Reasons to feel guilty over current state of economy
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- Published on Friday, 10 February 2012 16:34
- Written by James Kelly
Come on, let’s stop this. Only the other week I quoted Fr Christopher Jamison OSB on giving bankers a sense of vocation, yet the witch-hunt has increased dramatically.
I don’t know any of them and probably never will, but I am certain that they are being made scapegoats.
They were joined in the whole sorry enterprise over the last decade by the government. And then, the part lots of people find hard to face, there was us, the ordinary people.
Drunk on greed and without a thought for the following morning, people gorged themselves on fantasy financial sums and figures.
Of course, those who led lives of restraint – and were sneered at for it – are now losing out, too. In fact, they are losing out two-fold following the rejection of the Government’s plan to cap benefits at £26,000.
Understandably it’s an emotive subject, one which is cranked up by liberal nonsense. For example, the BBC’s coverage centred on a lady living in London because, of course, London is all that matters. She announced that she wouldn’t be able to live there if the benefits cap was passed.
Most people who work in London can’t afford to live there; it seems an odd arrangement that the only people currently able to do so are the super-rich and those on benefits.
And that’s the real problem. Absent in much of the debate were the working poor. I don’t mean that insultingly but to raise the fact that a cap of £26,000 is equal to the pre-tax average wage.
Consider that coldly for a second: someone who doesn’t work can bring home more than someone earning the average wage after tax. No matter how one looks at it, that is a ludicrous situation.
Only the seriously blinkered and naïve still believe that all those claiming
unemployment benefits have no other choice.
Even when I was a child in the 1980s I knew a man who lived down the road who chose not to work because he could get more money that way, and he was
educated at the grammar school.
It may be a cliché but many of the poorest in society have become trapped.
Being poor does not mean being morally degenerate and lazy. One only has to look at the backgrounds of several famously successful UK businessmen to see the aspiration behind their climb.
The potential is there but who is offering the aspiration now?
CAFOD, which deals with overseas development, uses the slogan ‘give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime’, yet
nobody seems willing to consider that message ‘at home’.
Among elements of the political and media elites, the welfare system as it stands has become an article of faith. Yet this very stance is fuelling social discontent, with sections of society starting to resent their taxes helping anybody, including those who genuinely need aid.
I would hope that nobody would resent the welfare state doing what it is supposed to – being a safety net to help those in need.
The previous government was supposed to be the party of the poor yet they were fundamental in continuing this betrayal. When there was money, nobody wanted to risk a vote-loser by sorting the ticking time-bomb of the welfare state as it stood.
Throwing money at the ‘problem’ is not an expression of Catholic solidarity. As such, it’s done more to undermine the welfare system than anything a cap could do; it created genuine resentment against it.
At the same time, the ‘live for the moment’ attitude continued. Public debt now stands at £1tn, hardly a nice present for future generations.
But hey, who cares when we can all carry on living in the way to which we are accustomed? After all, there’s always someone else to blame.
