There is a rather famous book written on this subject.
Catch-22.
In order to be given disability you must jump through so many hoops that no one whom is actually sick could complete them. Or how in unemployment you must prove you must spend your time proving you are looking for a job so you cannot spend you time actually looking for a job. My personal fav because its almost universal is sick-day policies that codify 100% abuse of sick days because people are punished for not using them because some people were "abusing" their sick days.
In the case of the book to be discharged from military service they must prove they are insane which no insane person could complete.
Minor correction, but in the book the act of asking to be discharged on account of insanity is taken as proof that one is sane, because no sane person would want to keep flying bombing missions day after day with low odds of survival.
That honestly doesn't make much sense when presented like that. It doesn't seem obvious that every single insane person would pick the insane choice in every scenario. It sounds more like a case of "necessary but not sufficient" in terms of sanity. (I imagine the book probably had plenty more nuance than the oversimplified strawman that I'm criticizing).
Yeah but in the UK there actually are lots of people claiming benefits that probably shouldn't be. Especially Personal Independent Payments.
It's enough of an issue that even Labour (left wing) is having to deal with it. Though as usual Starmer has chickened out (I think this is like the third thing that was obviously a good move that he's backed down on after dumb backlash).
If you're looking for hard numbers on how many people shouldn't be getting them then you won't find it. Only the government has access to the details of individual claims.
However you can infer a lot from a) the insane rise in claims, especially mental health related:
£400/month help with her bills because she struggles with time management? I'm sympathetic to her problems but that is a shit ton of money!
Even some of the people receiving it agree:
> "I was shocked by the ease with which it was granted. I was expecting to be interviewed, rightly so, but it was awarded without interview and he received backdated pay for the maximum amount."
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> She was also surprised that her husband got mobility allowance for not having a car, even though she had a car and could drive him around.
(This reminds me of WFA where plenty of people receiving that also thought it was ridiculous.)
> Paul Harris, from Barnard Castle, gets £72.65 a week in PIP payments to help with extra costs associated with his anxiety and depression - such as for specialist therapy apps and counselling.
> Nick Howard, 51, from Cambridge, is neurodivergent and has been claiming Pip for five years.
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> "Without Pip I would not be able to work as it pays for my transport to and from my workplace.
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> "I'm currently buying an electric bike on credit, others I have had have been stolen or vandalised," he added.
Great... but I don't think paying PIP for 5 years is a good way to buy someone a bike.
Obviously not all cases are like this, but clearly something has gone wrong. And this isn't a partisan issue. Both parties agree that it has to change. The Tories just ignored the problem and Labour gave up after predictable "N people will die!" press.
And to be clear I'm not anti-poor or anything like that. I also thing WFA is ridiculous and that mostly goes to the rich. Child benefit also goes to lots of people (myself included) who totally don't need it. They all need reform, but look what happens when the government tries...
Right, but they're not, because this isn't what's happening. There's a reason they're paying her. Otherwise you would be getting the money too, but you're not.
The general logic is that money is going to be taken from people no matter what (crime, expensive late interventions, etc.) and that relatively preventative measures are preferable because they cost less while preserving the social contract.
Sorry, but citation needed. Means testing might seem “obvious” from first principles, but from a policy point of view, it makes little to no sense.
The macroeconomic effects of welfare programs create a society that is better for everyone to live in. Reducing the issue to a matter of personal responsibility is a reframing that allows you to completely lose sight of the big picture, and create programs that are destined to fail by not reaching many of the people they need to.
Citation needed for the right to other people's money.
Government running charity interferes with the normal feedback in society. And the need to ask politely, justify one's apparently bad decisions and change failing behavior.
People become "entitled" to regular cash so a lot of the fear that ordinarily motivates the rest of us goes away.
Any system that asks nothing of people is a bad system.
I grew up on welfare. I've also seen how a lot of people on welfare actually live and how they spend their time. They don't spend it cleaning, I can tell you that.
That’s my soapbox — I think that’s the only feasible hope for the future, taking into account increased efficiency, fewer jobs, and higher corporate profits. UBI funded by higher corporate taxes.
I just don’t see any realistic way to make it actually happen.
The ultra wealthy are betting on us lying down and dying in droves while they build techno fascist city states with AI enhanced anti-dissent technology ensuring organised protests are impossible....Its already happening online. Hundreds of thousands of bots appear across platforms sowing doubt about everything until nobody believes anything or anyone strongly enough to get out on the streets and face the army of ai drones.
> Administration of means testing is often more expensive than doing away with the means testing. How about UBI coupled with repealing the minimum wage?
Er... why wouldn't UBI be more expensive?
I'm not even arguing against UBI here, I'm just trying to make sense of your claim, which seems quite dubious.
I would rather we have a system that is too generous and gets taken advantage of than one that is too parsimonious where people die for want of food and shelter that we could provide for them.
We exist in a world where people can be unable to work or even advocate for themselves through no fault of their own. As we raise the bar for how people have to prove that they "need" help, there will be people who die because they don't have the capacity to prove that. In theory we have social workers (as a societal role) but in reality they're underfunded/don't have capacity for the same reasons.
This feels like the same moral argument behind the presumption of innocence in the American legal system: far better to let criminals walk free than to falsely imprison an innocent person. Why do we not apply the same logic to welfare?
I mean, I know why: we're worried the system would get taken advantage of and not serve the people it's "meant" to help.... but then, who does it help? How much effort is it worth making people spend to prove they need help when that effort comes with a blood cost?
I agree with GP that welfare systems make for better societies--see also, public healthcare. I have several friends who are alive because of welfare systems. I grew up with people whose family squandered the welfare they got, but I don't view that as sufficient reason to withhold welfare from anyone else; I just accept that's the cost of a system that helps people.
I'd also rather people get "free" benefits and perhaps spend some of their time doing something creative or otherwise useful to society but which doesn't pay than force everyone to take a job no matter how useless or even destructive it is.
Citation needed that your neoliberal views are anything other than bad faith voodoo economics. We have decades' worth of proof that it's toxic for society, both politically and economically. Your whole talking point is an excuse for the ultra rich to get even richer through mass exploitation, which ironically is the embodiment of entitlement that you're so opposed to.
Constant hoops to jump through to prove they're looking for work or still incapable.
Or in the case of illness to prove they're still sick. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59067101