MetaFilter posts tagged with welfarestate

£53 a week? Of course we all could! - True grit in politics.

glasseyes — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:00:40 -0800

On Monday, the British Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, made a rather rash claim on BBC Radio 4. Hijinks ensue. 'Duncan Smith came under pressure after he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday that he could live on £53 ($81/week) after he was asked about a market trader, David Bennett, who claimed that he had to live on that amount after his housing benefit was cut. "If I had to, I would," Duncan Smith replied." ' from The Guardian. Since then a petition has started challenging him to try it. Petition has gathered 440,133 signatures in 5 days. Original report. There is a secondary petition going: this one is guaranteed to be debated in Parliament if it gets 100,000 signatures. There are a lot of details about the benefits system in comments to the Guardian posts. £53/week is the lowest rate of Jobseekers' Allowance, paid to claimants under 25, and includes no extras of any sorts. The background to this, apart from the recession, is the introduction of a new system on April 1st, which will increase the rent paid by council tenants with extra bedrooms. Meanwhile other petitions have been springing up on the government e-petitions board.

How The Left Has Won

the man of twists and turns — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:35:05 -0800

Or, why is there still socialism in the United States?

Why, then, would we look for evidence of socialism only where a state seized by radicals of the Left inaugurates a dictatorship of the proletariat? Or, to lower the rhetorical volume and evidentiary stakes, why would we expect to find socialism only where avowed socialists or labor parties contend for state power? We should instead assume that socialism, like capitalism, is a cross-class cultural construction, to which even the bourgeoisie has already made significant contributions – just as the proletariat has long made significant contributions to the cross-class construction we know as capitalism. What follows?

UK PM Cameron suggests cutting housing benefit for under-25s

marienbad — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 15:13:41 -0800

The prime minister has suggested that people under the age of 25 could lose the right to housing benefit, as part of moves to cut the welfare bill. Scrapping the benefit for that age group would save almost £2bn a year. via BBC News. Comments sortable and worth reading. *Tries really hard not to editorialise after a killer 12 hour shift today* Guardian's take on this.

Were single mothers better off in the 19th Century?

marienbad — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:07:17 -0800

"As far back as the 1800s, single mothers were receiving benefits. At that time, they would be paid up front and in cash, but were they better off than today?" [via] [Spoiler Inside] Spoiler: No.

Going Dutch

goodnewsfortheinsane — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:20:34 -0800

[E]ven if you are unemployed you still receive a base amount of [vacation money] from the government, the reasoning being that if you can’t go on vacation, you’ll get depressed and despondent and you’ll never get a job.
[...]
But does the cartoon image of [the Dutch system] — encapsulated in the dread slur "socialism," which is being lobbed in American political circles like a bomb — match reality? Is there, maybe, a significant upside that is worth exploring? [...] I think it’s worth pondering how the best bits might fit.

After a year and a half of living in the Netherlands, American writer Russell Shorto compares the Dutch "welfare state" to the tax, health care and social security systems of the United States.