The Law of Welfare

I'm writing this in response to some rather short sighted responses to my claim that most welfare is not required, during my address to the Beyond Capitalism event last Sunday.

Please read this with great care and think hard about it, then pause for a few minutes and meditate, ... then do it once more ... before responding. Read all of it, not just the first few lines :

• Involuntary Welfare = benefits for those willing and able to work but unable to find it
• Voluntary Welfare = benefits for those who have no choice due to bad luck in life or others who are scrounging *
• Total Welfare = Involuntary Welfare + Voluntary Welfare

I mean to abolish Involuntary Welfare. All of it. Which accounts for 1/3 of UK tax revenue. £150 billion. The truly need who we must support fully and pensions amount to about £100 billion. These are ball park numbers don't get excited about them not being scientifically precise. Focus on the point.

Divide that by 60 million = nearly £3,000 per capita.

The question I campaign to have our leaders ask is this:

If 2 million unemployed are willing and able to work but cannot find it, what is stopping them exactly? What is preventing the supply of work from meeting its demand. No one has stopped desiring the things made at work. There is abundant supply of labour evidently. What is stopping the labour market from functioning freely? And that the term "jobcreation" is highly offensive to the noble goals of freedom. Those using it have submitted to a form of modern day slavery that implies people do not start work under free conditions but must have work given to them by state or capital.

My position on this is that both taxes and land values are too high. The one is used to mitigate the other. Madness.

Employers cannot afford to employ labour due to high taxes on productive economic activity and high cost of land to produce on. When the cost of land and rents exceed the productive capacity to pay for it employers first get rid of employees, then eventually stop producing altogether. Recession. Labour cannot self employ for the same reasons.

Both effects squeeze those willing and able to work into welfare. Currently its harder to be self employed because employers have an advantage due to economies of scale. So employees compete against each other for a minimum wage and then finally as land values rise, they fall into welfare. The welfare state. 

The remedy?

1. Abolish taxes on earned incomes: work, enterprise, sales, saving
2. Tax the unearned incomes from property ownership

Given that all tax comes out of the value of land, please do not think there will not be enough to fund government. To do so shows you stopped thinking long ago about the nature of tax.

This constitutes what I call The Free State. In the Free State, all road blocks to work have been removed and labour prefers to employ itself. Now employers are gagging for scarce labour. Wages will be competed up to their natural level.

Welfare, except for the truly needy would disappear. And there would be an enormous surplus I would be happy to spend on the needy without question to make their lives as rewarding as possible.

This place I call the Undiscovered Country. It remains that way due entirely to our selfishness and ignorance.

Do we want freedom... or slavery?

* Read this very carefully. The two classes of people under voluntary welfare are not the same type. Nevertheless they exit in the same band. This is not to say that we should not pay them. Again, read this very carefully before responding. Very carefully. Do you understand what I mean by very carefully? Please read with great care. And think.