Stigma against benefits has made devastating poverty acceptable in Britain | Hacker News Reader

Stigma against benefits has made devastating poverty acceptable in Britain

phys.org

48 pointstapper18 comments

The term 'crab bucket' comes to mind. The British public have allowed themselves to be convinced they're being robbed by disabled people and immigrants. In reality, they're being robbed blind by an elite class of people who use every nook and cranny in law to hide assets and evade tax. Many of them are high up in politics.

Are you sure? Welfare spending is the second-highest voice in public spending at 208.8 billions (highest is health at 211.6) [1]. Tax gaps are currently estimated at 39.8 billions [2].

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-public-spendi...

[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/...

Are there things more important than the welfare of the people?

Giving people money isn't the same thing as welfare.

Ask any drug addict what they would do with more money. Most of them are truthful.

Is that what's happening? I thought it was going to housing, medical, and food assistance.

> Tax gaps are currently estimated at 39.8 billions [2].

And guess what the Tories chose to do instead of increasing taxes on the richer cohort of the population? Cut budgets for welfare programs, increasing poverty, making society less productive: more sick, less educated, individuals in poverty stay in poverty for longer further reducing economic output and straining public services, staying in poverty longer also mean a smaller tax contribution, so on and so forth.

I mean, immigration has been exploited by the owning class to force wages down.

Say in Canada, the workforce was set to be short around 2 million people. They're not even all retired yet and Canada has imported around 8 million bodies.

I don't know why people feel they can't ethically criticize immigration. TBH I suspect you've been conditioned by the owners.

It is more accurate to say that failure to build out enough housing, as well as other buildings, infrastructure, and industry, has made devastating poverty acceptable in Britain. https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...

Meanwhile, people like this are like: "Increase supply? haha, best I can do is subsidize demand!"

Original https://theconversation.com/stigma-against-benefits-has-made...

Are there no workhouses?

To an outsider, it's remarkable how durable this attitude has been.

That stuff went a century ago and the deserving and undeserving poor stuff dates from the poor law of 1834. I haven't heard that used in recent decades. The current trend is health related benefits - tell them you are depressed and give up working etc. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ifs-wes-streeting-labo...

That article seems to suggest that "the figure [of people claiming benefits] soared by one million since 2019, now accounting for 4.2 million working-age people (10.2%)", while the first article says that stigma actually lowers the amount of people applying for benefits. Which is the truth?

You can have a stigma that lowers the number of people applying that need it AND forces driving up the numbers. In this case, increased illness after the pandemic seems to be a factor [0]

[0] https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-people-in-the-uk-ar...

I think the truth is that it's complicated and you can take different views on it all. The first article seems to me a little biased - the author is arguing a particular position which is a bit of a simplification. The "soared by one million since 2019" probably includes a lot of long covid and people who lost their job during covid and can't be bothered to go back. Which is different from your traditional benefits claimants.

It's an attitude that benefits powerful people, and it's held against people who have no power.

Class warfare by manufacturing consent instigating divide-and-conquer and promotion of ideas against one's own best interests. Similar to how Fox News radicalized the working poor to also hate immigrants, homeless, and the disabled in America.

What does the government do with all the benefits money that people, avoiding stigmatization, are not collecting. Does it say in the article?

>When politicians (through speeches and policy) and the media (through reality television or stigmatizing reports) teach us to see poverty as a result of others' bad choices rather than a systemic problem, it becomes socially acceptable. In this way, poverty and poverty stigma reinforce each other.

That is an interesting point. The people who shift the blame to the poor don't actually care why they are poor, they just need some sort of circular logic to maintain a scapegoat. If government policies make the scapegoats poorer it, is proof of their bad decisions and they deserve even more blame.

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