Framing the debate.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Isn't it amazing how we frame political debates?

In the UK we have just had a reading of a new "Welfare Reform Bill" including a section on a "Benefit Cap" which will limit benefits for the unemployed of most kinds: this has been done on the grounds of expense. Quite rightly people see they are paying out from their taxes what they consider to be "excessive" benefits. One set of figures I saw mentioned the savings from the Benefit Cap alone would amount to £270M a year, which is almost £5 a year for each person in the country, or almost £10 a year for every tax-payer. However, the House of Lords amended the teeth from the bill (much against the will of the people, damn elitist House of Lords scum) by scuppering any inclusion of Child Benefit in the equation.

Now, a few folk with kids would become homeless over this "Benefit Cap" and maybe as many as 60,000 will be affected by it. But the tax-payers, most of whom appear to approve of this return to the values of Dickensian society, aren't too bothered about it, because they'll each be saving almost £10 a year. This could buy three pints of beer or half a bottle of cheap whisky, and that's not to be sniffed at.

And at the other end of the spectrum apparently tax evasion costs the UK some £69.9 Billion a year. This doesn't apparently take into account legitimate though unethical tax-avoidance. If this could be fixed it would put over £1,100 in each person's pocket, or well over £2,200 in each tax-payer's pocket. Or pay for well over half of the UK's total healthcare budget.

But really, who wants an extra couple of thou, or a decent health service, when we could be evicting families for the price of a few pints of beer a year. I mean to say, it all adds up, doesn't it?

Noblesse Oblige. The poor are always with us. Unless we can find a way of shipping them abroad, or encouraging them to live a life of homelessness where they will only be a minor drain on society until they die at approximately aged 47.

I know folk like Cameron have to pander to the ignorance and prejudices of the voting public. And it sure helps if the voting public are kept ignorant and prejudiced. I mean to say, even the Labour party agrees with the coalition that the "Benefit Cap" is a good thing, because it too has to appeal to the voting public.

I do think that we should educate our folk to be able to think critically, and if necessary, that education should be beaten into folk when they are children. But this is because, as an elitist, a snob, and someone who likes to occupy the moral and intellectual high ground despite my obvious limitations, I have little time for the ignorance and prejudices of the general public, especially when they are informed quite as badly as they appear to be.

Comments

[acollectivegood.livejournal.com]

Hi johnny, I'm glad to see that there's another country where voters can be selfish and aggreessive as far as taking away entitlements from the poor while protecting the rich from scruitiny. It must be a worldwide epidemic!

- A Collective Good (http://www.acollectivegood.com)

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

From your name I would guess we have some opinions in common, though I am what used to be called a "One-Nation" Tory, which these days puts me to the left of the Labour Party.

Mind you, I'd beat Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, into all of the children in my country, and I don't suppose you'd agree with me about that.

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

NO!!!!

I am rewriting the Illiad into a gangland thriller.... We do noy want people reading the original.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

  Three times Patroclus climbed Troy's wall.
Three times his fingers scraped the parapet,
Three times, and every time he tried it on
The smiling Mousegod flicked him back.
But when he came a fourth last time,
The smile was gone.
  Instead, from parapet to plain, to beach-head on,
Across the rucked, sunstruck Aegean, the Mousegod's voice,
Loud as ten thousand crying together,
Cried:
  "Greek,
   Get back where you belong"
So loud
Even the Yellow Judges giving law
Half-way across the world's circumference, paused:

"Get back where you belong! Troy
will fall in God's good time, But
not to you!"
  It was Patroclus' turn to run, wide-armed
Staring into the fight, and desperate to hide
 
(To blind that voice) to hide
Among the stainless blades.

  And as he ran
Apollo dressed as Priam's brother stood
Above the Skean Gate, and strolled
With Hector for a while, and look his arm,
And mentioning the ways of duty, courage, love,
And other perishable joys infecting men,
Dissolved his cowardice with promises,
  Observe the scene:
They stand like relatives; the man, the God,
Chatting together on the parapet
That spans the Gate.
        The elder points. The other nods. And the plumes nod
Over them both. Patroclus cannot see
The Uncle’s finger leading Hector's eye
Towards his flesh,
Nor can he hear Apollo whispering:
"Achilles’ heart will break..." And neither man
Thinks that a God discuses mortals with a mortal.

  Patroclus fought like dreaming:
His head thrown back, his mouth-wide as a shrieking mask-
Sucked at the air to nourish his infuriated mind
And seemed to draw lathe Trojans onto him,
To lock them round his waist, red water, washed against his chest,
To lay tired necks against his sword like birds.
—Is it a God? Divine? Needing no tenderness?-
Yet instantly they touch, he butts them,
Cuts them back:
- Kill them!
My sweet Patroclus,
- Kill them!
As many as you can,
For
Coming behind you through the dust you felt
—What was it?—felt creation part, and then
 
 
 
Apollo
 

        Who had been patient with you,
 
Struck.
 
  His hand came from the East,
And in His wrist lay all eternity;
And every atom of His mythic weight
Was poised between His fist and bent left leg,
  Your eyes lurched out. Achilles’ helmet rang
Far and away beneath the cannon-bones of Trojan horses,
And you were footless… staggering… amazed...
Between the clumps of dying, dying yourself,
Dazed by the brilliance in your eyes,
The noise—like weirs heard far away –
Dabbling your astounded fingers
In the vomit on your chest.
  And all the Trojans lay and stared at you;
Propped themselves up and stared at you;
Feeling themselves as blest as you felt cursed.
  All of them lay and stared;
And one, a boy called Thackta, cast.
His javelin went through your calves,
Stitching your knees together, and you fell,
Not noticing the pain, and tried to crawl
Towards the fleet, and-even now-feeling
For Thackta’s ankle-ah!-and got it? No….
Not a boy's ankle that you got,
But Hector's,

  Standing above you,
His bronze mask smiling down into your face,
Putting his spear through... ach, and saying:
  "Why tears Patroclus?
Did you hope to melt Troy down
And make our women fetch die ingots home?
I can imagine it!
You and your marvellous Achilles;
Him with an upright finger, saying:
Don’t show your face again, Patroclus
Unless it’s red with Hector’s blood.”
  And Patroclus,
Shaking the voice out of his body, says:
  “Big mouth,
Remember it took three of you to kill me.
A God, a boy, and last and least, a hero,
  I can hear Death pronounce my name, and yet
Somehow it sounds like Hector.
  And as I close my eyes I see Achilles' face
With Death's voice coming out of it,"

  Saying these things Patroclus died.
And as his soul went through the sand
Hector withdrew his spear and said:
  "Perhaps.”
            

Christopher Logue

Do better than that & I'll be impressed. :)

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Latin and Greek do not an education make. Mathematics, on the other hand, ...

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Depends how you construct your trivium really. :)

[taiki.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Sounds about right.

In America, they're doing everything they can to appear "tough on crime" by instituting drug filtering schemes for the unemployed and those on welfare.

After a few months of it, we can now safely say that yes, the unemployed ARE *LESS* likely to use drugs than the general population.

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

"the unemployed ARE *LESS* likely to use drugs than the general population."
Cite please?

[taiki.livejournal.com]

http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-welfare-recipients-be-tested-for-drugs/say-no-to-drug-testing-the-unemployed

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

That link doesn't prove the assertion that drug is is lower in the unemployed. It only says some unemployed have a lower drug abuse rate.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

The Florida case, which is the best statistical analysis we have, fails to note that fewer people applied for benefits after the law was put into place. I wonder why...

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a little more complicated than that. A reduction in social welfare spending will typically result in an increase in overall productivity as the "displaced" find jobs, etcetera (not immediately, but over time). Additionally, there is a reduction in administrative overhead (less to administer).

One thing that is certain is that reducing the "child allowance" will reduce the number of children that it applies to. Perhaps encouraging population growth is not economically feasible at this time?

Going after the tax evasion, well, it's impossible to get *all* of it, and at some point, diminishing returns are hit. The pojnt at which the marginal dollar collected is spent collecting it. And then there's the productivity hit that will be taken as businesses and entrepreneurs get forced out of business by reporting burdens.

It's also worth mentioning that the UK has initiatives in progress to combat tax evasion (as does the US come to that).
www.hmrc.gov.uk/news/offshore-penalties.htm

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

There is a number of jobs available, and there is a number of workers to fill that need. Social safety nets are dubious inasmuch as if you budget enough to support 100,000 people, it doesn't matter if those 100,000 people always stay on social welfare or get a job. The point is, there are 100,000 people on social welfare, whether they're transients or permanents. From an economic perspective, no one should care if Bob stays on welfare for the rest of his life, since it's the same budget either way.

Now when there is a shortage of jobs, as in the United States, kicking people off welfare does not produce more jobs. Since there are more workers than jobs, there will always be a gap. There are six workers to every open job right now. 5 people, whoever and wherever they are, will not get a job, because the market does not provide for it. So those 5 people get on assistance.

What I'm saying is, you can't artificially stimulate job growth by taking people out of social welfare. Whether or not there is job creation has nothing to do with the safety net.

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

False assumption: The number of jobs in an economy is not fixed.

Putting X number of people off the dole will drive the marginal price of labor down, which will adjust upward the number of jobs available at the new price.

Yes, job creation has a great deal to do with the safety net. No one will take a job for $300/week when the "safety net" pays $301. Which in practice, means that that job does not get done (or gets exported).

There is *never* a shortage of "jobs" there's a shortage of jobs *at the demanded price*.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

No, actually, they did that analysis, and found that 301 dollar job gets filled by someone else anyways.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Why save billions when you can save millions! Thats how we do it overe here anyways and we're the best country in the universe.

[vnsplshr.livejournal.com]

So, why doesn't the government improve their tax collection, cover the cost of welfare AND send everyone a refund?

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

If you'll please direct your attention to the article, the "tax evasion" being discussed there is "shadow economy", which typically means black/gray markets. It includes all illicit trades, all "under the table" transactions, etcetera. This does make it somewhat difficult to improve taxation percentage, since a number of the activities are illegal on their face.

Now, in the entire world, the nation with the smallest shadow economy is switzerland. Theirs represents 8.8% of GDP. Can we take that as te smallest reasonably attainable? Great Britain currently sits at 12.6% GDP. Now, subtracting the 2 to get a possible "capture" of 3.8% GDP, or 30% of the shadow economy. That'd give it 21B/ revenue that could be increased. From which you'd have to subtract enforcement costs, which would undoubtedly involve some prisons (again, illegal activities), and a whole lot of taxation auditors.

Not likely to be a particular panacea.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

The solution of course is to make the most profitable illegal things legal.

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

That's one option. Although it won't drive the entire shadow economy into the light. Amsterdam still has rather extensive illegal prostitution and drug trade.

Then again, some things are shadow simply for the purpose of avoiding taxation. For example the under-the-table short order cook or gardener. It simply isn't worth it to everyone to fill out the paperwork.

Again, can we consider switzerland (the smallest shadow economy in the world) as a reasonable minimum? Switzerland has legal prostitution and marijuana cultivation.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

And it sure helps if the voting public are kept ignorant and prejudiced.

Isn't that just another way of saying that they disagree with you?

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

You could put it like that. Or you could say that such are the reasons why I disagree with them.

Beat education into them first, and then if they disagree with me, they'll at least have good reason, to use that word again for emphasis.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that any disagreement that followed education would just be grounds for re-education.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Maybe in your world, but in mine, I do acknowledge folk have a right to a different opinion: but I rather care for a thought-out position, without which I can never modify my own. Thus far, I see nothing of use to the polis in the Austrian economic opinion, compared to the neo-Keynesian one.
Nevertheless, if the world economy tanks, Obama's bail-out gamble will fail: but that would actually be far worse in both short and long term to the forces of capital for them to actually organise to make it so.