Cutting the budget
Oct. 11th, 2012 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackLots of people I know think the budget doesn't have to be cut anywhere near as much as the government think, or not at all. That may or may not be true.
And regardless of who's right, I think it's criminal to cut a lot of different benefits not even across the board, but by bullying, tricking, and lying to people to get as many people as possible to fail to claim the benefit they're legally entitled to, based not on how much they need it or how much they're entitled to it, but according to how much effort they can spend to overcome the hurdles.
But I have to admit, if it is the case the budget definitely needs to be cut, it would be very easy to deny that because I didn't want to believe it and reject any individual suggestions for cuts/tax raises because they were individually unpleasant.
Which means the difficult question is, if something DID need to be cut, what would you cut? Yesterday andrew ducker linked to an essay about citizens income, which didn't necessarily get its figures right, but helpfully summarised the biggest items in the budget. If something had to go, and assuming that you couldn't rely on finding inefficiencies to cut, what would you choose?
And regardless of who's right, I think it's criminal to cut a lot of different benefits not even across the board, but by bullying, tricking, and lying to people to get as many people as possible to fail to claim the benefit they're legally entitled to, based not on how much they need it or how much they're entitled to it, but according to how much effort they can spend to overcome the hurdles.
But I have to admit, if it is the case the budget definitely needs to be cut, it would be very easy to deny that because I didn't want to believe it and reject any individual suggestions for cuts/tax raises because they were individually unpleasant.
Which means the difficult question is, if something DID need to be cut, what would you cut? Yesterday andrew ducker linked to an essay about citizens income, which didn't necessarily get its figures right, but helpfully summarised the biggest items in the budget. If something had to go, and assuming that you couldn't rely on finding inefficiencies to cut, what would you choose?