14 november 2010, of benefit ?

So much news: aung san suu kyi (free at last, but so little so late), abysmal failure at the g20, whose consequences will be with us for a decade (an excellent economist piece echoes my last post), and ireland again tests the euro. I'm struck most though by another excellent piece, by andrew rawnsley, on changes to the UK benefits system. Maybe because it's a problem facing all europe, with the outlier uk dealing with it first; or maybe because my horizons are now rather narrowing to things british. I really need to know much more about this. All sensible people agree that we have ingrained welfare dependency, which is both personal tragedy and economic millstone. British benefits though are not generous: I have personal experience of this, my other half having lost a well-paid teaching job in germany, and become entitled to two-thirds of her salary. Far more people though claim in the uk: around 5m says rawnsley, a third having been receiving for nine of the last ten years. All recent governments have been complicit in this gradual but rock solid rise, and all political parties want to reverse it. The way is, to use the slogan, to make work pay. Logically, this surely means both increasing minimum wages and/or enabling people to keep some benefits whilst in work, but also decreasing benefits. What to do though when there is no work, which for some is certainly the case, although much less than most think when we consider the lowest paid jobs. Should people be forced to do something for their benefits to become or stay accustomed to working ? That's hardly training to move people into the knowledge intensive economy we need - but work surely is work, and it's not benefits. There are of course the defenceless in society that need strong support; but how to tell them apart ? These are the questions. The grand experiment of the next years will not be without casualties, but it may provide some of the answers.