Archbishop Rowan Williams backs revolt against coalition's welfare cuts

[LeftishBrit]

Bishops across the country, backed by Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, have condemned the coalition government's controversial welfare reforms, which they say risk pushing thousands of children into poverty and homelessness.

Eighteen Church of England bishops, backed by Williams and the archbishop of York, John Sentamu, are demanding that ministers rewrite their flagship plan to impose a £500-a-week benefit cap on families.

In an open letter in Observer, they say the Church of England has a "moral obligation to speak up for those who have no voice". Their message is that the cap could be "profoundly unjust" to the poorest children in society, especially those in larger families and those living in expensive major cities.

The high-profile intervention comes after the Church of England became embroiled in an embarrassing row over its attitude to anti-capitalist protests outside St Paul's Cathedral in London. One cleric resigned over plans to evict the protesters forcibly, arguing that the Church should have been more supportive of their cause....



http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/nov/19/archbishop-rowan-williams-welfare-reforms

[Jim__]

1. How does that £500 a week stack up against average weekly wages?

Under the bill, which is facing huge opposition in the Lords, the government plans to limit the amount any household can claim in benefits to £500 a week, to ensure state handouts cannot exceed average weekly wages for working households.

And what types of benefits are they talking about? In the US, someone on Social Security - retirement - or someone on unemployment - short term - can get a government benefit that large. I don't believe people receiving welfare benefits - general poverty - receive benefits that large. If people on welfare in the US could get more than the average working family earns, I believe there would be a huge outcry.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Here is more detail on the subject...

this time from a LibDem peer, so technically affiliated with the government.

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancies/lib-dem-peers-call-for-increased-benefit-caps/6518056.article

Most people will not get benefits at this level anyway; the problem concerns families with children living in the places such as London where housing is most expensive. Of course, they could move somewhere where housing isn't so expensive, e.g. many places in the North; but then they would have much less chance of ever finding a job.

There is an obsession by this government with supposedly forcing people into work by cutting benefits - but the problem is that they ignore the fact that there mostly isn't any work to force people into! It would be much better in all sorts of ways if more people were on jobs rather than benefits, but let's have the jobs! Some of the problem is the world economy, but part of it is the current spending cuts here, and part of it is Thatcher having destroyed the country's industrial base 25 years ago, so that we ended up relying far too much on the banking and financial industries.

[Jim__]

4. It's a dilemma for rich progressive nations.

Being a rich nation, there shouldn't be any hungry people, and especially no hungry children. We have the resources to feed, clothe, and shelter all residents. The rich are generally parasitic. They did not create either the resources or the technologies used to exploit the resources whose benefits they arrogate to themselves. I don't see any injustice in redistributive schemes that reallocate that wealth more equitably throughout the population.

However, rich nations are over-consumers of resources - over-consuming meaning that the average resident of a rich nation uses far more resources than the average person on earth. With a world population rapidly approaching 7 billion, I believe the human population already exceeds the support capacity of the earth. The system is broken and population broke it. If the governments of rich countries guarantee to support large families, we encourage population growth, and population growth of the most expensive kind. The resource demands of rich countries are at least partially to blame for the plight of starving children in the Sudan.

I have some sympathy with the need to put caps on the benefits large families receive from the state; but only if those caps lead to less overall consumption by the nation as a whole. Usually, the caps just mean that the consumption is transferred up the income chain, so caps do not decrease the overall consumption of the nation.

Rich nations have an obligation to address population growth problems. Most progressive nations are also democratic; and democracies are not good at coming to terms with long-term, unpleasant problems. I really don't see us resolving the problems on our own; and nature's solution will not be pleasant.

[rug]

2. K&R