Cut all the benefits/welfare, fix the economy

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There are always crooks in any system. There is no point in making a major section of the citizenry starve or die in order to nail a few crooks. Most people want to be a functioning part of society. Its a matter of trust. You surely find more damaging crooks at the top income groups than at the bottom.

And the people who are actually to disabled to work!

My boyfriend is in need of benefits. the problem is he is to disabled to apply. he is so scared of people he only leaves the house for food. and sometimes he doesn't eat cause he is to scared to go out.

The only thing keeping him from being homeless is his family. he needs benefits because he really cant work. but he is so scared to go out that he cant even go to the doctor.

Don't tell me everyone should have there benefits cut! some people actually need it!

I am glad your able to work but some people like myself and my bf cant. so dont be so quick to assume things you obviously dont understand!

I also would like to point out that neither my boyfriend or i view it as a right. it is a privilege , a charity set up to support to less able. and it is only because we live in a country that is able to provide such a privilege that we have it at all.

Most people in other country's do die of hunger and starvation, or are locked up in deplorable institutions till they die. its only the wealthy country's (like England and my country America) that can provide the needed benefits to support people who cannot support themselves.

I thank god every day that my country gives me a monthly check to live on. or i would be out on the street.

As technology progresses less and less work is required to produce what is needed so producers cut their work force to make greater profits. But the market requires consumers with money and most of these consumers are workers. When producers do not pay out wages consumers cannot buy what is produced. It is a death spiral for standard economics unless consumers can acquire money to pay producers. That is what is happening in the USA. Beyond the reduction in money flow from loss of local work through technology the use of cheap labor in foreign production also removes money from the economy. Which again prevents consumers from getting money to pay producers. If production can be accomplished with less work then some other way to get money to consumers must be found. If work is not needed there is no virtue in work for work itself inspite of the stupid Protestant work ethic. Somehow money must be fed back into the system to make it function, or the system will collapse.

It's like a body or any system. Each part must work with the other smoothly. Right now there are dangerous distortions caused by several different things - some that are virtuous when it comes to production but others not so, such as financialisation. The key for policy makers is to make sure the system works properly, that the parts are in alignment. Right now that is breaking down and the system should be the first consideration here, not any kind of moral ethic or principles or anything like that. Such things are secondary.

Charity and volunteering - to build that into a system is to build a system that is fundamentally unstable. This is a bad idea. Certainty must be built-in. I know the stress maniacs on the Right who worship stress and "labour flexibility" and those who capitalise to make millions on market instability, they love instability, but this is bad for any system I think.

I'm starting to think that, realistically, the US will return to near full employment only when we start producing more material goods, and that means exports to the rest of the world. Yet that can only happen when the net-wealth, living standards, and relative costs go up in other parts of the industrialized developing world relative to ours. Either theirs goes up or ours goes down. It's the disequilibrium that's dangerous. If our standard of living goes down it will be via massive debt spirals and hyperinflation. There's going to have to be political pressure on global corporations and other governments. Otherwise we might as well give up on capitalism totally.

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Last edited by petitesouris on 21 Nov 2010, 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Firstly, if you're working, why the hell would you need DLA? Aspies don't need to buy wheelchairs or anything, do we?

Anyway, if you claim DLA, you get money from the government, and the government pays that through tax revenues. Therefore, it indirectly effects tax.

Because your tax is paying for all these different benefits, you pay a higher rate to fund it all, and it still isn't enough - at the moment, the government pay out more in benefits than they make from income tax! Then people wonder where the massive deficit came from!

For this reason, if benefits were cut and taxes were cut to match, working people would probably be better off.

I know the government is unlikely to lower tax if they save money in this sort of system, but then, there's no way they'd ever cut all benefits anyway. I'm merely suggesting it'd help the economy if they did.

Oh, my, I hear Francois Duvalier and his favourite saying, "Gratitude is cowardice". Something that the banksters have taken to heart.

Income tax is absorbed by business, it's passed down to business, so paying slightly more income tax for services to make life easier is win-win for individuals. Now there will be those who have adopted the Voodoo Economics line of appeasing the corporations and rich being the prerequisite for life itself who would howl with outrage at passing costs to business but the supposedly all-powerful gods that business is supposed to be is in just something in people's minds put there by propaganda. Effectively, they are paper tigers.

Claiming that DLA affects the amount of tax you pay is about as economically realistic as those people who claim that the Monarchy makes their taxes high, when in actual fact the grand total of tax you pay out for the Monarchy is about 60p A YEAR. I don't know about you, but I lose more than that in my sofa a year.

DLA is provided to pay for additional costs accrued because of Disability. That can include equipment, care costs, any number of things. Its not just wheel-chairs and panic-handles. Don't fall into the classic WP trap of believing that because YOUR manifestation of a Spectrum Disorder does not require extra help, that other people's is the same. We are all different, we all have different requirements. End of Subject.

Ending DLA is a false economy, as it would immediately render many people unable to contribute to society in a meaningful fashion.. a task which is already difficult enough in the UK due to the "benefits trap" and the destructive behaviour of ATOS and the DWP. A lot of people operate with a marked degree of independence using DLA, and if it were to be removed, those same people, who would be NO LESS disabled, would be thrown onto the mercy of the NHS and other public services, thus costing the tax-payer more. All the recent activity as regards person-centred planning and personal budgets is reflective of this, as it has only recently been realised that broad government-controlled support is more expensive to the tax-payer than individually-controlled support. DLA works in a very similar fashion.

And again, no level of welfare destruction would render us cheaper taxes. Such savings would only occur for the Government. We would see AT BEST a token reduction to keep up sweet for the next election.

Of course ending DLA alone wouldn't significantly decrease costs, but I never said otherwise. I said that costs are high because of benefits in general, which is true. I also said that you probably pay about the same or more in taxes as what you get back in benefits, which is also true in many cases.

I know that AS/HFA is a spectrum disorder, but I still don't see why anyone with either condition needs benefits because of it. If you're low functioning you obviously need care and stuff, but Asperger's by definition is minor autism. This view is also held by the government itself, which is why most Aspies need to exaggerate the effect their Asperger's has to get DLA in the first place, and that's benefit fraud anyway.

If government controlled support is more expensive for the tax payer, then that surely backs my point, because well, what the hell do you think benefits and the NHS are?

Considering the fact that the government's spending more on benefits than it gets in income tax, as I've already mentioned multiple times, we should see a drop in tax if this is ever implemented, at least in the long term once the cut costs have had an effect. And as I've already said in the OP, lower taxes can bring in higher tax revenue, too, so there's incentive for the government to cut them.

Despite the warning, you still fell squarely into the trap of thinking that your version of AS must be reflective of ALL variants of AS. AS is not discrete from regular "autistic" problems. But debating whether people with AS "deserve" help or not is off-topic, not to mention insulting, ridiculous and inaccurate.

The government downplays ALL disability, not just AS. DLA and its ilk demand that the claimant describe the absolute worst case scenario for their illness. The fact that the government perception of an illness is wildly inaccurate does not make said illness any less of an issue for the sufferer. The DWP have denied amputees DLA based on how much of a limb remains.

You misunderstand. When the government directly provides care and amenities for disabled people, they cost MORE than if the Government simply gives the cash directly to the disabled people, who then seek their own care providers. This makes a SAVING. Thus the government now favours the personal approach. DLA has always worked like this. The government paying you directly so that you can seek your own support and care. DLA thus is a cheaper alternative than pushing the disabled back into more generic care, which is the only other available option which remains humanitarian. Of course of you really wanted to save that cash, then letting the disabled die off along with the poor is a brilliant plan.

We will see no meaningful reduction in taxes whilst we are still measuring debt in the TRILLIONS. We will see no meaningful reduction in tax even if we did kill all the disabled and jobless poor. The government will NOT pass savings in tax on to the tax-payer in anything other than a token manner. You MIGHT encounter a small drop in tax, perhaps back to a previous level, just in time to garner support for an election, say. You will not suddenly get back a crapload of cash because they stopped paying job-seekers.

OK, Macbeth, what would someone with Asperger's need DLA for? Why do they need extra money for support?

I did say people like those with LFA need money for care, but it does not need to come from the government. Charities and such could do it. The NAS springs to mind here.

On the subject of the government giving money to people to find their own care... Does this mean you think the government should drop the NHS and subsidise private health care then? I'm just curious here.