Welfare? April 11, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in British Politics, Economy, The Left.trackback
Last month Prospect Magazine ran an article by Peter Kellner of YouGov, arguing that there was a quiet revolution taking place. He posits on foot of the problems the Conservatives ran into with welfare ‘reform’ bill that polling data conducted on behalf of Prospect magazine suggested that there was a shift taking place in relation to the attitude in Britain towards welfare itself.
And this wasn’t a shift that the left would be comfortable with.
He argues that:
A number of different, though related, issues need to be teased apart: the affordability of the welfare system as a whole, our attitudes to redistribution, the extent to which people think the system is being abused, attitudes to specific recipient groups, and the enduring debate over universal versus targeted benefits.
So what are the results?
To the question: “In general, do you agree or disagree with this statement ‘The government pays out too much in benefits; welfare levels overall should be reduced?’” 74 per cent agree; 17 per cent disagree.
To the idea of cutting back benefit 51 per cent agree while 35 per cent disagree.
More disturbingly again he notes that Labour voters support cuts 59 per cent to 32 per cent.
Kellner looks at other YouGov research and notes one very interesting snippet.
Last spring we asked people about taxation and public spending. We listed the variety of taxes, and the different forms of public spending and asked how fair the system was. To some extent with spending, and to a greater extent with taxes, people thought the systems unfair.
We then asked people to take all the different taxes and forms of spending into account, and posed this question: in terms of you and your immediate family, do you think the overall value of the benefits and public services you receive are worth more or less than the taxes you pay? A mere 8 per cent said they were net gainers, while 55 per cent said they were net losers. (The rest thought the two were roughly in balance or didn’t know.)
And he points to middle class voters as believing themselves to be ‘losers rather than gainers’ by nine to one, but he notes that working class voters hold the same views six to one.
His analysis is, that along with information from the British Social Attitudes data that since the 1980s indicates a slippage in support for redistribution.
On a political level none of this should be a surprise. The Thatcher period was a time when the very concept of redistribution was pushed aside. Support for
But here’s a thought. Kellner notes that:
We asked people how many welfare claimants are “scroungers” in the sense that they “lie about their circumstances in order to obtain higher welfare benefits (for example by pretending to be unemployed or ill or disabled) or deliberately refuse to take work where suitable jobs are available.” Just 28 per cent think the problem is confined to “a small minority” or “few, if any” claimants. Two-thirds of the public say that “scroungers” are a “significant minority” or “around half” or a majority.
But he doesn’t contextualise the piece with the actual figures. That lack of contextualisation is important because it somewhat adds to the discourse surrounding this issue that there are a significant numbers ‘scrounging’. Interestingly we know from the Irish experience in recent years that benefit fraud is actually very low and relatively easily dealt with and that the discourse is simply wrong on that issue.
For those of us who argue for universal provision – a position that might be seen as traditional strong social democrat (and even weak social democrat given that just this last month Frank Field, of all people, was arguing for universal provision), this is dispiriting.
There is another dimension to the vexed issue of who are “the right people.” Some of our benefits are universal (notably the state pension and winter fuel allowance). Child benefit is currently paid to all parents of children under 16, but will be removed from higher-rate taxpayers from next year. Other benefits are means-tested.
The argument for universal benefits is a familiar one. They bind society together. They avoid stigma. They are cheap to administer. They reflect the view that there are other kinds of redistribution than rich to poor—such as from childless adults to parents and children, and from working people to the elderly. They uphold the principle of national insurance, that we pay money in at one stage in our lives, and draw it out at another.
How persuasive are such arguments these days? We tested them in relation to child benefit and pensions. On child benefit, the public’s verdict is clear cut. Seventy per cent, support its withdrawal from higher-rate taxpayers. Only 21 per cent oppose the move.
And depressingly it is those on lower incomes who are most antagonistic to universalism in this provision. Small wonder, given the discourse surrounding it though. What’s fascinating is that the issue of general taxation to fund it is rarely raised. But then, as evidenced by the near-fetishistic reduction of the top rate in the UK in the past month or so, we know all too well the dominant narrative on that in the contemporary period.
This shift in attitudes demonstrates that years of relentlessly pushing in the media a relatively simplistic but coherent ‘Big Lie’ does pay political dividends. This is also testament to the stamina, patience, discipline, clear-headness and long range perspective of the Right (Tory, New Labour, Liberal Democrat) that it has kept at this message for decades and they’re now reaching the point where they have engineered an ideological consensus that will neutralise any dissent from or resistance to the planned dismantling of the welfare state. I think the Right has learned that it’s not tactically or strategically wise to ‘break’ sectors, like Thatcher and the miners or Reagan and the air-traffic controllers, in campaigns that could last a few months or a year, at most. A full frontal attack on the welfare state could result, would probably actually guarantee, a huge mobilistation of opposing forces and, from the Right’s perspective, runs the 50/50 risk of defeat. That would mean the welfare state, and the taxes needed to sustain it, would be safe for another generation, which is not what the Right, and its financial backers, needs. They’ve obviously decided to play it long term and to undermine working people’s ability to identify their own interests in the welfare state and how those interests would be better served by an enhancement and enlargement of the welfare state and not it’s destruction. Creating phony dilemmas about universalism, bogey men (‘dole cheat fathers 25 children with 15 different women’), re-surrecting ‘deserving v. undeserving poor’ tropes buried after WW1, and never, EVER, posing the question of what British society would look like without a welfare state (hellish for the majority, as they’ll soon find out) results in the kinds of attitudes being picked up by YouGov.
Contrast that with the collection of corporate taxes and the proliferation of tax evasion and avoidance schemes in Britain. As any avid reader of Private Eye would know the UK state takes a very, very relaxed attitude towards these latter activities and basically volunteers to forgo billions every year in taxes. The scale of tax evasion/avoidance dwarfs that of welfare fraud and there are even less justifications for the former activity. Many cases of what in a legal sense would be termed welfare ‘fraud’ would often be morally justifiable and defensible in a philosophical sense. The very poor skimming a little extra is no big deal, as far as I’m concerned, the very wealthy skimming huge sums is where the action is and where the focus should be.
This shift in attitudes demonstrates that years of relentlessly pushing in the media a relatively simplistic but coherent ‘Big Lie’ does pay political dividends
But you need to add to this:
(a) no significant political or media opposition to this ;
(b) most people not, over the past twenty years, having claimed or needed to claim non-universal benefits, and hence not having personal experience to combat what the media mostly say.
(Which is one argument in favour of universal benefits, of course. But among various points that can be made is one that came up recently on here, that you cannot sensibly make policy by appealing to perceptions that are actually wrong.)
Sure, the media point is crucial. This shift in perceptions of the welfare state is, I would argue, almost totally the product of a media generated and enforced consensus. I don’t think it would be too unreasonable to argue that probably less than a thousand people in Britain (journos, academics, politicans, think-tank wonks) have engineered this profound de-legitimising of welfare provision.
And while I take your point about huge numbers rarely interacting with the welfare state, and so being vulnerable to misrepresentations of what it really is and does, I would argue that a functioning welfare state is critical to social and political well being and that, when it’s gone, many currently decrying its ‘excesses’ will now doubt be wondering why it’s not safe to walk the streets and why they have to live in a compound surrounded by armed guards. The latter being daily realities for the ‘privileged’ in countries without a welfare state or re-distributive politics.
In this jurisdiction at least, there was a fair bit else going on contributing to waning popular support for the welfare state, not just the efforts of a few determined journos and wonks…
- a shift in the political view of welfare, from a genuine safety net to a conduit for distributing pre-election pork. Bertie in particular saw welfare spending as a plank to shore up cross-class FF support. It doesnt take much for the electorate to pick up on this cynical view, lots of letter-drops thrumpeting increases in head-line SW rates in the run-up to local and general elections will do the trick.
- a growing realization that notional full employement is a long way from a 0% unemployment rate. In previous times of high unemployment, the working assumption was that nearly everyone on the dole had no other options. This assumption was battered by the persistent rump of >5% unemployed when clearly there were jobs aplenty to be had.
- a weakening of the kith-and-kin aspect of social solidarity, for example by the EU decision that children not resident in the state must receive child benefit if their fathers are working here.
- rampant inflation in the actual cost of services covered by in-kind welfare, suddenly a medical card and rent allowance seem like much tastier benefits when the cost to workers of visiting the GP or putting a roof over their heads are accelerating northwards
- and finally it must be said that fraud is an issue, even if the implications are distasteful. WbS states that fraud levels are very low, certainly detection levels are low, but there is a persistent suspicion that this is merely the tip of iceberg. The Department doesnt help with their rediculous notions of control savings extrapolating upwards from actual frauds closed off. Neither did the ease-of-payment options introduced during the boom, for example having benefits paid directly into bank accounts without much or any requirement to be physically present. But I dont we think we really have the hard reliable data to call it one way or the other. Again, I would probably be alone here in advocating for a tough fraud enforcement regime being strongly in the long-term interest of a sustainable welfare state – not to victimize those doing a bit of cash work on the side, or claiming the OPFP when not really alone, but instead to ensure that the system is widely perceived to be water-tight.
there is a persistent suspicion that this is merely the tip of iceberg.
Ah, a persistent suspicion. And what a fine thing persistent suspicions tend to be.
Maybe it’s me, but firstly I think few enough would be in any sense comfortable with fraud. But I suspect many of us here would be more uncomfortable with exaggeration of welfare fraud not least because it feeds into a narrative of a feckless underclass/working class etc etc. And that’s certainly evident from the media/political discourse as against the actual hard evidence. Notable is the prosecution rate – even on foot of increased communications with social welfare.
I’m really not taken with your point that…
- a growing realization that notional full employement is a long way from a 0% unemployment rate. In previous times of high unemployment, the working assumption was that nearly everyone on the dole had no other options. This assumption was battered by the persistent rump of >5% unemployed when clearly there were jobs aplenty to be had.
It’s generally accepted by most mainstream economists of left right and centre that a 0% unemployment rate is impossible in a mixed economy for various structural reasons. Debate is to be had on where levels of unemployment will be consequent to that analysis – 3 to 13 per cent seems to be a band within which ‘full employment’ is still considered to be applicable.
In 2001 this state had a level of c.3.1% unemployment. Hard to come away from that with the idea that means there was a ‘persistent rump’ of anything very much. Not saying in the slightest there haven’t been those who for one reason and another have gamed the system, but that their numbers are again exaggerated and that when work has been available the overwhelming majority have taken it.
In a context of 2012 with 14 per cent plus unemployment we are clearly in a radically different context and in any case, it seems to me that dealing with the tiny minority who won’t move towards employment is better dealt with by measures other than the punitive.
“instead to ensure that the system is widely perceived to be water-tight.”
The problem with that motivation is that it doesn’t apply, or have the credible appearance of applying, to other areas of government policy which manifest themselves in the dealings of the state with the elites. I’m thinking here of how the government interacts with banks, developers, entrepreneurs. Name you favourite bugbear here. Salary caps for instance, to name one. Without getting into the details of any specifics, the point is that the government focuses on welfare fraud as part of a narrative to undermine public provision and the welfare state. It doesn’t apply the same energy to the optics of standing up to the vested interests of the elites, in large part because it supports rather than opposes those vested interests, and in part because the grand narrative of austerity requires a constant ideological focus on the interaction of “big government” and the little people as individuals.
Whatever about the actual level of welfare fraud, the point is simply that welfare fraud is made to be the story, when many other issues are not.
Coincidentally, just came across this story:
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/04/12/today-in-greed/
Just another example of the insiders creaming the system for their own benefit while the big story is about the most marginalised in society and how they are allegedly screwing the rest of us. You know, sort out the vested interests of the elites first and then come back to us about how to address welfare fraud.
‘We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.’
John Kenneth Galbraith
Reading Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine at the moment, it’s pretty clear that the assault on welfare provision is a precursor to future privatisation of the system. By removing universality and entitlement the crack is created whereby private operators can squeeze profit from the system. Simple as that unfortunately.
there is a bbc docomentry called centry of the self. it’s worth watching all four. its about the evolution of how marketers engage with the public. episode on how politics took uo the tactics. rather than the right playing a long game think they play a serious of very short games where they attemmpt to appeal to feelings rather than logic. greed, self interest suspicion are always there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhxfArTAcfM&feature=related
It is universal, the attack on welfare that is! Of course it is a pivotal part of the neo-liberal agenda, that seeks to hide the inevitable consequences of capitalism. Austerity as we have seen is the right wing answer to save capitalism, however as we know of right wing neo liberals, they are only interested in the short term, thus they do not see/nor care what is coming down the track? How far can austerity go , before it is required that it can only be pushed on the people, by the presence of troops in the street? The majority of respondents quoted in the first article, believe that cutting welfare and waste in the public sector will ensure an economic recovery!. However what many don’t realise is that not only will it not ensure recovery, it will lead to a general race to the bottom for all wage earners. By the time the majority realise that it is capitalism that is the root cause it will be too late. Already worldwide we can see the creeping symptons of fascist police states, curbs on personal freedoms, restrictions on the use of the internet, and the use of ‘the war on terrorism’ to enforce laws that would never in ordinary times be allowed by the public. Even if there is modest growth in the world economy,(which is not certain either) the next recession is inevitable. At the start of the next recession most western countries will begin with public sector services and welfare provision already trimmed to the bone, governments hamstringed by restrictions imposed by the like of the EU fiscal compact will be powerless to act. Therefore states will only be able to raise finances from within, in the form of more cuts and raised taxes, that will be on such a scale that it will make this recession seem like a picnic! Can anyone see anything other than police/militarized/fascist states that will be needed to keep people controlled????
recently krugman had a post on how the states receiving the most federal aid were the same states who keep returning US republican reps. The right has a very coherent line. In UK its the same story. The problem is that the leading left party in Britain (and indeed elsewhere) simply adopted right wing solutions.
Who is effectively (underscore) providing the alternative and coherent line.
I think its going to get worse before a this balances out.
Pervese how the more the right caused this mess the more the right get to implement their solutions.
Give them one thing they are flexible, adaptive and capable of implementing their agenda in a relentless manner.
Once upon a time the welfare state existed to protect the poorest of the working class from the brutality of the capitalist market. Now the welfare state seeks to force welfare recipients to submit to the dictates of the market.
Once upon a time social democracy aimed to change capitalism; but it was capitalism which changed social democracy.
Two good links on the subject.
Seamus Coffey on Irish inequality pre & post fiscal transfer:
http://economic-incentives.blogspot.com/2012/04/distributional-effects-of-direct-taxes.html
Michael Taft on who gained the most in terms of both income & social transfers during ze boom. Square that one with the attitudes in the OP! Prob something to do with how universal the transfers were?
http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/2011/09/remember-that-statement-how-during-the-boom-years-we-all-partied-as-a-nation-remember-those-prescriptions-how.html
OP dealing with the UK aside!
Nah, that’s grand. The Irish situation is of even greater importance in the immediate context.