This is a reaction to a recent Guardian article, which is possibly the dumbest I've ever read.
June 30, 2018
Are some Britons too poor to wash their kids? This week, the Guardian ran a story about children showing up at school unwashed and in dirty clothes. According to the article “more than four in 10 parents (43%) who took part in the survey [by a UK charity] said they have had to go without basic hygiene or cleaning products because they can’t afford them, while almost one in five (18%) admit their child wears the same underwear at least two days in a row”.
It is, of course, not the first time we are hearing about poverty depriving people of very basic things like shelter, food or hygiene. The inability to afford to heat your home in winter is so common it has its own moniker: “fuel poverty”. And the left is, understandably, outraged: how come, in a society as rich as the UK's, people go without life’s necessities?
There are two possible reasons why people may not be able to afford such basic things. Either they do not have enough money. Or they do, but chose to spend it on other things. The second option is quickly dispensed with: if indeed people are disposing of their cash in different ways, prioritizing other things above hygiene, then there is really no need for additional cash – in fact, there is even no reason to believe that additional cash would be directed towards hygiene, and it is hardly the UK state’s job to tell us how to spend the citizens money (though, of course, if it is welfare, zealots may protest that as is not your money, it can come with strict conditions – that is, however, a different discussion).
People may complain of poverty when the reason they can’t wash their kids is that they spend large on booze and cigarettes. That is not lack of money; it is lack of personal responsibility.
The other reason why parents may send their kids to school unwashed is, of course, that they simply can’t afford it: once shelter and food have been provided, there is not enough left for shampoo and washing powder. So, is the UK simply not spending enough on welfare, leaving those less fortunate left behind? If we look at the overall picture, it is one of the enormous budgets: according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, in 2016/17, the UK government spent $286635083 on welfare payments, equivalent to 28% of total public spending and 11% of national income.
State pension – which can be up to $166,43 per week – and other payments to pensioners account for more than half of total welfare spending; tax credits for over 10%; disability payments for about 8%. Jobseekers allowance gets a lot of press but makes up less than 1%. It is no fortune: $76,48 per week if you are under 25 years of age, $96,56 per week if you are older. At the last count, just shy of 900,000 people claimed unemployment-related benefits, but that number includes those on the much higher disability benefits, which can be up to $184,93 per week. If you have kids and are Britan you can claim child benefits, a tax-free payment of $27,08 per week for your first child and $17,90 for any others.
What does all this mean? Well, it is clear that if you are on basic welfare or state pension – which many people are – you are not rich. So people are undoubtedly having a hard time getting ends to meet, especially those with debts to pay off. The “working poor” are another group that is assumed to be struggling, largely because of the additional cost of bringing up children. But working families can claim tax credits, and the picture is murky – are these people poor or just not well off? The main body of evidence of actual poverty in Britain is anecdotal – in fact, based on the types of anecdotes that the Guardian article refers to. But as the reason people don’t wash their kids is not necessarily because they can’t afford it, it doesn’t really tell us much. The fact is that the UK welfare state can’t be properly evaluated on an outcome, and, consequently, is largely not held to account. Suggestions for shortcoming are taken as evidence of under-funding, and counter-arguments are difficult to formulate when there is no useable data.
But we can draw one conclusion: the current system isn’t very good. When they spend 11% of national income on welfare, you’d think people were taken well care of. But the UK state gobbles up more than 41% of GDP, and you’d think that with that kind of money to spend they would be able to take care of people. But no, amazingly, there is evidence that people can’t afford the very basic things they all depend on to make life liveable. The real question is not if they should spend more on welfare, but rather why, with what the state is already spending, people still lack money to afford basic things like soap and washing powder? What the UK has is a system that cannot be properly evaluated, but either it doesn’t deliver or it is being abused by people who use dodgy anecdotes to lobby for bigger budgets.
When children come to school unwashed in 2018’s Britain it is not because the welfare state is not big enough. It is because it is too big. They need a radical rethink. Way too many people have become dependent on the state as their primary source of income. Onlythrough a free, thriving economy and a renewed emphasis on personal responsibility will they finally be able to put all talk of poverty behind them.
Author: polytox_
Feel free to comment on this article and give me feedback, I appreciate it! Will upvote every serious criticism.
Note: The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Reddit Foundation for Individual and Economic Freedom #RFEIF and doesn't reflect at all the position of #OneLoveDTube, as we are a community with many different opinions.
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