This is copied from a comment on the Guardian which is talking about making the elderly share the burden of cuts. So far it’s received over 1,000 agrees.
Here’s excerpt from an article from the British Medical Journal showing the tactics of this agenda. Unfortunately it’s a pay site, so I couldn’t read more.
So for those who wish to destroy the European model of welfare state, the structural weaknesses of social welfare in the United States offer an attractive model.
First, create an identifiable group of undeserving poor.Second, create a system in which the rich see little benefit flowing back to them from their taxes.
Third, diminish the role of trade unions, portraying them as pursuing the narrow interests of their members rather than, as is actually the case, recognising that high rates of trade union membership have historically benefited the general population.
Finally, as Reagan did when cutting welfare in the 1980s, do so in a way that attracts as little attention as possible, putting in place policies whose implications are unclear and whose effects will only be seen in the future. All these strategies can be seen in the UK today.
The tabloid press, much of it owned by multi-millionaires, is at the forefront of the first approach. Each day they fill their pages with accounts of people “milking the system.” By constant repetition they create new forms of word association, constructing a cultural underclass. “Welfare” is invariably associated with “scroungers.” “Bogus” invariably describes “asylum seekers.”
They accept that there is a group of deserving poor, whose situation has arisen from “genuine misfortune” (which seemingly excludes refugees caught up in wars), but when these groups appear in their pages it is because they have been let down by the state, which is devoting its efforts to the undeserving. And as a growing body of research shows, this continuous diet of hate does make a difference,
Such vilification of the undeserving poor is not new. What is changing in the United Kingdom is the progressive exclusion of the middle classes from the welfare state through incremental erosion of universal benefits. The logic is appealing, but highly divisive: Why should the state pay for those who can afford to pay for themselves? Why should “ordinary working people” pay for “middle class benefits”?
The economic crisis has given the government a once in a lifetime opportunity. As Naomi Klein has described in many different situations, those opposed to the welfare state never waste a good crisis.
The deficit must be reduced, and so, one by one, benefits are removed and groups are pitted against each other, as the interests of the middle class in the welfare state wither away.
Read more here:
Quick comment here, as i’m about to take a nap
Our systems and circumstances are quite different. As opposed to welfare state, i think the terms “safety net” and “universal benefits” are more applicable here. There is also a disconnect here between the poor, and the working poor in terms of benefits.
Child benefits here are universal i believe in terms of tax deductions. It’s around $7,500 per dependent no matter where you are on the income scale. I believe that social security benefits and medicare are also universal (primarily for the elderly) – with the amount of ss determined by a formula according to how much you made over your working life. According to the very reasonable 9mile, we’re going to have to start means testing those at some point.
I have never noticed any real animosity here towards refugees or asylum seekers. Perhaps they’re not as publicized here as they are in the smaller uk. My state has quite a sizable number, have never heard any real complaints. And they do require to a fair degree recourse to public funds.
The union situation is different here than in the uk, and to complicate the situation, it varies according to whether a private, federal, or other public. Those at the state and municipal level can vary wildly between states, and even within a state. In my own state – the unions are beyond strong, they are the state.
Reagan’s cuts were not terribly subtle if you lived in an area affected by them. I lived in NYC and the results were quite obvious in the ballooning of the homeless population who where released from institutions, cut off from services. Also in the decrease of available SRO’s. That’s his most shameful legacy, out of many i think.
From Think Progress: Ten things conservatives don’t want you to know (remember) about Reagan:
Bluth-
Re #6 – He also managed to decimate scientific research in the process, as funding went to weapons and defense research instead.
One rather big difference between the US and UK benefits is the difference here between unemployment and welfare here. Honestly i think our system of unemployment in better, but then maybe i don’t know enough about yours. Is it true that jobseekers (or whatever your unemployment benefit is there – i’m not totally clear on your system) has to be paid back?
Ours is paid for via insurance, levied on employers. If a worker is laid off, they can collect for a defined period of time, usually somewhere around a year i believe. The amount has nothing to do with personal circumstances (ie whether or not you’re single, have a family, what your expenses are), but is calculated on a formula based on your average paycheck over a minimum number of weeks worked prior to becoming unemployed. The maximum per week one can collect is generally around 4- 500+ / wk, depending on the state. (Last time i collected was over a decade ago in NYC. I got the max i believe of around $411 / wk. A friend here gets laid off every winter, he got around $550 / wk last year). There is no obligation to repay any benefit recieved.
Porn,
I’ve never attempted to collect unemployment here. But I sincerely doubt that anyone who collects it will have to pay it back. I think that might be a confusion about tax owed on benefits or not.
Here it is insurance, too, and if you pay in more you are eligible to collect more. Not sure how long until Cameron does away with that.
As for Reagan killing science research that wasn’t weapons based, sure, that just isn’t one of the things he did that conservatives are trying to hide. They LIKE it.
They LIKE it.
I’m afraid that they do, which is just so fucking sad.
Bluth -
this is what i could find -
There are two types of benefits. Means-tested benefits depend on your
income and savings. Contribution-based benefits depend on your national
insurance contributions.
Statutory redundancy pay is treated as capital (savings). The way your
contractual redundancy pay is treated depends on things like which
benefits you claim. If you are not sure, get advice. If your savings are
over £16,000, you can’t get means-tested benefits like income-based
JSA and housing and council tax benefit but you may be able to claim
contribution-based JSA.
Savings between £6,000 and £16,000 will reduce the amount
of benefit you get.
You may be treated as still having savings if you have deliberately spent
them in order to get benefit – get advice if this happens to you.
I do know that our unemployment benefits are independent of any savings or assets, they aren’t taken into account. Welfare they may be, and probably are.
Also from Jobseekers eligibility -
You are fit for work, available for work and looking for work.
This is also a requirement here, and i believe that you have to certify as such each week to collect here.
God, I really can’t bear to talk about this. State unemployment benefit is not related to previous income, or length of employment. Thatcher got rid of that years ago. It’s dependent on the number of NI contributions (or was — I’m not up to speed with all this current bunch of crap artists is doing); if you hadn’t paid NI every year, you got a lower amount. But so far, no you do not pay it back.
(I got caught out that way once, because I’d never realised that the years I spent as a student didn’t count. I can’t have been the only one who had been under the impression they had.)
Every government since Thatcher has been making it more and more difficult. It started by deducting money because you were “not available for work” (e.g. you were foolish enough to admit you’d had a hospital appointment one day) and then ‘refusing” a job that was offered (even if it was either below or beyond your capabilities) and, now, not taking a job even if it’s unpaid, screws up your life, or is so far away you’d spend half or more of your ‘pay’ getting to and from it.
The worst effects have been ameliorated up to now, because if you won your home or rent it the local authoriity will pay most (less a few per cent) of your rent or mortgage interest repayments, and you don’t pay the Council (Property?) Tax, so you don’t lose your home. But this crowd of arseholes are changing that: they’re capping weekly housing payments to a level where, basically, if you live in a lot of places in London, the gap will be so big staying where you are is impossible.
(One reason I really do not want to contemplate this is because if the rent of my flat keeps going up at the usual pace, I won’t be able to afford to stay here in a few years’ time.)
But so what? As far as people like Cameron and Clegg are concerned, what are all these shitty peasants doing taking up space millionaires could use so much better? I mean, get them back into the run down slums they came from and the place will look so much pleasanter and prettier, won’t it?
And you really don’t want to spoil the view of Russian Oligarchs with poor people cluttering up the streets, do you? They probably smell. What’s to stop them splashing the Chanel No 5 about like decent people do? None of them would recognise a decent Armani jacket if they had to sew it by candlelight for ten pence an hour, would they? And they don’t even try to get plastic surgery, so they don’t even look attractive. And they’re always crippled or ill or something. Disgusting. Pathetic. We’re better off without them.
This all goes beyond ideology somehow. You can’t, like you could with Thatcher, credit it to an ideology. None of this bunch have the kind of brain to formulate one or even comprehend one. it’s getting to be simply vindictive. Why, though, is utterly beyond me.
That’s all Squirrel will contribute on this sort of thing, ‘cos it is hurtful and depressing. Already planning the “Adopt an Abandoned Squirrel” campaign . . .
It started by deducting money because you were “not available for work” (e.g. you were foolish enough to admit you’d had a hospital appointment one day) and then ‘refusing” a job that was offered (even if it was either below or beyond your capabilities) and, now, not taking a job even if it’s unpaid, screws up your life, or is so far away you’d spend half or more of your ‘pay’ getting to and from it.
Now things might have changed a bit since i last collected a decade ago, but it wasn’t that draconian here. What it was, every sunday night you had to call in the number for unemployment and answer a small handful of questions by pushing 1 or 2 on your phone keypad. It’s probably done online now.
So, were you ready, willing, and available to work every day this week? yes. Did you refuse any reasonable offer of work this week? no Did you have any paid employment any day this week? no. Basically that was it, and the check came on Thursday. I may have had an appointment every few month or 2 or 3 where i had to submit a list of jobs i had applied for, but honestly that part is a bit hazy.
There was no additional housing or health insurance or other support though. I may have been eligible for food stamps or something, but honestly never thought to check it out. If you’re on welfare here though, you do get Medicaid. Which may sound nice, but in a way it’s in a very real sense penalizing those low income folks who work, but can’t afford insurance by a long shot.
Sorry it was the mortgage/rent relief I was thinking of. Which, as Red says, they have or soon will cap.
As to the refugee / asylum bit, i was kind of surprised to see the btl reactions in this graun thread the other day. It really doesn’t seem to be much of an issue here. During the DSK alleged rape case here, when it came out that the maid had lied about being gang raped on her asylum application, i expected some sort of minor shitstorm. Never really happened. Did a little google and found that suspect rape stories for asylum purposes are indeed somewhat commonly known here to asylum officers.
Bluthner:
Just as an aside, pace the Repugs love of wars . . .I came across this bizaarre piece by David Frum.
I simply cannot understand what he (or “one of America’s leading writers on military affairs”) is trying to demonstrate quite apart from some obvious absurdities like “European societies developed monarchies, bureaucracies and standing armies to fight wars” (Eh ?).
“The New Englanders rejected this idea of managing an unending conflict. . .Nor were the New Englanders keen to replicate the war-fighting institutions they had left Europe in large part to escape.
Instead, New Englanders began to imagine a different kind of future: a future of absolute security obtained by the total elimination of their enemy.”
Er . . .what, from the War of Independence right through to the War of 1812? I thought I’d kind of got the hang of the American right mythologising and rewriting history, but this is downright weird. It’s pure Tea Party speak somehow shoehorned into a non-theory: “Europe>bad>monarchy>worse>nothing but wars . . .”
“The American colonists in the 18th century came to escape that shit . . .”
“Americans don’t want to copy Europe. . .”
And somehow we end up with not Americans, but ‘New Englanders’ inventing some kind of ‘total war’? And, supposedly, the conclusion is that somehow this resulted in everlasting peace, amity and togetherness between the USA and Canada and we can all learn from this American experience in the 21st century?
How? Totally annihilate your enemy in some new non-European way (with drones, presumably) and Pakistan and Afghanistan inevitably happy neighbours ever after like Canada and the USA?
Like I said, weird. Even Niall Ferguson* can string together egregiously dodgy historical examples together to draw mistaken (but politically-right-OK) conclusions more plausibly than that.
Also OT, but, sorry, the war of total annihilation against the Welfare State is just too depressing for Squirrel; and, apropos:
* I thought I heard Ferguson’s giving this year’s Reith Lectures. My first thought was this is typical BBC pandering to the Tory neo-fascist right in the vain hope the ‘liberal bias’ (pro-privatisation) tory freaks might lay off for a bit. Can’t think what else would ‘qualify’ him to do it.
Squirrel -
I think that Frum piece is getting smacked down all over the place.
It’s finally occurred to me where i got my idea about your jobseekers allowance (or maybe it’s just benefit?) – i remember people saying on CiF that the allowance for a single person was something like 67 pounds / week.
By coincidence this article in the Guardian this morning….
Try again:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/10/concierge-services-boom-super-rich-london
Dunno if you caught this article last year -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/aug/07/tim-adams-who-owns-britain
Amy/Squirrel/y’all: jobseekers benefit for a single person is indeed max around £71/week. That’s the base level for over 25s. You don’t have to pay it back, but boy, do you have to work for it…
There are three major kinds of benefit available currently: jobseekers allowance (JSA), if you’re unemployed and well; income support (IS) if not able to work, unemployed and insufficient national insurance contributions (NIC); incapacity benefit if you’re eligible for IS and have made sufficient NICs. All these are means tested, so you’re not eligible for the full whack unless you have no other sources of income.
[There's also other benefits I know nothing about - including disability living allowance. Others may know more].
Receiving one of these benefits also makes one eligible for a council tax rebate, and for Housing Benefit. In theory, Housing Benefit should cover your cost of rental. In practice, it won’t. You’ll be assessed on the theoretical amount you should be paying given your requirements. This is understandable, from a bureaucratic PoV, but Kafkaesque.
In theory you can claim these as long as you’re eligible. In practice, the govt have progressively ensured that you have to jump through more and more hoops to get them. And they demonise claimants in the process.
Some on my experience of benefits:
I had a nervous breakdown about six years ago with severe depression following. Had to drop out of my PhD. Signed off sick for a year. No NICs – student – so finally got myself on IS. Took well over a two months of wrangling to achieve it. Typical bureaucratic wossname.
Took several months to get all the eligibility for various bits sorted out. They awarded me something like 70% of my housing costs, sight unseen. I presume on the basis that if I didn’t have enough, I could always move somewhere cheaper, and hang the rental contract?
I think once I covered bills, that left me £30/week to live off. Tight, but feasible. By no means untypical of the realities of benefits.
Six months into IS, you have to go for a review to test your fitness to work. These are contracted to a private company, who conduct a question-based review of your fitness for work. Things they look for in assessing this: did you turn up to the interview? Did you walk to the interview? Can you answer a phone? Can you walk up the stairs? Can you answer the door?
I could do all these things, so I was judged fit to work. Didn’t ask me whether I freaked out after too much time in peoples’ company, or whether I could concentrate on anything for longer than a couple of hours per day. Because work is just an atomised sequence of repeatable, mechanised tasks…
Thence, therefore, to JSA. Fortnightly visits to the local office to confirm that I’d been available and looking for work, but hadn’t found any. Another review session after six months, at which point they start requiring you to apply for certain jobs irrespective of skill and suitability or face loss of benefit.
I crawled back to the PhD rather than face that, and just about slogged through another year. (I still have yet to submit my thesis).
Some more info on benefits and fraud:
The relevant govt department (Dept for Work & Pensions) calculates that the rate of incorrect payment of benefits is 4%. This includes both over- and under-payment. The rate of overpayment is 2.5%. Most of that is simple error. A tiny proportion of that is fraud. The system is under constant review to check this.
The total amount spent on benefits is dwarfed by the spending on pensions (same govt dept). Think it’s a factor of four, from memory (yet nobody talks about pensions fraud…).
Yet despite the relatively small amount of money, and the virtually irrelevant rate of fraud, plus the shitty reality of living on benefits, the govt rhetoric on benefit claimants is increasingly hostile. It’s getting to the stage where they are assuming you’re cheating the system, whether by shamming illness or disguising income. The review system I mentioned earlier seems to be predicated on the assumption that you are fit for work, regardless of medical opinion.
The anecdotal data on this review system is hilarious, judging by the amount of ‘fit for work’ decisions that get overturned on appeal. I believe it’s something like 40%.
And this doesn’t even take into account the current govt’s changes: cuts to rates, increasing humps to jump through, making JSA conditional upon undertaking unpaid work for public sector companies…it’s even worse for those with chronic health conditions. From what squirrel’s said about his back, I’d imagine what I’ve shared of ‘the system’ seems horribly tame.
I hope I’m not coming across as complaining about the existence of welfare, benefits or state support. If I am, slap me.
I’m grateful, as it kept me out of penury. But it’s not a year I look back on with pleasure: the whole benefits thing is a degrading, dehumanising and distrustful system. And I’m a highly educated and trained guy, sufficiently capable of tussling with bureaucracies. What it’s like for those with worse depression or less bolshiness, I dread to think.
The problem’s with the social contract. The idea is that these benefits will ultimately be paid for by me with productive labour – tax take, etc. They are part of my right, just as the tax is part of my responsibility. But that’s been eroded:
‘sure, you can have this benefit, but you have to fill in these long forms…(ok)…and you also have to go to these interviews…(fair enough)…and now you have to dance like a monkey for us…(huh?)…and let us tar and feather you and lead you through the streets…(what?)…before taking mandatory unpaid positions at a private company at a time of high unemployment…
Sib -
Our unemployment insurance may seem pretty generous, but there is no housing benefit there. So if i, a single person, was collecting $411 or so per week, the maximum (i probably showed an income averaging around $26,000 to get that), i could just barely, but not quite, squeak my rent (around $650 / mo for a studio flat) food, transportation, and bills on that in NYC. If you were a married guy in a with a kid or 2 who made $50,000 / yr or more, you would get the same. I’m not sure if i agree or disagree with that. Honestly i probably agree. Unemployment is meant to be temporary assistance, in reality sometimes there really are just no jobs, or not nearly enough. That was certainly the case in NYC after 9/11 at the time.
The problem for some folks there is the biggie – health insurance again for those that needed it. If you were covered or paid via your job (i wasn’t), you should have been eligible for COBRA. In reality, being able to afford COBRA after your job ends is well near impossible.
…before taking mandatory unpaid positions at a private company at a time of high unemployment…
This isn’t required for us for collecting unemployment. Collecting is a relatively unmonitored thing here, although you do have to periodically show evidence of a job search. And it’s temporary and time limited. Many people collect during temporary layoff periods too – that happens to some of my friends here who are outdoor workers during the winter. Workfare is i believe required to some degree for welfare though, at least in some instances. But i’m really not sure about anything to do with welfare. Except that as a single person i think i’m ineligible for most of it.
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to imply that the US gets it easy. I’m aware that the differences between our systems put basically differing but equal-ish strains upon the unemployed. Except for the healthcare issue – you guys have all the sympathy I can muster on that it. It sucks.
And I quite agree that unemployment and other benefits should be temporary things. But this loud rhetoric that somehow the majority of people would prefer a life on benefits even if jobs were available is just insulting lunacy. Unemployment chez vous is 8%. It’s not much lower over here (correction: it’s exactly the same – 8.2%!). It’s not something the unemployed have all that much power over.
Unemployment chez vous is 8%.
Ah, but that’s an average over a huge country. Break it down by state, and it varies wildly. My state is one of the highest in the country, it’s around 10% i think. Kevin’s state is the highest – last i checked it was around 14%. Calif is not far off that, i believe they’re second. But Vt where Madame and Expat are, i think it’s around 5 or 6 %.
Another thing to keep in mind – i don’t know how your unemployment figures are calculated. Ours go only by the unemployment rolls – ie those collecting unemployment. So that leaves out a lot of people – those who have used up their unemployment benefits, out of work contract and freelance workers who aren’t eligible to collect (supposedly around 23% of our workforce), discouraged workers, and people on welfare, just to name a few. The actual figures are much higher.
Pornstar:
Don’ be too surprised. We have the same kind of right wing you do; in the /states they vent their nastiness on ‘illegal aliens’.
The Tory Party has a particularly virulent proportion of (basically) neo-Nazi/neo-Fascist/almost white supremacist MPs and supporters who were pretty vocal under Thjatcher. Thing is, we thought (Cameron managed to disguise them, or draw our attention away from them) they’d died out pretty well. But they’re all still there, looks as though they’d just been lying low, and they’ve crawled out of the woodwork again.
And because they’ve stuck their heads above the parapet again, they’ve ‘legitimised’ those people who have also been keeping their heads down,. who now think it’s OK to come out and start shouting their intolerance from the rooftops again.
And — like the Republican Right — they pick the Grauniad because what’s the point in spouting this stuff in a right-wing paper? They want to, in a sense, intimidate the ‘softy left’ of course.
Yes, I was aware of that, and I know there’s a big difference in employment rates across the country. I’ve spent a worrying amount of time examining US unemployment figures of various kinds over the last few years. But that’s true of the UK as well, size notwithstanding: employment rates vary by region, and the headline rate only examines declared claimants. The US isn’t unique in that respect.
But the headline rate is also the useful comparator, since it does its job: giving a useful snapshot of how the economy is performing over time. While I know successive govts squeeze the figures and make balloon animals of the categories, it still shouts: alert! there are loads of people without jobs!
Also important is the population/employment ratio, which in the US fell off a cliff in ’08 and despite the slight fall in headline unemployment rate, has barely budged at all, implying that not a few of the people leaving the unemployment rolls are simply deciding to retire…
And this is all relative to the scary NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment): the lowest unemployment can possibly be without triggering an inflation rise. In the US that’s about 5%. That’s probably typical of western economies.
Here, I think, it’s those ‘receiving benefit’, now I think, when it used to be ‘claiming’ and there’s an obvious difference; successive governments have fiddled the figures of course, by making it harder to claim, more humiliating and so on and so forth. But they’re possibly a bit more realistic than in the US, since (I think) a greater proportion of people who have lost a part-time job are likely to claim as unemployed.
Squirrel:
Michael Portillo always springs to mind when anyone talks about barely suppressed racist tendencies.
As you know he’s an occasional broadcaster now and comes across as a really nice, amiable fellow even if he is a Conservative, but I remember being appalled at a racist remark he made whilst he was an MP and was being talked about as a contender for the Tory party leadership.
We have the same kind of right wing you do; in the /states they vent their nastiness on ‘illegal aliens’.
Still different situation though. You have open borders with the EU. So although there may be resentment towards the Poles or the Roma, they’re still legal. Then you have some different commonwealth arrangements as well, still legal.
I think we don’t have many issues with asylum seekers and refugees here because they’re here legally. They check in at the door, and are duly accounted for, provisions made, and processed. They’re for the most part fleeing horrific situations. Worst i’ve heard in my own state is some grumbling about government forms in Hmong. My state also has the largest number of Liberian refugees in the country, Obama just granted another 2 years stay. Increasing numbers of West African refugees. Again, welcome. The vast majority here in the country welcome legal immigrants too, wherever they come from.
The number for Vermont for April was 5%. Although like the country as a whole there are big variations. The towns of Killington and Dover for examnple, both ski areas, show 19.5% for April so I assume that the resort workers claim unemployment in the off season.
But they’re possibly a bit more realistic than in the US, since (I think) a greater proportion of people who have lost a part-time job are likely to claim as unemployed.
You can claim unemployment benefits here for loss of part-time work – it goes by average income recieved over the past 36 weeks or so, not average hours worked per week. If i remember, it was roughly that you had to show income for 36 weeks of the past 52 to qualify. Again though, i believe you still have to be looking for full time work. However, if you’re a freelance or contract worker, you’re not covered by the employer for unemployment insurance, so you don’t get to collect.
they pick the Grauniad because what’s the point in spouting this stuff in a right-wing paper?
I can’t believe the shit they let stand in the Telegraph comments. Or for that matter, the Beast.
Re immigrant bashing as a cornerstone of rightist populism: of course it’s proportionately worse in the UK: who else is there to bash? The key point is # 1 from Di’s BMJ article…
…and the key word of the key point is “identifyable.” A them-and-us mindset is a precondition for the whole damn program. This has never been a problem for most of the US, but there are a very few homogenous states (morning, Expat) where most people (including the Republicans) view themselves and their unseen neighbors as fellow rowers in the same leaky boat.
Sib -
Are you an Econ PhD?
Re Frum’s latest drivel: it’s possible that he managed to notice the American revulsion toward standing armies around the time of the revolution and then imagined an ideology that fit it. That revulsion was real enough but it had little to do with actual war. It had to do with the self-evident evils of being occupied by foreigners, which the country had learned a lot about in the years leading up to the war. It was one of the principal grievances cited in the declaration of independence:
Patrick Henry elaborated (he always elablorated, at the very least): “One of our first complaints, under the former government, was the quartering of troops among us. This was one of the principal reasons for dissolving the connection with Great Britain. Here we may have troops in time of peace. They may be billeted in any manner — to tyrannize, oppress, and crush us.”
This led directly to two of the first three articles in the bill of rights: the 2nd amendment, which made the quartering of troops unnecessary by establishing local militias, and the 3rd, which outlawed the practice entirely in peacetime (and even in time of war without the consent of Congress): “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
Re the distinction between unemployment compensation (UC) and welfare in the US. From the depression until maybe ’73 or ’74, we had a general concept of welfare for the long term, non-disabled unemployed, called just “welfare” or “relief” (in Illinois, where I had a caseload of these pampered fortunates, it was called “general assistance”). If you were laid off, you got UC for thirteen weeks (or longer in most recessions). After that you went on relief, at much reduced benefits. Both depended on being physically and mentally able to work. If you weren’t, you went on something called just “disability” (unless you had enough paid into social security and were unwell enough to meet its much higher standards of frailty).
Nixon took care of “relief” and most of “disability”, replacing the latter with the “supplemental security income” disabled people now get (“security” is an especially nasty joke). But UC somehow lingered on. Some industries depended on it. Construction workers in northern states often spent the winter on UC. Proposing to means-test those benefits would have been political death. It remains pretty much what it was originally, paid-up insurance that provides temporary benefits for some classes of workers. But since it’s the last strand of the “safety net” left for a lot of people, of course its recipients are finding themselves less and less deserving year by year.
Chemistry, alas. I’m just not very good at staying within the boundaries of my discipline and am slightly obsessed with wikipedia…
If you were laid off, you got UC for thirteen weeks
This sounds familiar. I have some vague recollection of collecting at some time much earlier in life and i believe that this was probably the case. No recollection of “relief”, but then my working life began in my early teens well after Nixon was gone. Then again, i probably had a job by the time the 13 weeks were up. UC in NYC after 9/11 lasted well beyond 13 weeks though.
UC is not a degrading process at all from what i remember of it. However, should the benefits run out, and you’re eligible for welfare, i believe the humilation kicks in with a vengence.
Questions which one must never ask:
Given the context which formed the entire Bill of Rights, and the clear logical connection between Amendments 2 & 3 (and 4 & 5, arguably…), why has Amendment 2 been entirely dehistoricised while Amendment 3 entirely forgotten?
And does anyone talk about ‘Third Amendment solutions’?
Sib,
See, if y’all would only found the The Royal Rifle Society, in a few years you wouldn’t have to ask.
And if the third amendment had been expanded ever so slightly (and unnecessarily, in those days) to read, ““No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, domestic or foreign…”, we’d have learned long ago that “quartering” meant only “being chopped up after one is drawn.” I’m quite sure Benjamin Franklin himself once said so.
Nat, I once more bow to your superior wisdom, and am grateful for your willingness to explain this to ignorant furriners.
You should totally do a book of this stuff – it really is hilarious!