Interesting discussion on Radio 4. Some woman from some group was annoyed about the proposed cuts to housing benefits. The presenter drew her attention to the hundred families in the UK who are getting more than £100,000 per year in housing benefit, and asked if she thought it completely doolally that such sums were being ripped from your bank account (he mentioned you by name) and handed to people who don't fancy working, thanks very much.
Her responses:
1. You shouldn't base a policy on something that affects only 100 households in Britain.
2. If you cut those people's benefits, they might not be able to have more children without moving somewhere less salubrious, and that would contravene their human rights.
Some knee-jerk responses:
1. 100 households getting over £100,000 equals £1 million. Yikes!
2. Ever hear of a bell-curve? Those 100 families are at one end. Yikes multiplied!
3. I thought benefits were meant to provide either temporary help for people between jobs, or help those most vulnerable members of society who can't meet their own needs?
Incidentally, a friend of mine and Lady Resourceful's was telling us last weekend how he didn't want to have children unless he could support them himself. It's not just a pride thing; he believes that children need parent who model industriousness. He has a full-time job as a software developer now, but he struggled for a long time to find an employer willing to look past the fact that he has cerebral palsy.
4. Regarding those not-so-salubrious areas that you can't ask the benefits families to move to: I'm sure the many hardworking parents presently living in those not-so-salubrious areas would welcome the human right to take their children, give up work and live in, say, Kew at the taxpayer's expense. But if living in Kew for free is a human right, it is merited by virtue of being human, and should be extended to all humans. Otherwise you are classifying those who work as non-human.
If you're on benefits and you're having so many children that you need to move to ever bigger houses, the choice should be between getting a job so you can afford the bigger house, or moving to a more affordable area. Why? Because otherwise you're penalising working people for working - an unsustainable policy that will eventually saw off the very branch on which it sits.
5. What about the human rights of the children of these families to grow up with parents who are positive role models?
6. What about the human right of people to be expected to work? There's a sense of purpose that comes from contributing your skills to support yourself and your family (not to mention add to the taxes that pay for services on which you yourself rely), and disincentivising people from working has a horribly alienating effect on folks. Of course, we may find it hard to pity those poor alienated people who are raking in £100k a year, but in a very real sense the state is refusing to count these people as citizens.
The Radio 4 interviewer didn't raise any of these points.
We need a culture that cares for the vulnerable, celebrates hard work, and makes the world of work a place of opportunity and fulfilment. Lavish benefits are pay-offs; it's easier to keep some people infantalised and dependent than encourage them to find a worthwhile place in the society to which they belong. The fact that it masquerades as care makes it all the more ugly.
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