And Sunny, I admire you focus on the evidence, but as I wrote earlier it’s not hard to find. If you want me to point to a few papers, here’s one:

Fortin and Lacroix (1997). Welfare Benefits, Minimum Wage Rate and the Duration of Welfare Spells: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Canada

Abstract (edited):
In this paper we analyze the impact of benefits on the length of welfare spells. It introduces a “natural experiment” approach of comparing the length of welfare spells before and after a major reform of the welfare program that took place in the Province of Quebec …. with the reform monthly benefits rose from $173 (1986) to $425, an increase of over 145%. …. our estimates suggest that the reform increased the expected duration on welfare from 2 to 4.5 months.

There are many other papers – the relationship is often found to be heterogeneous across categories of country. Not ever researcher finds the relationship but the weight of evidence looks clear to me. This is not my field, so I am ready to be corrected.

Note in the paper above the effect of a large increase could be seen as relatively modest – combined with Chris’ data on unemployment flows, it is easy to argue that cutting benefits from their current level would do little to cut unemployment while imposing great hardship on many who are unemployed through no fault of their own.

By demonstrating evidence for it? Honestly, your argument is a bit like saying: “Well we haven’t tried whipping people to work them harderand anecdotal evidence from those old Hollywood films about Egypt indicates it works so let’s try it. And the only reason we’re not is because of this “liberal consensus”.”

This is why I have little time for people on the right… all they do is moan without actually presenting much evidence to support their case.

This is certainly the next phase of the neo-liberal offensive, the marketisation of welfare and the extension of the notion of the ‘deserving poor. n the UK, the political parties are being aided by giant US multinationals who see rich pickings(see below) and UK training companies such as A4E who also want a piece pf the pie. If ‘imported’ here as looks likely, (all main parties are rushing to attack the poor) it would cause misery for millions of claimants: particularly disabled claimants whose entry to the workplace is often difficult. It is clearly based on victorian values and blaming the victim, it was revealing that someone has to feed those who won’t get benefits and while there some progressive groups feeding the poor, of course it’s the christian right with their disgusting notion of the deserving poor who were on hand to give a sermon about self help along with the some groceries.

Clearly the sanctimonious, the neo-victorians and the misanthropes will love it, cuts in welfare plus and you can feel good about it by giving some food to the needy. I wonder if Jackart, Matt, Luis?, (why are they so obsessed with welfare?) realize how difficult how difficult it is to get benefits these days and the levels paid, for example, Job Seekers Allowance(JSA) is only around 54.00 a week. The UK has a very punitive attitude to towards benefits compared to the rest of Europe spurred on as others point out by a rapacious tabloid press (btw, only .5% of IB claims are considered fraudulent) and an already brutal claiming process is to get more severe when the Welfare Refrom Act is implemented.

It’s also interesting that while the neo-liberal economy is being challenged in so many areas, in welfare it seems to be in the ascendancy. We shouldn’t forget welfare systems worldwide were fought for by generations of trade unionists and activists such as the in the U.K, the National Unemployed Workers movement in the 1930’s etc,. Now, they are being dismantled in front of our very eyes and progressives, and todays’ unions etc seem to be doing nothing. Indeed, Brendan Barber, president of the T.U.C has broadly supported the UK welfare reforms. Don’t the neo-victorians on here realize that life without benefits will lead to a dystopian future, some people of course will ‘triumph’ and make some sort of a life, but there is no doubt crime would rise and maybe over time social unrest. Though many will blame themselves and fall into despair, becoming invisible.

Btw, again I come on here to discuss, work through and read issues with progressive left/libereral people not right wing libertarians who would throw people to the dogs, already Guardian CIF has largely become unreadable, why do these people come to progressive sites?

Find out more about’welfare reform’ here:
http://www.swansheffield.org.uk

What a kop out and a whiny one to boot. Still your not ranting.

What changes would you like to see made? You did not answer that. In fact you want other people to change it for you.

“disconnection from any semblence of the reality most people experience.”

Is this a joke? Matt, you smeared a socio-economic group that you have no contact with, apart from when you drive past them.

Why would I take any responsibility for social changes ? I’m not a politician, an idealogue, a member of the cognoscenti, the chattering classes, or the liberal elite. I’m just a citizen who sees some change as good some as bad, and the majority as unrelated to the self styled opinion formers whose white noise serves only to expose their immersion in privelidge and their disconnection from any semblence of the reality most people experience.

I think it perfectly logical to ask why self-styled progressives, who generally want to change everything, are strangely silent on this issue, content merely to toss the odd statistic around and dis anyone who suggests change on the basis that the status quo “works”, given that this is exactly the argument that would have been made against welfarism at its inception.

And it’s you’re as in “you’re just a ranter”.

What changes would you like to inflict on the people you drive past? Matt your just a ranter with nothing new to say or add to the debate. All you have done is smeared council tenants and ranted incoherently about the harm that progressives have done to British society. Do you take any responsibility for the changes to British society?

“How then is anyone supposed to prove, in the unique cultural and economic enviroment that is the the UK, that welfarism increases/doesn’t increase dependence, without changing current policy ?”

Research? Read the conclusion to this: http://www.esr.ie/Vol32_2callan.pdf

We have had a liberal consensus on welfare for at least 40 years. Even Thatcher didn’t attempt any serious reform. How then is anyone supposed to prove, in the unique cultural and economic enviroment that is the the UK, that welfarism increases/doesn’t increase dependence, without changing current policy ?
I think the argument misses the point, is circular (welfarism “works” so lets keep it ?) and has resulted in policy paralysis .
Welfarism hasn’t worked, it was intended as a temporary safety net, to allow people a degree of social security if they fall on hard times. It has become an institution, locking swathes of the population into what I would consider an unhealthy economic and social dependence on the state. The suspicion is that welafarism suits the left, not because it solves poverty, but because it creates a docile underclass who, as recipients of state money, are then obliged to also be receipients of state “interventions”. Why else are the left so hositle to the nuclear family if not because it is a self sufficient unit, ungratefull to, and unreliant on state agency. The left are so intolerant of independence they had to draw many “middle class” nuclear families into dependence through the tax credits system. To redistribute wealth shall we adjust tax codes (simple and cheap but no control) or introduce tax credits (expensive, cumbersome and inefficient but allows more intrusion and more control). Welfare is about the only issue on which “progressives”, despite all the social and economic chages of the last 40 years, want to see the status quo maintained – why is that ?

The ‘disability register’ and claims for disability-related benefits are not synonymous.

Disability and ill-health are limiting factors not a complete barrier to work and the reasons why someone who is faced with such limiting factors may be unable to find work are rather more complex than simple ‘lazyness’ – there have to be both opportunities to work that are within an individual’s capabilities and employers willing to take on workers who have such limitations.

Free(ish) markets are driven by profit not by social considerations and are, therefore, under no obligation to provide employment merely because there are people who are unemployed, which means that there will inevitably be some who cannot gain employment because their no demand for their skills and/or labour or because, in the case if disability and ill-health, the constraints that places on them in terms of the kinds of employment they can take up leaves them ill-equipped to compete in the labour market.

Seriously, Jackart, if you can find a successful way to ensure that the labour market provides enough jobs of exactly the right kind to ensure that there is a job suitable for everyone, without resorting to Keynsian-style public works programmes – which can be driven by social considerations – then do say so – there’ll likely be a Nobel Prize in Economics in it for you.

Yes, you raise you useful points for discussion, particularly in terms of how they relate to the issue of marginal tax rates, etc.

With Chris around, I’m sure it won;t be too long before we get in debating basic income in full.

Jackart:

What about the disability register? There are some disabled on there, but most are just lazy.

I’m sure the guy I know who is most certainly registered as having a disability – he’s quadriplegic – but still still holds done a full time job as a toolsetter (he manipulates various aids with his mouth to enable him to programme the machine he operates) would be delighted to know that you think he’s lazy.

For Sunny @21, read @20.

For ‘prevent’ read ‘dissuade’
For ‘NOT stop’ read ‘NOT discourage’.

Sorry, been reading the absolutist language of others and caught a mild meme virus from it, I suppose!

What about the disability register? There are some disabled on there, but most are just lazy. The differentials in percentages of the population in receipt of this benefit in different parts of the country bear this out. The more economically deprived, the higher the disability register.

It is a convenient fiction to move the long term unemployed off the claimant count to hide the shocking truth. Some people just don’t want to work, and the benefits system facilitates this.

Marginal deduction rate Before Budget 19982007-08
Over 100 percent5,0000
Over 90 percent130,00050,000
Over 80 percent300,000170,000
Over 70 percent740,000210,000
Over 60 percent760,0001,680,000

Is that better? Nope, oh well.

From the 2007 Budget report Table 4.2 (you decide how well you wish to trust the figures but …), as a little bit of googling would have shown you.

Marginal deduction rate Before Budget 1998 2007-08

Over 100 percent 5,000 0
Over 90 percent 130,000 50,000
Over 80 percent 300,000 170,000
Over 70 percent 740,000 210,000
Over 60 percent 760,000 1,680,000

I assume from this that by “Over x percent” they actually mean “over x percent but below the next higher figure”. As there is no preview button, I also apologise if the table format is crap.

No, Sunny, with all respect, you need to show that providing resources to a group does not prevent them from finding their own. This is not a double negative – the need is in the assertion that paying people does NOT stop them from wanting to get their own money, for if someone is not given anything they HAVE to get their own.

1. Housing benefit and/or subsidised housing – the distortion and intertia thereof.
2. Low and eroding personal tax allowances. Why on earth the personal allowance is not at something like £12k? (i.e., I find it rather perverse that someone on minimum wage pays income tax and often has to go cap-in-hand to the State to ask for some of their own money back)
3. The issue of multi-generational worklessness.
4. And springing from 3, the poverty of ambition.

I do think Welfarism is significantly responsible for nurturing poverty of ambition. I do not think it “throws people onto the scrap heap”, at all, but that it makes it tolerable for some and so short-circuits ambition borne of necessity.

Also, you say: plus don’t the government keep telling us that we need lots of migrants to do all these unskilled jobs that the indigenous population “don’t want” to do ?

It’s mostly businesses who say that in reports to the govt.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2209508,00.html

The biggest provider of independent care and nursing homes in the country, the Southern Cross Healthcare Group, even took the highly unusual step of producing its own news report about the crisis in care that might lead to 1,000 of its workers being forced to leave the country. Chief executive Philip Scott said: “The reality is indigenous staff don’t want to work in senior care positions so the assumption that these positions will automatically be filled by locals is not true.” Local people do not want to do such work because the pay is so poor.

You also say: Where is your evidence that welfarism doesn’t increase dependence ?

Um, you’re asking to prove something that is a double-negative, without justifying it first. You show me the evidence that the welfare state increases dependence, without the council-estate drivebys, and I’ll take that more seriously.

Do we know that this is not in fact the case? I find the 0.2m figure for long-term unemployed unconvincing (based only on instinct, I admit).

Luis, what I enjoyed most about my last job was the social aspects, meeting new people, conversing with them, sharing a joke that I miss more than my wage. Unemployment is (for me) boring, lonely, a mind numbing frustrating experience in comparison.

So your ‘evidence’ is that you drive past a council estate in the morning, which take, what?, 3-5 minutes, and you don’t see anyone about, therefore nobody there works?

What time in the morning do you drive past?

Must be fairly early if you don’t anyone, not even parents/kids on their way to school?

What are the demographics on the estate?

What proportion of residents are retired?

How do you know that people living there haven’t already gone to work before you drive past?

Do you know the difference between evidence and anecdote – no, don’t bother you’ve already answered that one.

When I wrote “generosity of benefits”, I meant to refer to a degree of generosity that may vary between very ungenerous (zero) and very generous. I did not mean that existing benefits are “generous”.

My point is only that whatever the level of benefits is, we are somewhere on a sliding scale trade-off – it may be that £60 a week is towards one extreme of that scale where the disincentive effect is low, so that scope for reducing unemployment by cutting benefits is low and the misery caused by doing so would be high. But you needn’t deny the existence of the trade off – if benefits were cut to £30 per week some people currently declining work would get a job, and if benefits were raised to £90 per week, some people would decide they’d rather stay on the dole.

Matt love the empirical evidence. I to drive past council estates.

evidence – in the form of cross country comparisons and natural experiments – certainly exists. You can search google scholar as well as I can, so I won’t provide links to papers.

I don’t think that being on the left ought to mean denying that the generosity of unemployment benefits has a causal link to unemployment – in addition to empirical evidence, it’s pretty uncontroversial to say that any labour supply decision is going to be influenced by what the ‘option’ of being on welfare involves. This is one of those trade-offs that I think Mr Dillow would like to see the left acknowledge, and start confronting, rather than having arguments with the right about its existence (which the left would lose).

It’s better to try an accurately measure that effect, and get some sense of its scale against other determinants of (long term) unemployment and also what would be needed to erase the effect – what’s on the other side of the trade-off?

For example, perhaps cutting unemployment benefits to a sufficient extent to make a dent in long term unemployment (by motivating those slackers) might also entail unacceptable levels of hardship for the non-slacker unemployed who cannot find work through no fault of their own. (efforts to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving unemployed being what they are)

Armed with this sort of information, the liberal left can then argue that knee-jerk right wing benefits-make-people-lazy responses are informed by no idea of the scale of the effect and no sense of what costs (in terms of misery) would be involved in cutting unemployment by cutting benefits.

Personally, I like the sound of the (I think) Danish system, which is generous for the first six months or so after losing your job, but then gets increasingly miserly . But I can’t say I’ve thought about it long enough to have any idea of its drawbacks.

If I was being flippant I’d say the evidence is my local social housing estate, which I drive by on my way to work every morning. There’s no sign of movement, apart from the satellite dishes, as no one there works. Unless you expect me to believe that every resident is physically or psychologically incapable of work, then they aren’t working by choice as there are loads of jobs available locally. A cursory look at the web site of any employment local agency will reveal this, plus don’t the government keep telling us that we need lots of migrants to do all these unskilled jobs that the indigenous population “don’t want” to do ?
Where is your evidence that welfarism doesn’t increase dependence ? Why wouldn’t it ? It’s basically institutionalization in the community. Why give up doing nothing if doing something is a load more hassle for hardly any more money ? The real problem is that unskilled people are unwilling or unable to accept the consequences of their life choices/their situation, believing themselves to be somehow worth more than the market will pay them, they use this insult to their over inflated self esteem as justification for doing nothing at taxpayers expense. A decade of brainwashing about “not stigmatizing poverty” allows them to sit in front of the TV all day with a clear conscience.

As for the stats, as anyone who has worked for DWP will tell you, the same people come on and off benefits all the time, as they are periodically forced to take jobs, or they change to a different benefit, or their circumstances change, making the stats look as though a large number are new claimants when in fact they aren’t.
There are also a significant numbers on incapacity benefit, who may or may not be genuinely unable to work, and which has a number of advantages over job seekers allowance (not expected to look for work, no monitoring, more money and more perks). Once someone is on incapacity benefit, they are more likely to “retire” or die than ever work again.
Alternatively, for evidence you could try America where time limits on welfare claims and welfare to work programmes have reduced long term unemployment significantly in some states – and no I don’t have all day to look for the links…….

Second, marginal tax rates are a favourite anti welfare/tax credit argument, but there are a few points that need to be made about the idea.

Firstly, there is a need to consider the location of the margin, take the two salaries below (the monthly figure takes into account standard rate of tax and NI)
£16K = £1060 per month
£18K = £1172 per month

A rise from the first to the second is a 10.5% increase in income, consider though that our income earner will also have some additional costs to pay out. If we assume costs of £600 then this rise translate as a 24.3% increase in disposable incomes. The point is that on low incomes, even small rises in income are highly noticable and this means that the marginal taxation tax credits is not as signifigant as one might think.

The second point to consider is the route to higher income, the gap in pay between low paid jobs and jobs that require training is signifigant, far to signifigant to make matters of marginal taxation that much of a disincentive.

Finally, I belive it is incorrect to assume that everyone is capable of rising above their station. Some people for all their good intentions, for all their desire to improve themselves may not have the ability to live up to their goals. I think it would be deeply wrong to just abandon these people.