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.

Troll hunting is against the rules.

The idea often touted is that people will create work for themselves if they needed. The fact that no-one has any money to pay for their cars to be washed/ironing to be done/bins cleaned is neither here nor there to these people. They are convinced that anyone and everyone could find enough work to feed and house themselves if only they tried hard enough.

It's an idea that's been around for ages, but is getting more prevalent as jobs are getting scarce.

I remember posting years ago, just after I left DH with nothing, about struggling to find work that paid enough to live on, and I happened to mention I had hairdressing qualifications. It was decided I was lazy. If I wanted to work, I would stand outside of schools offering to cut children's bangs for 50p a pop because that would 100% earn me enough to pay rent, buy food

When I pointed out that salons cut bangs for free and hairdressing scissors are £50 a pair, minimum, I was told I was making excuses because I didn't want to work.

I just think that a lot of these people, especially the well off middle classes who e literally been given life on a plate with the modern ( less than twenty years old) emphasis on inheritance, have absolutely no idea what change looks like and absolutely no conception of different ways of life or other cultures. Going to Egypt or Dubai to laze around a hotel pool does not equal immersion in different cultures. The complacency is unreal to anyone who’s had to work for a living.

And rather like wings on a bird and the ability to fly, the human brain and its ability to think are energy intensive and lost through social evolution all too quickly!

Society, as a whole, is definitely getting dumber at an alarming rate. I dread to think how much worse this will get when AI properly kicks in and no-one has to think for themselves at all.

I do agree that people will find work if they really need to, though, only they won't be standing outside of the school gates offering to chop kids' bangs with a pair of rusty kitchen scissors. They'll be stealing cars, shoplifting, and selling sex and drugs.

Your community sounds like hell to me.

No caring for each other’s misfortune? Emotional support, advice, guidance, practical support? And yes “bailing” each other out if you haven’t means to do so.

Life wasn’t meant to be lived solitary and to suffer alone. Primitavely, humans a tribes people. Large families each who had a role, they supported each other even shock horror the disabled, umwell, mentally ill, elderly and more unfortunate.

It sounds like you were very much left to your own devices growing up and it’s skewed your views on life.

What happens if you have an unfortunate accident and you can’t care for yourself? Will you be told to get on with it? What will you do?

Life can change in a heartbeat and anything can change the tides and not all of it is within our control.

Have some empathy.

Oh lord it gets worse. The shame of asking for help? A personal failure?

I actually feel sorry for you.

Can anyone think of a country with no/punative welfare that actually works or that they'd like to emulate in Britain?

Because when I think of countries with a lack of welfare, I think of China and children younger than 10 working 12+ hours a day in a sweatshop for pennies.

Thailand and the Philippines, with their sex tourism and primary-aged children forced to sell sex to Western pedophiles.

Or Dubai, which was literally built on slavery.

Is this really something we should aspire to?

Yes me too, If the Op is genuine then it is terribly sad people think like this, i can see how people are drawn to the likes of Reform or Restore if "shame and failure" is on their minds.

Ironic you mention China where the whole point of the revolution was to overthrow ‘self sufficiency’

And China now has a welfare state to support this switch.

Yet they have children in sweat shops…

Because they have a very small welfare state with few workers' rights and a heavy emphasis on families supporting each other, which seems very similar to what a lot of posters on this thread hope to achieve for Britain.

I don’t agree. Undoubtedly some people today have very hard lives. But we have a welfare state, free education with access to free school meals etc, free health care, employment legislation, health and safety legislation, laws that protect women and children, food standards legislation, we have a democratic franchise, access to relatively affordable transport. Many essentials such as food and clothing are much cheaper than they used to be - although I completely appreciate that there are more things we deem essential today so it’s not a straightforward comparison. We have legislation to protect people from truly atrocious landlords, building standards, rules about overcrowding, indoor plumbing, I could go on.

Some people will always have really hard lives, there has always been unemployment and crime. But there are remedies today that while not accessible to everyone, at least exist. In the not too distant past, many were non-existent or out of reach due to cost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_in_China

Of course there's a chance that what is presented regarding the Chinese welfare system may not be 100 % transparent, but this is a broad overview.

Also bear in mind China operates a Social Credit regime to control / nudge its citizens in the required direction.

Having a welfare system does not preclude the employment of children in sweatshops if that supports the economy and takes precedence over individual well- being.

We will definitely have UBI within the decade. There is absolutely no other alternative. There’s not one politician or think tank that believes different.

I get where you’re coming from and understand the sentiment but the practical reality is that increasing the minimum wage will cause:

Increased inflation
Less jobs and increased unemployment
Less opportunities for younger people to get a first job

Not saying it’s right but in a hard capitalist society, there have to be workers shafted to serve the super rich.

I do think this is the way forward. However my political predictions are nearly always wrong!

Why does the thought of of disabled people on benefits anger you or anyone

33% of households on universal credit are in employment, so I guess OP means the 67%. The ones skipping meals, I suppose.

The poster is correct. A number of benefits and concessions available to disabled people have been quietly withdrawn over time, having been in payment for decades previously. They’re not mainstream, so no-one is making a song and dance about it. But the people who were eligible have no doubt been impacted.

The Independent Living Fund comes to mind as an example. It was closed to new applications in 2010 and closed down completely in 2015. The responsibility for the support it provided was devolved to UK national governments and local authorities, and largely replaced by the system of direct payments we have now.

It’s also a fact that since the early 2000’s existing disability benefits have gone through a series of reforms which have reduced the support available to disabled people and have made it much harder to access.

For example the abolition of adult DLA in 2013 and the switch to PIP actually targeted disabled people of working age and subjected them to an entirely different and harsher assessment than that of DLA. Despite the fact that these benefits are designed to assess and support the extra cost of living with a disability, are universal and not linked to the ability to work, their are plans in place to do exactly that, by combining the assessment for PIP with elements of the work capability assessment. The recent consultations on plans for reform also discussed ways of means testing. These are sold to the public as alternative means of support, when in fact all they are, are mechanisms for reducing benefit.

It’s called divide and rule - keeps us all punching down instead of questioning what goes on at the other end of the scale. So the rich get richer and the taxpayer keep on subsidising the wage bills of wealthy employers and the outlandish rents charged by private landlords, all the while blaming the claimants themselves instead of applying any critical thinking. We need to reform the system, but again and again people fall for the narrative that we have to reduce the circumstances of the most vulnerable in order to do it.

And what do you think will happen when those workers get sick of being shafted ?

How will it be paid for?

I don’t think that’s what this poster is saying.

Taxing companies like Amazon, Tesla and Starbucks properly.