Benefits system
Simon Heffer has a column in today's Telegraph discussing the flaws of the UK benefits system.
It raises some important questions. Unfortunately, it also tries to sell a certain political party in the process, which devalues the issue discussed to just mere politics.
But here's one:
The report [on reform of the benefits system, published today by the Centre for Social Justice] is laced with models and case studies. “Why”, it asks, “do those most in need of encouragement have the greatest penalty”? A young man working 25 hours a week in a part-time job will, they show, lose 84 per cent of his new wage in taxation and loss of benefits. A lone parent would lose 61 per cent. A low-income couple who choose to live together – such as for the purpose of bringing up children – will lose £1,350 a year by doing so. So the benefits system, as we currently have it, has failed. It keeps people from looking for work, because their marginal gain is frankly not worth it; and it institutionalises the breakdown of society, not just by removing incentives for individuals to be productive, but by encouraging that underclass of single parents that sociological surveys since Charles Murray have shown lead to poverty, criminality and underachievement by their children.
I often wonder the same.