What welfare recipients get in Britain
Carol Iannone writes:
Did you read that article in The Independent that Laura Wood cites? Here are the proposed CUTS in British welfare payments that have set off such a controversy:
Ministers have provoked anger over the plan, which caps the total household benefits to families where no-one works at £500 a week (£26,000 a year) for couples and £350 a week (£18,200 a year) for lone adults.
A pound is worth $1.62. That’s $42,120 for a “family,” probably a single mother with a kid or kids; and $29,484 for a lone adult. And repeat, that is the proposed new limit, which Labour and the Liberal Democrats have vowed to try to defeat. What is the current limit?
I thank Miss Iannone for bringing these astonishing facts forward. Repeat: Under the proposed limits, an unemployed single childless adult will receive almost $30,000 per year, and this figure is considered totally unacceptable by the British left. Which means that the current amount received by such persons must be substantially more. How much is it? How the heck has Britain managed all these years to pay for such a huge welfare establishment?
And then there’s the fact that healthy young men receiving such money, just for breathing, have nothing to do with their time except cultivate their own sense of entitlement combined with contempt for the weak, cowardly society that entitles them. See yesterday’s entry, “Joy, cont.” with my parody of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.”
Here is the Independent’s article:
Benefit cap will hit single mothers and minorities
By Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor
Thursday, 4 August 2011
Moves to impose an annual limit on benefit payments to the unemployed will affect single mothers and ethnic minorities hardest, the Government’s own analysis of the controversial policy has concluded.
Ministers have provoked anger over the plan, which caps the total household benefits to families where no-one works at £500 a week (£26,000 a year) for couples and £350 a week (£18,200 a year) for lone adults.
The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) calculates 60 per cent of those hit will be single parents and 30 per cent from ethnic minorities.
The planned cap was announced at last year’s Conservative conference by the Chancellor George Osborne, who argued it could not be right for families on benefit to receive more than the average household income. He argued that the scheme was crucial to get a grip on Britain’s soaring welfare bill, which last year stood at £192bn.
However, Liberal Democrat and Labour opponents have vowed to try to defeat it in the Lords next month, while charities warn it will increase levels of poverty. Critics will seize on an impact assessment carried out by the DWP into the policy, which is planned to come into force in 2013.
The clampdown will have a disproportionate effect on ethnic minorities, it acknowledges, calculating they represent 30 per cent of the estimated 50,000 households whose incomes will be cut. The DWP said they will be heavily affected as Asian families on average have larger households than other ethnic groups.
It added that 60 per cent of claimants whose benefit will be reduced will be single women, almost all of whom are bringing up children.
The department’s research also warned that the cap will make some parts of the country unaffordable for families who depend on housing benefit. The calculations emerged a month after a leaked letter from the private office of the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, warned that the policy risked making 40,000 families homeless.
A DWP spokeswoman said: “The Government believes it is not fair that people who are in work can earn less than those who are on benefits. However, we have always said that we will look at the sort of help available for those people in particularly difficult circumstances.”
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 12, 2011 09:55 AM | Send