Old Holborn Nails Housing Benefit

[Trampa501]

It may not be good for your blood pressure (he's bound to say something you disagree with) but his tweeter feed is always entertaining. Here's his concise view of HB and other benefits

Landlords and bosses both know that the taxpayer will pick up the welfare bill. Hence a plethora of State benefits

[Executive Sadman]

Yep. Just look at how many MPs, doctors, councillors and the rest of the bureaucratic-industrial complex have HB paid for slums in their funds.

Welfare isnt to help the poor, its to pay for the rich.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Executive Sadman

[SHERWICK]

Yep. Just look at how many MPs, doctors, councillors and the rest of the bureaucratic-industrial complex have HB paid for slums in their funds.

Welfare isnt to help the poor, its to pay for the rich.

Yep.

[JustAnotherProle]

The problem is that the moment you attempt to discuss what really needs to be done about the welfare insanity, perhaps by introducing vouchers only & removing cash from benefits all together or making people who want children to pay for them themselves, send delinquent parents to jail and reducing max HB by 50%, no NHS or benefits for anyone who has not paid into the UK system,..etc..you get called a Nazi.

It does seem that if they really wanted to change things they could, it just not in the elites best or financial interest.

[Timak]

Or we could build council houses so the money tax payers paid out was minimised.

Why didn't we think of that before?

[Conrad]

Do food stamps work in the US? Do the US proprotionally spend less on welfare? It sounds like a good idea but are vouchers they way forward?

[@contradevian]

Or we could build council houses so the money tax payers paid out was minimised.

Why didn't we think of that before?

You wouldn't need council houses if the blatant land scammery, land banking.hoarding, planning corruption, the eeking out of piss poor pockets of land on flood plains were dealt with, and an LVT introduced.

But the scammery has worked well for the land owning elite since 1066 so fat chance. As such the market will find equilibrium with 20% of the populace unable to meet the "market rent" but it suits the elite that way as they still get to fleece the remaining 80%.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Secure Tenant

[happy_renting]

You wouldn't need council houses if the blatant land scammery, land banking.hoarding, planning corruption, the eeking out of piss poor pockets of land on flood plains were dealt with, and an LVT introduced.

But the scammery has worked well for the land owning elite since 1066 so fat chance. As such the market will find equilibrium with 20% of the populace unable to meet the "market rent" but it suits the elite that way as they still get to fleece the remaining 80%.

^ This. Though you forgot to add the Enclosure Acts.

[Guest TheBlueCat]

^ This. Though you forgot to add the Enclosure Acts.

Yes, life was so much better when we were all subsistence farmers.

[corevalue]

Yes, life was so much better when we were all subsistence farmers.

Terry Jones points out the fact that the medieval peasants only had to work 50 to 80 days in the year for their feudal lord, compared to 150 days now? (tax freedom day in the UK, according to wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day

[shipbuilder]

Yep. Just look at how many MPs, doctors, councillors and the rest of the bureaucratic-industrial complex have HB paid for slums in their funds.

Welfare isnt to help the poor, its to pay for the rich.

The type of welfare and tax system we have certainly is. That's why no parties are keen on, say, LVT and CI.

[shipbuilder]

Yes, life was so much better when we were all subsistence farmers.

Yet the enclosure acts exist - they had to be brought into law and enforced.

[Dorkins]

Terry Jones points out the fact that the medieval peasants only had to work 50 to 80 days in the year for their feudal lord, compared to 150 days now? (tax freedom day in the UK, according to wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day

Don't forget that modern day peasants pay both taxes and rents. What day is Tax and Rent Freedom Day? Some time in July/August?

[erranta]

Yet the enclosure acts exist - they had to be brought into law and enforced.

Town/private Militias - threat of Gun and Sword (Man-traps in elites woods) in them days.

[stormymonday_2011]

Yet the enclosure acts exist - they had to be brought into law and enforced.

Agreed. The 'Tragedy of The Commons' was ot that they were over exploited by dumb peasants as we are led to believe (generally commons were well managed prior to enclosure by customary law and manorial courts) but that they were stolen by wealthy and politically influential landowners. In fact theft subsequently sanctioned by legal and constitutional changes after the event is a leitmotif of British history from the time of William the Conqueror right down to today.

[MrPin]

I think you will find "Old Holborn" to be a rolling tobacco, and not a district of London!

[Guest TheBlueCat]

Terry Jones points out the fact that the medieval peasants only had to work 50 to 80 days in the year for their feudal lord, compared to 150 days now? (tax freedom day in the UK, according to wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia....Tax_Freedom_Day

Let's see, average life expectancy in 1750 for men, 31:

http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/year9links/industrial/population.pdf

I think I'll stick with 2013...

OK, so I'm being a bit flippant and I do recognise that quality of life is a complex issue and that land rights in the UK are, historically speaked, truly f*cked up, but the idea of life before the enclosures being one of bucolic idyll and life after being one of industrial slavery is just plain wrong.

[Guest TheBlueCat]

Yet the enclosure acts exist - they had to be brought into law and enforced.

Don't get me wrong, the enclosures were a monumental act of theft but, at the same time, they were one of the many pieces of the jigsaw that allowed the industrial revolution to kick off. That, eventually, produced the lives of amazing opulence, long years and good health that we have in comparison with our ancestors.

[shipbuilder]

Don't get me wrong, the enclosures were a monumental act of theft but, at the same time, they were one of the many pieces of the jigsaw that allowed the industrial revolution to kick off. That, eventually, produced the lives of amazing opulence, long years and good health that we have in comparison with our ancestors.

It would take a brave person to claim that such progress would not have happened without the enclosure acts.

If 'subsistence farming' was so grim and the alternative so attractive in comparison, then the acts would not have been necessary, surely? It looks like a simple choice in retrospect, but...

The problem I have with this point of view is the imperialistic ring of 'people don't know what's good for them and need to be told' about it.

Edited April 4, 2013 by shipbuilder

[Guest TheBlueCat]

It would take a brave person to claim that such progress would not have happened without the enclosure acts.

We can never replay history but it seems hard to imagine that agricultural productivity would have risen at the rate it did without it. It's also hard to imagine that the industries that started the industrial revolution would have been able to find the staff they needed either.

If 'subsistence farming' was so grim and the alternative so attractive in comparison, then the acts would not have been necessary, surely?

Where did I say moving to the city was a better alternative for them? I imagine it was worse for most people. What I said was that what we have now is way better than what the peasant class had before the enclosures. Given a choice between a life expectancy of 31 as subsistence farmer in 1750 or 85 as an urban officer worker in 2013, there's no contest for me.

It looks like a simple choice in retrospect, but...

The problem I have with this point of view is the imperialistic ring of 'people don't know what's good for them and need to be told' about it.

Again, where did I ever say that? My point is not that the enclosures were a good thing for the people who lost their livelihood but that they were part of the complex set of events that kickstarted the industrial revolution.

[Lewis Gordon Pugh]

Let's see, average life expectancy in 1750 for men, 31:

The average is brought down by the high child mortality, which was largely to do with not understanding disease. Nothing to do with being a peasant. A peasant with antibiotics would probably survive childhood.

Why not compare the maximum life expectancy of a man who made it through the dangerous first few years? That figure has not changed in the UK since around the Victorian time, and i bet it wasn't much lower in the middle ages.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Lewis Gordon Pugh

[shipbuilder]

We can never replay history but it seems hard to imagine that agricultural productivity would have risen at the rate it did without it. It's also hard to imagine that the industries that started the industrial revolution would have been able to find the staff they needed either.

True, as you say, productivity may not have risen at the same rate and other countries may have industrialised first, which would have significantly altered our own history, but not general human 'progress', in my opinion.

Where did I say moving to the city was a better alternative for them? I imagine it was worse for most people. What I said was that what we have now is way better than what the peasant class had before the enclosures. Given a choice between a life expectancy of 31 as subsistence farmer in 1750 or 85 as an urban officer worker in 2013, there's no contest for me.

I wasn't implying that you said anything - just making the point that it's easy to look back now and point out obvious material differences, but that doesn't tell the whole story, hence my point 'it looks like a simple choice in retrospect'. I would rather be a farmer now than King in 1750, but that's science and progress.

Again, where did I ever say that? My point is not that the enclosures were a good thing for the people who lost their livelihood but that they were part of the complex set of events that kickstarted the industrial revolution.

But you are claiming that the industrial revolution was good due to our better living standards today, which is fair enough, but that implies that the enclosures were a 'necessary evil'. Whether you meant to say this or not, it's how your post came across.

Whether you were making it or not, It's an argument that's made regularly by all sorts of people, for all sorts of things - the idea that force is required to bring an unenlightened people along to a better way of life and without it we would all still be scraping in the dirt. We can see it used by both the left and right to justify authoritarianism, imperialism and corporatism.