We have witnessed two weeks of unravelling. A fortnight where the socialist foundations of New Labour were exposed by the electorate after Brown’s redistributionist endeavours foundered upon the rocks of his middling class taxcut dogwhistle. And their unionist pretensions were undercut by Wendy Alexander’s referendum put option. Salmond will never buy.
The disaffection with New Labour is a confluence of favourable attitudes and pernicious circumstances. The expansion of clientelism widens the contacts between the state and the working poor. Not those on incapacity benefit, not those on income support, but people who apply for tax credits or pensioners on the borderline of poverty. These people never put money by for adverse circumstances or sickness or retirement, since they had to fund state monopolies through taxation or national insurance. Their plight is imposed by the state and they are forced to recoup the taxes paid through the bureaucratic process of tax credits and means testing.
We forget our history at our peril. Nobody likes a state employee snooping in our lives and people will vote to put them back in Brown’s cuticle. There is only so far the state can intrude, even in a social democracy. Britain has never been a liberal democracy as liberalism died with Campbell-Bannerman, our first “Prime Minister”. Yet, the dismantling of war socialism was a popular move that assured Tory ascendancy throughout the nineteen-fifties, even with Eden’s reversal at Suez. Blair took note that consumerism trumped jingoism.
We have heard that the British people show greater trust in the state than their foreign counterparts. Why? Because the British political system, in the past, has been responsive to state intrusion and has reversed its effects. ID cards were abolished over here. That is why Britain survived as an admixture of monopolistic services and the judicious application of state power. New Labour revealed that the settlement had been overturned by all mainstream parties, with the help of Thatcher’s radical centralisation. All law-abiding citizens found themselves facing unprecedented scrutiny from the government and they responded with true British grit: they walked elsewhere in unprecedented numbers and said “Fuck you!”.
This makes the Tory achievement even more astonishing than it already appears, since so many of their natural constituency have emigrated.
So, Cameron, the people want government off their backs. Adverse economic circumstances and higher taxes, the inevitable outcome of socialism have increased their taxes and reduced incomes. New Labour wanted a voting bank and they found that state dependency equals Northern Crock (especially in Crewe) . Scything waste will reduce expenditure. It is not difficult. Reduce pork, reduce taxes.
“These people never put money by for adverse circumstances or sickness or retirement, since they had to fund state monopolies through taxation or national insurance.”
I disagree. They never put money by for adverse circumstances because they knew that the state would always pick up the pieces. Many of them bought expensive cars, frequently went on holiday, etc. Their money, of course, and free to spend how they wish, but however pernicious the state has been over the past twenty or so years (and further back), people have still found the money to fund the greatest consumer boom in history.
You seem to say that it does not matter how much the state may penalise you, you are still responsible. To which I say bollix.
Give us some evidence of your assertions. If not, shut up. You have no idea of how the deserving working class live and you demean them with you fux collecvtivist debt trashing.
They are individuals. You have no idea how many of them are in debt and how many of them are not! What a pity my first commentator was a pisspoor tory.
Because that is what they were told is the case. People considered themselves to have an “insurance policy” run by the state. Just as a rational person who is paying an insurance company for cover will presume themself covered and not make further provision, so the population in general did the same thing. The attitude was “I’m paying for it so I expect to get it” which is entirely reasonable.
Now we libertarians may think that naive, we look at what the state did as setting up unsustainable Ponzi schemes for future generations to pay for. But for the greater part of the people, we cannot blame them for not understanding that. And a person on a limited income, who believes they have cover, is making a rational decision to spend what they have remaining on some comfort in life; a TV or a holiday. People have for decades been told to believe that the state is running comprehensive insurance schemes. They don’t tell people that the taxes paid this year only cover next year’s bills; that there’s no money for the future. The tax you paid when you’re 20 is gone when you’re 21, it’s spent, it’s been pissed up the wall by the government of that year, it hasn’t been invested for your future health or social care.
This is Von Mises territory- the simple fact that government interventions send the wrong signals into the marketplace, causing actors to make the wrong decisions. It’s the same as with credit expansion. If the wrong signals are propagated (e.g. by manipulation of interest rates) then the market as a whole will do the wrong thing, and it’s no good moaning about how they ought to be wiser. That is what will happen.
So let’s have less of this snooty “it’s all the stupid chavs’ own fault” line. It just isn’t the correct analysis, and the strong tendency of conservatives to analyse the problem along those lines is a key indicator that conservatives are never going to solve the whole sorry mess.
Dear Mr Chaston,
It is a pity you do not seem to be able to take criticism without resorting to rudeness.
The problem with your assertion concerning personal responsibility
lies in the fact that those same penalised individuals actually voted for the government penalising them. If you choose people known to like ponzi schemes to run your finances, you cannot really complain when you get trapped in yet more ponzi schemes. As Alexis de Tocqueville* once said
As for your appeal to Mr Cameron: good luck with that! From what he says, he is more likely to waste the money in carbon-trading schemes rather than cutting taxes.
* This quote has been attributed to other people too.
So, what was wrong with the comment that got smitten?
If you choose people known to like ponzi schemes to run your finances, you cannot really complain when you get trapped in yet more ponzi schemes.
Unless those same people are responsible for your (and your parents & possibly grandparents) “education.”
As Alexis de Tocqueville* once said
In a Democracy, the people get the government they deserve.
Well, whoever said it, they were wrong at least for some of “the people.”
I agree whole-heartedly with Ian B,
The welfare state was sold as cover “from cradle to the grave”. To this day a sizeable chunk of UKGov’s tax intake is via National Insurance*. The fact that “paying your stamps” nowadays (and for quite some time) has fuck all to do with benefits etc and it all just goes into the big pot to be as Ian, rightly, puts it “pissed up against the wall” escapes most people.
It especially escapes the elderly (who are most in need) because, when they were younger, there was a connection and they were told that we were building a New Jerusalem fit for heroes. How many times have you heard an elderly person say, ” I’ve paid into the system all my life and now that I’m in need…”? We have been conclusively shafted. OK, my generation (I’m 34) is different. We (mostly) don’t have the slightest expectation of the State doing anything for us in our dotage but for the generation who fought WWII and then voted for Attlee it’s different. They were promised a welfare state and at first stuff looked good. Initially everything was free on the NHS and it looked good. Look at it now. Try and find an NHS dentist. Even then NHS dentistry isn’t free, merely subsidised and therefore still expensive (and usually deeply primitive). People are pulling their own teeth in the garage with a pair of pliers. The system is so completely arse over tit the only rational response is extremely dark humour. (Un)fortunately something Brits are good at.
*Which is spectacularly inefficient. I know, I once temped at NICO**. I also know because my wife has had a 6 month battle with HMRC over 600 quid. Apparently she had overpaid income tax and underpaid NI. She had failed to grasp that “voluntary” (as in NI contributions) is defined rather differently by HMRC than it is by the OED. Somewhere in the bowels of a Revenue building is Franz Kafka laughing his ass off.
**National Insurance Contributions err… Organisation.
Not to be confused with a heroin addicted German singer then. Or perhaps not. I wonder how the Velvet Underground would have run the Welfare State?
The Velvet Underground had their own
Welfare state.
It was called Andy Worhol.
True patronage because they sold bugger all records on release, brilliant though they were.
Gurning Gordon has a new single out next week
All tomorrows Parties
(are cancelled)
At this level of taxation it is very difficult to save – and the savings themselves are taxed.
As for investments – the financial environment is unstable (a credit bubble in fact) and investments are taxed anyway.
Also if people do manage to save something for their old age it will not be enough – and they have to get rid of any savings or property before they will be given governement aid.
Therefore it is not rational to save anything. “But if most people do not save and invest civilization will collapse”.
So it may – but that does not alter the fact that for most individuals not preparing for old age, sickness (etc) is rational. It is the way things have been crafted.
By the way their is little evidence that most people voted for this stuff – the Welfare State (whether the Lloyd-George stuff or the Atlee stuff or …..) was the work of an elite. Most people voted the way did for all sorts of other reasons.
Of course in the past children looked after their parents in their old age – but people have few (if any) children any more. And the young are now taught that the old are the responsibility of the state (falsely called society).
By the way – calling the Welfare State “pork” may be correct but it is confusing for most people.
The term “pork” is not really used in British politics much – and even in the United States it tends to mean “bridges to nowhere” and so on, NOT welfare schemes like Social Security, Medicare, SCHIP and so on.
Sadly the very people who should be warning the general population about the dangers of the “entitlement state”, the academics and the media, are the very people who lead the charge for a BIGGER government.
Most academics are either radicals (distorted semi Marxoids bringing the oppression of race, gender and class into every subject – even the natural sciences) or “liberals” – which means people who want ever more government health, education and welfare spending. And the mainstream media (who are educated in these universities) reflect their values – as do even many super rich business people.
Actually it is the common people (the ones who did not go to college) who tend to have a few doubts about the whole “Progressive” project.
The academics accuse them of “voting against their economic interests” when they sometimes vote against the left, but it is in fact the case that many ordinary people are dimly aware that the promises of ever more everything do not make sense.
However, it is only a dim awarness (a doubt – a feeling that something is wrong) rather than detailed knowledge of policy.
Sadly the people who could give ordinary voters a clearer understanding of policy (the academics, the media people, the rich business people who hand over vast sums to “educational” charitable foundations) tend to be barking mad statists.
“You seem to say that it does not matter how much the state may penalise you, you are still responsible. To which I say bollix.”
No, I don’t “seem” to say that at all. I would like you to demonstrate that we haven’t gone through a massive consumer boom, you know, provide facts and stuff. The money to fuel this came from somewhere, and a very large part of it came from the “working classes”, whatever they are these days.
Of course, if you cannot provide these “facts and stuff” you could always “shut up”, as you so eloquently put it.
“You have no idea of how the deserving working class live and you demean them with you fux collecvtivist debt trashing.”
How do you know I have “no idea” how the deserving working class live? Do you? Oh, I might desist from “fux collectvtivist debt trashing” if I had the remotest idea what that gibberish meant.
“What a pity my first commentator was a pisspoor tory.”
What a pity you cannot argue reasonably, without ad hominem, and provide facts to justify your arguments.
Most of it came from a massive credit expansion engineered by our political masters and the central banks.
I’ve made a personal resolution to use this exciting new phrase in conversation at least once a day.
This is the great scam behind the stakeholder pension. Unless you can reasonably expect to accumulate a pot of over £100k, the pension it will buy will be just enough to disqualify you from claiming many benefits but not enough to give you the income you need to buy the same services from your taxed income. Yet this was sold to people on low incomes who could never hope to save £100k if they worked until they were 200 years old.
The water gets muddier however the younger you are because there will come a point at which the taxpayer will be unable to provide pensions to the elderly as well as benefits to the governments chosen clients. Something will have to give, and I expect it to be pensions. The question is, when will that happen; I suspect anyone over 50 now should be OK, and anyone under about 35 won’t be, but I could be wrong.
I well remember the elation & euphoria subsequent to WW2…everything, but everything was to be FREE…even visiting furriners were to share our enormous good fortune…FREE.
All this from a totally bankrupt nation hell bent on pennies-from-heaven self-delusion!
Very few did not believe this wonder of wonders.
Distribution of income, even to those with no intention of working for it & swingeing taxation on those who did, would bring about this Utopia.
Doubting Thomases who tried to save what was left of their earnings suffered the cruellest & most immoral tax of all, that levied on their already multiple-taxed savings. (That’ll teach you not to deviate)
Thus began the downward path…
(But Laird, Laird…we didn’a ken……)
“fux collectvtivist debt trashing”
I would join Ian B in regularly applying this “exciting new phrase” if I could figure out how to use it. Assuming that the first word is actually “faux” (as in “false” or “artificial”*), and the second is actually “collectivist”** , I’m still lost. Can anyone help me parse this phrase?
* If that’s not the case it would be difficult to use the phrase in polite company.
** There’s a reason this site has a “Preview” button; more people should try using it.
Laird, thanks for the enlightenment, I’d been puzzling over it under the incorrect impression that fux was a phonetic rendering of an impolite expletive. Now it starts to make sense.
I suspect that “faux”, meaning artificial, was meant to imply that the commenter is in truth a collectivist while claiming to be something else (e.g. a libertarian). As such, my guess is that starting the phrase with “crypto-collectivist” might render it clearer. But that’s just a guess.
Thanks, Ian B, I’ve re-read (several times) the original source of this phrase, substituting “crypto-collectivist” for the first two words, and now think I have a grasp on what it means. (Not that it makes much sense, mind you, but at least I think I understand what he was trying to say.)
BTW, the Centers for Disease Control defines “crypto” (short for “Cryptosporidium”) as “a germ that causes diarrhea.” That seems especially apt when used in conjunction with “collectivist.” It’s going into my lexicon of favorite adjectives, along with “fecular” and “carminative.”