A couple of weeks ago Informeaning wrote about the tragedy of tax rises for the rich. We explained that it was unfair to make the rich pay for the fiscal shortcomings of a government obsessed with increasing the gap between the rich and the poor.
The economy may have collapsed because of a culture of greed and gambling that served the rich, but that doesn’t mean the rich should be responsible for the fallout from the crisis of profitability.
No. Since when did anyone in their right mind think that the rich should stoop to the level of the poor and be held responsible for their actions? It is far more appropriate to reward the rich with massive corporate welfare packages, otherwise they would lack the motivation to screw things up again.
However, governments will have to pay for this welfare somehow. The trillions of pounds, dollars and Euros that have been handed over to banks and bankers did not grow on trees (cue, “but paper…”).
Business Week estimates that European governments recently managed to find $4,000,000,000,000 hidden away beneath various mattresses, under the cushions of sofas and, well, just lying around. This was promptly spent on social services, education, hospi.. oh, sorry, on hand-outs to banks.
Istockanalysis tells us that the US government’s corporate welfare bill could reach $11,000,000,000,000, or 80% of 2007 GDP!
Surely governments cannot divert money from military budgets to pay for this? The Council of Foreign Relations reports that total US military expenditure on the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq is likely to reach between $2,600,000,000,000 and $4,500,000,000,000. The Guardian reports that the UK’s spending on these wars in just one year (2008) amounted to £4,500,000,000.
But whilst there are still countries to invade and people to kill, defence budgets cannot be cut.
No. There must be sections of society who can be defecated upon without an uproar because they simply don’t matter? There must be people and organisations from whom money can be taken without anyone really caring.
Information has already reported that the gap between rich and poor has increased to such a degree that there is not much more to take from the poor.
Ah! That’s it! The government still has some kind of commitment to providing for a near-human existence for the disabled, children, and the mentally ill. That’s right, welfare paid to these incompetents can be cut so that, er, we can cover the cost of welfare for banks.
Sources close to the street have informed Informeaning that there are some 3,400,000 lazy, good for nothing children whose lethargy has led them willingly into poverty. They are no doubt scrounging for demotivating government handouts.
There are at least 340,000 homeless children in the UK, many of whom have chosen to live that way out of sheer selfishness, denying parents the pleasures of paedophilia, and drug-and alcohol-induced violence. These, surely, are the people who should be paying the bankers, in return for so many years of bankers having selflessly promoted and provided jobs, homes and futures that the pesky kids refuse.
Fortunately Informeaning is not the only font of such wisdom in the UK. Indeed the government itself has recognised the demotivating effects of providing a nanny state for such lazy, disloyal children, and has tried to address this shortcoming in its 2009 budget.
Kate Green of the Child Poverty Action Group celebrated the “crisis budget”, explaining that, “The money targeted on the children struggling most during the recession amounts to less each week than the cost of a pint of milk”
Lisa Harker of the Institute of Public Policy Research was equally pessimistic: “This was the government’s last chance to make the necessary investment to meet its own target of halving child poverty by 2010. This target is now almost certainly unachievable”
On the other hand, the government announced a £20,000,000 hardship fund for the voluntary sector. This alone could provide 3.4 million children living in poverty with £5.80 each! It is not beyond the meekest of us to calculate the inflationary effective of such handouts.
In Ireland there is more sense. The government there has heeded calls from stockbrokers (yes, that’s right, their opinions are as valid as ever) to cut welfare payments to Irish scroungers (of the poor type). The Irish Business and Employers’ Conferderation has echoed the stockbrokers’ calls, suggesting that as the poor are likely to benefit from deflation, welfare payments should be cut by 3%. At the same time, they have rightly insisted upon a “short-term emergency support package for enterprise”, without which the world would end.
Some of this sense has crossed the Irish Channel. Indeed, the UK government has identified the worst offenders against hard work and innovation – the crazies, the sick and the “dying”. The British Association of Social Workers reported that cuts in the social UK work sector resulting from the budget will result in 500 too few staff in ‘community mental health teams’, and ‘will mean little or no support in the community for a significant number of people with mental illness’. There will also be shortages of psychotherapists, fewer than 1% of people with personality disorder will get help, ‘long-stay patients who could be resettled in the community will have to remain in inappropriate hospital care’, ‘advocacy services for carers will not be developed; residential respite care will continue to be restricted; proposals to support victims of sexual or domestic violence cannot be taken forward’.
Additionally, it reported,
– ‘at least 3,000 people with chronic illness will not receive early intervention support and will have unnecessary hospital admissions;
– proposals to improve care services by expanding the range of services and responses to older and vulnerable people will not be taken forward and long waiting times for care packages will continue;
– plans to develop end of life palliative care services will not be implemented;
– new approaches to self management of chronic disease will not be put in place;
– access to specialist services out of hours to children and adults with difficult asthma will not be provided’
Showing no signs of embarrassment for their slavish submission to the nanny state, the Association of Sandle-Wearing Communist Social “Workers” fail to see that things like “end of life palliative” services contribute nothing to our national wealth or welbeing. Those people are dying anyway, and are no doubt too lazy to work.
If these social workers had the intelligence of Irish stockbrokers, they would realise that $4,500,000,000 can pay for,
– 6000 Rolex Daytona watches
– 2000 holidays in Jamaica
– 50,000 Mercedes
– 40 Lear Jets
– 1000 brats to spend 10 years each at Eton.
– 10,000 Armani suits
– 100,000 wraps of cocaine
with enough left over to pay for a lifetime subscription to Ms Classy’s dominatrix dungeon for each stockbroker working at the FTSE.
Such spending would create real jobs for real people, is as far away places as Colombia, the West Indies, Thailand, China and Poland as well as in the UK. Welfare cuts would compliment this growth in prosperity by encouraging scroungers to turn their back on the recession, show some initiative and either die or get on their bikes and find work.
Meaning, there’s welfare and there’s welfare. Oh, and, yes, scarcasm is the lowest form of wit.
Mediations and politics 