MPs need to be saved from themselves. How did they allow the story of their £20,000 a year pay claim to emerge in the week they voted to cut unemployment benefits in real terms for the first time since the 1930s? Nothing better illustrates the extraordinary world that politicians inhabit. where a salary that is greater than 95% of the working population's is considered too little to live on.
Just to recap: Claimants are to get 1% increase in benefits as a result of last weeks vote - that's well below the inflation rate. Public sector workers get 1% too. But MPs want 32%? I don't think so. MPs are feeling the pinch because they can no longer put in those expenses claims that used to bolster their incomes prior to the scandal in 2010. They just can't manage on the miserable stipend of £66,000. MPs believe that they should be paid "the rate for the job", and they are falling far behind comparable professions like doctors and senior civil servants.
WE all feel that we are underpaid - even idiots like the French film actor, Gerard Depardieu, who said he would emigrate rather than pay his taxes. We live in a culture of peevish plutocracy, where utterly undistinguished and often incompetent accountants can end up being paid millions if they happen to be called Fred Goodwin. and are put in charge of a bank. We have created a society where everyone believes that everyone else is on the take. All those skiving benefit claimants lying in bed with the blinds drawn while we hard working "strivers" go out to work.
But who really believes that claimants are unemployed out of choice? I don't know how anyone lives on £71 job seekers allowance - less if they are under 25. Would anyone live on that if they could possibly avoid it? Yes, I know: housing benefit is a national scandal - but that's because the price of housing is a national scandal, kept aloft by money printing and near zero interest rates. The money doesn't go to the claimant.
Why is this hostility so evident in Britain, and not in countries like Norway and Denmark? Of course, there are people who question the Nordic model of social democracy, but they don't pose any significant political challenge there. This is largely because these countries are so economically successful. The conventional wisdom in neoliberal Britain is that welfare is unaffordable, a break on the economy, a 'luxury' we cannot afford. In fact there is very little correlation between the size of the welfare bill and the performance of the economy. Denmark is one of he highest taxed, highest welfare countries in Europe, yet it sailed through the economic crisis. Welfare benefits are much more genererous in Germany than Britain.
