Underlying yesterday’s raft of benefit cuts is the final emergence of an ugly philosophy which the Tories have been planning for the last 3 years. It is the idea that acess to community or State resources will no long be determined by need, but rather by the market. You get what you can pay for, and if something now costs more than you can pay for, then however important it may be for you, you will have to go without or move to a cheaper place where you can afford it. Money rules in future unconditionally, and the idea of welfare is being squeezed into the background. It is ugly and nasty because under the ground rules of free-market capitalism income is distributed extremely unfairly, and those who can’t get access to employment are treated contemptuously and demonised.
After a history of 68 years since 1945 the Welfare State has always provided, however at times inadequately and fragmentarily, a backstop against individuals and families falling into destitution. No more. The government decision to limit benefit upratings to 1% a year for the next 3 years (and no doubt beyond that when that period is over), well below the rate of inflation, marks the beginning of the end for the concept of a safety net for the poorest and most vulnerable in society and its replacement by naked and unabashed market power. The bedroom tax is only one amongst many signs of this counter-revolution, though the most provocative and most brazen, that money alone is what counts, and if benefits paid are our money, not your money, then you can go without. Never mind that you may have paid for your benefits through tax and insurance contributions over the last 20 years, never mind that you may be disabled (as two-thirds of the victims of the bedroom tax are), never mind that you desperately want a job and have applied for 30 but can’t get one because there’s an average 8 persons chasing every vacancy across the country – tough!
What is vicious about this Tory Market State is that unemployment is excessively high and income grossly unfairly allocated. For 40 years after the war full employment was the central goal of economic policy; since neoliberal capitalism took root in the 1980s it has been the residual variable, the left over when all the other economic goals have been put in place. Equally for those who do have a job, sheer market power with all the regulations removed has awarded today’s top salaries plus bonuses plus ‘incentives’ plus pension awards of £4.5m a year (£86,500 a week), 80-fold more than 30 years ago, while those on the minimum wage now get £6.19 an hour (£230 a week), less than twice what they got 30 years ago, though if their wage had risen at the same rate as top salaries they would now be earning £19 an hour. Today top executives now get 375 times more than their lowest paid employees. Kick away the safety net, welcome to the uninhibited Tory Market State.
