The basic idea behind Universal Credit is a good one – those who receive assistance from the rest of us should face a simple and complete system of assistance. The secondary goal, of making the system provide better incentives is good too. The old system – with its interlocking benefits and taxations – leaves people at certain income levels with marginal tax and benefit withdrawal rates of over 100%. Universal Credit tries, at least, to reduce that to 60% or so.…
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How Did People Have Children Before The Welfare State?
A fairly silly thing being said here by Philip Inman:
Not enough babies? Not enough state support for families
Phillip Inman
That really is a silly thing to say:
When governments withdraw from child-friendly policies, their citizens are, unsurprisingly, more reluctant to procreate
Social support – the welfare state that is – has rather increased over the past century or so. Family size has decreased over the past century or so. Reality seems to disagree with Mr Inman but then with Mr.…
See MoreAs We’ve Been Saying, We Cannot Afford The Welfare State We’ve Already Got
You’ll have noted that there’s a cry, a clamour, that we’ve got to raise taxes. Raise taxes on all sorts of people because government’s maw simply must have more cash. Well, OK, this may or may not be true. Around here we tend to think that there are quite a lot of things that government currently tries to do which it shouldn’t be trying – for the simple reason that while it tries it doesn’t manage to do – to do.…
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