Welfare handouts aren't fair – and the public knows it

[Big Don]

Welfare handouts aren't fair – and the public knows it

A new survey shows that despite years of propaganda from the Left, Britons retain a deep-seated sense of fairness and individual responsibility, says Janet Daley.

Telegraph.co.uk EXCERPT:
Like a mythical traveller seeking truth, a think tank has asked a profound question: what is fairness? And lo, the people have answered with (almost) one voice: what "fair" means is that those who are deserving shall receive, and those who are not shall be – well, not exactly cast out, but certainly not entitled to everything that's going.

As we report today, Policy Exchange – supposedly the Prime Minister's favourite ideas outlet – has done a brave and unusual thing. Rather than polling the public just on policy and voting intention, it has put a far more abstract moral issue before them. It instructed the pollsters at YouGov to find out precisely what the public thought the most powerful term of approbation in the political lexicon – "fair" – actually amounted to.

The quite unequivocal reply that was received (with breathtakingly enormous majorities in some forms) came as no surprise to this column. To most voters, fairness does not mean an equal distribution of resources and wealth, or even a redistribution of these things according to need. It means, as the report's title – "Just Deserts" – implies, that people get what they deserve. And what is deserved, the respondents made clear, refers to that which is achieved by effort, talent or dedication to duty: in other words, earned on merit.

As I have written so often on this page, when ordinary people use the word "fair", they mean that you should get out of life pretty much what you put in. Or, as the report's authors put it, "Voters' idea of fairness is strongly reciprocal – something for something." By obvious inference, a "something for nothing" society is the opposite of fair. And this view, interestingly, is expressed by Labour voters in pretty much the same proportion as all others.

Imagine that. After all these years of being morally blackmailed by the poverty lobby, harried by socialist ideologues and shouted at by self-serving public sector axe-grinders, the people are not cowed. Even after being bludgeoned by the BBC thought monitors and browbeaten by Left-liberal media academics with the soft Marxist view of a "fair" society – from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs – they have not bought it. They do not believe that if people are poor, it is necessarily society's fault, and therefore society's duty to deal with the consequences.
No, they say, as often as not, poverty is a consequence of lack of effort or self-control – and, therefore, the individual must accept the consequences. And they do not believe that such character failings and their consequences should be disregarded in the apportioning of welfare or help from the state – help which they know is made possible by the efforts of those who do "the right thing". They still have a firm and undaunted conception of the "undeserving poor" – a term so unfashionable that no politician would be capable of uttering it – and would like such people to be made to accept their reciprocal obligation to society in return for any assistance from public funds.

End EXCERPT
Damn those Tea Bagger, wait, what? hahaha

 

[Sukerkin]

I don't agree with all of this, as the writer is not thinking of the consequences very clearly in my opinion but this comment below the article rang a multitude of bells with me:


Posted by Thamesquay
Perhaps the time has come to give up all taxation now extant and instituting a consumption tax to fund all basic programmes of government. No more incomes, V.A.T., Council, Poll and NHS taxes. All of these would be replaced with a 23 percent consumption tax that shall fund our government. It shall be collected at the retail level much as V.A.T. is done now. Each shop collecting the retail consumption tax shall deduct 2.5 percentage of the tax taken at point of sale for their overhead in collecting and transferring this tax to the government. For those whom say that a consumption tax is VERY UNFAIR to the poor an automatic electronic payment into a bank account shall take place monthly for each house hold. The amount of this monthly payment shall be based upon the cost of living regarding staples. This payment shall include the monthly amount of 23 percent consumption tax paid at retail point of sale for food and clothing calculated on the cost of living for each member of a household. The cost to government shall be greatly reduced to send these payments out monthly to bank accounts as the Internet transfer of funds will be used.

Perhaps it's time that we consider scrapping all taxes except for a consumption tax from our citizens and the collection of tariffs for our importation of goods from foreign countries.

The immigration problem also has to be addressed as it's ludicrous to allow large families to move to Great Britain and are immediately moved unto benefits. Will someone please tell me what sort of benefit this is to the U.K.? We have to adopt the same sort of immigration programme that Australia have in those whom possess advanced skills and education. To allow immigration to those whom don't speak English and are barely literate just drives our quality of life down. Those whom do immigrate here have to assimilate into our society. They are coming here to live and if they want to keep their 7th century mindsets about family, women, people of other faiths, etc. then perhaps we should restrict their entry. WE LIVE IN the 21st CENTURY. Either accept this fact or please don't come here. Some hard decisions lie in front of our leaders. Either they stop playing to the illiterate layabouts of us and the bone lazy of the incoming immigrants with unlimited benefits or we shall fall.

Layabouts and wastrels don't add to a nation, they only take. It's one thing to say that for a brief period of time benefits may be necessary to help one in sorting out their lives. However we've got several generations of layabouts whom DEMAND that government keep them up with benefits. This canard about substance and alcohol abusers having to receive a lot of subsistence benefits just makes we producers all the more brassed off. It used to be that a drunkard was shunned culturally and the churches and relatives would look after their families in hopes of providing a level of subsistence. When the drunkard went for months without finding gainful employment then a group of men would seek him out and have a very frank word about his responsibility to his family. Now that would be called criminal in certain quarters of our society as to bring one's alcohol and or drugs addition to their attention is considered insensitive and demeaning. It's alright to be a drain on society however to have a hard working taxpayer just mention his wanting a drunkard to amend his ways makes him criminally liable for his words. How did we come to this in our country? The people whom produce for the country are getting fed up with the situation as an article in yesterday's DT noted. The amount of people whom are contemplating migration to New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong has increased markedly in the last several years. An impetus for this sort of mass migration by the citizens of Great Britain spells trouble to any government whom continue with their idiotic ways of making the producers pay for the wastrels' lifestyles. We have to stop this social engineering and get back to having people being responsible for their own families and themselves. This is the only way that we shall pull this nation out of her doldrums and malaise.

 

[billc]

I know that the flat tax and consumption tax are two idea's for the improvement of the american tax system. We would need to get rid of the income tax before we went to a consumption tax otherwise we would have both.

 

[bushidomartialarts]

Um...duh?

Of course welfare isn't fair from a standpoint of getting out of a system what you put in.

The trouble comes from what it is that you want to be fair.

The idea of social assistance comes from Jeffersonian Democratic ideals: "An aristocracy of achievement rising from a democracy of opportunity."

But we don't have a democracy of opportunity. Where and to whom you are born remains the single best predictor of the quality of your entire life. Welfare and other forms of social assistance were originally intended to create a level playing field from which people with the talent and the drive arose.

Of course, it's been twisted politically into a way for Democrats to keep a powerful voting bloc. But that's another matter entirely.

 

[WC_lun]

It has become a powerful voting block for Democrats and a powerful scape goat for Republicans. To hear some of the stump speaches from Reagan on, anyone who takes assistance from the government is either a "welfare queen" or "lazy." I won't deny that I know some people taking government assistance that fit those names, but I know many, many, more that if given a choice would like to live life where they could support themselves without the government.

Have any of you who are so quick to judge people on government assistance actually looked into what it takes to get it and keep it...at least in the US? You basically sign away any right to privacy. In itself, I think if you are taking money then that shouldn't be a big deal, but how big an issue would that be for you? It isn't easy to get approval, and even if you qualify in spades, for instance a terminal illness, odds are you will likely be turned down the first time you apply, just to make sure you are serious about needing assistance. After you are approved you must wait for the benefits to kick in. So great, you are approved for benefits, but until those benefits kick in you can't afford your life saving drugs, medical care, food, shelter, transportation or anything else. Lets hope you have friends and family that are better off than you. You live with the stigma of being on government assistance, but every month open up medical bills where the doctors and hospital have padded thier bills, sometimes with outright fraud. No one ever talks about that though, because they have money to pay lobbyist to look after thier interest. Then of course, every so often you'll get some politician that wants to fire up his base by changing the rules qualifying you for goverment assistance. So now it is back to square one where you get to jump through all the degrading hoops. This is all stuff I experienced when I had a catastrophic illness just after I turned 22. I know for fact most people getting assistance are not just milking the system, they are just surviving...and sometimes because the way of the system, they don't survive. You want to crack down on the welfare queens, the lazy, and the fraudulent criminals? Great!! Please do! They are all criminals and should be treated as such. You want to make the system more effecient. Awsome! I can get behind that. You want to treat everyone who is "on the dole" like lazy, good for nothings, well I give you the one finger salute, because you have no idea what it is like to be one of those people.

 

[K-man]

I know that the flat tax and consumption tax are two idea's for the improvement of the american tax system. We would need to get rid of the income tax before we went to a consumption tax otherwise we would have both.

Why can't you have both? A fair income tax coupled with consumption tax works well here. Anyone cheating the system with cash jobs to avoid income tax spends the money and it gets taxed when they spend. Basic foods and medicines are exempt from the tax so low income and social security beneficiaries don't get slugged to eat.

You have State taxes and charges that could all be replaced by a consumption tax.

Works here! :asian: