A sense of entitlement

Free spectacles might have been a novelty in the 1940s and 50s but by the 1980s they had become a bad joke as the frame styles were not updated so looked downright ugly.

Can't the NHS change from being cure-centric?

Whatever happened to the homeopaths, acupuncturists or dieticians emoted by the NHS?

It is not pampering if the money for the NHS comes out of taxes as it should. It is a sane way of catering for basic needs.

This isn't the palaeolithic age. The knowledge and technology could be used to make everyone's lives better. The Scandinavians gave managed it - and gone aalo g way to making the whole dreary stunting cycle of poverty a thing of the past. Why can't other countries? 

Personally I would not equate basic needs with pampering or for that matter, spoon-feeding. 

And actually the NHS cane into being not through any kind of altruism. It was because the UK had no army. Why was there no army? Because most men were then we're too sick to be part of it. 

Of course we could always go back to the social darwinist model of the US. Stuck in a  no-hope job? Got appendicitis? No money?

Then you die. Too bad. 

That kind or argument could be made against anyone deemed to not be among the fittest of this lovely world. 

And what's your job, BlueRay?  How much do you contribute to society through your Universal Credit, and spending a year in bed because you choose to - without being sanctioned by the DWP?

Knocking the system that supports you is the height of hypocrisy.  Rank hypocrisy.  Go get a job and stop pontificating with your new age crap.

How are you going to afford your camper van, I wonder.  You live on benefits.  Where are you going to get the money from?

When free health care was first introduced, including free spectacles, the serivice was inundated with people wanting free spectacles and free health care. As health care has grown and has got better (for want of a better word) expectations have got higher. People go to see their gp’s for all sorts of crazy things nowadays. You’re right, it’s like a national religion. Instead of going to mass to get rid of their sins, they go to the doctors. 

It’s been enjoyable reading all your comments. Thank you. 

One word.  Thatcher.  She created it.  Said 'Greed is good'.  Said 'Let the rich get richer.'  Introduced 'right to buy' for council tenants.  It matters not if it was a Labour party idea.  She introduced it for different reasons: personal enrichment.  I'm now in my 60s, so can remember a time still when the post-war spirit of 'help each other out' was still there in society.  The welfare state, brought in by the Attlee government in the late 1940s, was a good thing.  It created a system in which those at the bottom of the ladder could be supported to help them through.  It gave us a National Health Service, with health care free at the point of service for a national insurance contribution.  It was a time when we were all pulling together for the common good.  It was a time when we were all trying to look after one another.

Thatcher destroyed a lot of that.  For her, it was every man and woman for themselves.  She destroyed communities in the name of 'economic reform'.  She created a society in which the over-riding ethos was 'look after yourself first.'  The generations since then have grown up with the sense of entitlement of which you speak.  'I'm entitled to own my own home.  I'm entitled to private healthcare.  I'm entitled to look after myself, and sod the rest.' 

People will be sold on the crap peddled by the right-wing media - that the sick and unemployed are the biggest drain on society.  They'll believe crap TV programmes like 'Benefits Street', which portray benefit claimants as malingerers and scroungers, draining society - whereas the true culprits are those at the top, busting our banks but still taking huge bonuses because we're bailing them out, playing roulette with our savings, selling us [removed by moderator] and then blaming us for accepting it. Tax evaders and avoiders likewise.  All they want is what's good for them - because they're somehow 'entitled'. 

Turn your head around a bit and look at the agenda behind it all.  Blame the unemployed.  Blame the sick.  Blame the immigrants.  Keep your focus on blaming them.  That way, the ones that are truly bleeding society can continue to get away with it.

[Edited by Ayshe Mod]

Debatable. Public services are one thing but claiming large amounts of benefits over a prolonged period is another thing. The benefits are the grievance of the OP.

The NHS has become a national religion although large amounts of resources are spent on all sorts of undesirable things like people who have totally left their health to rot. Part of the problem is the NHS emphasis on cure rather than prevention. This may have been a good strategy in the 1940s but it no longer is today.

With education it created a faction of society (which still exists today) that refuses to take responsibility for their children's education or pay money for educational resources because they believe that the state should provide it all. There was a big fiasco at my mother's secondary school over safety glasses for chemistry lessons.

I have thought that a better solution to cutting benefits it to require people unemployed for more than a few months to home educate their children. 

The pampered society maybe that we now live in, perhaps? With free nhs health care, dentists, sickness benefits, social security benefits etc. I would say the attitudes that you are referring to started when the government started to spoon feed people. 

Arran

One word: 'Germany.'

Unlike Thatcher Britain they did not close down the mines and destroy that industry and since then something seems to have been lost in the UK.

If you are poor it must be your fault and you must be punished. Or rehabilitated. And the overworked and underpaid can keep on blaming the unemployed.  Divide and rule. 

This is grossly simplistic but one could argue that it's the long term bitter fruit of de-industrialisation. When heavy industry was closing down during the 1970s and 80s the people who were made redundant wanted to work and so did their children. Decades of despair and a total lack of jobs following the closure of industry have transformed what was once the working class into the underclass. No government has implemented a clear strategy to counter the ravages of de-industrialisation. Residents of areas that have lost their traditional industries who want to work more often than not have to move to places where there are jobs which unfortunately have higher house prices. They end up having to claim in work benefits even on reasonable salaries.

My mother's background is economics and she says that the overall standard of living was better in the 1960s and it was much easier for children from poor and lower class backgrounds to attain a comfortably well off lifestyle, or enter the ranks of the middle classes, that it has been this side of the millennium.

I work hard, I work smart and I pay a hell of a lot of tax (for the 17/18 tax year probably near £40k)

The question I would like to know is what size salary do you have and how much do you really think that you need to live a comfortable lifestyle? If you are paying £40k in income tax then that's more than what the average person earns each year before income tax is taken off.

Does anybody have a sense of entitlement to earn over £100k a year on the basis that they work hard or work smart then moan at having to give £40k to the taxman leaving them with more than double what the average person earns each year after they have paid their income tax?

I have a friend who was a carpenter, but was paralysed from the waist down in an car accident. He didn't decide to just do nothing with the rest of his life but retrained as a software engineer, he didn't feel entitled to live off taxpayers for the rest of his life.

That might just be a rare and lucky instance...

I'm aware of a software engineer who could not find employment as a software engineer that was told by the Job Centre to retrain as a bricklayer. The advisor was not aware that his uncle was a bricklayer who could not find employment as a bricklayer in the 1980s and was told by the Job Centre to retrain in computers.

Retraining is fraught with complications. It's actually quite a big challenge to retrain as both a software engineer or a bricklayer after the age of 40. Another factor is that most bricklayers are good with their hands but not good with their brains and most software engineers are good with their brains and not good with their hands. 

Retraining also takes time and money whilst the individual might have bills to pay and a family to support.

The rise of in work benefits and associated housing benefit has been a major issue. It has been partially responsible for driving up housing prices, it's caused people to live in areas that they can't afford to, so further driving up house prices in London and the South East especially where as without the levels of housing benefit and in work benefit those people wouldn't live as close to London, so averaging out prices better across the country etc.

There are a multitude of factors responsible for driving up house prices including mass immigration, Agreed Shorthold Tenancy (which is what revived private renting and sparked off the BTL craze), and easy money in the form of BTL mortgages. In fact the people who really benefit from housing benefit are landlords and BTL investors. People who claim housing benefits are just a downtrodden intermediary as billions of pounds of taxpayer's money line the coffers of landlords and fuel BTL empires. Banks are also making billions from interest charges on mortgages. I was the previous Conservative government which planted the seeds for the mess that the housing market is in with the Housing Act, Maastricht Treaty etc. The Labour government in 1997 could have taken action to stop skyrocketing house prices and the BTL craze before they started as well as prevented mass immigration from eastern Europe but they chose not to.

Also take into account that millions of people face a stark choice between being unemployed in an area with cheap housing or getting a job in an area with expensive housing. People generally tend to move to where the jobs are. London and the South East is where the bulk of investment and job creation takes place whilst in other parts of the country there are naff all jobs and naff all investment.

Countless people in work are financially worse off than unemployed but it's not that unemployment benefits are too high. Salaries are too low and living costs too high.  

MattBucks

I work very hard too, have done for over 20 years now. Often pretty thankless work too, for little pay and high taxes. For which we see little return, there is a lot of corruption in the country I live in.

Low taxes is part of how austerity works. As for Labour, as far as I remember, it was Blair who introduced Workfare in the UK!

nexus9 said:

Independence can be a sterling quality Matt. But I do wonder when it becomes looking for others to censure others who get help whether there isn't some kind of resentment for those who appear to have it easier. 

It's not others who appear to have it easier, but who actually have it easier. The rise of in work benefits and associated housing benefit has been a major issue. It has been partially responsible for driving up housing prices, it's caused people to live in areas that they can't afford to, so further driving up house prices in London and the South East especially where as without the levels of housing benefit and in work benefit those people wouldn't live as close to London, so averaging out prices better across the country etc.

I work hard, I work smart and I pay a hell of a lot of tax (for the 17/18 tax year probably near £40k) yet I'm constantly told by Labour and in the newspapers that I should pay more income tax, that my companies should have to pay higher corporation tax etc. because some people want more. I have no problem with paying in to help those who need genuine help themselves, the disabled and sick especially should have their benefits raised substantially but I want to see it targeted at those in genuine need rather than just scattered around to those who don't need it as electoral bribes. I'd even like to see wages rise in the NHS, other emergency services, armed forces, teachers etc and I'm willing to pay for that but it has to be more universal. We're already one of the lowest taxed major economies and the bottom three centiles pay significantly less than they would in any other major EU country, whilst the upper two pay roughly they same as they would in most of the EU (Germany or France for example).

The problem is our tax system was lowered by the Conservatives to buy votes, and Labour upped benefits to buy votes, we have the worst of both worlds.

They go to food banks too.

It will be workhouses back next. Cockroaches in the porridge. But after all, it is all about Victorian values. 

My dear mother used to read that. I don't know if papers are provided in the home she is in now. The staff are almost all immigrants......

They have low self-esteem and believe they won't be able to cope.

I remember the whole getting-you back-to-work programme as being basically punitive, and that was in the late 80's/early 90's! You were classes as guilty by default. Now th is the real threat of starvation if you are 10 minutes late for an interview if your mother died. 

All this in one of the richest countries in the world. 

I am a supporter of a UBI.

MattBucks previously mentioned that he was a capitalist but I think that he is actually a Calvinist. There are plenty of capitalists who support the UBI. One economist I was talking to stated that he believed in a free market economy with a UBI.

If you didn't already know, there are more people claiming benefits and tax credits who are in work than out of work. Millions of hard working people rely on them to make ends meet because salaries are too low even to pay for basic necessities like housing and utility bills.

This suggests to me severe structural problems with the economy and employment rather than millions of people being lazy or greedy.