The Slog alienates both tribes on the issue of welfare costs

You may not have noticed, but a Twitter war has been raging all morning on the subject of the UK Government’s Benefit Cap. The Benefit Cap is rather like a Dutch Cap in that, in theory, it should cut the cost of hungry mouths. The Left dislikes it because it “discriminates against those who are unemployed through no fault of their own”. The Right likes it because it “stops the resentment felt by working families towards non-working households”.

I’m afraid, yet again, I think they’re both full of bollocks.

Giving people free money up to £25,000 per year is hardly discriminatory. It’s far more than my pension gives me. On the other hand, I never worked in an economy where the public finances had been f**ked by an almost equal contribution from Mandarin pensions, mad bankers, and fiscal incontinence during the last four years of New Labour. Or Ronald Reagan. Or Christine Lagarde. (Insert name of incompetent ‘leader’ here)

But on yet another hand, the illogical resentment of unemployed people by the members of working households is not, I think, any reason at all to cap benefits. This is rewarding meanness of spirit – and the hypocritically high moral tone of those fortunate enough still to have a job. On the fourth hand, Britain’s ONS data unequivocally tells us that 22.4% of adults aged 16-64 are economically inactive. Very few are retired, and only about 7% are disabled. Around 1 in 5 Brits do nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And on the fifth hand, only one in four Brits today has a full-time job. See: it’s tricky this ‘being fair’ lark, innit? Some folks are bone idle, and some economists are full of sh*t.

Of the 300,000 long-term unemployed on the books when the Coalition came to power in May 2010, within twelve months of Iain Duncan-Smith’s announcement of radical welfare reform, fully 130,000 left the sofa and got a job. Funny that. These are the same LTUs who claimed not to be able to find a job in the 2000’s while 1.3m Poles immigrated here….and found a job. Funny that.

But here’s another nasty twist: the average salaries of the working people in Britain and America (‘the Squeezed Middle’) have declined by an uncannily similar amount since 2002: 30%. And a month ago we saw how Mario Draghi openly told the EU FinMins that without active wage level suppression, Europe couldn’t compete in the world. And…and…and…David Cameron lies his fat head off from the Despatch Box every week on live telly by claiming that “employment is rising”….when he knows full well that hours worked on both sides of the Pond are falling.

In short, the bottom line is this: as long as wage suppression under neoliberalist economic horsedung thinking drives down the cost of labour, there will be a permanent excuse to drive down the amount of benefits allowed.

We are back in the land of Indeflation pioneered by The Slog two years ago….household costs going up, and incomes going down. This means – whether you are Keynes, Friedman, Marx or Ruby bloody Wax – consumption must fall, and growth must stall.

The logical conclusion is thus that this form of capitalism is a busted flush.

This morning I have been mainly asking Human Tweetfest Dan Hannan MEP, the renowned Friedman apologist, to meet me halfway on this issue: I will agree that some people in the UK are taking the piss when it comes to welfare benefits, if he will accept that real hours in unemployment are falling. Danny Boy has gone uncannily silent.

I have no doubt at all that, were I to reverse this ‘deal’ and offer it to Tom Watson, he too would become decidedly Trappist.

This is votecentric, rigid ideologue-constipated tribalism in action. And it is yet another example doomed to explain why The Slog is unaligned.

Wake up, people: neither of these feather-bedded, vested-interest pressure group bordellos cares a fig about best governance: they care only to save face, attract votes, stay in the stockade, take bribes, and peddle worn out old ideas. They have no sense of, or talent for, ambitious creativity, open-mindedness, ethical standards or individual bravery. They’re just a shower of process-driven Stepford robots brainlessly asking if you had a nice day at the office, dear….and getting huffy if you say “No”.

From what the growing regiment of American Sloggers tells me, the Democrats and the GOP are made of this same rubbery, spineless stuff: not Tom Wolfe’s Right Stuff, just stuff that gives not a monkey’s chuff if it’s stuff and nonsense just so long as the campaign bills are paid. George Carlin was spot-on: they don’t give a rat’s arse about any of us.

Ask yourselves who the brave folks are at Westminster. Kate Hoey, David Davis, Frank Field, Bob Stewart…..er, anyone else? Out of 624 of the buggers.

Radical constitutional reform alongside re-engineered moral values is the only solution to the decline in public service ethics. Rejection of production-model globalist monopolism in favour of communitarian mutualist entrepreneurial self-sufficiency is the only escape from our economic dead-end.

That and, of course, forgiving all Sovereign debt, and drowning all the lawyers, Wall Street banking firms, and media moguls. In this context, I leave you this afternoon with a little homily regarding the SEC’s opening of the civil fraud case against former Goldman Sachs Superman Fabrice Tourre:

Petit Fabrice was caught/Today’s his day in Court

He fell into the vortex/of overblown right cortex.

But though he may court favour/his defence lacks the flavour

to make God’s priest Lloyd Blankfein/face any kind of bank fine.

RIP Equality before the Law. RIP a Few Good Men. RIP civilisation.

Earlier at The Slog: Draper Osborne fiddles, the MSM obeys, and Rome burns