But don’t worry, every cloud has a silver lining.
Due to the labour govts mishandling of the economy and their propensity to spend other peoples money like a drunken sailor, the recession will be both deep and hard and a lot of ordinary decent people will, through no fault of their own, find themselves affected.
They will suffer, but their eyes will be opened to the reality of the welfare system in this country.
This is a fantastic post by “Max Headroom” over at Money saving expert and I have reproduced it in full below.
I’ve worked full time in continuous employment since I left school 25 (is it really that long!?) year ago. And I’ve been fortunate enough never to need to claim anything, I’ve just jogged along earning my money, paying my taxes, living my life.
And naively (as it turns out) I’ve paid those taxes in part in the belief that I’m contributing to the countries benefit system which is helping out those that need help, safe in the knowledge that there but for the grace of God go I. And that should I ever be in the unfortunate position of being unable to support myself, that very same benefit system will be my safety net should I need it.
Sure, I’ve had the odd rant in the past like everyone else about the benefit scroungers of society. It seems every other month the Daily Mail unearths another family of eight pulling in £30K a year worth of benefits and living in a five bedroom detached house all at the expense of Joe Taxpayer. and on a more personal level, I know of several people seemingly able to live life quite happily without a thought toward getting a job, nice little terraced house, secondhand car, treats for the kids and a modest holiday once a year. And that irks, but as is often said, that’s the price we pay in this country for a safety net that keeps everyone afloat. The system is bound to be open to some abuse, that’s just how it is.
Ok so, recession hits, the business I’m working in almost completely flat-lines, and after a year of sitting in my office staring out of the window and wondering how long they’re going to continue to pay me for doing nothing I get my answer. They’re not. I’m out. Fair enough, I can cope with that, honestly can’t blame them. The business isn’t there and only a major re-structure is going to save the company. Unfortunately I’m (along with many others) re-structured out the door.
I hit the ground running, my CVs are in the post like confetti, I’m all over the job sites, I’m on the phone, I’m Mr. Proactive, I’ve got history, I’ve got experience, I’ll get another job and we’ll keep the plates spinning.
No.
Two months and one deafening silence later and I’ve not had a single offer of an interview. The enormity of all those hours of BBC news broadcasts and reams of newsprint hit home. This is serious. And this isn’t happening to somebody else, this is happening to me, now.
So thank god for the benefit system this country proudly boasts. Thank god for the safety net that has it’s problems, but doesn’t allow anyone to slip through, a cradle of support for those in dire need. And I am in dire need.
So I find myself on the phone and I find myself in the job centre and I find myself answering question after question and I’m signed on.
And what do I get? £64-30/week. That’s less than £3.5K a year. That’s £279 a month. I can also claim help with my council tax. And that, I’m told, is it.
And for that I have to trot down to the job centre once a fortnight with my homework for marking. What jobs have I applied for? Who’ve I phoned? Where’ve I looked? After all, they don’t want me putting my feet up and retiring on this bountiful income do they?
So what happened to this safety net? What, in fact, am I supposed to live on? Ok I’m fortunate, I’ve got a small amount of savings. But what if the roof falls off tomorrow and the builder tells me it’s going to cost all of that to fix it? What, actually, will I live on then? I live very modestly but the JSA barely covers the bills. I can’t actually therefore afford to eat. Pretty basic stuff I’d have thought.
So, like many others, I find myself questioning.
Why is this “safety net” failing a hard working tax paying single man? What were all those tens of thousands of pounds I’ve put into the system for?
And how is the single girl I know who’s been living on benefits as long as I’ve known her (several years) able to afford to run a car and has just bought a pair of £130 Nike trainers for her sons birthday? I can’t afford to eat on my benefits!
There is something very messed up with this system. And I think that as this recession bites deeper and deeper and people like myself suddenly become face to face with a reality they thought would never affect them, there’s going to be a sharp learning curve as to what the benefit system actually is and a lot of people like myself are going to have the benefit system brought into sharp focus.
And what they (we) will see is that it’s not a safety net at all. It won’t save you when you need it, it won’t provide temporary support at all, it just doesn’t work that way. But yet it does at the same time allow many many people to live quite happily for years carving out a reasonable standard of living from it.
Something here is very very wrong.
And it desperately needs to change.
Poor Max he doesnt realise that JSA isn’t the benefit that most people get who scrounge off the state. The one that most people who scrounge longer term for is Incapacity Benefit, and its related sister Disability Living Allowance.
I remember having a conversation with my boss in 1997 and discussing a client who had saved enough on DLA of £800 a month to take a three month holiday to Australia.
We all remarked that we were in the wrong game.
Of course there are drawbacks to doing this. You may end up on a psychiatric ward with other people who are ill whilst you are just pretending or not as the case may be You may be fed lots of psychotropic medication and you may put on weight as a side effect but you will have money.
There are those who you never see until their form is due, and we know they are playing the system but if we refuse we would get beaten up or they would up the ante and go to the A&E saying they were suicidal and we’d be forced to act or they would cut them selves badly enough to be admitted and therefore circumvent the process. So tell us what would we do? We can do nothing unless we have proof and doctors dont have time to keep tabs on everyone else.
Hence the stasi type spying on your neighbour type stuff
and the benefits cheats number. But you can only do so much before someone suspects who it is who is ringing up
and so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Its a sad state of affairs. If you have paid into the system for years like Max you don’t know about the fiddles and therefore you end up on JSA.
Max needs to know how to maximise his take whilst minimising what he has to do for it. After all hes paid into the system for 25 years….
Is that cheating No hes getting back some of his tax and hopefully it wont be for very long But they take you off JSA after six months and then they take you off the unemployed list Statistically lying to the people about how many unemployed there are.
So how would you fix the system?
It’s a gradual process and you can’t suddenly abolish entitlements that people have already been forced to contribute to, ie state pension.
Instead you take a considered approach by initially cutting all the unnecessary things that the govt does and use this ’saving’ to cut income tax. This gives ordinary people much more money in their own pockets so they are more able to look after themselves.
Then you start the process of stopping the state being the provider of welfare, ie scrap the monopoly status of education and health care, social insurance etc.
As state involvement becomes smaller over time you get back to the systems that existed before the introduction of the welfare state, ‘free’ hospitals, friendly societies, charitable organisations.
And because ordinary people will become much richer due to smaller taxes and increased economic activity they are much better placed to voluntarily come together with like minded individuals to arrange what they think is appropriate.