If you are a conservative in government, then you probably believe that character leads to hard work leads to financial success and that the opposite logic flow applies (that lack of financial success is due to a lack of hard work due to an absence of moral fibre in the diet). Never mind that this is somewhat like arguing that if you're injured in a car accident it must be because of your bad driving which was a consequence of your lack of intelligence; you're in government now - the people have spoken - and you have a mandate to make real anything you want to believe should be so.
It follows then that you don't want to pay welfare to anyone. Far too much of the public money is being given out to hussy single mothers - who only got pregnant to get welfare in the first place - and old people who were so financially reckless that they either retired too soon or lived too long for the small amount of money that was all that, due to their moral turpitude, they saved for their old age. These people have to learn the consequences of their poor judgment (as do their children).
But the modern political world is not one in which you can be honest about these issues. Your hard core of firm moral values has to be padded in a coat of concern and pathos. You just can't come out and tell these people the harsh home truths that they need to hear - that their kids will be working down the coal mine before they're 7, mum will be on the game and the elderly will be begging on the streets - which is what God intended for such slackers. You have to make it look like you care without actually paying any money to them. So how do you achieve such a task?
It's all in the detail. Let's illustrate with an example. Say you want to take away childcare benefits from families. Follow these steps.
1. First of all, keep the rebate rate the same (say 50%) but adjust the baseline. You don't want to pay 50% of actual costs but 50% of the average cost of childcare. What if the average is too high? The trick then is to play statistics. Most people are afraid of maths - even other politicians - and so if you can get some good, complicated looking stats presented by a bespectacled freaknoid who is - and is keen to remain - on the government payroll, you're home and hosed. Firstly, treat any amount more than say 10% above the average you want as an "outlier" which you're quite entitled to remove for statistical purposes. That knocks out all the expensive stuff. Then take the average over ten years which means that you're looking the cost of childcare for the last cohort of parents, not the current ones. That should knock the average from $90 down to say $67 then you're only out of pocket $33.50 not $45 a day. This trick has worked for years in Medicare. If anyone whinges that this isn't anywhere close to the real cost of childcare - your response needs to be "Well maybe not in your latte-sipping, middle class, entitlement-mentality suburb but it is for real battlers!" - wedge politics is your friend here.
2. Reduce the number of hours you'll pay for. Say parents want 10 hours a day - 8 for their actual work and 1 hour each for the commute from childcare to work and back. You don't want to pay for that. They should consider themselves lucky to have a job at all - not expect the government to be shelling out to help them get to and from it as well. Reduce the rebatable hours to 8. Then recalculate the average. That should take another $3 to $4 a day off the amount you need to pay.
3. Taper early and often. You can always sell the line that welfare is only to help people get back on their feet. As they get more income, they need less help. It only stands to reason (great line that, use it often). Only offer the top rate of rebate to the very poorest and then take away $1 for every 50c someone earns above the poverty line. Almost no-one will get the top rate but it's still there in theory (and makes a great headline) and, by the time someone gets to the stage where they can actually pay the rent, they'll be getting a McDonald's coffee worth of rebate a week - if they're lucky. That should shave another 30% off the total bill.
4. Now make it impossible to get. Only people with work need childcare - if they don't have work they can't get childcare. Of course, they can't take a job if they don't have a guarantee of childcare but that's hardly your problem; life wasn't meant to be easy. Are they complaining that they're casual or piece-working? Well, don't make their lives easier; it would only provide a disincentive for these losers to get real jobs. At the same time, under the guide of 'fairness', wrap the whole thing in bureaucracy so Byzantine that most people will give up in despair before they actually get a penny. Make them prove they're working, make them do it every month and make them do it in writing. Try this: get their employer to have to fill in a form - handwritten for every employee - and make the lodgement have to be in person at a welfare office. Then strip the staffing from those offices and hire a few smelly, mumbling, shoeless nutters from the local asylum to clog up the queues and take up the waiting chairs all day. That should take another 10 - 20% off the total bill because that percentage of people won't have time to complete the process - they'll be too busy commuting to or actually being at their jobs.
5. Wedge the middle class. You don't want a middle class - they are always the one causing problems, abusing the education they've been given by asking awkward questions or thinking about things they weren't asked to think about. The natural order of things is you and your mates at the top and everyone else in the serving classes. Remember too that revolutions always come from the middle classes; you need to turn them against themselves so they are too busy fighting each other to unite against you. The trick here is to redefine "rich". Rich people shouldn't expect handouts ("handouts" not "support" or "assistance' - the pejorative is important). If too many people are getting welfare, just move the "rich line" until the top half of the middle class has become the despised "rich" and, by virtue of their new social position, you have elevated and castrated them all in one go. They no longer have a leg, let alone a soap-box, to stand on to complain about welfare reform. You can move the line as low as you like. If two newly graduated teachers are bringing in $120K gross between them, move the wealthy-line of family income to $100K. Now they're not battlers - almost as good as diggers (soldiers for my international readers) or farmers in the national consciousness - they're wealthy; privileged, chardonnay drinking, Mercedes driving wealthy. They've just been cut out of the national debate very neatly indeed.
And that's how it's done. By this time, your total bill should have come down to something like 20% of what it used to to be almost no-one is getting a brass razoo.
And, as an afterthought, make the whole thing more palatable by putting a fraction of the total savings into a fund for disadvantaged kids - after all, they're a growing percentage of the population now - and blame the opposition for taking food from the mouths of the disabled if they don't support your policies. That screws them over and gives you a small window through which to show your true colours
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