Wednesday 10 December 2008

Twats of the day (6)

At the bottom of the same article covered in my previous rant we find this:

Mr Purnell said: ... "There's a danger of saying, as David Cameron did in the Sunday papers, that all five million people on benefit are potential Karen Matthews. I think that's offensive to people looking for work."

He said the Government was spending an extra £1 billion over the next two years on more Jobcentre advisers and other help. Mr Purnell said that the lone parent changes were aimed at giving young people more "aspiration". But he admitted that "if there isn't childcare, that would be a good reason for not going to work". Today's White Paper features moves to increase sanctions on those who avoid work, with a range of penalties from losing one week's £60 jobseeker's allowance to being forced to work for the benefit.

However, Right-wing think tank Civitas hit out at the proposals for being "too soft". It claimed that allowing single parents to simply "monkey about with their CV" was a "waste of time".


As ever, clowns to the Left of me, jokers to the Right.

1. I've bolded the important bit; "an extra £1 billion over the next two years on more Jobcentre advisers and other help". I make that about 20,000 extra tied Nulab voters come the next election (20,000 x typical salary £25,000 x 2 = £1 billion).

2. As to 'childcare', it's not my decision if single women choose to have children. They ought to think about 'childcare' before they have 'em. Yes, I am perfectly happy to scrap Child Tax Credits (which are a straight bung for single parents actually) and roll them into a higher Child Benefit of (say) £30 a week (or whatever is fiscally neutral), but of course I'd restrict it to the first three children per mother to prevent baby-farming à la Karen Matthews).

3. The real point is that welfare claimants have no strong motivation to find a job because they lose more in benefits than they can earn in net wages. Until the Powers That Be grasp this simple fact, all this tinkering achieves nothing.

4. Civitas make superficially fair points actually, but I've read plenty of their pamplets and while they are good at diagnosing the reason why the welfare system is so corrosive (the perverse incentives and poverty trap), to my knowledge they haven't twigged that the key to all this is simply reducing the savage withdrawal rates. Such a measure would probably more than pay for itself (total withdrawal rates of seventy per cent-plus are quite clearly on the downward slope of the Laffer Curve).

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Something's just occurred to me about this legislation. If it doesn't affect mothers with small children, isn't that just going to be an incentive to find a local chap to get you up the duff every few years?

Mark Wadsworth said...

That was my first thought.

If we follow that train of thought, it would be better to excuse mothers with one child under 16 than just mothers with one child under 7 - that way they just have another one every 15 years, not every 6.

Even better, treat women the same whether they have kids or not. That way there is no financial incentive to have children at all.

This is the rationale behind the Citizen's Income system.

marksany said...

"The real point is that welfare claimants' have no strong motivation to find a job because they lose more in benefits than they can earn in net wages. Until the Powers That Be grasp this simple fact, all this tinkering achieves nothing."

I CAN'T STAND IT! WHY WHY WHY WHY DOESN'T ANYBODY GET THIS?

Anonymous said...

"He said the Government was spending an extra £1 billion over the next two years on more Jobcentre advisers"
What a masterstroke! They've created more jobs advising people how to get a job:
"Sorry sir; the only vacancies we have at the moment are for job advisors!"

Lola said...

I don't think it's quite as many as 20k 'workers'. £25K salary, yes, but with on-costs (pensions done't forget) you can at least triple this. So say 666.67 extra workers.

(PS I think I've fixed my post)

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, a more sophisticated calculation would reduce their salaries by the tax and NI that is deducted and increase it again by pension promises. By and large, the two net off to nil.

There are also premises costs, lighting, computers, stationery and so on, but as the original figure of £1 bn is within a huge margin of error either way (if not completely plucked out of the air, like the £1 bn for the two-year mortgage holidays), the only sensible course of action is to take it at face value.

The Remittance Man said...

1 billion. Just about the same sum the service chiefs are squabbling about to save the Harrier force. Something I would suggest that is far more urgently needed than yet more useless mouths.

Mark Wadsworth said...

RM, I have pencilled you in as Defence Minister in my 'Bloggers Cabinet.