Welfare state costs £473 BILLION!!!!

donaldtramp

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/6539812/David-Camerons-Tories-must-have-the-will-to-reform-welfare.html

It has been Labour's most expensive missed opportunity. Once in power, it went for the soft and lazy option of continuing to sign welfare cheques to its clientele – which has cost a total of £473 billion over 12 years. The country has paid dearly in other ways for this act of political cowardice. The number of people dependent on welfare at the end of the boom decade was almost identical to the number at the start – about 5.4 million (almost half of them on incapacity benefit, an unhappy legacy of the last Conservative government). There are 1.6 million children living with an unemployed lone parent, while the number of young people classed as Neets (not in education, employment or training) is nudging the million mark.....

....The state has smothered self-reliance and personal responsibility and spawned a host of perverse disincentives that positively encourage irresponsibility. In today's welfare state, too many people are better off doing the wrong thing rather than doing the right thing.

£473 BILLION? Why have we allowed this welfare state lifestyle choice to continue?
It isn't fair to the taxpayer nor the people living off the state.
Britain can no longer afford this nonsense and it needs stopped.

thriftybabe

OMG that is awful. We are hearing about cuts everywhere. Surely that is where they need to start. The only problem is there are no jobs for all these people to get back to work!

Graham_Devon

The hardest thing to cut in all honesty.

Reason being, the media and compassion brigade will be out in force and would make mincemeat of the government.

Old_Slaphead

thriftybabe wrote: »

OMG that is awful. We are hearing about cuts everywhere. Surely that is where they need to start. The only problem is there are no jobs for all these people to get back to work!

It's only the same figure (ie £40bn a year) that's being accrued for the 5.8 million public sector employees pensions and many (especially those who expect to receive them) think they are fully justified.

zappahey

I recall, from my schooldays, the forecasts that the white heat of technology would lead to a leisure society, where robots would do all the hard work.

Effectively, it's here but the problem is that the leisure is not shared equally so those in employment are subsidising those with all the leisure.

The strategists and big thinkers talk about moving to a knowledge-based economy but the number of people with the intellectual capacity to contribute to a knowledge-based economy is limited so where is the gainful employment to come from for those who contribute through manual labour?

When manual labour is competing against that of low-cost economies, the picture does not look rosy and the outlook for those in employment is an increase in the subsidy paid to those without.

Dave101t

i think that works out at 23,650 quid per person on benefits, taking a billion as 1,000,000,000 so maybe more

HammerSmashedFace

My biggest issue is stop encouraging young chavs to have 5 kids with 5 different dads before they are 21 and giving them a nice big house with 30k+ a year in benefits, the benefit culture that has been nutured for these kind of people has created an underclass that puts nothing back into society apart from trouble in the most part. 60% of households on council estates 4 decades ago had somebody working, now it's less than 30%, yet the health of the nation is much better than it was back then, go figure ?

Lets get real about incapacity benefit, do we really believe that 2.7 million people cannot work !?, can't even pick a phone up in a call centre or sit at a desk and use a computer for instance ? I don't believe it for a second. Lets crack down on these kind of people, not only would it benefit society to get rid of these crooks off the welfare bill, we would also be able to give more money and support to the people who truely are unable to work.

Pensioners die by the 1000 each year, while I see some teenage chavvy cow with 6 kids in tow, smoking, standing in a queue with loads of other obese pie eating trash, waiting for her benefit handout.

edgex

zappahey wrote: »

I recall, from my schooldays, the forecasts that the white heat of technology would lead to a leisure society, where robots would do all the hard work.

Effectively, it's here but the problem is that the leisure is not shared equally so those in employment are subsidising those with all the leisure.

The strategists and big thinkers talk about moving to a knowledge-based economy but the number of people with the intellectual capacity to contribute to a knowledge-based economy is limited so where is the gainful employment to come from for those who contribute through manual labour?

When manual labour is competing against that of low-cost economies, the picture does not look rosy and the outlook for those in employment is an increase in the subsidy paid to those without.

there isnt any


& bit simplistic, but if there was only a 'safety net' system in place, so people couldnt live on benefits for their entire lives, what would the birth rate be like?
would everyone act like the middle & upper classes generally have been doing for a generation, & not be having children till they had hit 30 & got their lives & careers sorted?
would there be next to no families with more than 2 children?

Witchfinder_General

Well said that man (HammerSmashedFace)

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

HammerSmashedFace wrote: »

My biggest issue is stop encouraging young chavs to have 5 kids with 5 different dads before they are 21 and giving them a nice big house with 30k+ a year in benefits, the benefit culture that has been nutured for these kind of people has created an underclass that puts nothing back into society apart from trouble in the most part. 60% of households on council estates 4 decades ago had somebody working, now it's less than 30%, yet the health of the nation is much better than it was back then, go figure ?

Lets get real about incapacity benefit, do we really believe that 2.7 million people cannot work !?, can't even pick a phone up in a call centre or sit at a desk and use a computer for instance ? I don't believe it for a second. Lets crack down on these kind of people, not only would it benefit society to get rid of these crooks off the welfare bill, we would also be able to give more money and support to the people who truely are unable to work.

Pensioners die by the 1000 each year, while I see some teenage chavvy cow with 6 kids in tow, smoking, standing in a queue with loads of other obese pie eating trash, waiting for her benefit handout.

Have to agree with you.
I'd have to say that as well as what you say I'd get rid of tax credits and child benefits.
Having children is a good money maker these days,we should at least limit how many we pay out for.
If things like this were addressed perhaps genuine claimants would be able to get the extra help they needed.
We should perhaps look at how we got into the position where a single mum having several kids to perhaps different fathers (who don't pay for them) is accepted as the norm.
It's not just the benefits system that needs looking at,perhaps our attitudes too.

HammerSmashedFace

And just while I'm on a rant:D, how many of these low lifes are jumping the queue on the social housing list ?, jumping ahead of decent families who work to pay their way, or even singles who have absolutely no chance of ever getting one of these homes.

Remember Max Headroom's post a few months ago ?, if the guy hadn't luckily paid all his mortgage off before he got made redundant he would have been sleeping on a park bench with some newspapers for blankets as the welfare state stuck two fingers at him because he was on his own, all this after paying taxes for the whole of his working life (20 odd years if I remember), totally disgusting.

The system is a joke and now more than ever it needs to be controlled with an iron fist.