Benefits reform - and then they came for the blind!

[bochead]

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/fury-as-blind-people-hit-by-benefit-reform-7754452.html

Blind people often use their benefits payment to facillitate working btw are the latest group under attack.

There is a petition if anyone cares enough to register their disgust. epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/20968

David Cameron is asking for a further 25 billion in Welfare Cuts -

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/poli...fare-cuts.html

However for those that think they are not ill or disabled and it won't affect them - read the following extract -

The savings will be made from cutting back benefits for people of working age. However, the Work and Pensions Secretary has privately indicated that pensioner benefits should also be re-considered in future, but not for people who have already retired.

You see you could be absolutely right flatpack hamster, but I am still left with two things that bother me.

1. We have a chancellor whose father is an interviewee of choice for the FT's 'how to spend it', who mixes socially with the super rich, but who claims to be shocked that the super rich can pay almost no tax. He is either a bit thick or lying, which makes me a bit about everything he says.

2. If you cut benefits for the disabled what do you do? Open up the workhouses? Create mass hostels for people with disabilities and their families? DLA is not a lot of money (about a notebook a week) I think a proper review of the benefits system would save no money at all because as much as it might identify some fraud, plenty of other people would be found who need more benefits.

Full marks to the government if they want to improve the benefits system for the disabled. However, if they honestly think they are going to save themselves some money, I think the exercise will just be a load of rich boys stomping around and making a mess.

Can't help but think this is turning into a -pick and choose who to make "disappear", so that the rest of us have a chance at survival- situation.

Between the devil and the deep blue sea, sounds like some of us prefer to lose our souls. As harsh as it sounds, I prefer we all go flipping bankrupt for eons decades to come and learn not to fool around with money rather than to cut loose the old and weak so that "the rest of us" can get back to where we think we should be.

It is a lesson for all of society to learn not just those who, at the moment, spend the most and who, coincidentally and unfortunately, need the money the most. if you ask me anyway.

I am not saying we should go into free fall debt but there is some middle ground between the cuts and more debt. Neither of the options is palatable but taking the hard man stance that either way is the only way to go, is just really . That middle ground is hard to find and is still tough. It would just balance out the problem on all of society instead of targeting just the rich or just the poor or just health or just education or just some sector a bit more than another.

If we sink, we sink together. If we swim, we swim together. That is what "all in this together" meant for me. Not that we would be cutting people off like ballasts on a balloon...

flatpackhamster Fri 18-May-12 08:31:26
2shoes

"I'm not missing the point at all. You are missing the point. The point is not that being disabled is expensive. The point is that the money to pay for welfare comes from the taxpayer or from borrowing. The borrowing taps are being turned off, leaving us with a smaller puddle of money to spend on this stuff."

Your first potential source suddenly seems to have gone missing... If the borrowing taps are turned off, how does that mean we cannot get money out of the tax payer?

(and yes, before you ask I am one of them).

The bit I don't get is why we can't tax high-middle earners more for fear of damaging the economy, but we can abolish a benefit that enables people to go to work at all and somehow this won't have a negative impact on the economy.

Consumer debt you mean?

We don't get an AAA rating based on luck FFS. Greece is on the brink of bankruptcy. We are not.

And yes it does matter that the rich get richer. If it doesn't, why not just let the rich off their taxes (why does having money mean you don't have to contribute, I don't know). It matters because people claim that the cuts have to happen, letting the rich off having to pay their share when they had a hand in all of the debt that's floating about. Nothing is being done to sort out the mess that we're in except for the odd fig leaf bankers tax It's no coincidence that countries which don't have such disparities between rich and poor are not in such a mess.

The poor do get poorer if the rich get richer by using their power to allocate to themselves more than their fair share of the reward for work.

That's kind of why we don't have things like slavery, we have rules about executive pay, companies like John Lewis and the Co-op exist, sweat shops are generally considered to be a bad thing, and we all feel guilty that we in the west consume more than our fair share of world resources.

If my company makes £10 and I decide to give myself £9.99 and my employee 1p, there is a causal link between our disparities in income.

Its very difficult because if the cuts were reversed then the long term fiscal situation would look very bleak and we are a loss of confidence in the bond market away from a disaster so fiscal retrenchment is required, however painful that may be for the populus. In truth the true mistake was to allow this situation to develop but there is no point in complaining as we are where we are and we have to deal with it.

The problem is there is fiddling around with numbers and percentages and debt ratios and making a budget and then there is the reality of actually cutting benefits, and what you actually do when you cut somebody's DLA and they say

"well I'm sorry, nobody in the household can earn any money any more, so now we need more benefits."

or they say.

"With less income, I am not able to look after my disabled children - would you care to pay for residential care?".

or they say.

"Sorry, my daughter can no longer access education as she has to stay at home and look after me - could you please advise me on what benefits she can claim?".

perhaps we could limit how much money people send out of the country then it could be put back into the ecomony.

so who is going to pay for all the expensive residential care that will be needed?
as we head back to the days of disabled people being in institutians

alemci- Capital controls and other protectionist measures will make things much worse

What I don't see anybody getting is the fact that the country is not like a private househould. If you cut the debt you cut the income, and it is a vicious circle. If the government spends, for example on DLA, the person works, they pay income tax, the government can then spend the income tax effectively use some of the same money again... money circulates in an economy.

In a household if you cut your debt your income doesn't go down. In a country it does.

Now maybe we need to cut something. But not DLA.

(before anyone asks I am a higher rate tax payer, who because of DLA for my son, has continued working and paying back far more in tax than my son receives in DLA). The DLA also emplotys another person (pt) who also pays tax, which tax can also then be spent by the government.

And as for Greece - in my view the problem there was not the debt, it was the Euro and their government paying Goldman Sachs (or some other bank can't remember which) to fiddle the criteria for getting in. If it wasn't in the Euro it could revalue the currency and their debt would shrink. What the Euro needs is for Germany to leave as Germany is making the Euro artifically valuable.

thereonthestair- The Government is cutting debt, it is cutting the budget deficit ie the amount of money it borrows to fund its spending. Much of our deficit is structural and so it will still be there even if the economy was growing quickly.

but the only ways to get out of the debt are economic growth - which won't happen with these amount of cuts, or inflation which it won't allow.

we ignore the lessons of history at our peril, but due to dogma, this government (much likes the last) thinks it can rewrite those lessons. It can't anymore than America or Japan can

Isn't it funny that there was outrage when they cut the CB for those higher rate tax payers, but nobody gives a shit about the 500 000 genuine disabled people who are going to lose their DLA! It's bloody shocking IMVHO!

Iggly

No, I haven't factored household debt in to that. The three largest debts which aren't 'on the books' for calculating debt to GDP ratio are the public sector pension deficit (how much extra money the taxpayer has to find to pay for all those public sector workers), the state pension deficit (extra money to pay for people living until they're 90 instead of 65) and PFI, which was used by Gordon Brown to build hundreds of schools and hospitals without having to pay for them.

Household debts are on top of those debts.

thereonthestair

I see this argument an awful lot, and it's overwhelmingly used to justify unmanageable expenditure. Any money spent by the government has to come from taxpayers in the first place. If cuts in government spending affect the economy that badly, then its influence on the economy is too large, and consequently the government is too large too. Government now spends 50p in every pound the economy generates.

don't blame PFI on Gordon.

It was dreamed up by the Tories.

Who, incidentally, won't be stopping it anytime soon.

flatpackhamster ! am so sorry to have lived to 68 years now claiming my state pension and measly NHS pension. Shall I jump off the pier now? Oh BTW my 5 SN kids will need full time care. I am saving this country far more money than my pension and their DLA why can't people see this and I work bloody hard.

tax havens. why?

flatpack the reason the argument is made is because it is true. A large state, which supports the population need not be a bad thing so long as the population is supported. If that support generates work we are all better off than a smaller state and starving people. The 50 p in the pound is circulated and that is why it is so valuable.

The issue is how you interpret generate. Generate for who and why? I would rather generate money to support people than to fund the rich. I accept that I am one, and chose not to leave the country when tax went to 50p. Most people I know in a similar bracket felt the same. Its just the super rich, the super selfish and the stupid who do not accept redistribution is not always a bad thing.

I did not want my ds to be disabled, no-one does. However he is and as a whole the economy is better off with my working than not working. The state "helps" that btu I am lucky and could do it all privately if I had to however there is such a thing as society and we should recognise this. Using austerity and cuts as an excuse to ignore society is another lesson we should have already learnt from history.

Surely the basic point, beyond all the economic theories, is that before we are anything else (a political player, a 'power', a nation) we are civilised humans, and as such we cannot allow disabled children to suffer hardship while the rich get richer. How can that ever be defensible?

2old
Totally off point - at 68 do you really have two of your five children still in education? T

What I don't see anybody getting is the fact that the country is not like a private househould. If you cut the debt you cut the income, and it is a vicious circle. If the government spends, for example on DLA, the person works, they pay income tax, the government can then spend the income tax effectively use some of the same money again... money circulates in an economy.

It's more like a household budget than people realise. Look at it this way. How does the government spend if it's taxed people to the hilt and noone is willing to lend them anymore money? Quite honestly it doesn't!

We're overspending by so much that taxing the rich simply isn't going to cut it. All that will happen is that we kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

What we need to do is accept we cannot pay for everything and that we've been living beyond our means for far too long and take the painful medicine.

It's not about fair or unfair. Frankly there's nothing fair about any of the cuts at all. People have been fooled into thinking that the government has an endless pot of money and if more is needed, we just tax someone else. Reality is that it's not possible and it's a painful lesson for most to understand.

The rich aren't laying any golden eggs though. They're getting richer and I dont see any evidence of a trickle down effect.

YES. Blame SS who dangled 2 beautiful children in front of us, they are 6 and 13 complex needs-we only do adoption not fostering. There are a few daft couples of our age in the same situation.
PS the front door is now locked!!

one thing you could argue is increasing corporation tax. but i use last years profits, to hire the next person.

tax the profits and you delay the next job being created. its easy to say what is wrong, the fix is the difficult bit.