limited democracy. Then, in the fifth century B.C., as a result of the victories of the Athenian (and Syracusan) navies, more radical democracies won out in Athens, Syracuse, and cities under their influence.
ALFAMALE
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Thanks for that link, a touching and powerful article, on the struggle of some of the UK’s less fortunate folk, sadly IDS and George Osborne, want to make it even tougher, for them to get back on their feet.
5 regimes of Palto; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_five_regimes
“Democracy[edit]
Oligarchy then degenerates into democracy where freedom is the supreme good but freedom is also slavery. In democracy, the lower class grows bigger and bigger. The poor become the winners. Diversity is supreme. People are free to do what they want and live how they want. People can even break the law if they so chose. This appears to be very similar to anarchy.
Plato uses the “democratic man” to represent democracy. The democratic man is the son of the oligarchic man. Unlike his father, the democratic man is consumed with unnecessary desires. Plato describes necessary desires as desires that we have out of instinct or desires that we have in order to survive. Unnecessary desires are desires we can teach ourselves to resist such as the desire for riches. The democratic man takes great interest in all the things he can buy with his money. He does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. His life has no order or priority.
Tyranny[edit]
Democracy then degenerates into tyranny where no one has discipline and society exists in chaos. Democracy is taken over by the longing for freedom. Power must be seized to maintain order. A champion will come along and experience power, which will cause him to become a tyrant. The people will start to hate him and eventually try to remove him but will realize they are not able.
The tyrannical man is the son of the democratic man. He is the worst form of man. He is consumed by lawless desires which cause him to do many terrible things such as murdering someone unjustly. He comes closest to complete lawlessness. The idea of moderation does not exist to him. He is consumed by the pleasures in life. He spends all of his money and becomes poor and leads a miserable life.
When Plato says the tyrant is a prisoner to the lawless master he means that if the tyrant should lose his power for any reason his life and the life of his family would be in great danger. The tyrant always runs the risk of being killed in revenge for all the unjust things he has done. He becomes afraid to leave his own home and becomes trapped inside. Therefore his lawless behavior leads to his own self-imprisonment.
Palto should be PLATO
If you want to change the distribution of income, it is not impossible to do so, but you need a minimal grasp of economics.
Here are some workable solutions.
1. Taxes
Eliminate some or all taxes paid by poor people, e.g., VAT, and replace it by a tax paid by rich people, e.g., a capital tax as in Switzerland. Or, rather than eliminating VAT, there could be a VAT rebate to low income earners, as in Canada. Another possibility is simply to eliminate taxes paid by the poor and cut government spending to compensate. For example, by closing the door to mass immigration huge savings would be possible in infrastructure spending — schools, maternity hospitals, roads, universities, etc.
2. Cost of Living
Housing is a major factor in the cost of living and housing costs have been driven up by immigration-driven demand. Close the borders and housing costs will fall.
3. Competition
As immigrant economist Ha-Joon Chang at Cambridge University has pointed out, for virtually every job in Britain there is a better qualified potential immigrant than any British candidate. So closing the doors to immigration will reduce unemployment by improving the chances of those already in Britain of finding work at a reasonable wage.
4. Trade globalization
Obviously, when you’ve outsourced car parts, textiles, electronics and just about every other manufacturing business you can think of to Asia, the ME, Africa or Latin America, you ain’t got many high-wage jobs left and the competition for what remain will drive wages sharply lower. So a flat import duty, permissible under WTO rules, would be a good way to promote domestic investment in manufacturing.
5. Capital flows
If you allow the rich to offshore their money to tax havens or to low-cost manufacturing plants, etc., many of them will do that, which means less tax revenue, less investment and fewer jobs.
All of the above were considerations in the determination of British Government policy in the pre-Heath, post-war era.
So instead of economically illiterate talk about raising the minimum wage, it would be better, if you care about the interests of ordinary people, to trash the globalist agenda and get back to running Britain as a nation state, serving the interests of the people born and raised in the country, not the hordes from Asia, the ME and Africa who might opportunistically wish to live in Britain — the sort of Putinesque policy that has tripled Russia’s GDP since 2000.
Ba’al Zevul 30 Sep, 2014 – 4:25 pm
“I remember Thatcher explicitly resisting proposals to restrict what benefit claimants spent the dole on. It was their business, she said, and none of the state’s. E-beer to anyone who can find the speech, but it was pretty well pre-internet. It’s a measure of how far the drain the country’s gone that this is even being proposed.”
Speech to Conservative Party Conference 1975
Margaret Thatcher, 10/10/1975
I’ll have an ebottle of Red Kite (Black Isle Brewery), please.
“Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, not as the Government dictates.”
same speech
One thing I’ve advocated and never seen in print or heard in a speech is revamping the way we choose elected officials.
The system has been corrupted and seems to corrupt any good broker who buys into the current system.
Campaigns are expensive. Many elected persons admit they spend way too much time raising funds.
A tas-payer funded system giving funds to candidates would ease that effect, if not eliminate entirely.
How to choose candidates who qualify for funds?
Groups from the voter roles selected at random like a jury pool could hear candidates offer their policies under oath, making broken promises subject to perjury laws.
After vetting they would receive funds for the campaign.
‘tax payer’ funded system.
Publicly funded campaigns has been available for years, but candidates opt out when no one else will play. Just to be clear, the idea I’ve not seen is using jury pool selection of candidates.
Belief is key here Ben, without faith, without trust, we negate hope and spiral into isolation and silence. When faith, trust and hope work together we can expect intention dominating ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ as ‘self’ takes a back seat.
Then we understand a collective psyche and painfully break from media ecology to one of collective emotion that powers intention. The pain of others becomes very real and must change our thoughts and behavior and the ways we perceive the world.
Better be careful, the helots are gonna git ya!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPkOp1XOgU
You’ll get e-Greene King IPA and like it, Node. Good catch, that’s the one, thanks.
“The first welfare recipients to get the cards are expected to be drug addicts and alcoholics, or those who are problem gamblers, in order to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not used to fuel addiction and dependency.”
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The fact – pointed to by Baal – that even Mrs Thatcher resisted efforts to determine what welfare benefits could be spent on sounds plausible given her ideas on personal responsibility but is neither here or there for the purposes of the present discussion.
It’s been pointed out on here that people (welfare recipients and suppliers acting in collusion) will find a way round the planned restrictions. It is surely correct that there would be such attempts. But on a purely technical level – leaving aside larger philosophical and moral considerations – I wonder whether that phenomenon could not be countered by some kind of adaptation of the wartime rationing system of points which, according to what I’ve read, was more or less fool-proof?
‘Belief is key”
For sure Mark. I’ve lived long enough to believe we create our own reality through thinking and behaviors. It’s not scientific, but science is limited by the human beings who wait for stuff to happen, rather than making it happen. But be careful what you wish for! 🙂