Don't take that attitude with me

One of the law's most important fictions is that every person is equally valuable. It is only by making this assumption that rights can be protected impartially. If you drive recklessly and kill a pedestrian the law will not impose a different punishment according to the "value" of your victim; nun or prostitute, policeman or professional criminal, Tom Hanks or unknown extra, each victim is worth the same. Similarly, however rich or poor we are, however successful or unsuccessful, well known or obscure, we all have the same legal rights which the courts will strive to enforce without regard to who or what we are.

The law's approach is, of course, a fiction just as it is a fiction in our individual lives to suggest that every life and every person is equally important. I learned recently that someone I know is in intensive care after falling and hitting his head. He has been in a coma for a week. I know him only because he is a builder I have employed recently. Ten weeks ago I had never heard of the man, eight weeks ago he was someone I had met once, six weeks ago I made a contract with him, four weeks ago he first impressed me with his work, two weeks ago I knew quite a lot about him and his family. Had his accident occurred ten weeks ago I would probably never even have heard of it and if I had my only reaction would have been "oh, how sad". As I got to know him better the impact of the news of his accident would have been greater and greater. But it would not be on the same level as hearing of a similar fate befalling an old friend and that would not be on a par with serious injury suffered by a close relative. For me, and for everyone, some people are more important and more valuable than others. I think that is a simple and incontrovertible fact.

When ranking the importance of people in our lives I think most of us would put ourselves first. There is nothing selfish and greedy about this, it merely reflects the fact that we have to be alive in order for anyone else to have any impact on us. It follows from this that we can expect everyone to value their own life more than they value the lives of others. There is, of course, a sound argument for parents putting the lives of their children before their own where one or other has to perish, but that is a rare and exceptional circumstance. In the normal run of things parents can provide best for their children by strengthening their own position. To my mind this is just human nature. We have a survival instinct because each of us only has one life and we engage in social interactions to further our lives. The more remote the people we engage with socially, the less important they are to us.

At the heart of all our lives is us. Me in my case and you in yours. If it is right to say that human nature compels and impels us to survive, why is it that some believe they cannot cope? I am not talking about those with mental illnesses or physical handicaps who require assistance by reason of their condition, but about those who see no prospect of providing for themselves despite having nothing other than their frame of mind to hold them back.

I am sure this is a new circumstance in human history. When our predecessors were living in caves and went hunting it seems unlikely anyone thought themselves incapable of knocking a small animal on the head and sticking it on a fire. It might well be that George in the big cave had a particular skill at killing sheep and enjoyed a daily crown roast with a medley of seasonal vegetables and blackberry jus while Gilbert in the shabby cave made do with stewed rodent and a few boiled twigs, but sitting at home painting on the walls and starving to death was not an option. So why is it that we have a persistent underclass today for whom work and self-reliance are alien concepts?

The easy answer is to blame the welfare state. There is certainly logic behind this approach because an absence of welfare handouts would force people to provide for themselves. But it cannot be the whole explanation because for every person with no qualifications and limited skills who sits at home waiting for a benefit giro to come through the door there are several with no qualifications and limited skills who sweep the streets or push a handcart of meat around a wholesale market or sit on a production line taking things off a conveyor belt and plopping them into cardboard trays. The wages for these thankless and uninspiring occupations are modest and might not exceed to any significant degree the amount of money these workers could receive by sitting at home, yet they choose to work whereas others do not. The true differential between the idlers and the workers is a state of mind.

I have no doubt that state of mind develops and becomes institutionalised by a combination of (i) the availability of benefits, (ii) being told by tree-hugging do-gooders that they are victims of capitalist oppression and (iii) the small difference between what they could earn and what they receive from the state. Pulling the plug on benefits, as some suggest should happen, would only address the first point. It would reinforce the second and the third would only become relevant if there is a job available for them. We cannot assume that there are sufficient employment opportunities to provide for all those who would be left penniless by the withdrawal of benefits. It is not just a matter of how many "menial" jobs exist but where they are and whether those who would need them could get where they would need to go, Tebbitt bicycles are not necessarily available.

In saying this I do not mean to suggest that the country should just carry on with things as they are. In the same way that the stultified state of mind developed, so can it change; but it can only change by undoing all strands of the rope that ties people to a life on the dole. The aim should be to change the state of mind, to change the attitude that is so contrary to human nature. One necessary step is to broaden the financial gap between welfare and work. Welfare must return to its roots as a safety net providing subsistence rather than being a viable career choice. Work must be rewarded by a massive rise in the income tax threshold. And a central task of social workers and benefit offices must be to encourage self-reliance rather than the victim culture. There might still be a shortfall between the number seeking work and the work available and it might be necessary to provide assistance for those who need to move to find work, but the first task is to change the "it isn't worth it / I can't be bothered" attitude.

If we do not value ourselves sufficiently highly to want to provide for our needs through our own efforts there can be no hope that we will act positively towards other people. A deflated sense of self-worth does not carry with it an inflated sense of the worth of others. I believe the only way to rid the country of the underclass is to change the attitude of those in it. Many an asocial yob has been turned into a hard working man by being shown that he can cope, that he can hold down a job, that he can learn a trade, that his fate is in his own hands and, most importantly of all, that being trapped in welfare dependency is more a state of mind than anything else. There might be some for whom there is simply no hope, but they are very few and far between. The problem is with those who are persuaded they have no hope when in fact they are perfectly capable of coping with life and standing on their own two feet. Human nature gives us a survival instinct, the system should encourage that instinct not suppress it.

Is there a benefits trap?

It seems to be accepted wisdom that some people living on benefits are trapped by their dependency on welfare. As I understand it two situations exemplify the benefits trap: (i) those who could not earn as much as they receive from the State and (ii) those who could earn a little more but so little that it is not worth the effort. Commonly the latter category are seen as less worthy than the former because they would receive a modest financial gain by working rather than sitting around the house. Little discussion surfaces from the political parties about the former category, it seems to be accepted that because they cannot earn more than they get on welfare so they are justified in remaining on benefits. From time to time suggestions are made about having to undertake some modest form of work to retain an entitlement to benefits, but such suggestions bear all the hallmarks of headline grabbing sops to the taxpayer rather than anything substantive.

My question is: what about those who do work for less than they could get on benefits? Because, you see, there are people like that. Some have always been in very low paid work and others have seen better times but through illness or bad luck find their opportunities restricted. What distinguishes these people from the worthy welfareists, why is it that they choose to work when a cushier option is available? It seems obvious to me that it is all a matter of personal standards. The same explains why some people on low incomes steal things and others say they would rather be poor but proud than engage in dishonesty. It also explains why council estates contain many houses with well tended gardens and clean curtains in the window while others are just storage areas for junk. The standards we have, usually learned from our parents, dictate much of our behaviour and they set the scene for how we live our lives.

The benefits trap is only a trap for those for those who wish to use it as an excuse for idleness. It is certainly a ridiculous state of affairs that anyone should receive so much in State handouts that it could be said to be a disincentive to self-support, but it is wrong to believe that it is a disincentive. It is nothing of the sort unless you choose to treat it as such. Until someone can persuade me that sitting around doing nothing should be the default position and work is just an optional extra, I will not accept that the benefit trap exists at all.

We can look at the position from a different angle. Take the person who would receive, say, £25 more a week on welfare compared to the amount he could earn for the work available to him. Just looking at that sad statistic only tells part of the story. Once he is in work and has a record for honest toil he is better placed to find something that pays more or to seek a raise. Those of us who live in the real world know that employers often take someone on at the minimum wage to undertake a menial task and then increase that person's pay, often through a loyalty bonus or a birthday or Christmas gift, it happens in small businesses up and down the country. The going rate for the job is still the minimum wage but the person doing it with dedication receives a little more. The so-called benefit trap is not a trap at all when one takes into account the increased opportunities that being in work provides. Some will not be able to turn any of those opportunities into more cash, but I can be sure they go home each evening with a great sense of self-worth because they have done a day's work.

It is not the money that traps people on benefits it is their personal attitude, the standards they set for themselves. Any attempt to tackle the problem of the long-term unemployed with no qualifications and no drive must address the issue of standards and then the issue of money will disappear.

Your choice: more equality or less inequality?

One could ask that question about all areas of equality policy, I want to see how it relates to claims that we should aim for more financial equality or, as it usually put, for less financial inequality. As I mentioned in one of my previous witterings, "wealth" can refer to income or it can refer to capital assets, for present purposes I will look at income.

The way the policy is argued for is very interesting to me. If you want to narrow the gap between the richest and the poorest you have a choice between arguing for greater equality of income or for less inequality of income. Those on the left seem to argue against inequality far more then they do for equality. Perhaps this explains why their chosen method of securing their aim is to tax the wealthy. It is implicit in that method that the disposable income of the wealthy will be reduced, but it does not follow for one nanosecond that the poor will necessarily receive a penny. Yet, surely, the moral argument must centre around how to improve the lot of those at the bottom of the pile? Simply removing some cream from the top achieves nothing apart from satisfying a rather pathetic form of blood lust. Once they have skimmed the desired amount of cream they say that they have reduced inequality. Indeed they have, as a purely statistical exercise. And what good has it done? Of itself, I can see none.

Equality policy can only be justified if inequality causes a problem. Therefore the problem should be identified and the cure must be just that, a cure for the problem. What is the problem in one person having an income of £1million and another's being just £3,000? The problem is that £3,000 is not enough to pay for him to live. So the problem is not that the one person receives £1million a year it is that the other only receives £3,000. Any policy aimed at curing this problem must find a way to increase the poor man's income.

If making the rich man poorer would achieve this, all well and good, but I see no evidence that that happens to any appreciable extent or that it would happen to a more meaningful extent if the wealthy man were taxed substantially more than he is at the moment. Instead money is taken from the wealthy, laundered through the great black hole known as HM Revenue & Customs - during which process a lot disappears in administrative costs - and is then deposited in the government's spending fund. The spending fund includes some measures for improving the income of the least well-off through payment of benefits, but none of them does anything other than take a few people who would be below the poverty line and put them above the poverty line, it does not make them appreciably wealthier and nor could it ever do so.

A modest increase in marginal tax rates for the wealthy might increase government income a little, although it will also increase incentives to avoid (legally) and evade (illegally) the additional tax. Even if it does lead to an increase in income, because there are so few at the top and so many at the bottom it cannot do anything substantive to solve the perceived problem.

One then has to build into the equation that those who bleat about inequality are generally in favour of government spending money. They believe, erroneously in my view, that government has magic powers and can improve life for all if only it spends enough money. This causes the spending fund to be under permanent pressure to spend more on this, more on that and more on everything. Putting more cash in the pockets of the low earners is just one item on the list. As revenues increase political pressures to give some to favoured groups come into play. We cannot assume that additional taxes on the wealthy would ever be reserved wholly to pay more to the poorest, but even if that were the case how much would they get?

Paying an extra £1 a week to all those claiming "out of work" benefits and tax credits would cost in excess of £350million a year. In other words, for every £350million in additional revenue from increasing tax on the rich the most that could be achieved for those at the bottom of the pile is an extra £1 a week. Let's say the rich are absolutely hammered for additional tax and an extra £1.5billion is raised from them, assuming no extra administrative costs the poorest people would receive enough to buy a packet of cheap cigarettes.

I do not suggest for one moment that an additional £4 or £5 a week would not be most welcome for those struggling to make ends meet, of course it would because every penny helps. But it only happens once, the same tax rates next year will not allow for a further £4 to be paid but they might allow the increase of £4 to remain in place. All that can be achieved by even the most grandiose attack on inequality of income through tax is a tiny increase in the incomes of those at the bottom. It is such a small amount that it does not get anywhere near curing the problem.

Perhaps this is one reason why the left is so keen to complain about inequality. They know that if they argued for more equality rather than against inequality they would have to explain how it can be achieved through tax and the plain fact is that it cannot. Their current approach requires only that they point out the gap between rich and poor, for them that is enough in itself to justify taxing the rich. It is gesture politics of the pettiest and most ineffective kind, they claim to give the poor hope when the measure they promote cannot possibly deliver anything but a tiny sum. To my mind it is a cruel approach to a difficult and important problem.

Tackling poverty, part three

Poverty is only a potential problem for those in employment, for those without work it is often a stark reality. I suggested yesterday that subsistence benefits should be paid to those who are unemployed but looking for work. My reasoning is that those who are prepared to take any job rather than exist on benefits should not be dissuaded by benefits being too generous. It is a tough stance but one which I believe to be justified because I have great faith in the inherent decency of people including that strand of decency which makes them want to work rather than, let's put it bluntly, scrounge.

One of the strongest justifications for having a national minimum wage is that it guarantees a living wage for those in full time work. I will not pretend that life on the minimum wage is a bed of roses for a couple with children who decide the best interests of their children requires one of them to stay at home, but a full working week will bring in a living wage provided the income tax threshold is increased to a sensible level. But what of those who do not want to work? To what extent is it appropriate to protect them financially from the otherwise inevitable consequences of their idleness? Merely asking the question would label me a fascist in the eyes of the left, but that is no more than a label and I am not interested in being unfair to anyone, my concern is that the system should do everything it can to bring the best out of people and encourage everyone to support themselves if they possibly can. Not only will that reduce the burden of tax on those who work willingly, it will also improve the lot of those who currently live on benefits a little above subsistence level but would do a lot better if they found a job.

I believe two changes to the current system to be necessary. First, permanent dependency on the State by reason of physical or mental incapacity to work should be limited to those who really are incapable of work. Over the last eleven years the government has made it easier to claim incapacity benefit, so much so that something in the region of 2,500,000 people currently claim a benefit which should be available only to those genuinely unable to work. Idleness and fecklessness are not incapacities, they are idleness and fecklessness. Fictitious bad backs are not incapacities, they are bogus excuses. No one knows how many of the 2,500,000 are really unable to work, but we all know that it is good for unemployment statistics if a vast number who are out of work are classified as unwell rather than unemployed. Yet governmental attempts to hide the true level of unemployment do not fool anyone, it is obvious (according to my personal version of common sense) that in a population of some 30 million people of working age it cannot be the case that 8% are incapable of holding down a job. The most dangerous consequence of trying to mask unemployment by calling it incapacity is that the government has an incentive to continue the pretense. For so long as they feel there is political mileage in reducing the headline unemployment rate by attaching a different label to a large number of unemployed people, they have no reason to change the system. In turn that locks the people on incapacity benefit into that state, they receive more than if they were "ordinarily" unemployed and the financial gap between being on benefits and being in work is reduced.

Secondly, those who are able to work should only be allowed to receive benefits of any kind for a limited time. Will this push them into starvation? No, it will push them into work. For quite some time this country has been able to absorb migrant workers for one reason and one reason only, that those who live in this country have been unwilling to do the jobs the migrants have taken. Not unable, unwilling. How many office cleaners, parking attendants, roadsweepers, kitchen porters, hotel chambermaids and dustmen are white and British? In all cases the answer is very few in proportion to their number in the country. That is not because the foreigners who fill those positions have stolen jobs, it is because those sitting on benefits have not applied for the work. This is a systemic problem caused, I believe, by the easy availability of benefits. I do not believe most of those on benefits would think it such a good life if they tasted work and the self-pride it brings, but there is an underclass who have never worked and have no comprehension at all of self-worth.

Recently we saw a fine example of the hopelessness benefit dependency brings. The by-election in Glasgow East highlighted an area in which generation after generation of families never work. They do not need to because they receive housing for free and enough to live on. They are told by those on the political left that they are victims who can never improve their lot because the system does not allow it. I disagree, they are not victims of a wicked capitalist economy, they are victims of those who have told them for decades they have no hope of improvement. By my definition they are not in monetary poverty but they are certainly a lot poorer than they would be if they took the jobs people travel thousands of miles to fill and they are in poverty of expectation.

It will not be an easy task to change the culture on the sink estates of Glasgow East and the other inner city constituencies and there is no painless way of changing that culture. Yet it must be changed if those people are to have a chance of living a life in which they can walk down the road with their heads held high, knowing that they are providing for themselves and their families. It is a harsh method, but imposing a strict time limit on their State benefits is, I suspect, the only way to get them out of their rut and give them an opportunity to live independent lives and enjoy the satisfaction that brings.

I cannot accept that those on the sink estates want to live on the poverty line forever, nor can I accept that they are unwilling to work under any circumstances. What I can accept is that they have been labelled victims for so long that it will take time to persuade them they can cope on their own. The jobs are there, Glasgow East is a short bus ride from vibrant hotels, pubs, restaurants and clubs who need staff, lots of staff. Thousands of jobs currently filled by transient employees from overseas could be filled just as well by locals if only they felt there was a reason to do them. It is time to be cruel to be kind. That would be real social justice.

What is poverty?

With food and fuel prices rising by huge amounts we will hear much over the coming months about poverty and it will all concentrate on money. It is quite right that money should feature high on the poverty agenda because most definitions of poverty look at nothing else. My intention is to address the monetary side of poverty in a series of ramblings over the next few weeks, but today I want to challenge the concept that a lack of money is an adequate definition of poverty.

Lack of money is a common theme in politicians' rantings whenever problems arise in the inner cities. Many examples can be given: teenagers terrorise a council housing estate, the child of a teenage mother starves to death, children are found to be eating burgers and chips as their main meal seven days a week and so it goes on. Often, the first thing that is said is to blame lack of money. If that really is to blame, an increase in income for the people concerned would prevent the problems being repeated. I doubt very much that that is the case. I can explain why by looking at the particular examples I have given.

When a gang of teenagers terrorises an estate you can be sure of one thing. There are far more teenagers living on the estate who do not join the rampage. When a child dies in horrible circumstances you can be sure that many more children of teenage mothers are being cared for very well. For every child eating burgers and chips every day you can be sure there will be many eating sensible balanced meals. The well-behaved teenagers will not have parents markedly wealthier than the parents of the hooligans, the teenage mothers of living children will not be markedly wealthier than the mother of the dead child, the parents of the children on balanced diets will not be markedly wealthier than the parents of those fed burgers and chips. It is not money that differentiates between those who behave well and those who behave badly, it is values.

That is not to say that values are absolute things, they can be affected by all sorts of external influences. Peer pressure can persuade a teenager to join in with the terrorising gang even though he would never dream of threatening anyone if acting alone. A bad example can temporarily override a strongly held opinion that something is wrong. Money can also play a part, as in the case of many poor people who steal goods from shops when they would not do so if they could afford to buy them. Of course that raises the question why they chose to steal when others would just go without and the answer is simple, the values of those who steal are less powerful than the values of those who go without. It must not be overlooked, however, that financial poverty is only a cause of theft when the theft is necessary to be able to provide the basics of life (housing, heating, food, clothes) which, in my view, is never the case in this country.

I do not suggest for one moment that life is easy for those on low incomes. They have little if any opportunity for discretionary spending, the vast majority of their money has to go on housing, heating, food and clothes. I can understand why someone in that position who has become accustomed over many years to having two packets of cigarettes a week will buy smuggled smokes at £3.50 rather than paying £5.80 for exactly the same product in the shops, the difference of £2.30 a packet is significant to them. What I cannot understand, and do not accept, is that a lack of money causes people to behave in a way that is harmful to others. Such behaviour is a consequence of the people concerned not having good values.

There is another non-monetary aspect to poverty. So far I have discussed only poverty of values. Values are taught by our parents, our schools and others who have had a significant effect on our lives. Those influences generally apply in our early years and they provide us with the individual moral standards we carry into adulthood. When in adulthood, most people have children and they hope their children will learn the values they learned. They also hope their children will receive a good education to give the opportunities they had to build a career or start a business or have a steady job. Sadly we seem to have reached a position in this country in which education is viewed by government as a means for social engineering and a statistical resource rather than a means for developing minds and teaching skills. Unless schools allow each pupil to develop to the best of his or her ability they fail in their central purpose.

These days the curriculum is crammed with touchy-feely eco-multicultural nonsense. Children are taught that Nelson Mandela is more important than Isaac Newton, Al Gore more important than Winston Churchill, rights more important than duties and equality more important than quality. There are so many tests and league tables that it is more important to get the marginal fail up to a marginal pass than it is to teach the bottom few to read or the top few to excel. One of the greatest successes of schools in the fifties and sixties was to get those from modest backgrounds into the best universities and the most challenging professions. Means tested grants were given to the best students so that their nascent talents could flourish. Naturally some withered, but that will always be the case, those who flourished were able to pursue careers their parents could only have dreamt of, but not now. There is genuine poverty of opportunity because state schools have to follow political diktats.

Lack of money is the third type of poverty, third in my list and third in importance. If you have no values it does not matter how much money you have you will harm others throughout your life. Poverty of opportunity condemns future generations to under-achievement and, necessarily, condemns the country to fail to benefit from their talents. Monetary poverty is not a barrier to high values and should not be a barrier to good education. I will return to various aspects and effects of monetary poverty in future musings, today I have endeavoured to explain why I believe that poverty of values and poverty of opportunity are more detrimental than monetary poverty.

Housing and the underclass

I find it simply impossible to imagine what life must be like for the infant of a teenage single mother on a sink estate with little education, no family support, no marketable skills, no ambition, no drive, no money, no nothing. How is that child going to grow up? What chance is there is of its own future being anything other than a mirror image of its mother's life?

We hear idealists of the left tell us it is all about inequality. I have never understood how my winning the national lottery and thereby becoming a millionaire overnight would be to the detriment of anyone, nor have I understood how giving all my winnings to a Museum of Lightbulbs the next day would improve matters for anyone; yet each would have that effect if the mere fact of inequality is causative.

We also hear that the underclass need "support" through a vast army of social workers, advisers, and counsellors. If that cured the problem there would now be no problem. Yet the more "support" people are given the more they seem to need, not in every case but in so many that one has to ask whether the exercise is worthwhile.

One thing that seems to be a constant in the underclass is depressed and depressing housing, the "sink estates". There can be no better example of (possibly well-intentioned) socialist policies making things worse for everyone. It was claimed that these estates would give "the poor" modern housing they could be proud of and a strong sense of community. The theory was that "the poor" were victimised if they lived next door to the wealthy. The victimisation theory worked on many levels, the most often stated aspects were that poor people suffered a loss of dignity by seeing their neighbours enjoying a lifestyle they do not have themselves and the poor are always snubbed by the wealthy and made to feel worthless.

At heart it is all about the leftists' love-affair with social class, for them class is everything. Someone from humble roots who qualifies as an accountant and earns enough to buy a nice house and drive a nice car is a traitor to his class and must be denounced (unless he donates money to leftist causes in which case the only difference is that he will not be denounced to his face). Someone from a wealthy family who falls on hard times is not one of "the poor", he is a toff who has achieved his just desserts. Social mobility and the concept of a classless society are the last thing these people want to recognise because it destroys the very foundations of their beliefs.

Massive concrete estates built to accommodate the poor would be happy places, so the leftist theory goes, because everyone would be among their own class. Best of all would be to put them in a modern tower block with lifts. Not only would they live among their own class but they would have lifts which only the toffs had before. That's one in the eye for the enemy.

The reality, of course, was that bringing together the poorest people also increased the concentration of those who are poor because of their own unsociable behaviour. One yobbo in a terrace of 50 houses can only do so much harm and if he can be influenced by good examples there is a chance of changing his ways. Give him 40 yobbo neighbours and the power to wreak havoc is increased by far more than 40-fold, and the influences on him to change his ways are negligible.

Sink estates are self-perpetuating. Those unfortunate enough to be housed in them have their lives blighted by gangs of, frankly, scum. Some are able to escape but for those who cannot life can be a constant misery, prisoners in their own homes.

If we are to tackle the problem of the underclass our first priority must be to ensure that as few as possible join the group. Demolish the sink estates. Build new estates in small squares and closes with no more than 10 or 12 houses down each avenue or cul-de-sac. Build small houses with private gardens as well as flats. Spread the known trouble-makers as far and wide as possible and give the decent majority the chance of a decent life.

How will this help the child of the feckless teenage single mother? Nothing is guaranteed, but I suggest the mother will get more practical help from a houseproud matronly neighbour than she would from a dozen social workers and counsellors. In turn the child will have a chance of growing up surrounded by good influences.

Would it cost so much that it cannot be done? Quite possibly. Solving the mess left by socialist folly is always expensive and it takes time. We could aim at one estate a year to start with. I doubt that taxpayers' money would ever be better spent.