the jobs going are often so insecure and poorly paid they are not worth coming off benefits for.
Oh dear. Of course, given that salaries are set by a process of supply and demand, and benefits are not, we might conclude that the salaries are actually at the right level. In which case, a 25% cut in benefits is perhaps called for?
I'm sure "Carl" (the quote's unemployed author) would be very pleased with this. After all, the tax cuts that this could fund would make work even better paid. The reduction in spending power in and around the sink estates would also increase the competitive pressure on local retailers, allowing his higher take-home salary to go further, too.
The owners of the businesses in his locality would see their tax bills drop, as well. That might make them feel confident enough to expand and create jobs - you never know.
Dream on....
Nah, what you don't do is explicitly cut the number of pounds a person gets in benefits; doing this is a bad mistake in terms of media coverage, apart from abolishing tax credits and increasing the tax-free allowance to cover it.
ReplyDeleteNo, what you do is freeze benefits and let inflation do the dirty work for you; the average benefit-wallah is too stupid to cotton on to what's happening if you do it this way, with fiscal drag, just like they were too stupid to cotton on to Gordon Brown stealthily increasing taxes using the same ruse.
Better yet, this trick acts slowly and gently and will ease the Great Unclued back into the world of work slowly as things progressively get tougher.
The other trick is to cut out all child benefit for more than the first two children a woman has, with some sort of gentle phasing-in period so as not to drop too many people into too much hot water.
Do both of these, and you stop the benefit-milking classes breeding so much, and you ease the buggers back out of the "I know my rights" mindset into the "We work hard for what we have" mindset.