Breeding useless

[peterbirks]

It's hard to feel sympathy for Iain Duncan-Smith. In fact it's hard to feel anything for Iain Duncan-Smith – even contempt. But his latest argument for a cap on welfare payments at £25,000 a year does have a certain logic on its side. It's hard to justify even the rare high-profile examples of people living in £8,000 a month houses, paid for by the council.

What I find interesting about the whole affair is the line taken by those opposing the changes – particullarly the various funding lobbyists such as the Children's Society, the Bishops in the Lords and The Observer/Guardian in media-land.

That line is "innocent children will suffer". See, for example, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/22/housing-crisis-benefit-cuts?intcmp=239

However, figures produced for internal use by the Department for Work and Pensions reveal that thousands of children in families on benefits will be pushed into poverty, defined as homes where the income is below 60% of the median household income for families of a similar size.

Leaving aside the debatability about poverty being a relative concept (under the current definitions you just can't "cure" poverty -- even if everytbody earned exactly the same, because some households would have more working people than others) the logical flaw in this argument stares one in the face, and yet even the Conservatives fail to have the courage to mention it.

If children canot be allowed to suffer, then the best way to ensure a survivable, albeit in no way lavish, lifestyle without having to work is to have children. The rules as they stand encourage adults to use children (innocent bystanders) as an economic weapon. And there are no easy social or political solutions to this. It's not acceptable to say "yes, the innocent will suffer along with the guilty, but that's the parents' fault, not the state's". It's not acceptable to say "we will ensure that the children do not suffer economically by putting them into care". (And neither would it be wise to do it.)

But what puzzles me is, how hard can it be? It's not as if the current situation sees children not suffering. The child benefit money is paid to parents, not to the children, and there are clearly examples of where what little money there is, is spent by the parents on themselves. I've started buying much of my food from Lewisham market. If I spend a tenner I've got more than I can eat in a week, and that includes frying steak and chicken. Or, alternatively, I could buy four pizzas or a single big bucket of KFC.

I don't want to come out with the "they are all scroungers" line beloved by the likes of the Daily Mail, preferably accompanied by a Somalian refugee outside a six-bedroom house in Hampstead. I know that it's more complex than that. But to dismiss Duncan-Smith's arguments with the homily "but what about the children?" does little service to a complex problem. After all, you can ALWAYS use that argument to protest about cuts in expenditure. And if it's an argument that you can always use, then it isn't really an argument. Sadly, in real life, people suffer all the time through events which are no fault of their own. I'm afraid that I can't see what part of our Judeo-Christian heritage dictates that this should only apply to people over the age of 18, or 16, or 10, or whatever age to want to apply.

A stronger argument against such cuts is that it will breed social unrest in the future. But this strikes me as being based on other flawed arguments.

1) The most significant causes of unrest are the lack of a stable family and a feeling of exclusion from society. Paying more benefits won't solve that problem.
2) There are more effective ways of spending money to create a sense of inclusiveness within society than throwing child benefit payments at parents. TBH, give some of the examples that I see in Lewisham, these are teenage girls who do really love their kids (at least to start with) but who are utterly ill-equipped to cope with "real life" as we know it. For them "real life" is benefits. Maybe with a little off-the-books money on the side, and some free babysitting from granny (a slightly misleading term when the chances are that 'granny' is only just 40). All of this is a mess, but it's not a mess because benefits are or are not capped at £25k. It's a mess for a hole range of other reasons that, I suspect, will not be made better or worse by the introduction of a cap.

I've got no real bee in my bonnet about this issue, TBH. What irritates me is the lack of logic from both sides when it comes to approaching the issue. One side cries "but who will think of the children?" as if it were a simpleton Simpsons episode, and the other side has to respond "the children won't suffer".

No-one is allowed to ask the question: "when did being young and innocent start protecting you against bad things in life happening to you?

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Comments

[john-f-hopkins.livejournal.com]

I generally agree with much of what you write, Pete. In this case, I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with everything.

But you don't go far enough. Child benefits (paid specifically to the MOTHER, incidentally) are the tip of the iceberg. Unmarried serial mothers in their twenties don't just get their 40-something Granny to do free babysitting. Granny goes to the DWP and states that her unmarried and unemployed daughter is "incapable of caring for her many children", but that - out of the goodness of her own heart - Granny can help by becoming a FOSTER MOTHER to the children.

The Council, of course, laps this up. No colour-matching problem (tick), a family connection (tick), lives in the same area (tick). The application is fast-tracked.

This brings a monthly payment of £700 PER CHILD. Add in free dental treatment, free housing, free council tax, free school dinners, free tuition fees at college or Uni, free eyecare and glasses, free prescriptions and various other benefits and you're soon talking about serious money.

A woman with a convenient mother and eight children pulls in £75,000 a year. And that's in Streatham. No need to move to Hampstead to piss off the Daily Mail readers.

And are the children well-treated, with all this wealth? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. More money no more guarantees better treatment than less money guarantees worse.

And what do the children learn? That there are two routes to wealth. Crime and/or legally gaming the benefits system. We can apparently do nothing about the former. A benefits cap would begin to do something about the latter. But the benefits cap must only be the precursor to proper reform of the whole system. to remove its many perverse incentives.

When Jesus said "the poor are always with us", He was clearly thinking of a RELATIVE measure of poverty.

[(Anonymous)]

"If I spend a tenner I've got more than I can eat in a week, and that includes frying steak and chicken."

Wat? As someone who spends the best part of a tenner on lunch (nothing extravagant, just an Eat sandwich + soup for example) how do you live for a week on a tenner?

matt

[(Anonymous)]

Todays lunch courtesy of EAT:

1 Duck Wrap £3.15
1 Big Fruit Salad £2.99
1 Simple Soup Big £3.25

Total £9.39 :(

I was just genuinely enquiring about how to live on a tenner a week. Of course I'm aware I could reduce my expenditure but I have a job and little time. The 'duck wrap' wasnt very good.

matt