Destroying the welfare state

"There will only be schools for the rich"
"We wont have any hospitals for the poor"
"Families will struggle"
"It's so unfair"

Such are the ridiculous hyperboles thrown about because the British Government is proposing to cap the welfare state by (get ready for the poor bashing moment):

1. Eliminating child benefit for anyone earning over roughly £44,000 p.a. (where the second highest income tax rate cuts in);
2. No one will be able to receive more in benefits (including housing, council tax etc) than the average wage.

So the top 15% of incomes in the UK (yes apparently £44,000 p.a. is rich!!) wont get welfare. "An attack on the principle of universality"! Oh what a tragedy. Families that WONT get welfare.

It really has come to this. Britain is overspending at a rate of £2 billion a week, but a cut in welfare for the comparatively RICH, sends the left into apoplexy. A saving of £1 billion a year, and it is portrayed absurdly as an attack on the poor.

The British welfare state is not under threat.

British taxpayers still pay for everyone's children to have compulsory education.
British taxpayers still pay for the most centrally planned and socialist universal health care system in the world (and funding for it isn't to be touched).
British taxpayers still pay for benefits for those out of work, unable to work and to reward breeding up to the average wage.
British taxpayers still pay for much of the population to be housed.

All the government is doing is cutting back on welfare for the middle classes. It is a start, but it is NOT destroying or even challenging the welfare state.

The opponents of these cuts do NOT have an alternative to reduce the deficit, they like to pretend continually borrowing to pay these benefits is better (none ever propose other cuts, few propose more taxes on the rich who will lose from these cuts anyway).

However, most disconcerting is the belief that families are "entitled" to help from the government. No notion that it is their own taxes they are getting back, no notion that when one breeds you should look after your kids yourself. A culture of being "entitled" to someone else's money or more absurdly, to get your own taxes recycled through the state.

The Conservative-Lib Dem government isn't challenging this revoltingly corrosive dependence on the state. What it is doing is abolishing welfare for wealthier families and capping welfare so that nobody gets more in welfare than the average person takes home from working.

For this to be controversial to anyone other than hardened Marxists who believe money grows on trees and that people should ideally get paid money for no reason at all, is tragic.

Oh and if you think New Zealand is less silly, then take the OECD figures from the Daily Telegraph, which claims payments per child per annum are on average US$3,133 per annum in NZ.

What is wrong with people paying for the consequences of their own breeding?