We are intensely relaxed about this
That world out there is a complex thing. This is what makes planning, even hard and fast rules, so difficult. We do indeed think there’s something wrong with the relationship between benefits and wages in this country. But this isn’t one of them:
Thousands of households are receiving more than £60,000 a year in benefits amid claims that loopholes and health top-ups are causing “mayhem” in the welfare system.
Analysis of government data shows that more than 7,000 households claimed more than £60,000 in welfare handouts in 2023-24 as the numbers of people on disability or incapacity benefits surged.
No, we don’t know the details and we’re not going to argue about the numbers. But a little musing and rule of thumb. There are some 25 million households - good enough estimate for the purpose here - and 7,000 claiming this seemingly excessive sum. That’s 0.03% of households. Can we imagine that there are 0.03% of households so hard hit by the vicissitudes of genetics, ill-luck, catastrophe or happenstance that they require vast help from the rest of us? Yes, we can actually. We also don’t mind that help being proffered in the slightest. We’re more than intensely relaxed about it in fact, we’re wholly in favour of it. Assuming that these sums are indeed going to those 0.03% of households so hard hit by the vicissitudes of genetics, ill-luck, catastrophe or happenstance that they require vast help from the rest of us.
£10 a year each so that those smote so heavily by the truly ordure stained end of the stick of life gain full support? We’re not just relaxed about this, we’re in favour of it.
Research by the CSJ last month found that 6.2 million Britons would be better off if they lived off benefits instead of working. It calculated that benefit claimants take home more than roughly one in four workers after tax.
But that? No, that we’re not in favour of. That some require wholehearted support is obviously going to be true. But that near 10% of the population - or, counted differently, over 20% of the working population - need to be paid more to not work than to work, no, we don’t agree. That’s to have moved from those who need it to wouldn’t it be nice if people had? Nice being something we don’t think justifies the imposition upon others.
Which then becomes a more general point. Social insurance is just fine. But we do think that it should be for those things that are actually needed, not those things that might be nice to have. Health care, say - sure, everyone gets that vicious cancer treated, gets scraped up off the road after that car smash. But the nice things, the blood pressure readings, the well man/woman meets, the gluten free food, possibly even contraception - those should be directly funded by the individual not the collective. Say, and as an example. Or we pay for the necessary housing for the truly poor rather than have a vast system of subsidised housing for those not or no longer poor like Frank Dobson? Or that benefit that is the state old age pension kicks in much later but at a higher rate?
All examples only but we do think it an important point. We are indeed a rich enough country to actually solve all problems of proper and absolute need. But we are only rich enough to do that if we only spend upon need, not upon these would be nice to haves. Further, if we blow the money on the marginal issues then we’ve not enough left to cover the truly base ones.
We’re in favour of a very generous welfare state that is - but also a very rare one. Because only if it’s rare can we afford the generosity.
To adapt the words of Mssrs. Parfitt and Rossi. Not whatever you want but only whatever is needed.
Tim Worstall