WELFARE ABUSE: 32 years old Austin, Texas welfare recipient says working is stupid.

There's plenty of similar shttp://the people in the UK but the BBC and it's Labour allies won't admit it, why, because they vote Labour.

More here www.theospark.net/2014/02/welfare-abuse-32-years-old-austin-tx.html?m=1

A comfortable life on welfare

This confessional is from the USA but the same situation pertains in the UK too.

Labour's moral squalor | Melanie Phillips

It's hard to argue with this by Melanie Phillips:

'Britain's welfare system, in other words, is inescapably implicated in creating lifestyles of profound amorality and barbarism. It not only subsidises them, but actively creates an attitude of mind which is deeply self-centred, regarding the world as owing the claimant a living, sinking into patterns of indolence, hedonism and squalor, and treating those who should be recipients of love and duty instead as objects to be used for self-gratification and as whipping-boys when they dare make any demands of their own. Worse still, it then perpetuates itself down through the generations in inherited cycles of dysfunctionality, creating a class apart which is simply separated from civilised society.

Those who claim that such an analysis demonises the poor are themselves wholly complicit in condoning and incentivising the neglect and victimisation of children, the abandonment and abuse of women and the spreading of violence and hideous selfishness in ever widening circles of demoralisation and dysfunctionality.

There are many truly poor and disadvantaged people who, through no fault of their own, really cannot escape their straitened circumstances but who nevertheless lead lives of sobriety, orderliness and civilised values. It is hard to exaggerate the fury felt by these people, who are forced to live on welfare benefits, at the way in which people like Philpott not only shamelessly milk the system but are treated as equally deserving as themselves.'

More here http://www.melaniephillips.com/labours-moral-squalor#.UV6yhu4J4dY.twitter

Spending welfare

1) In the UK The Mail reports that:

'Most families who are due to lose their child benefit are worrying about how they'll make ends meet without it.

But for Kelly Marshall, who has five children by four different fathers, the handout has never been about paying for nappies, food and other everyday expenses.

She saved her benefit money to help pay for breast enhancement.

And as many parents envisage tightening their belts after the Tories announced plans to cut the benefit for higher-rate taxpayers, she plans to save more of hers for liposuction and a tummy tuck.

Miss Marshall, who has never worked, rakes in almost £29,000 a year from benefits - and last year spent £4,500 to go from a 34A to a 34DD.

She explained: 'I have wanted a boob job since I was a teen. But it wasn't until I had five children that I could afford it - with all the extra benefits I get. Now I hope to have liposuction, a tummy tuck and regular Botox.

'I thought having children would make my boobs bigger, but that never happened so I decided to do something about them.

'I saved money from my benefits for four months to cover half the cost and put the rest on a credit card, which I pay back with my benefits.

'I know most people will think it is wrong I am spending taxpayers' money on my looks. But I deserve it because I am a good mum. Having children has taken its toll on my body. All mums should be able to have cosmetic surgery.'

Do read the whole piece, it's a doozy...


2) In the USA USA Today reports that:

'The Los Angeles Times is reporting that California welfare money meant to help the needy pay for food, clothes and other essentials has been withdrawn on at least 14 cruise ships sailing out of Miami and other ports.

The news outlet says an investigation of state records found $16,010 of California welfare money was taken out on cruise ships between January 2007 and May 2010 -- in some cases on vessels sailing to such faraway and pricey destinations as Rio de Janeiro.

Results of the investigation, published Monday in the Times' print edition, found California welfare money also had been withdrawn along the Las Vegas Strip, at Florida's Walt Disney World and at other vacation resort areas from Hawaii to the U.S. Virgin Islands.'

What a world.

America Alone: The end of the world as we know it - Mark Steyn explains

A fascinating interview with Mark Steyn about some fascinating subjects, do try and spare less than 40 minutes to watch it.



Thanks to Theo Spark.

Hiding the true unemployment figures

Labour's lies about who has benefited from its creation of 2.5 million jobs are well documented but less well known are the way that it has quite deliberately created a client state of people whose livelihoods depend upon payments from the state. I have remarked upon this phenomena before but an article on Burning Our Money caught my eye today:

'How many of our 6m public sector jobs are just another form of welfare?

The reason I ask is that listening to today's BBC coverage of the continuing debate over National Insurance Contributions (NICs), the question didn't get a mention.

...

This is public employment as welfare. And when we look a the high dependence on public sector jobs in the depressed regions of Britain today, we can see it's more than an empty slogan.

The one slight snagette is that welfare employees still need paying .... Which means that someone else has to part with the fruits of his own labour in order to provide the wherewithal. And all he'll get in exchange is the sight of another new pyramid, or if he's lucky, a government promise to repay the loan in some distant future, probably in debased coinage.

Getting low skill, low productivity, welfare dependents into work is going to be one of the very toughest challenges facing Cam's government. Given the catastrophic fiscal legacy, leaving them on the public payrolls will not be an option.'

IF, and it is still a big if, the Conservatives do win this general election then the exposing of the lies and manipulations that have been at the heart of Labour policy and actions for the last 13 years must be a top priority. The whole country must be made aware of what has really been happening and the culpability of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson in the ruination of this land. Of course I hope that a way is found to have the three of them (and there are others) tried and convicted for their crimes against the UK; an idle pipe-dream, probably but not a total impossibility?

Fascinating BBC headline - "Tories continue welfare attacks"

"Tories continue welfare attacks" what does that mean to you? That the Conservatives are in some way attacking welfare payments or people on welfare? That's how it read to me, which is why I clicked on the article to see which Conservative politician was being misquoted now. The actual story starts:

"The Tories have stepped up their attack on Labour's employment record, accusing them of leaving people trapped in a "vicious cycle" of welfare dependency.

Shadow work secretary Theresa May said unemployment had become entrenched in many families with dire social effects.

Figures released on Wednesday showed the number of UK households with no-one working has risen to a 10-year high."

So a somewhat different story from that which the headline alludes to, I wonder why the headline was chosen...

The BBC then report the frankly incredible claim that

"Labour said the Tories' failure to help the unemployed in the 1980s had left a disastrous legacy."

Cricket as a metaphor for the Welfare State

A Very British Dude manages it quite well, here's two extracts:

"So like the ICB trying to make the supposedly more exciting game even more exciting, the Labour Government tinkered with the rules. Seeing "a problem" that there are some people who don't earn very much, it was decided to give those people money. So that this could be targeted at labour voters the most needy, the system designed was incredibly bureaucratic. Because of the bureaucracy in accessing the rest of the benefits system, people choose not to take up work because of lost benefits, because short periods of temporary work just do not pay; or they decide to work cash-in-hand. To counter this, Labour forces its clients to accept unsuitable work, and criminalises those who take cash in hand."



So just as Cricket authorities spoiled the game to satisfy their hard-on for television ratings, Labour, in attempting to make the unequal equal have turned the UK into a hellish panopticon, causing misery for all. Of course, of the two problems, the growth of so much limited overs cricket is by far the more serious of the problems, cricket being cricket, whereas politics is, well just politics."

Do read the whole piece...

Work or welfare?

Mark Wadsworth has an interesting comparison:

"So let's add this up. £64 JSA + £150 Housing Benefit + £15 Council Tax Benefit = £229 per week. Let's call it £230 for simplicity. That works out at £11,960 per year. Not a bad wage (starting salary as a squaddie is around £15,000) for doing 5 minutes work per week.

So, how much would you have to earn to take home £11,960 after paying council tax at £15 per week? About £15,675 by my calculations. The State has decided that there is an income that people need to survive but they still tax you if you earn that much. How does that make sense?"

Do read the whole article.

Benefit Britain by design - Fraser Nelson explains

From The Spectator's Coffee House:

"To understand why Britain has such welfare dependency, look at the incentives. The horrible truth is that a girl leaving a British school with poor qualifications has a choice of career: work or pregnancy. As welfare is split up (council tax relief, tax credits, etc) no one in government has an overview of the real choices facing our school leavers. But I asked Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice to put together the figures for me – before housing costs, so as to compare them to the going rate for jobs. The weekly net income of a benefits-dependent parent is as follows:

Lone parent, one child: £207 a week
Two children: £262 a week
Three children: £324 a week
Four children: £377 a week
Five children: £441 a week.

Now compare this with work. The ONS recently published what women are paid for various occupations. It shows that a woman with two kids (and a £262 net weekly income) does better than a waiter (£113/week) a cashier (£128) shelf filler (£155) library assistant (£170) hairdresser (£188) child-minder (£240) and street trader (£246). These are gross figures, so you’d have to take off a bit for tax (and add about £30 to the waiter and shelf filler – the lower paid get tax credits) but you get the picture.

This is the key to understanding why 5 million have been on benefits throughout the Labour years. We are not a country of feckless, dissolute Little Britain idiots but a country that responds to the incentives set down by the government. If welfare pays more than work, why work? Why is every Pret A Manger filled with immigrant staff? Because the difference between working and not working is far greater for them then for our own people."

But what is the solution?

The welfare state

Devils Kitchen has a fine piece attacking Kerron Cross today. Do read the whole article but the bit that spoke to me clearest was DK's attack on the National Minimum Wage, here's an extract:

"Some people are never going to be worth paying at all and will thus remain unemployed (unless they retrain, for instance, thus adding to their human capital worth). If you introduce a Minimum Wage of, say, £4, anyone who's labour is worth less than £4 an hour will never have a job.

As you raise that Minimum Wage (especially if you do so above the level of natural wage inflation) then you increase the number of people who labour is not worth that amount. As such, you increase the number of people who will never be able to get a job.

The consequences of this are fairly plain. That person will, for starters, never have the chance to better themselves at the expense of their employer, through in-job training, etc. They are left very poor and so their chances of being able to go and study to improve their human capital, and therefore their labour rent value, is also reduced.

So, you contribute to an ever-increasing underclass, an üntermensch, who will never get a job. As such, you propagate an increase in the number of people who will always be living solely off benefits. As you increase those benefits, you make it even less likely that getting a low paid job will be more profitable, given the time outlay involved in working, and thus further reduce the probability that these people will ever work again.

If you then introduce Child Benefits, your unemployed person can afford to have children (they become, in fact, an investment), and you end up with children being brought up in a home where no one has ever worked. And so, you increase the number of people who, in turn, will probably never work.

And the stupid thing is that you don't have to take my word for it: we have seen this happen over the last sixty years. We now have a reported 3 million households in Britain that are entirely dependent on benefits.

And as Labour ramps up the Minimum Wage, the number of households will only increase as you increase the number of people whose labour is not worth the wage that you have insisted must be paid."