#Unemployed #JobseekeersAllowance costs 0.3% of #UK #GDP Why does George Osborne emphasise the government’s benefit cuts? As The Economist noted after the Conservative Party conference, even when his cuts are a comparatively small element of his plans, he still talks them up. #Osborne is a notoriously ‘#political’ Chancellor, and he knows that polls repeatedly show that benefit cuts are popular. That’s why the “tax summary” you’ve just been sent by HMRC tells you that “welfare” accounts for a quarter of 10 Downing Street spending when, as Declan Gaffney has shown, working age #SocialSecurity (which is what the word welfare usually suggests) actually represents one-seventh of total spending. One of the reasons for this popularity is what has happened to attitudes to benefits for #unemployed people. We know from the British Social Attitudes Survey that, in 2013, 49 per cent of people wanted less spending on benefits for unemployed people, compared with just 15 per cent who wanted more. Mind you, I want less spending on unemployment benefits too, because I want there to be lower #unemployment. But I doubt if most respondents to the survey meant only that: in 2013, 57 per cent of people believed that “benefits for unemployed people are too high and discourage them from finding jobs”, up from 24 per cent in 1993. This is despite the fact that, over those twenty years, the value of unemployed people’s benefits, relative to average earnings, fell in most years. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is convinced that fighting #poverty means that we need higher pay and higher benefits. That’s why the subject for our 2015 poverty conference is #MakingWorkPay? What role can the #WelfareState play in raising living standards? We’ll hear from expert speakers, including Howard Reed (who carried out the research for the TUC showing that working families were facing the bulk of the government’s benefit cuts) and Andy King, Head of Staff at the Office for Budget Responsibility. A strong welfare state is one of the pre-conditions for higher living standards for working people. We won’t make progress until we recognise that unemployed people and working people need to support each other and not let ourselves be picked off one by one.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 18:15:18 +0000
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