No mince pies for you

Once again a government, and this is a Labour government, is desperately trying to cut the benefits bill by getting more people into work. Worthy and work beats the alternatives hands down but still you get that feeling that this is all based on the idea that anyone using the welfare state is really just a shirker, a slacker and a leech.

Amazingly after 14 years of Tory benefits cuts and remorseless ostracisation of the poor there is still more to be squeezed out of the feckless, or is there? How about a more radical plan that really attacks those living off benefits and doing nothing to earn them?

I’d vote for that.

So let’s abolish all in work benefits but force companies to pay a living wage and create decent pension schemes, no more subsidising low pay and insecure jobs by the taxpayer.

The state would save many billions a year and bring in more in income tax and NI contributions from those higher wages. You could use some of the money to cut corporation tax, improve infrastructure, build homes and improve training and education, all the things that business tells us they want and need. You could even fund creches to encourage millions into work, the economy would boom.

After all we know that the right and its pals in business hate taxes and the welfare state, abhor state intervention, believe in free enterprise, despise subsidies, and support competition red in tooth and claw.

Interestingly enough I once suggested this idea to a senior member of the CBI, you should have seen their face. They spluttered something about in work benefits being necessary in order to cover the “transition to higher pay” or some such gibberish.

So I asked them how long the transition was going to last, because the benefits had been paid for well over 50 years by this point and there seemed to be no end in sight?

Answer came there none, nor was there an invite to the Xmas drinks do.

It must have got lost in the post.

Jonty’s Jottings

From Jonty Bloom Media Ltd

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