I have been playing with some of the figures in the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecasts this morning. The following is table 4.24 on welfare spending, simplified to take out on some sub-headings and with all the data after the Total Welfare line added by me (although the nominal GDP forecast comes straight from the OBR):
There are three reasons for reproducing this table. The first is to show what so called welfare spending is really on. Spot, for example, the tiny cost of those on Jobseeker's Allowance.
Second, I wanted to show that as a proprtion of GDP the spend on welfare will be falling over the next few years.
Third, I wanted to show the remarkable trends within that decline.
So, note that pension spending as a proportion of GDP will be falling. The decline will not be massive but it is panned to be real nonetheless. Many defend this because pensioners have done well over the last few years and the argument goes that others should now benefits instead.
But the fact is that they don't. Overall 6.% of GDP is spend on other benefits now and by 2021-22 that is planned to fall to 5.6% of GDP. What that means is that in real terms there will be a decline of 15.3% in the spending that would have taken place if the spend on benefits had been held constant as a proprtion of GDP over this period. And that is a staggering decline in the sum that will be dedicated to those who most need help in this country.
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Fascinating – and I wonder what has happened to universal credit from next year? I havent heard govt say it willabandon, quite the opposite. So if they migrate more from jsa and esa on to it, which also affect wtc and HB, then surely the OBR figs are very unreliable, on those areas alone?
Doubtless some of the young will cheer this on only to find that they don’t benefit but it will be to late then.
Sorry, re previous post: I hadn’t noticed that UC had two entries. Not sure I understand why there are different figures in 15/16 & 16/17 on the second entry though either.
But if the first line entry is right, then anyone unemployed is going to be hung out to dry. If Leaving the EU means more unemployed we are in for very very hard times indeed.
Reading the background data on the link you provided Richard: Some of those social security rates are coming down to levels that were prevalent during 2000 – 2007 when the whole employment and income (admittedly much of it debt based) dynamic was utterly different. This is madness. Its cutting whole swathes of people out of the economy mostly. In what universe are our politicians living?
And look at the carers allowance. We have swathes of care homes threatened with closure. More people denied social care at home. There is only one result to that – more people will need to claim the derisory (and in my view criminal) amount that is paid for carers allowance – again taking them out of the economy in terms of spending. Just wait for the VoteLeave fundamentalists to start suggesting euthanasia if you fall into one of Neil Kinnock’s famous categories:
“If Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as prime minister on Thursday, I warn you. I warn you that you will have pain — when healing and relief depend upon payment. I warn you that you will have ignorance — when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right. I warn you that you will have poverty — when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay. I warn you that you will be cold — when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don’t notice and the poor can’t afford.
I warn you that you must not expect work — when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don’t earn, they don’t spend. When they don’t spend, work dies. I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light. I warn you that you will be quiet — when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient. I warn you that you will have defence of a sort — with a risk and at a price that passes all understanding. I warn you that you will be home-bound — when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up. I warn you that you will borrow less — when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.
If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. And I warn you not to grow old.
There’s nothing left to cut in Social Security, not safely; arguably there was nothing left to cut in 2010, unless some dangerous radical stepped up and ended his or her career with a proposal to bring back in-house those costly public-private ‘partnerships’.
The word, of course, is ‘safely’.
We all got over the idea of ‘humanely’ when support for disabled children was cut in 2010; deluded liberals believed these benefits to be the ‘Holy Cow’, the most deserving case if all, that couldn’t possibly be cut without a public outcry and backbench rebellion.
While we munch on that delicious and divinely blessed beefburger, let us consider ‘other material mechanically-recovered from the carcass’ of the cow: the Benefit Cap, and the abandonment of principle it represents.
It is a blunt commitment that the state will walk away if your needs cost more than a predetermined amount.
Once we’ve accepted that principle – and, as far as I can tell from the media and the limited amount of published polling data, ‘we’ the public have accepted capping and we’re happy that single mothers with three or more children should rely on foodbanks or give up a child or two – it follows that there is no reason why any benefit should not be cut, at any human cost, provided an effective propaganda campaign that expels the beneficiaries into an ‘out group’ can be tested successfully on the focus groups.
We can take it as a given that the media will stay onside and the opposition will be ineffective. Or worse, refuse to challenge the purpose and the propaganda because they, too, are chasing the same voters on the same dismally amoral electoral calculations.
The 15 percent cut can be made, and more, if such a calculations is correct: and I *do* trust our government on this: cutting benefits to disabled children made no electoral impact whatsoever, the growth of foodbanks and the reappearance of childhood malnutrition made no impact on the core conservative vote, and ‘sanctions’ or Starvation Orders register a net approval among voters sought by all the major Parliamentary parties outside Scotland.
They are doing this because they can, and all moral arguments that say “They can’t because of the human consequences” miss the point: they can, and they did, and the human consequences didn’t matter to anyone who matters.
If we oppose this – ‘Oppose’ it as if there is more to opposition than ineffective twittering – we have a mountain to climb: a vertical mile of icy indifference and a willingness to face avalanches of appalling propaganda.
More excellent forensic analysis Richard. Thanks so much. It is said that information is power but it seems frustratingly impossible to translate the legion issues you raise and discussed here into a joined-up attack on the Tory anti-state agenda, largely because of Corbyn’s and McDonnell’s intrasigence and lack of leadership.
I don’t know why anyone is surprised by Tory party policy. It does what it says on the tin. CON-servative! It has always governed (especially since 1979) to protect private assets in any way it seems fit, irrespective of the impact on the rest of society. As has been discussed time after time, neo-liberal economics is an ideological ‘CON’ on the scale of institutionalised religion.
So – how to get the truth (reality?), both macro & micro, out to the general public before our country is once again dragged down by these ruthless millionaires? You do your bit, and a lot more, by identifying and analysing the issues here, regular public appearances and, most importantly, teaching the enxt generation. But unless the gauntlet is picked soon up by a group that can challenge the status quo with a modicum of authority, we are just another bunch of angry people talking to each other.
In the course of your wide-spread activities what is the reaction of like-minded academics, economists, activists, journalists and others who recognise the very real threat to the country currently being orchestrated by the government?
Either the Labour Party will get its act together before 20120 by working with the Greens, SNP, et al, which isn’t going to happen is it?, or else the nation will have to wait for the economic shxt to hit the fan and react to clean up the mess, which I fear will be a challenge greater than Hercules’ 5th task. It always seems to take at least a generation.
I hope I don’t appear perennially negative. I’m sure you share the frustration of all your readers and contributors. Noam Chomsky always says to get active at local level but there isn’t time to rebuild a new progressive party from the bottom up, even from the Green Party’s critical mass. Anyhow, American politics is so different to ours, with much more power devolved to individual states, citis and even townships. I think here in the UK we are facing an unprecedented task, further complicated by the insane Brexit catastrophe which will take up an excessive amount of government & civil service time plus money for what return?
Apologies for the lengthy rant. It’s a gloomy Sunday here on the south coast with not much to cheer one in the press. But, to end on happier note, here’s at least one good news story! http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/kindly-elderly-man-buys-little-9313860.
This, against a background of rising rents and rising costs for food and fuel. The net effect will be far more than 15 percent.
2020 not 20120. Hopefully it won’t take that long – the human race will have long self-destructed by then!
Looks as though every year we’ll be spending ten times as much on housing benefit as on JSA. This is a great example of a – presumably for them emminently affordable – government commitment to the property market.
I wonder if it’s a free market or a ponzi?
I know of a pensioner who will get a £200 cold weather payment this winter and who is very wealthy and whom could afford to give the £200 back (she won’t BTW) without blinking an eyelid.
I wouldn’t mind if JSA and housing benefit was issued without a means test but they ( and other benefits) are. In fact it should be called ‘mean testing’ because that is what it is like for the working poor and the under 35’s at the moment. The disabled too.
So looking at your figures it seems that a cut of sorts is heading the way of the elderly. My main concern now is those of pensionable age who live in poverty or have worked in low waged work like a retired agricultural worker I know of in Nottinghamshire.
What I find hard to believe however is that once again these stupid nasty Tories are taking Government money out of the economy – money that is someone else wages or income. The sheer ignorance of that is inexcusable given the rich knowledge about how state money works and supports markets.
This government has too many provable spots but simply doesn’t want us to know about the nastiest ones. Why would that be? I’d suggest a few nasty spots:
1 A demonstrably broken ideology to which most of its politicians is completely addicted.
2 Both a willingness and a desire to hide the horror to which they know, or should know, given their own figures and statistics, they will take us by continuing down their misguided road.
3 An absolute devotion to making sure that, as that imbecile IDS said yesterday while attacking Paul Johnson’s comments, that “someone” pays, the unspoken but obvious thought behind that being just as long it’s not him and his mates, if he has any, but the poorest and weakest which will soon be the majority of the population.
Those taking us down the tubes simply have no moral or ethical code whatsoever, however much they might protest to the contrary.
To echo John D’s comments; who if anyone in Labour is paying attention to analyses like these? Or even carrying out their own analyses? As with the NHS and so many other areas, there is a mountain of evidence to support detailed attacks on the government but there is little sign of that happening.
Perhaps other parties might make better use of your work, Richard?
I will be sharing it
Richard
Good to hear – the (red) parrot seems to be comatose in the bottom of its cage…
Nothing will happen to derail the austerity express.
It is propelled by renewable energy, along rails of fascism, toward a destination of gold-edged clouds and winged harp-playing Angels.
At least; that is my press-induced vision of the end game.
We have no press freedom now, so we do not have an educated electorate to make choices based on knowledge. We have an electorate that believes tax-avoiding-sociopathic-media owners over the visible evidence in their lives.
Face it Richard, hard rail-crash brexit is exactly what the right want. A permanently poor under-population scrabbling for the pickings from their owners gold teeth.
Fresh from talking to an NHS employee (although she works for a private health service contractor, she is still “NHS”) who was ORDERED back from her family holiday in Spain for two days work because illness had deprived the lab of staff….but who had refused and is now facing disciplinary action. Bullying is rampant among health service employees, whoever they work for.
Look not upon the health service as a paid-for-but-free-at-point-of-treatment service, but as the last large financial resource for the totally corrupt and parasitic financial sociopaths that run “hedge funds” or “pain capital” “management” services….
Oh well….your MP is supposed to be representing the interests of his/her/ constituents…even when said constituents have not the faintest idea what those interests are. Or when said constituents have been told by the “free” press that their best interests are fatal assaults on elected members and physical assaults upon migrant workers.
I’ll leave you with this:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_full.html#.WDvs9-vfWrX
I see dead people. Perhaps when those outside the disabled communities start seeing them too they’ll realise the inhumanity of what’s happening and the flaming torches and pitchforks will finally be brought into play. Maybe then the riots which so terrify the Tories will start in earnest.
Bill; troops are being trained now to control civil disorder.
The police will be purely there to cease to take action if disorder occurs and to call armed troops into action.
The government will take any and all necessary actions to quell civil disorder and ensure it never occurs after.
Fortress London will take less than an hour to institute…with all public transport stopped…planned long ago…
This is a democratic monarchy…with the subjects allowed to be free as long as they do what they’re told!
These are the same troops witnessing their kit and colleagues vanishing and their pensions going up in smoke? I doubt the Tories can expect support from them. Thatcher at least had the sense to well reward the armed forces and the police, creating a (probably very misguided) loyalty. This lot seem to believe they can survive on the basis of entitlement alone. We should bear in mind too the investigations into their alleged fixing of the election remain ongoing and may yet bear fruit. None of what they want is set in stone.