The American Dream can succinctly be stated that "You can get or be anything you want if you work hard enough for it". That doesn't sound too bad, does it? However, if you think a little bit deeper about it, you realise that the corollary of the American dream is "If you're poor, it's your own fault because you haven't worked hard enough".
Taking this philosophy to its logical conclusion allows you to understand the attitude of many USians (at least on the Republican side) towards socialised medicine, welfare, etc: "Why should I give the money that I worked hard for to the government so they can then spend it on poor people who are only poor because they haven't worked hard enough to help themselves?" It is important here to make the distinction between what the US chooses to do as a society (i.e. government spending) and what individuals choose to do in charitable giving, which is generally a lot more generous. I'll come back to this point later.
What has spurred the drift from my usual inane shit about why I can't find the right type of chocolate biscuits here in the US and move onto social justice issues? Well. This Monday, 1st April, the UK chancellor is cutting the top rate of income tax from 50% to 45%. The top income tax bracket is any money earned over £150,000. At the same time, to reduce the budget deficit and try to save the economy that the Tories have been running into the ground, they are squeezing the poor in several different ways.
First, the "bedroom tax" will cut 14% to 25% of the housing benefit for people who have one or more unoccupied bedrooms in their house. There will be cuts and restrictions applied to disabled benefits such as Disability Living Allowance, along with cuts to council tax rebates for disabled people; this comes at the same time that local councils will start introducing or increasing co-payments of various care services. Let's not forget that VAT (a UK sales tax) was increased to 20% a couple of years ago, all in the name of cutting the budget deficit. This is on a backdrop of massive inflation on food and energy prices, with a 0.5% Bank of England interest rate, causing most people to become relatively poorer even as minimal wage increases take effect. Oh, and the Tories have introduced an overall benefit cap, which applies to:
- Bereavement Allowance
- Carer's Allowance
- Child Benefit
- Child Tax Credit
- Employment and Support Allowance (except when in the support group)
- Guardian's Allowance
- Housing Benefit (HB) (HB, England, Scotland, Wales) (HB Northern Ireland)
- Income Support
- Jobseeker's Allowance
- Maternity Allowance
- Reduced Earnings Allowance
- Severe Disablement Allowance
- Widowed Parent's Allowance
The reason that all these cuts are being applied? Because the UK banking system took ridiculous risks and had to be bailed out by the taxpayer. The same bankers who are still getting millions of pounds a year in bonuses. The same bankers who will benefit from the reduced top rate of income tax which comes into effect on Monday.
The Tory / Lib Dem government (yes, Liberal Democrats, I've not forgotten about you and your treachery; neither will the voters) have done quite a clever job of painting the social security cuts as helping the "strivers" whilst penalising the "skivers", ignoring the fact that many people who receive benefits actually work but do not earn a living wage so are reliant on government help to cover the costs of housing. Why is housing so expensive? Because the UK economy got derailed partly due to overinflated house prices which have not been allowed to crash (helped by 0.5% interest rates), meaning that only the rich can buy houses in places like London and the South East, where they then rent them out at exorbitant rates (and, in many cases, have this inflated rent supplemented by housing benefit paid by the government on behalf of their tenants).
The UK government, in adopting language like "welfare" instead of "social security" and painting a picture of hard workers supporting the lazy poor, seems to be recapitulating the more insidious aspects of the US Republican party. Is that where we want to go as a society? Do we want unemployment benefits to be paid for only two years after which, if someone hasn't found a job, they're left to starve to death because they obviously haven't tried hard enough?
I live in Montgomery County, one of the richest counties in the US and even here, 12% of households are food insecure, meaning they do not have enough money to feed themselves or their children, in spite of many of them actually having jobs. Since the government doesn't pick up the tab to help people, it is the kindness of individuals donating to charities such as Manna Food which stops more people starving to death in their homes. Considering that the US is the richest (and, they keep telling me, the best) country in the world, would you really expect that 16 million children (almost 1 in 5) are at risk of hunger? I've already touched on health care here, so I won't again mention that the US government pays 25% more per capita on health care than the UK except have no socialised medicine.
So, as a society, is this where the UK wants to go? Do we accept the Tory rhetoric and use the recession as an excuse to shift to the right, lower the top rate of income tax for rich folk (I've not heard anyone say "wealth creators" yet, but it's only a matter of time), and continue squeezing the poor? Alas, the rise of right-wing, xenophobic little Englander parties such as UKIP doesn't bode well for the future. Labour, once the party of the working majority, have been outflanked by the Tories as they shift public opinion to the right. Living in the US, I've seen what happens if you take this philosophy to its logical conclusion and it's not somewhere I imagine most Brits want to end up.
In Scotland, we do things a little bit differently. Our politics are generally to the left of those in the UK as a whole, so we have things like universal personal care for our old folks, an NHS that isn't being slowly sold off to private investors and free university education. On September 18th, 2014, we have a once-in-300-year opportunity to say that we like to do things differently. I think that voting 'Yes' in the independence referendum is the best way for Scotland to decide that it wants to build a different society, one where we look after those who are less fortunate than ourselves, one where we choose to build hospitals instead of spending £100 billion on weapons of mass destruction. One where we actually have a written constitution. I don't look upon it as leaving England to their Tory-led shift to the right, but more as having a chance to show the rest of the UK that there is a better way.
Right, this is unusually long and serious. Next time I'll go back to inane bollocks about my middle-class angst at not being able to source the right type of grass-fed lamb while my neighbours starve to death in poverty.
