Friday, 1 October 2010
Universal Credit
There should be a single form of payment, called and providing Social Security, and fixed permanently at half median earnings, however much that happened to be from financial year to financial year. It would cost next to nothing to administer. Like, for example, free public transport. Or free prescriptions, free eye and dental treatment, and free hospital parking. IDS, over to you.
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This is a genuinely interesting idea, have you expanded on it elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteHow would you deal with children, and with abled body adults who have dropped out of the workforce? While I think these problems are exagerrated, they are still problems with any cash benefits scheme.
The issue with children is a form of welfare fraud, where the couple just has child after child to get the additional checks, which they don't necessarily spend on their children. The abled body adults issue is self explanatory, though not as much as an issue at a time when the UK and US economies are reducing the number of jobs.
The "having child after child" thing is talked up; it is really very unusual, but people who have never actually met the poor are prone to believe that it is routine. Benefit claimants do not in general appear to have any more children than anyone else, and certainly no more than the working poor.
ReplyDeleteAs for able-bodied adults, the whole thing would of course be set in the wider context of the active promotion of full employment, while the conditions for receiving Social Security would vary among individuals: the over-65s and the medically signed off would get it automatically, but other people might not, and some other people - those capable of work both in health and in circumstances (not looking after pre-school children full-time or anything like that) - certainly would not.