How low can you go?

As promised today I am going to have a look at the PM’s promise to fund tax cuts by slashing spending further and especially to cut welfare payments.

Already the right wing rags are full of fellow travellers claiming that the country is drowning under a tsunami of welfare payments and that there is plenty of room for cuts, that we are subsidising the lazy, the indolent, the shirkers and the sick note brigade.

It is almost as if food banks don’t exist, or heat banks, or as if the UK doesn’t have just about the worst social security net in the western world. Nor, does that take into account the fact that most payments go to those in work, but who are massively underpaid and to pensioners who, yes you guessed it, have the worst state pension going.

Of course, this is a well worn path and it works because the media will run endless stories telling the vast majority, who are not on benefits, that the problem is that the unemployed are living life high on the hog. So let’s try some facts.

The government spends £112 billion on the state pension, you know the triple locked one, guaranteed to rise and paid to people who often vote Tory, so that is probably safe.

The government spends £26 billion on sickness benefits which has soared post covid and because NHS waiting lists are growing all the time. So spending more on the NHS would save money.

and the unemployed get £1 billion, already down from £5 billion.

Many of these benefits are being rolled over and merged into the Universal Credit payment which will soar as a result, doubtless this will be used to “prove” that benefits are soaring. But they aren’t, the whole point of Universal Credit is to save money and “simplify” the system.

So you tell me where do the cuts fall? Where are the big savings to be made? Who do you want to freeze to death this winter or force back to work when they are ill? Who do you want to make homeless?

Come on, there are rewards for the right answer, some tax cuts for you and your rich friends. Or to be honest smaller tax increases, because huge tax rises have already been announced, for years ahead.

You could abolish inheritance tax, paid by the top 5% of the population, after they die, mainly on unearned and untaxed property wealth. Or give more pension breaks to millionaires, like Jeremy Hunt did.

Come on they are only the poor, cold, hungry, old, and sick. If you can’t squeeze a few billions out of them why did you enter politics in the first place?

How low can you go?

Jonty’s Jottings

Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.

By Jonty Bloom Media