Friends with Benefits

Can Labour fix the welfare system?

Some people think that two adults can have sex on a friendly basis, having a relationship sort of like gym buddies but with even less commitment or emotion than the average bromantic gym partners that I know. TV loves this sexy, cool, ‘grown-up’ approach to relationships, but here in real life, most of us are aware that these arrangements collapse when one of the pair ‘catch feelings’, or more accurately realises that the other person really does just want to be friends with benefits and will end the arrangement the moment something better comes along.

Labour have announced what they call sweeping reforms to the welfare state and the progressive left is screaming their misery into the void of the internet like a choir of spurned lovers. The hyperbolic and overwrought emotional accusations of a ‘genocide’ against vulnerable people tends to make one want to automatically disagree with everything they say, but they aren’t entirely wrong to point out the unfairness in the welfare system.

There’s just so much that’s unfair about the modern welfare system in the UK, it’s hard to know where to start. It’s unfair that people with disabilities that mean they’re unable to work have their lives limited to a level of comfort and security that is politically and economically expedient for the state to provide. It’s unfair that increasingly young people are written off with mental health disorders that mean they’re unlikely to ever rejoin the work force and improve their lives. It’s unfair that some new migrants get generous welfare packages upon arrival whilst others get almost nothing.

But what’s also terribly unfair that gets very little airtime in the virtue signalling, victimhood vamping that our national conversation currently consists of, is that no matter how legitimate all these claims for resources without being able to work are, it’s the ordinary taxpayers of this country that pay for them all. Well, most of it. Because of course the UK government has been running a budget deficit every year since 2000/2001 and for quite a long time before then as well.

People prefer to frame the debate about benefits in terms of individual rights and the all-powerful states moral and legal obligations to provide, no matter what the cost. But there is a cost, and that cost is being paid for by ordinary people doing ordinary jobs.

Imagine the average road in the average town or city in the UK, say around 100 adults live in about 40 houses. Well on that road, around 49 people would be getting up and going to work in a private sector job every day. Around 11 would be getting up and going to public sector jobs. They’re providing services to everyone but it’s the 49 workers who pay their wages. About 23 people are of pension age, they’re not working. And 17 people of working age are also not working for various reasons.

So on our imaginary average road, 49 people are getting up every morning and going to work and then spending a significant proportion of their wages on supporting the 51 other adults on the street, 40 of whom aren’t working at all. How might the 49 doing all the work feel about the other 51? No doubt the majority of them would look at the obviously physically disabled and the very old and be quite happy to support them. But clearly there are others that they would feel more sceptical about. Maybe a younger person with a mental health diagnosis, a new arrival to the road or a fit new retiree who spends the money you give them as a pension on drinks on the round the world cruise they paid for with their own private wealth might give them pause for thought.

Framing it in this more personal way worries people because it exposes the cost of ‘individual rights’ to the people around you. It essentially exposes it as charity and charity demands gratitude. It would be morally grotesque to demand gratitude from those legitimately unable to work for themselves. But the legitimacy of the whole system has been called into question by its enormous expansion.

The stark numbers also make it clear that there is a limit to the system, something people just don’t seem to want to hear. The AI and automation revolution hasn’t come yet, and we can’t afford to pay the majority of the population Universal Basic Income to not work. Yes, we should do a better job of making large international corporations and the very wealthy pay a proportionately fair share. But squeezing the middle class that already disproportionately shoulder the tax burden to pay for a bottomless pit of welfare payments isn’t fair.

There is dignity in work and, aside from a few notably stressful jobs, providing for yourself and spending the day contributing in some way to the world around you is good for your physical and mental health. The personal pride from contributing and a sense of shame are often all that keep low-income workers from giving up working medicore jobs and going on benefits. Because God knows they’re not seeing that they’re materially better off than the people on them.

The government needs to work harder to provide jobs and make it clear that working those jobs will provide you a better life than one that benefits will pay for. At the same time though they must ensure that people who legitimately can’t work have a reasonable and dignified standard of living. It’s a hard balance to strike but surely not impossible.

I often wonder if it would have been more cost effective in the long run to subsidise the manufacturing and mining industry in this country rather than condemning so much of the country to a welfare state for decade after decade. Whatever the future may hold, you can be sure that friends with benefits isn’t a workable long term arrangement.