Opting Out? Government says NO!

 

In September 2023 SOYMB posted ‘Huddled Masses Opting Out.’

‘In a supplication reminiscent of the entreaty at the base of the statue of liberty in New York harbour, the UK Work and Pensions Secretary appeals to those of the working class who, through no fault of their own, are unable to offer themselves up to full-time, long-term exploitation, to help reduce the financial burden of running this particular capitalist entity.

The MailOnline reports: ‘One million people on sickness benefits could be forced to start looking for jobs including thousands with mobility and anxiety problems as the Government gets set to slash billions from its welfare budget.

More: ‘Up to a million sickness and disability benefit claimants are to be ordered to seek work. Unveiled by Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride the blitz is aimed at slashing the £26billion welfare budget’.

https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2023/09/huddled-masses-opting-out.html

Moving on to November, now comes the big stick.

‘BRITS on benefits who refuse to look for work risk losing their right to free NHS prescriptions, dental care and help with energy bills.

The move, set to be announced in next week's ,Autumn Statement forms part of Jeremy Hunt's major plan to crackdown on economic inactivity.’

Around nine million Brits of working age are currently unemployed.

On Wednesday Mr Hunt will unveil a £2.5bn “back to work plan” in an effort to bring the figure down. Fresh funds will help up to 1.1 million people find work. Under the scheme benefit recipients who don't look for jobs risk losing access to free NHS prescriptions, dental care, legal aid and energy bill support. And sick notes will be approved by civil servants instead of doctors in a trial where patients will be treated by therapists working for DWP.’ The Sun 17 November

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/news-money/24767659/brits-will-lose-free-prescriptions-in-benefit-crackdown/

To anyone who thought the Labour Party represented the British working class:

‘Millions of out-of-work Brits are a “horrible, painful toll” on the public purse and are “dragging” down the economy, a top Starmer ally declared last night. (speaking at Labour Party Conference).

Whose economy?

Shadow Cabinet Minister Peter Kyle said: “There are 2.5million people that are just unknown to the economy for reasons that we don’t understand, and there’s no exercise to go find them.“There are 700,000 young people who are not in education, training or work. And that figure has been growing, not diminishing.”

The shadow science and tech secretary hit out: “All of these things are personal tragedies, but they’re also taking a horrible, painful toll on our economy.

“It is dragging our economy down. So we need to get cracking on it.” ‘

The Sun 8 October

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/24329382/

The Guardian has; 'Speaking on Thursday afternoon, Hunt said the government wanted to address the “rise in people who aren’t looking for work” to help grow the economy.

“These changes mean there’s help and support for everyone – but for those who refuse it, there are consequences too. Anyone choosing to coast on the hard work of taxpayers will lose their benefits.”

Confirming the plans for a benefits crackdown, the Treasury said it would be taking steps to strengthen the current universal credit sanctions regime to incentivise claimants to comply with their work-search requirements and move into a job.

Under the current system, claimants can be subjected to open-ended sanctions if certain requirements are not met, such as attending a meeting with a work coach. These sanctions can result in benefit deductions until a claimant re-complies.’

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/16/unemployed-benefits-in-jeremy-hunt-autumn-statement

From the Socialist Standard, April 2014; ‘The Times (15 January) reported that George Osborne was to tell a conference organised by the think tank Open Europe that ‘Europe will face further economic woes if it fails to cut welfare spending’:

‘As Angela Merkel has pointed out, Europe accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world’s population, 25 per cent of its economy and 50 per cent of global social welfare spending. We can’t go on like this.’

He didn’t explain why not, but the implication must be that, to compete on world markets against the products made in countries which spend less on welfare, Europe has to reduce its welfare spending towards their levels. In other words, a race to the bottom.

One dictionary definition of ‘welfare’ is:

‘1. good health, happiness, and prosperity. 2. the maintenance of persons in such a condition; money given for this purpose.’ (Oxford Reference Dictionary)

On this definition, Osborne was in effect saying that, due to competition on the world market, all countries are forced to reduce the ‘good health, happiness and prosperity’ of their population. What an indictment of capitalism! And what a confirmation of the futility of reformists’ attempts to make capitalism serve human welfare.

But is it true? One thing Osborne ignores is that ‘welfare spending’ is not motivated by a desire to improve human welfare but by a desire to improve the productivity of the workforce – a better educated, more healthy workforce feeling less insecure can produce more profits. This was in fact the capitalist rationale behind the introduction of the so-called Welfare State and why the drastic reduction of such spending to the levels in China or India which Osborne and Merkel seem to be proposing could prove to be counter-productive.

Osborne probably knows this and doesn’t regard such spending as an unnecessary burden that has to come out of taxes that ultimately fall on profits any more than he does military spending which also comes from this. For him, both will be part of the necessary costs of running capitalism. What he will be against is welfare for those who can’t or don’t work and so are useless from a profit-making point of view – the sick, the disabled, the mentally ill, the old, the unemployed and the unemployable. In short, the most vulnerable members of capitalist society.

The fact that welfare has become a dirty word for capitalism shows that it is not a system geared to improving human welfare. If it was, then as productivity increased (as it does slowly from year to year) more resources would be devoted to services and amenities that enhance the welfare of everyone. But this is not what happens. Far from it. The pressure is downwards not upwards.

The fact is that capitalism is a system geared to making profits and accumulating them as more and more profit-seeking capital. That’s the logic which is imposed on all countries through competition on the world market. In this sense Osborne and Merkel are right, but that’s a convincing reason to get rid of capitalism and to replace it with a system in which the welfare of all can and will be the priority. Which is only possible on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources and the end of production for the market with a view to profit.’

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1316-april-2014/

The Sun is part of Murdoch’s News Corporation.

The United Kingdom is the world’s sixth largest economy.

Bums On Welfare

House Speaker John Boehner says that unemployed Americans are pretty clearly malingerers, bums on welfare who have decided that they don't feel like working: "This idea that has been born, maybe out of the economy over the last couple years, that, you know, 'I really don't have to work; I don't really want to do this. I think I'd rather just sit around.' This is a very sick idea for our country," Mr. Boehner said in comments made after a speech at the American Enterprise Institute this month.
I could point to the overwhelming economic evidence that nothing like this is happening - after all, if what we were seeing was a mass withdrawal of labor supply, we should be seeing wages for those still willing to work taking off. I could also point to zero interest rates and low inflation as evidence that we're living in a demand-constrained economy. I could ask how, exactly, Mr. Boehner believes that increased willingness to work would conjure more jobs into existence.
But what really gets me here is the fact that people like Mr. Boehner are so obviously disconnected from the lived experience of ordinary workers. I mean, I live a pretty rarefied existence, with job security and a nice income and a generally upscale social set - but even so, I know a fair number of people who have spent months or years in desperate search of jobs that still aren't there. How cut off (or oblivious) can someone be who thinks that the problem here is just that these people don't want to work?
When I see stuff like this, I always think of the opening of B. Traven's book The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: "Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn't know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason why he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love, and to demonstrate how little he knows the world."
Return of the Bums on Welfare
It has long seemed to me that the issue of unemployment benefits is where the debate over economic policy in a depression reaches its purest essence. If you're on the right, you believe - you more or less have to believe - that unemployment benefits hurt job creation, because you're "paying people not to work."
To admit that depression conditions are different - that the economy is suffering from an overall lack of demand and that putting money into the pockets of people who are likely to spend it would increase employment - would mean admitting that the free market sometimes fails badly. And, of course, disdain for the unemployed helps a lot if you want to oppose any kind of aid for the unfortunate.
But there's something remarkable about seeing these claims made now - because even if you believe that expanded unemployment benefits were somehow a cause rather than an effect of the economic crisis, those expanded benefits are long gone. They're back down to their level at the height of the "Bush boom" in 2006.
And Josh Bivens, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute, recently pointed out that the recipiency rate - the percentage of the unemployed receiving any benefits at all - is at a record low. As Mr. Bivens says, the pullback in benefits is one main reason that economic expansion isn't reducing poverty.
So basically the right is railing against the bums on welfare not only when there aren't any bums, but when there isn't any welfare.

Paul Krugman from here

The ConDems - the real cheats

Welfare cuts that are meant to get the jobless back to work are driving down the living standards of hundreds of thousands of people who are in no position to find a job.

Chancellor, George Osborne, told MPs in June “It is about reducing dependency and changing people’s lives for the better … Where is the fairness in condemning people to a life on benefits because the system will not help them to get back into work?”

Researchers examined the potential impact of the reforms in areas covered by 325 local councils, and found that, in 314 of them, most of the savings would come from reducing benefits paid to households where somebody works. Social security reforms will save taxpayers £11.8bn in 2015-16, but it is reckoned that 59 per cent of that will come out of 530,000 households where there is someone working, compared with 41 per cent coming from 1.18 million households where no one works. Almost half of the total savings, £5.3bn, will come from a tightening up of tax credits.

Sharon Taylor, chairman of the  Local Government Association’s finance panel, warned “In many areas welfare reform is not encouraging people into work because the jobs simply don’t exist, while the opportunities for people to downsize their homes to cope with reductions in benefits are severely limited by a lack of affordable accommodation. Unless more is done to create new jobs and homes, households will be pushed into financial hardship and we will see a huge rise in the number of people going to their councils asking for help to make ends meet.”

TUC’s general secretary, Frances O’Grady, however, said: “The Government has tried to sell its welfare reforms on the back of mistruths and nasty stereotypes. However, this research exposes what a devastating impact its policies are having on communities throughout the country. Ministers are not cracking down on cheats as they claim, but destroying the safety net that our welfare state is meant to provide for those who fall on hard times through no fault of their own.’

The study calculates that most families on benefits will receive £1,615 a year less than they would have done under the old system – except in London, where high housing costs will reduce the incomes of households on benefit by £1,965 a year. 

Who takes what?

In the UK we have a vindictive campaign against those claiming disability benefit who have been called "LTBs", lying thieving bastards, by the agency contracted to root out suspected fraud. In the US a similar purge is being promoted. American Social Security pays benefits to people who cannot work because they have a medical condition that is expected to last at least one year or result in death. Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, in his Wall Street Journal article “Yes, Mr. President, We Are a Nation of Takers.” is outraged by the specter of shiftless American males who have decided to ditch work and file for disability instead. Eberstadt believes many people filing for disability are faking it.

The number of working-age Americans relying on Social Security's disability programs has indeed increased over the past two generations. Jared Berstein, a former economist for the Obama administration, notes that much of the rise is due to simple demographics trends. As they age, baby boomers are more likely to have disabilities than they did when they were young. That’s one reason for the rise. Another is the fact that more women have joined the workforce and can receive disability. As Berstein explains, about half of the increase in disability rolls since 1990 is due to these factors. In additional more people onto disability rolls is the rising retirement age. Since the retirement age has been gradually rising since 1983, you thus get more people in their 60s applying for disability. Also, the Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act of 1984 provided for certain revisions, including a change in the standards for determining mental impairments and more emphasis on the combined effects of multiple ailments in the absence of one severe impairment.

Could some of the low-income men who apply for disability actually work in the absence of benefits? In 2010, the rejection rate nationwide was 65 percent (although some claimants later succeed through appeals). Among older workers, the answer seems to be no. Researchers are able to determine this by looking at whether or not rejected applicants are able to find jobs. Older workers, they find, have a very hard time getting a job if they don’t get disability. Young workers have a better chance of getting employment some going back to the workforce with whatever disability they have often accepting whatever job they can find at lower pay.

Both in the UK and the US the real purpose of highlighting supposed benefit fraud is to shame and discourage genuine recipients from claiming.

The working class know who the real takers, the real thieves and the real liars are in society. The top 1 percent of earners’ real wages grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011, yet the real annual wages of Americans in the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011. Almost a quarter of all jobs in America now pay wages below the poverty line for a family of four. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 7 out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage — like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains. The average pay of a Walmart worker is $8.81 an hour. A third of Walmart’s employees work less than 28 hours per week and don’t qualify for benefits. Walmart earned $16 billion last year and plenty of that went to Walmart’s shareholders. The wealth of the Walton family now exceeds the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of American families combined.

Capitalism used to sell us grand prosperous visions of tomorrow, full of leisure. But exploitation and oppression didn't disappear. Real wages have stagnated, debt soared, jobs have been lost and the prospects for the new generation are bleak. A far cry from the promised future

Taking liberties from the poor

Kaaryn Gustafson extensively documents the trend toward the criminalization of poverty. "The word welfare is now commonly used pejoratively—as in “welfare mother” or “welfare queen.” We often hear the word welfare used to describe a bureaucratic mess or to describe economically and socially marginalized populations. She demonstrates how, in her words “welfare applicants are treated as presumptive liars, cheaters, and thieves,” which is “rooted in the notion that the poor are latent criminals and that anyone who is not part of the paid labor force is looking for a free handout.”

Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) recently introduced a bill that would require states to implement drug testing of applicants for and recipients of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. This is reminiscent of Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) failed legislation last summer to drug test the unemployed and those receiving other forms of government cash assistance, which ultimately died in the Senate but around the country states are taking matters into their own hands. In at least 30 state Legislatures across America are considering bills that would limit the meager amount of state help given to needy families struggling to make ends meet. Many have proposed drug testing with some even extending it to recipients of other public benefits as well, such as unemployment insurance, medical assistance, and food assistance, in an attempt to add more obstacles to families’ access to desperately needed aid. Florida’s Legislature has passed a bill that will require welfare applicants to take drug tests before they can receive state aid. Once signed into law by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, which is likely, all adult recipients of federal cash benefits will be required to pay for the drug tests, which are typically around $35. In Maine, Republican lawmakers introduced two proposals that would impose mandatory drug testing on Maine residents who are enrolled in MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program for low-income and disabled residents. Under a similar bill that passed both the House and Senate in Missouri, recipients found to be on drugs will still be eligible for benefits only if they enter drug treatment programs, though the state wouldn’t pick up the tab for their recovery. In Massachusetts —where about 450,000 households receive cash or food assistance — a bill introduced by state Rep. Daniel B. Winslow (R-Norfolk) would set up a program requiring those seeking benefits to disclose credit limits and assets such as homes and boats, as well as the kind of car they drive. His reasoning is “If you have two cars and a snowmobile, then you aren’t poor..." San Diego, for example, established a program known as Project 100%. Under the program, all individuals who apply for California’s welfare program are subject to an unannounced home visit by a plain-clothed welfare fraud investigator, who is deputized and employed by the local prosecutor’s office. Home visits occur before benefits are issued, and consist of an interview and a walk-through of the home. Investigators may, and do, look inside closets, bathroom cabinets, laundry baskets, and trash cans during the walkthrough. Welfare applicants are informed that the home visits are designed to verify their eligibility. Anyone who refuses consent for the interview or walk-through will automatically have her welfare application denied.

The notion that the poor are more prone to drug use has no basis in reality. Research shows that substance use is no more prevalent among people on welfare than it is among the working population, and is not a reliable indicator of an individual’s ability to secure employment. Furthermore, imposing additional sanctions on welfare recipients will disproportionately harm children, since welfare sanctions and benefit decreases have been shown to increase the risk that children will be hospitalized and face food insecurity. In addition, analysis shows that drug testing would be immensely more expensive than the acquired savings in reduced benefits for addicts.

There is a long tradition behind this, going back to the Poor Laws in England. The theory was that if you make getting relief as painful, disgraceful and threatening as possible then only the truly desperate will finally resort to it. This resulted in the misery and brutality of the work-houses that Dickens wrote about, trying to bring about a public reaction to the horrible condition of the poor and their children. This is the era politicians want to return to – wage slavery, child labor, adulterated food, unlimited pollution and raging epidemics of preventable disease.

Taken from here

NHS - health rationing

The State-capitalists and reformers dream comes to an end ? The National Health Service is trumpeted as the finest achievement of the Labour Party throughout its entire history. For years Labour supporters when tackled on the non-socialist and pro-capitalist nature of the Labour Party would reply with the one riposte, ‘Ahh , but what about the NHS?’ Its chief architect , Aneurin Bevan , was very sure of his aims, it was to be an institution which would take care of all the medical needs of the working class for evermore without charge. No matter how expensive the treatment might be , medical attention would be obtained for all. For free!

"Faced with limited budgets, the NHS cannot indefinitely continue to afford to fund free care for all." the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh conference , "Rationing, Charity and Private Support: How Much Longer Can We Afford the NHS?" , will hear.

Dr Rodger, a kidney specialist based in Glasgow, said the NHS faced growing expenses in a number of areas, including the new generation of increasingly expensive drug treatments coming on to the market, on top of growing population needs."It is clear this situation is not sustainable financially, particularly when taking into account the anticipated impact of the recession on the NHS, and that something will have to give if the NHS is to survive," he said.
Dr Rodger said doctors wanted clinical decisions to be based on need, not money, but a debate was required.

The ugly realities of capitalist economics has always reared its head throughout the history of the NHS . No reform is secure under capitalism. In fact, the workings of capitalism continually undermine any reform that has been introduced. We pointed out in 1991
"All services within the NHS are being priced and sold within an internal market: GPs must buy services from hospitals, hospital departments specialising in one area from those specialising in another, and so on. These new contracts for services can only be entered into if the buyer has the money in the budget. No money to buy, no contract; no contract, no provision of service. The original aim of the NHS was ostensibly to provide free health care paid out of state funds; now each sector of the NHS must rely on its own budget and constantly think in terms of the market. This is just making explicit what was already implicit in the financing of the health service."
In 2006 a new rule was introduced into the NHS requiring GPs when recommending elective surgery to provide at least four choices of hospital, one of which must be a private institution (with the operation to be paid for out of NHS funds). GPs themselves are supposed to operate as semi-independent companies, with competition within the NHS being provided by the Primary Care Trusts (PCT). The need to control their budget and to meet their targets is meant to promote a pseudo-market within the NHS and improve efficiency.

The NHS has to be paid for, and the money has to come from the capitalist class. Ever since its inception the history of the NHS has been a story of trying to provide adequate funding. Every government has looked for ways to find the money and cut the costs, and every government has failed. The original set-up has been modified, tinkered with or altered repeatedly, all, we are told in the interests of efficiency. And every government produces a fresh plan with a fanfare of trumpets that promises to solve all problems.

Contrary to popular belief, the NHS is not dedicated to satisfying the human need for health care, or the eradication of disease. Medical practice and research in capitalist society is strongly influenced by its role in maintaining a healthy labour force, and in socialising and controlling people in a class-divided society. The NHS keeps us fit for work so we can produce profits for our bosses. It is an integrative mechanism that helps hold class-divided society together.The need of individual bosses to make as much profit as they can from us has to give way, to a certain extent, to the long-term needs of capitalist society as a whole.
One cannot understand the NHS by looking at a snapshot of it at one point in time, but by looking at how it came into being, the social context within which it operates, in whose interests it operates, and so on. Hospitals don't fall from the sky.
In Marxist terms, medical care is important for the reproduction of the forces and relations of production. The reproduction of labour power is provided for through the payment of wages - which enables us to feed, clothe and house ourselves at a historically and culturally specific level - but also through the state, which has, to an extent, taken responsibility for the collective reproduction of labour power by providing education, social security, and other welfare services. The development of the NHS was in part a recognition that a shift away from unskilled manual work to other forms of employment would require a healthier workforce and a more stable and qualitatively superior one. To put it more plainly, the NHS helps keep us fit for work so that we are forced to keep on selling the only thing of real value we own - our creative abilities - to our employers.

To some extent , socialists have to acknowledge that NHS made the living standards for some sections of the working class better than they had been under rampant capitalism and its early ideology of laissez faire ( although these ends should never be confused with socialism ). But Socialists also argue that all reformist activity is subject to the changing nature of capitalism. To fight the same old welfare reform battles over several decades is demoralising enough, but when previous reforms are put into reverse the case against the system which puts profits before needs is stronger than ever. The NHS decline would support the argument that capitalism cannot sustain meaningful reform.

The best laid plans

On Monday the Labour government presented its long-prepared plans to reduce benefits to the long-term unemployed and sick with a view to forcing them back to work for an employer. They have made it clear that they think that “too generous” payments for incapacity have undermined the proper functioning of the wages system by weakening the economic pressure compelling workers to sell their labour power to some employer to get money to buy the things they need to live.

Under the plan the Labour government hope to throw up to a million people off the welfare rolls and onto the labour market. But to work this requires that a million new jobs become available. This was over ambitious anyway but, unfortunately for them, their plan was announced just as the economy is entering its downturn phase, and perhaps the worst slump for many years, and think-tanks are predicting a steep rise in the number of unemployed over the next few years. For instance,

“The number of people out of work will reach two million by 2010, the highest level since the early days of new Labour, according to a think-tank. The unemployed number will rise from 1.6 million to 2 million for the first time since July 1997, according to the Ernst & Young ITEM club.” (Times, 21 July)

The reason why the unemployed benefit part of post-war Beveridge Plan eventually failed was that it was premised on an unemployment rate of 2-3 percent, whereas by the 1970s and 1980s this was more than twice that. The new plan is likely to fail for the same reason - a higher than anticipated levelof unemployment.

Not that this will really worry the government - or its successor - as, if the people thrown off incapacity benefit cannot find a job, they’ll move to the lower benefit paid to the unemployed. And so save the government money.

In any event, the whole episode is yet more evidence that Labour governments are just as anti-working class as the Tories, basically because all government, however well-intentioned towards workers (not that this one is), cannot make capitalist work in the interest of those forced to depend for a living on working for a wage or a salary.

If you accept responsibility for running the political affairs of the capitalist class, then you have to do their dirty work. Which the present Labour government has shown itself all too willing to do.
ALB