There was definitely a policy where people were and why not make people work for their welfare
The irony is that migrants can’t work and many want to
… Just not the 27-37% of non-EU migrants that have ILR and claiming UC. Or 4m people on UC with no requirement to find work.
and those who are unable to work?
You throw these questions without actually defining what you mean. How is this defined?
The upsurge in sickness benefits is driven, primarily, by younger people 18-24 citing mental health disorders. Should someone with relatively mild mental health issues or behavioural disorders be consigned to a life on welfare?
That may seem compassionate to some, but it isn’t in the long term.
The idea of getting pensioners to work for their payments was mooted under one of the previous Conservative governments iirc (I want to say the May government but not entirely sure). They aren't economically productive in the here and now, they might have been in the past (just as someone unemployed could also have been before falling on hard times), they're a drain on the state. By your logic, either turn off the money tap or get them to work. The state pension is the biggest chunk of the welfare bill, so let's focus on that.
That you have 'liked' a post which says we should effectively boot onto the street anyone who can't find work in an acceptable amount of time is pretty revealing. Disabled people too, economically unproductive so let's eliminate benefits for them while we're at it. Women on maternity leave another category, either get back to work straight after your baby or no help for you either. Children aren't taxpayers until they become one either.
You see, the more you look into who can be classed as 'economically unproductive' the more the argument unravels as of course we're not going to withhold the state pension, stop funding state education, take away the right to parental leave and so on. What this is amounting to is the assumption that most people who are unemployed are unemployed by choice and because they're lazy. Which is itself a lazy assumption to make.
Straw man arguments throughout here.
Actually, I’d support scrapping the triple lock pension and raising the state pension age and that would save a lot of money. In addition, I’d also reform public sector pensions because this is quickly becoming a large sum of money that isn’t actually funded properly by HMRC. All of these measures are unpopular and frankly, rather than go after pensioners who have paid into their pots their working lives, there are areas across the welfare state that need looking at.
Your point on maternity isn’t relevant because these people are employed and get SMP from their employer. Likewise for schools, they’re an investment to educate the next generations taxpayers. Besides, the education budget is separate to the welfare, it’s a complete misnomer.
The point about long-term sick/severely disabled, these numbers remain low %. No one is suggesting severely disabled people should get nothing. What’s actually driving up the costs of disability/long term sick is low level behavioural a mental health disorders. Frankly, a welfare state is unsustainable if 15-20% of your working age population is out of work. Around 15% of the population is in population when you count unemployment and long sickness benefits (excluded from unemployment stats).
With respect, on this issue it’s plainly obvious that you and others want to obfuscate and use straw man arguments rather than confronting fundamental drivers of the swelling welfare state. If you care about the welfare state, reform is badly needed before the whole thing implodes.
