Oh Noes Welfare Cheats

[Placid Dingo]

Following the London riots one of the wierdest recurring motifs I've seen is the desire to find the rioters and strip them of their benefits. Because apparently if we find the people who have little enough to qualify for welfare, and take away their money, that'll inexplicably make the world a better place or something. The strategy has another beautiful facet; by punishing through welfare, we can make sure we're not too harsh on any of the decent middle class folk who were led astray by all those nasty scary poor (dare I say black) people.

I hear regular outbursts against welfare from otherwise intellegent people who seem hornswoggled by the mention of 'dole cheats' or 'welfare bludgers'. We go from carefully measured intellegent conversation to sending the underprivlidged (or undermotivated) to provide cannon fodder in seconds.

This buys into a kind of awkward middle class conspiracy, namely that through some unexplanable magical hodgepodge of reasoning, we'd all find ourselfes shot into untold prosperity, if all those bloody poor people would, you know, just stop being so bloody poor. They do it on purpose you know.

This is built on a kind of arrogant reasoning that the reason WE (speaking as the token middle class first worlder) are in nice jobs and university, is not because of opportunities, interests, privalege, life skills, kicking arse in Maslow's heirachy of needs or the fact that we have a hunger for financial growth and security but because there's something about us that makes us super good people who really really COULD have just sat down and accepted welfare but CHOSE to make something better of ourselves because of a selfless need to serve the needs of our nation/the world/the market/whatever, and those other LAZY people really COULD be just like us, but they're lazy enough that welfare is easier... but if you took it away then they'd be JUST LIKE US! And then we get to the untold prosperity, etc, etc.

I don't mind looking at ways to improve the welfare system or any other system; I just worry about the trigger the word 'welfare' triggering this idea about how those OTHER people are ruining EVERYTHING and it's just SHOCKING.

Anyway, off to catch some sleep before I get up early enough to ring work and chuck a sickie, to make some money in my sleep. Don't worry, it's nothing that bad; I'm middle class.

[East Coast Hustle]

The really odious part of that whole idea is that people are willing to punish the children for the perceived sins of the parents. It's the same reason that requiring welfare recipients to pass drug tests in order to keep receiving benefits is a terrible idea.

[Adios]

Many times I wonder how long it will be before being poor is pronounced to be illegal. That way the poor can be locked up and forced to work for a quarter an hour as slaves to those high and mighty who are the benevolent masters.

[The Johnny]

It used to be illegal to be unemployed in the streets, if im not mistaken, around Napoleon's time and some variations of the disciplinary society.

Who knows, it might catch on again?

[Adios]

Officer on a routine traffic stop.

"I need to see your drivers license, proof of insurance and proof of gainful employment, please."

[Doktor Howl]

Many times I wonder how long it will be before being poor is pronounced to be illegal. That way the poor can be locked up and forced to work for a quarter an hour as slaves to those high and mighty who are the benevolent masters.

It's already illegal to be poor.

Look around.

[Doktor Howl]

Also, DP, this is what I was talking about.

[Adios]

Many times I wonder how long it will be before being poor is pronounced to be illegal. That way the poor can be locked up and forced to work for a quarter an hour as slaves to those high and mighty who are the benevolent masters.

It's already illegal to be poor.

Look around.

Good point, I was thinking this just the other day.

[Disco Pickle]

Also, DP, this is what I was talking about.

yeah, I know.

I don't know how anyone could get behind this train wreck of an idea, to be honest.  Some of my positions are pretty damn ruthless but this is just bad for everyone.  Pouring rocket fuel onto a fire.

[Doktor Howl]

Also, DP, this is what I was talking about.

yeah, I know.

I don't know how anyone could get behind this train wreck of an idea, to be honest.  Some of my positions are pretty damn ruthless but this is just bad for everyone.  Pouring rocket fuel onto a fire.

It keeps the hair-shirt punishment freaks happy, and they are the backbone of an authoritarian society.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

So let's ask the question that has been bothering me for a while now.  When I was younger, my mother and grandmother used to say they were going to end up in the poorhouse if we wanted something too expensive. It always bothered me terribly  Now I learned about workhouses and poorhouses in school.  They were terrible places.

How long, do you think, before this new regime the country seems so thrilled with, will reinstate such things?  Or will they just euthanize us?

[Adios]

So let's ask the question that has been bothering me for a while now.  When I was younger, my mother and grandmother used to say they were going to end up in the poorhouse if we wanted something too expensive. It always bothered me terribly  Now I learned about workhouses and poorhouses in school.  They were terrible places.

How long, do you think, before this new regime the country seems so thrilled with, will reinstate such things?  Or will they just euthanize us?

Press gangs for the able bodied, goodnight to the rest.

[Doktor Howl]

So let's ask the question that has been bothering me for a while now.  When I was younger, my mother and grandmother used to say they were going to end up in the poorhouse if we wanted something too expensive. It always bothered me terribly  Now I learned about workhouses and poorhouses in school.  They were terrible places.

They also kept a lot of the poor from starving.  They were awful by today's standards, but remember that they were an attempt to take care of the poor that occurred in a time that was miserable for everbody.

How long, do you think, before this new regime the country seems so thrilled with, will reinstate such things?  Or will they just euthanize us?

Neither.  The poor are a useful political tool.

[Cain]

The thing is, people in prison cannot claim benefits anyway.  And people have more spent on them in prison than on benefits, also.

And people have really always seen poverty as a matter of personal morality and worth.  Like Dok and Khara mentioned, with the poorhouses.  I actually studied that period of British history (the evolution of the welfare state until 1918) and that is a reoccuring motif, one that also appears in contemporary conservative/paleo-libertarian agitprop throughout the world. They broke down though, as they were maintained by charities, and their needs outstripped the resources or, in the case of government run ones, the abuse was utterly terrible, and Victorian moral outrage at that superseded moralizing about the poor.  Plus the extension of the franchise meant more and more voters were having a first hand experience of such places, and putting pressure on the Liberals especially to deal with it (either directly or through defecting to the unions and Labour)

Of course, it is also worth noting the contemporary institution that has most similarities with the poor houses are actually, er, working prisons.

[Doktor Howl]

The thing is, people in prison cannot claim benefits anyway.

Thing is, one 18 year old was arrested, and they threw his mother, who had no connection to the riots, out of her housing, as he had been living there.