UK: Benefits Pay Much More than a Job

Here's a well-researched and well-argued article that, after investigation, reliably shows that the presence of food banks doesn't mean that welfare cheques are not high enough, but only that "sometimes the state messes up benefit payments and leaves nasty delays. They prove that people aren’t good at managing money. They suggest that not everyone puts rent and food before fags and booze (but we don’t want to get into a discussion about the deserving and the undeserving here). They confirm that supply creates its own demand."

My disagreement with the writer is that she seems to be in favour of a welfare state, even overly munificent, and that she attributes the current state of affairs - in which working members of society practically support and maintain in a comfortable lifestyle generation after generation of non-working members - to the altruism of individuals.

I think instead that people pay excessive taxes not because they are philanthropic but because they don't have the courage to rebel against them, as they haven't had the courage to rebel against Islamisation and unlimited immigration.

Spontaneous, individual charity is a sign of a moral spirit and improves the character of the giver without corrupting that of the recipient. Imposed charity is just tyranny by the state.

Below are the astonishing results of the author's research, confirming what we already knew, namely that benefit claimants are paid for doing nothing much more than the average worker earns for devoting almost half of his waking life to a job.

Having read a good amount recently on food banks in the UK this week, I had a little wander around the benefits system. I looked at a postcode in the southeast of England to see just how much you get from the welfare state in the UK if you aren’t working at all.

I started with a couple with two children and added up their housing benefit, jobseeker’s allowance, tax credits and child benefit. The result? A tax-free income of £24,269. That’s the equivalent of an earned (and hence taxable) income of £32,000. That’s very significantly more than the number we are always given as the UK’s average wage.

Then I looked at a single mother with two kids. Her payments come out to just under £24,000, so again an earned income equivalent of just under £32,000.

Finally, I looked at a single unemployed man of working age. His benefit payments in the same area come to a tax-free total of £12,300 with £7,600 of that being housing benefit. I then looked up the accommodation available to rent at that price or less in the area. Rightmove provided 68 pages of possibilities.

Now, none of these amounts add up to fortunes. But they don’t add up to anything approaching absolute poverty either. Live frugally and stay out of debt, and things should be fine. Not exactly luxurious, but fine.