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Well said Bruce.
Most of us woefully overestimate the percentage of welfare/benefits claims that are fraudulent and the percentage of unemployment that is chronic. We underestimate the percentage of welfare/benefits that are unemployment based.
In this country, unemployment benefits make up a tiny proportion of a benefits. The overwhelming majority of what is paid out in state or council benefits are paid to pensioners and to supplement low paid workers and part-time or underemployed workers.
Of those claiming unemployment benefits a tiny percentage remain on them permanently. The overwhelming majority will return to work within 2 years. Of those that remain unemployed for longer a large percentage are mothers and single parents with very young children - even then the majority of single parents will rejoin the workplace in some way once children are in nursery or school.
In terms of outright fraud, such as people claiming they are not working, whilst taking cash-in-hand, or who claim to be too sick to work, but are later seen engaging in heavy physical activity, or claim to be single and unemployed whilst their well-paid partner lives with them - I don't know for sure, but the last I looked it was something like 1% of claims.
The government here has been banging the austerity drum since they came into office - they've cut mercilessly, focused their efforts on the unemployed, who've bene consistently demonised in our press and on tv (lots of reality tv shows like 'Benefits Street' looking at the day to day lives of one little street with a very high percentage of unemployed benefits claimants - poverty porn we call it, and most of it is titled and focused on the extremes and show benefits claiming i the most negative light possible).
They've reduced support for people with disabilities or serious long-term illnesses. They've taken away much of the support that was available to under 25s (like housing benefit) and they've made the systems through which the long-term unemployed, many or most of whom have clear barriers to overcome, harsher and more humiliating. The sanctions scheme they now operate has literally driven people to suicide. Despite clear evidence to the contrary the DWP consistently denies operating targets for their staff to impose benefits sanctions on claimants - these are imposed with no warning, theoretically for failure to adhere to jobseeker agreements, but in reality for any arbitray reason including missing an appointment because they didn;t send out the summons letter until after the appointment date, because they failed to make 50 job applications in any one week, because they were five minutes late getting to a job centre that takes 90 minutes to travel to, and in some cases when people have failed to attend a work programme advisor meeting because they were at a job interview, and the advisor didn't get the message they left for them.
There's a lot more going on, particularly around housing and particularly around the most vulnerable claimants.
But the gist of it is that we have been sold the lie that the reason the country is broke is because the previous government allowed benefits to get out of control and we can no longer afford to throw money at people who don't want to work.
But the more they cut, and the deeper, the worse the situation gets. They save the country so very, very little money when they do this. And those savings are just in the headline figures. The hidden costs grow. The cuts to housing benefits saved a tiny amount, and what was saved was dwarfed by the increased costs of dealing with sudden homelessness and families in crisis.
They make it more, not less, difficult for the unemployed to find sustainable work that will allow them tobe fully independent of state help - and we end up with people accepting, because the alternative is scary as shit, appalling working practices and a complete lack of working rights, and companies employing workers at criminally low wages (in some cases literally, once youve factored in how much of the work is unpaid and how much is paid at mimimum wage).
All it does is drive the more of the economy towards low wages and insecure employment, make the help and support we do offer less effective and actually also less cost-effective and at the same time force a bunch of people to pretty much vacate the main economy and inflate informal economies.
Sorry - that started out as a cogent point in my head but turned into a teeth-gnashing rant. It pisses me off so very, very much and always has.
Good on Finland for giving a possibly revolutionary alternative a try. I hope that it takes off. Very interested to see what happens with it.
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