Usually I can but agree with most of Chris Dillow's posts. But with this one, he is totally wrong. In his response to the Tories proposals to crack down on incapacity benefit fraud, he asks:
Why should someone unlucky enough to be made redundant get less than someone unlucky enough to be ill?
The very simple answer answer is that we have a duty as a civilised nation to support those who cannot support themselves. His proposal of a "flat rate payment to all, a citizens basic income" means that the very people who really need help won't get it, whilst those who could work if they could be bothered to get off their arse will get paid just as much. That is absolutely immoral. Those who can't work deserve support because they can't improve their own situation themselves. They can't work and earn money.Those who can't work deserve our support. Those who can work but would rather sit at home leeching off the rest of us don't deserve it. They deserve some support whilst they are looking for a job, so long as they will actually take one when they get it. The classification of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor goes back to the Poor Laws, and much it is correct right to the present day.
And this is the reason why I support the removal of benefits from those who refuse to take jobs, where "[b]enefit claimants will lose a month's worth of state handouts for the first job they turn down, three months' of payments for the second "reasonable offer" and a third employment refusal will be punished with a bar on unemployment benefits for up to three years." Those who refuse to take jobs shouldn't be paid Jobseeker's Allowance, since surely the whole point of something with that sort of name is to get people into work, so why should those who won't work get paid it?
