Welfarisation has made people utterly entitled and unable to take responsibility for themselves and their families.

[hagchic]

I grew up in a working class family. The values I was taught were that you stood on your own two feet and it was no one else's job to do what you could do for yourself.

If you were hurt, you were expected to get up and go and clean yourself up - and stop whining about it unless it was actually serious. If you were ill, you went to bed and if you were lucky some magic lucozade appeared.

If you were sad, then you were sad. If life was unfair then that was just how life was and you needed to deal with it.

You never ever sought charity or took benefits when you were able to work or put up with less. You lived to your own means, not to what you saw on TV or at school - and if you wanted that lifestyle it was up to you to get it.

Today everyone has the expectation that someone must help them, that they are obliged to help them - even before they have made any attempt to actually do the work of helping themselves. They expect luxuries like holidays, pets, new clothes and treats when they do nothing to earn this.

I think self sufficiency is a value that needs to return to our society.

It's not that people are entitled or lack resilience or don't want to be self sufficient. A pp from another country touched on the unfeasibility of buying land and building ones own house in the UK for the average person. Individual Self sufficiency is an anathema to end stage capitalism because it threatens the corporate machine

Quite. Self sufficiency in Britain was initially destroyed by Enclosure, and our elites did not care about the resulting starvation beyond worrying about the ‘filthy beggars’ in the street. It took decades, centuries to claw back some rights, time marked by such events as the Peterloo Massacre and the General Strike of 1926. Yet slowly humans learned the same old lessons that the ancient world knew in smaller societies; that the higher levels of the social pyramid can only be higher when they’re perched on top of a solid foundation. Post war rights came back into life for the poorest, rights equivalent to those the medieval world held as standard, rights to counter the wish of the rich to force everyone else into near-slavery. Then the greed took hold again in the 1980s and the cycle started again. The size of the human population today really works against us.

The welfare state evolved out of need not greed.

I think part of the problem is the idea that things can ever be fair or the playing field levelled.

Another is the shift over many decades from viewing state support as like charity to an entitlement or right. Neither is a helpful perspective.

I agree that the state makes self-sufficiency hard in many ways by tying various elements of life in red tape and bureaucracy.

I also think abolishing universal benefits like Child Benefit was a huge mistake, there are posters on this thread talking about ‘take up’ of CB when until recently it wasn’t means tested in any way.

It seems clear economically that we cannot continue as we are because the benefits bill is so large but as we all know too well, successive governments will not grasp the pensions nettle, nor other electorally unpopular measures.

I think most people have no idea how hard life could be in even the relatively recent past. The state has stepped in to so many areas of people’s lives today. For some people, benefits are a perverse incentive. There has to be a better way to support those people than just handing over money and writing them off. But the complexity of the economy and job market make it incredibly hard to do so.

Fantastic post.

Excellent analysis.

Funny how some people always look down on people with disabilities and people who receive the benefits they are entitled to but never get angry about MPs getting subsidised housing, food/drinks and having their expenses paid by the tax payer although they have a decent salary and very often come from wealthy backgrounds.

Or grifters like Michelle More wasting tax payer money to fund her luxury lifestyle with no consequences whatsoever.

Or fat cat bosses paying staff poverty wages that force people to claim benefits on top of their salary just to survive.

Or parasite private landlords who purchase several homes, charge high rents and contribute to the general housing crisis.

It is such black and white thinking to imply that people who claim benefits are 'scroungers' and lack resilience while ignoring the wider context.

We have a low wage economy where salaries have not kept with inflation, high rents and house prices, high utility bills, high transport costs and mental health and social health services that have been cut to the bone.

No wonder we have many people we are struggling.

Not to mention that the majority of the benefit bills comes from pensioners because we have an ageing population and with advances in medicine people will continue to live longer.

I never understand how so many people fell for the right wing press benefit bashing propaganda but never take time to look at the facts.

Perverse incentives exist at every level though. For example tax avoidance, perfectly legal and a marker of savvy business practise.

I get angry at all of them.

Permit me to add a side of fries to your word salad - great and thoughtful post, thank you!

The whataboutery is an inevitable tactic.

Historical observation is whataboutery? Interesting.

I apologise. I was referring to @Seasidecatlady post. I got your two posts mixed up. Sorry again. Of course your post didn't represent whataboutery.

Ah, no worries - easily done on a fast moving thread x

I’m torn on this. On the one hand I’ve worked my arse off to get to where I am. I grew up on a council estate in a deprived city, nobody in my family went to uni and my mum has always worked in low paid roles. I got a PhD, I’m an academic, I’ve published an academic book and a few papers. I’m proud of my achievements. My DH is also successful professionally, has an MBA, we’ve both worked really really hard to get here and haven’t had a leg up from family.

We don’t get benefits, not eligible for any. I’m not bitter for the most part about families who do, especially when both parents are working FT in jobs like my mum did where the pay just doesn’t stretch to support them- I don’t think that’s necessarily their fault. Not everyone is intelligent enough to go to uni frankly, and definitely not crazy enough to get a PhD.

What has pissed me off about the recent Labour alterations is the extension of FSM for anyone claiming UC. This has to be the majority of families surely? I know some get £5-10 a week so a nominal amount but now will also get FSM. I don’t think this is right, particularly not when DH and I have worked our tits off for years slogging away and get zero back in return (just a big tax bill each month!).

SO I am a bit bitter in truth but I’m wrangling with these emotions because I’m not a Tory but it makes me feel like one. I realise life isn’t black and white and I know there are societal barriers in place which prevent people doing better in life. A working class white boy for example is less likely to do well in life than a black or Asian boy. We don’t live in a fair or equal society.

Thank you ❤️

Exactly this!!
Demonising those on benefits suits the "fat cats" at the top very well indeed!

Not many get angry about all of the people who made money in dodgy ways during Covid (eg Michelle Mone) but are irate at the idea of people on benefits.

Apologies for jumping in. Yes anyone can post at any age, of course.

I think going forward when AI properly kicks in and takes more and more jobs we may have to consider an idea as radical as a Universal Basic Income.

Everyone gets it and it provides just enough to live on. People could opt out of having it if they liked.
It's a radical idea that has been around for decades and has even been trialled in some parts of the world.

Then welfare "scroungers" are instantly gone because everyone gets something. It would probably reduce crime.

It will blow some people's minds, of course, but I think very radical changes will be needed in the future - or we do in fact being back the workhouse.

But in reality a punitive measure like that would probably cost more!

Can't afford lucazade, what kind of house do you think we live in? Go and lick some dew off the grass

Some people just miserable and arseholes. You living your best life must really upset them- fucking weirdos

(Them not you in case thats not clear)

UBI would be an utter nightmare. You'd basically be condemning masses of people to generational unemployment. It would lead to an absolute dystopia.

Yes, we used to send children up chimneys as well. That really made them resilient ...

I think most people have no idea how hard life could be in even the relatively recent past. The state has stepped in to so many areas of people’s lives today.

I think most people on here have no idea how hard peoples’ lives are today, where there is no economy in far too many towns and nothing for people to work for beyond the drugs world, and the choice of porn, sex work or welfare for far too many women. There is very little work, no alternative to work as a means of providing for oneself, and none of it pays.

Every so often there is a wake up call, I remember the posts on here from the well off middle classes saying they had no idea so many people had so little just after the Brexit vote. So quickly forgotten.

Well it’s got worse, more unequal and more polarised and it won’t get any better without work and serious examples from the top down, not from the bottom up. Even if we acknowledge collapse in most part of the country and we go into a dark age of ‘take what you can’ it’s the armed drug gangs who will take.

Classic pulling the ladder up behind you.

But those people are going to be unemployed anyway. How do you expect them to earn a living through work when there is no work???