Poor people still clinging to life, warns Iain Duncan Smith

[ttosca]

The work and pensions secretary has issued a stark warning that some poor people are stubbornly clinging to life despite his best efforts to remove them from the welfare system by killing them off.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Iain Duncan Smith said that people who are poor and alive are much more likely to claim benefits and tax credits than people who are dead.

?The overwhelming majority of people who claim benefits are alive,? he explained.

?This is a situation that we cannot allow to continue.?

?We need to implement a system that encourages people off benefits and into mortuaries.?
Duncan Smith on obituaries

Mr Duncan Smith also lambasted the tax credit system put in place by Labour, describing it as ?not fit for purpose?.

?It is not fair that decent hardworking people should have to foot the bill for decent hardworking people,? he said.

?What we need is a fairer system that involves employers paying what they want, being able to sack people when they want and for whatever reason they want.?

?Employers are more likely to create jobs and take on more staff if they can sack them.?

Duncan Smith used numerous pieces of evidence-free evidence in order to highlight how the poorest in society are causing the UK to haemorrhage money quicker than Paul Merson playing Three-card Monte.

?It is important when discussing welfare reforms that I use the word ?fraud? as often as possible,? he said.

?It is equally important when discussing tax avoidance and MPs expense claims that I don?t use it at all.?

?That way everyone knows where they stand.?

newsthump.com/2012/12/31/poor-people-still-clinging-to-life-warns-iain-duncan-smith/

[ttosca]

We're not allowed to question whether Iain Duncan Smith shat himself on Question Time, MN?

Have you received a complaint from him?

[alreadytaken]

haven't read the thread but I liked the OP and was looking for somewhere to post a link to this story about MP's wanting a 35% salry increase and to keep final salary pensions www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20978487. You couldn't make this up!

[picketywick]

I thought the Liverpool Pathway problem had been solved. Clearly not. The NHS/governemnt need to be more candid about death in hospitals

[Darkesteyes]

ssd, the problem that tax credits enables you to work for £6.19 an hour. And if you won't work they will get someone else who will also be on tax credits. In effect it's become a subsidy for business. But imagine if there was no such thing (or something only very few could get). All of a sudden the employer will find they can't get someone at £6.19 an hour so they'd have to either up the wage or not employ anyone.


Yes that would be why (in the 90s before working tax credits were applied to people without children) there were jobs advertised in the Job Centre for £50 pounds a week (at that time my rent alone was £48 a week) and 50p an hour. I can see this happening again.

[ttosca]

Interesting choice of words. Robbing. That would imply the money belonged to the 'poor' and has been forcibly taken and given to the rich.

And actually, this is exactly what is happening, as taxes are subsidizing corporations in the form of handouts, bailouts, and tax credits which pay for wage bills.

[ttosca]

The 'rich' are still getting hammered and pay the vast majority of taxes.

The rich are not getting hammered. If they were getting hammered, the UK wouldn't have the same wealth inequality as Nigeria, and the same level of wealth inequality which it had in the 1920s.

The rich are doing very well, thank you very much. They don't need your support.

[niceguy2]

Interesting choice of words. Robbing. That would imply the money belonged to the 'poor' and has been forcibly taken and given to the rich. Nothing of the sort has happened. What is in fact happening is that less money is being given to the poor and instead the money saved is simply not being borrowed.

The 'rich' are still getting hammered and pay the vast majority of taxes.

[picketywick]

The "nasty" tory party is still with us. Robbing the poor; and giving more money to the rich.

[niceguy2]

Personally I'm not a big fan of Cameron & Osbourne either. I don't think they truly understand the average family struggling to make ends meet at all.

But given the alternative, does anyone think Prime minister Ed Miliband & Chancellor Ed Balls would do any better at all? No. It's really a case of the least worse choice at the moment.

[PeahenTailFeathers]

Oh, come on!

First, part time work is not "idleness." At the very least, it is a damned job - probably the only damned job available for many people. Secondly, what you also have to factor in is that the majority of part time workers are women and a large proportion of these act as carers for relatives or friends when not working; again, very far from "idleness." Thirdly, just because someone is in a part time or low paid job does not mean they are stupid or undeserving; if you are an highly paid and highly qualified whatever, you are still going to come across people cleaning, emptying bins or stacking shelves who are more intelligent and hard working than you are, they just never had the opportunity or had too many responsibilities to others to get the career they deserved.

I do not have faith in this government's ability to run the economy. Despite what Tory spokespeople say, benefit cuts don't raise money but, at best, might save some. Plus Gidiot (thanks to whoever came up with that name!) is no more qualified to be Chancellor than the average person off the street. He has neither qualifactions nor career background in economics and this is painfully highlighted in his embarassingly ignorant budget statements that have resulted in so many U turns, as well as policies that have gone through despite having no logical thought behind them such as the child benefit reforms. Cameron's defence of him is "He stayed in my shadow cabinet not because he is a friend, not because we are godfathers to each other's children but because he is the right person to do the job." Seems to me like it is the friendship and godfather bits that keep him in the job.

[niceguy2]

ssd, the problem that tax credits enables you to work for £6.19 an hour. And if you won't work they will get someone else who will also be on tax credits. In effect it's become a subsidy for business. But imagine if there was no such thing (or something only very few could get). All of a sudden the employer will find they can't get someone at £6.19 an hour so they'd have to either up the wage or not employ anyone.

Yes tax credits help you each month but it's also part of the problem too.

Jux, I don't think that's fair. If IDS's brief was to first & foremost to balance the books then he wouldn't have suggested Universal Credit. It would be far simpler to simply slash benefits as they are rather than spend the hundreds of millions, if not a few billion getting UC off the ground. Not to mention the political costs if (like most govt projects) it falls over on its arse the first few months it goes live.

When people talk about fairness, it's nice to see at last some consideration towards those who are actually net contributors to the state. For too long this group have been ignored and any questions as to why we have to pay yet more taxes has been shouted down alleging we don't care about the poor & vulnerable.

It can't be fair can it when most employees are not getting a payrise or at best a sub-inflation payrise that we have to pay more taxes so that those on benefits can have a bigger rise?

[Jux]

My experience of ex-army officers is that they will follow the brief. If that is true of IDS, then his brief was, first and foremost, to balance the books. If his primary objective had been fairness to the vulnerable, less fortunate etc, then we'd be getting something very different from him.

[picketywick]

Daft to put an ex army officer like IDS in charge of welfare. They know more about fighting wars

[ssd]

thank god for tax credits

my employer will still pay me £6.19 an hour whether I get tax credits or not, they couldn't care less how much I get so long as they don't need to up my wages by a penny

getting rid of tax credits will only hurt people like me, the employers wont pay any more, they don't want to and its not in their best interests

if I leave they'll just get someone else, people on mw are disposable to employers

[pointedlynoresolutions]

I think letting either side test out their theories is very dangerous and unethical...

If I'm going to be poor, can I be poor in Sweden or Denmark?

I wouldn't classify north Korea as communist, Karl Marx would turn in his grave if he could see what goes on there. If states can be psychotic, North Korea is.

I still think that the Scandinavian model is one worth striving for, it seems to have struck the balance between a strong state and a strong private sector.

[Xenia]

There is certainly an argument that we have never had a pure communist state.

Secondly there is an argument that we have never let the free market rein. Neither side has ever really been able to test out their theories.

[MiniTheMinx]

No they can't have had communism because communism can not exist either alongside or in capitalism.

[niceguy2]

So what you are saying Mini is that North Korea, Cuba, the old USSR and the old China failed not because of communism but because they were not communist enough?

[MiniTheMinx]

Which ultra left states have ended up broke? Under communism it would be impossible to be broke!!! We have never seen communism.

If you look back on history you see that that it is taken up by a struggle between serfs/peasants/working class and ruling class. The yardstick I would use is freedom from not freedom for. ie, freedom from exploitation and struggle as opposed to freedom to exploit. When the serfs rose up or at the time of the French revolution they hadn't already experienced capitalism or living in a republic History isn't a mish mash of chaotic events unrelated. We make history happen, we do so now.

[niceguy2]

I don't pretend that capitalism is the perfect answer. I just see the examples from history and believe it is better than the alternatives. Every country which has tried a communist/ultra left socialist model has ended up broke and resorted to repressing it's citizens to stay in power.

The yardstick I would use is. Would I prefer to be poor in a free market economy such as the UK/France/Germany or would i prefer to be in Cuba/North Korea?

[MiniTheMinx]

How can China be said to be communist ? One way might be to point out that they have a planned economy. They are state capitalist, seems to be working very well for China if not the Chinese people. That can not be said of us, nothing is working for us, either at the level of the state or the people. But China can not really be said to be communist. Communism can not sit alongside capitalism either at the level of individual countries or within a global economy. Stalin thought that Russia could be communist in a sea of capitalism, end result was a sort of fascism. (very little distinguishes the two when you consider economic policy under capitalism) I can understand why people look at these examples and fear "communism" I would go as far as saying that there is even a sort of McCarthyism sometimes to be found on the left when people understand the economics but instead adopt a reformist left position. This is because the cultural aspect of neo-liberal theory have sought to leave little room for discussion or difference. It has created cultural hegemony.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

[Xenia]

We have certainly been left a huge mess by the spend spend spend policies of Labour.

We all know the country with one of the biggest wealth gaps is communist China. I think it something like a 1 - 34 ratio compared to about 1 - 5 in the West. Capitalism is the best solution.