What a cunt

  • alykanas ( alykanas@slrpnk.net ) 
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    2 years ago

    A month ago he told us of his plans to “Unleash AI” To ‘increase efficiency’ - a phrase long proved synonymous with cutting jobs.

    Would love to know what work he expects people to do when they’re kicked off sickness benefits.

    Perhaps they will leave their wheelchairs behind and become bricklayers.

    He is delivering a future inequality instead of alleviating it.

    It’s all just so incoherent. I would settle for anyone who had the inclination to build functional society for the future, instead of the staid old ideas of slavish adherence to neoliberal economics. Academia is yelling out that they have seen the end of that road and it does not look good.

  • HumanPenguin ( HumanPenguin@feddit.uk ) 
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    2 years ago

    "The cost of 0 VAT on financial services is devastating. "

    And only used by the wealthy.

    Why should someone who needs an accountants time get it tax free. But needing a plumbers time dose not.

  • Fluke ( Fluke@lemm.ee ) 
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    2 years ago

    Disabled and ill peons don’t hand out shares and consultancy jobs to politicians.

    Disability benefit claimants can’t fight back with armies of lobbyists and lawyers, like the US based companies such as Amazon and Meta who not only avoid paying billions in tax every year, but get paid by UKgov to “invest in infrastructure” they need to profit from UK consumers.

    “The Labour Party” are choosing to take from the poorest and most needy and give it to giant multinationals, as the Tories before them.

  • skozzii ( skozzii@lemmy.ca ) 
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    2 years ago

    Disabled people already don’t make enough to live off of,and they can’t do anything about it. They already live in poverty, how much do we want to make them suffer?

    Going after them and adding more stress is just terrible.

    He should be ashamed of himself. He is going to kill people, blood on his hands.

    • alykanas ( alykanas@slrpnk.net ) 
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      2 years ago

      It’s broadly accepted that austerity is the primary cause of stagnation.

      Krugman, Stiglitz, Chang, Piketty etc etc have all explained how cutting welfare weakens demand, which in turn prolongs a period of stagnation.

      The time to cut welfare, if you have a hard on for hurting the poor, is when the economy is booming.

    • Man, there is a lot that you can correlate with economic stagflation. High residual nitrogen in soil. Gay marriage. Sales of left-handed ukeleles.

      Why specifically choose welfare?

      More to the point; do you know what happens to sick people who become poorer? They get sicker and become more expensive to look after. Check out the public cost of helping a disabled person keep some independence versus the cost of looking after them in hospital or a care home.

      These people won’t magically disappear if you pull the rug on them.

      The issue is health, not welfare.

      • Aux ( Aux@feddit.uk ) 
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        2 years ago

        They shouldn’t get sick in the first place. The focus should be on prevention, that’s what is cheaper and more helpful.

        • futatorius ( futatorius@lemm.ee ) 
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          2 years ago

          So what do you do with all the people who didn’t have your blazingly brilliant insight and instead already got sick?

          Many forms of illness are not preventable, and of those, many don’t benefit from early treatment. Even among the more or less treatable chronic illnesses, many (such as type 1 diabetes) are not preventable.

          Pretending a problem doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away.

        • I think you may be getting unfairly downvoted for this particular comment. Because yes, the focus should be on prevention - lack of exercise and poor diet on the physical side and the breakdown of in-person community and brainrot screen time on the mental side.

          Too many people are losing control of their lives for avoidable reasons and that is what should be addressed.

          The point obviously remains that removing people’s support after they have become ill is a bad idea and there are also people who are sick/disabled for unavoidable reasons e.g accidents, violence, genetic disorders etc.

          I hope this conversation has helped change your mind about sick people a bit. We’re all guilty of not thinking things through sometimes and there are a lot of malevolent voices shouting for our attention.

          • futatorius ( futatorius@lemm.ee ) 
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            2 years ago

            Because yes, the focus should be on prevention

            Great idea. But it’s far from the case that all forms of illness are preventable. And prevention strategies don’t always work perfectly: sometimes they improve people’s odds of avoiding a disease, but don’t work in every case.

  • futatorius ( futatorius@lemm.ee ) 
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    2 years ago

    This is a terrible situation, since two unpleasant things are true at once: the benefits system is riddled with fraudulent claims and mismanagement, but there are also people with genuine disabilities who absolutely rely on these benefits.

      • whoisearth ( whoisearth@lemmy.ca ) 
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        2 years ago

        It’s not. It’s a dog whistle by anyone opposed to social programs.

        The reality is that, although there is abuse in all systems, the level of that abuse is negligible to the point of being a rounding error.

        The goal is to punish everyone for the sake of that small percentage that abuses the system.

        This is not unique to the UK it’s the same song and dance everywhere.

    • Fluke ( Fluke@lemm.ee ) 
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      2 years ago

      The benefits system, relying as it does on privatisation from top to bottom, haemorrhages cash, this is truth.

      Go find out how much actual cash goes in.

      Then find out how much of that actually ends up in claimants’ hands.

      Then, finally, realise the scale of the problem.

      • Fluke ( Fluke@lemm.ee ) 
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        2 years ago

        Did you know that if you’re renting, you can get that rent paid by benefit?

        That rent goes to a landlord who uses that rent to pay the mortgage on the property, maintain it (lol), and some profit.

        If, however, you “own” your home and are responsible for paying the mortgage and maintenance, the best you can get is a loan to cover the interest only. You must pay this loan back with interest if/when you sell your home.

        They’ll happily pay over the odds for “rent” costs to landlords, but they won’t pay less than that to you for your mortgage.

        They’re happy to pay a mortgage, just not to you, the benefit claimant.

        The whole system is rigged to take from the poorest and filter it all to those who have more than enough.

        • HumanPenguin ( HumanPenguin@feddit.uk ) 
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          2 years ago

          This has nothing to do with this topic. I don’t disagree with your points. But removing the benefits designed to allow disabled to actually function in anything close to an equal manner. It is in no way going to help your issue.

          And refusing to cover rental housing costs for the poorest members of our population. Without hugely increasing homelessness and death. Will require a huge investment in social housing and time. Long before the nation is ready to stop covering that cost.

          But I agree that sort of move is needed. But that would require an electorate and political party willing to support it.

    • HumanPenguin ( HumanPenguin@feddit.uk ) 
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      2 years ago

      the benefits system is riddled with fraudulent claims

      If this was true. These actions in no way address such claims. They are purely about making it harder for genuine claims to actually pass the process, and paying less to those that remain. Absolutely nothing in this plan addresses false/fraudulent claims.

      Also, while some fraudulent claims exist, riddled is totally false. The Tories have spent their whole time in office trying to prove your statement. Yet the cost of implementing their extra checks has been hugely more expensive than any claims cancelled.

      You like much of the nation have fallen for the media and channel 4 propaganda.