Welfare Cuts? Do We Need Cuts?

Fitting poster. Though I'm not advocating a Labour Vote.

Warning: Before you excommunicate me, I'm playing Devil's Advocate here. An interesting game; but no Playstation Network trophies.

"No to all cuts!" many protestors say. It's an argument that irritates me a little. If we were to trust the government's figures (OK, that's stretching it a bit), and we really have run out of money, then for me it is an argument that doesn't really work.

If I borrowed £5000 from a reputable credit card company (or Cash Convertors at least), and after the first year of payments stated quite clearly to them that I didn't want to pay my debt anymore because I didn't accept the lifestyle change, I'd probably get laughed at and a hefty court bill. I don't see why national budgets or borrowing should be any different. Even if the danger of our deficit is constantly being over-inflated by the coalition.

It is where these cuts lie, however. For me to agree to any budget that includes cuts, the cuts need to fall equally on the entire population. If my income and benefits are going to be reduced because of a cap on benefits, or an increase in tax, then I would expect that the same burden be applied to everyone on every income. I would fully expect taxes or other burdens to increase so that, as a population, it would result in us all across the income spectrum (as far as possible) gaining an increased income of no more than, for example, 2%. If I knew the head of Barclays Bank was having the same proportion of income reduced as me, I'd sleep much better at night.

What we see, however, is tax on the highest incomes reduced while these tax increases and benefit caps are inflicted on the poorest. We are quite blatantly not in it all together. And this is further compounded by the wealthiest, such as the owners of these international banks, are the ones that caused this financial mess all those years ago.

Add onto this the fact there are many areas this government could be cutting or raising money from, and this obsession with "scroungers" and "benefit cheats" makes you wonder if there is more at work here. Although to be honest I don't think our leaders are that intelligent; they just want to look hard on fraud so Daily Mail readers are more likely to vote for them. To be fair, about 2 million people read the Daily Fail, so I suppose you can't blame them.

Disclaimer: I do not actually get in the habit of taking loans out from Cash Convertors.