Why does poverty still exist in one of the richest countries on earth? In this video, I respond to a claim made by Mark Littlewood that poverty “should be over” because the UK spends £300bn a year on benefits. We have inequality, sure we do. But no poverty. So, there we are then. So, what… Read More »The UK has no poverty The post The UK has no poverty first appeared on Tim Worstall.
Why does poverty still exist in one of the richest countries on earth? In this video, I respond to a claim made by Mark Littlewood that poverty “should be over” because the UK spends £300bn a year on benefits.
We have inequality, sure we do. But no poverty. So, there we are then.
So, what was this all about? Mark was clearly not really asking a question about poverty because he must know that poverty is a reality for many people living in this country, and it has not been relieved by £300 plus billion worth of benefits a year. And instead, this was a question that sought to transfer the blame for poverty onto those who were receiving benefits rather than those who have exploited them and left them in dire financial circumstances.
Let’s be clear. Forty-five years of antisocial, neoliberal economics have left us with an economy which is designed to extract wealth from people who work. What it does is transfer the profits that they make as a consequence of their efforts to a few, so that wealth is concentrated at the top of the economic system within our society, and economic insecurity is focused on those who have to work for a living and who do not have capital of their own. And this system is designed to discipline workers by threatening them with poverty benefits if anything should go wrong in their lives.
Of course, if we actually believed the Sae, Zucman, Piketty tosh then we’d capitalise that annual flow into wealth. About £6 trillion’s worth. Which means that we also don’t have excessive wealth inequality, do we? Because the poor have that £6 trillion more than currently claimed.
The post The UK has no poverty first appeared on Tim Worstall.
