Three ways in which the "Bedroom tax" exposes Tory hypocrisy

In April 2013 the Tory led Coalition government will introduce a measure called "Bedroom tax", which is an absurd scheme aimed at financially penalising poor people into moving out of their homes. Social housing tenants in receipt of housing benefit will have their housing support payments reduced if they are deemed to be "under occupying" their homes. The measures are supposedly designed to save £480 million, a seemingly large sum until one considers that annual housing benefits payouts amount to £23 billion (48x the amount) and that much like all government estimates, the figure is almost certain to be a grotesquely over-optimistic calculation.

Problems with the "Bedroom tax"

The main thrust of the article will be to explain how "Bedroom tax" demonstrates Tory hypocrisy, however first I'd like to run through some of the reasons that "Bedroom tax" will prove cruel and ineffective for many reasons. This is a long, but by no means exhaustive list of reasons that the "Bedroom tax" is a terrible and malicious idea:

• A sensible strategy to increase the availability of social housing is to build more social housing. Not only would this increase the supply of decent , affordable family sized housing, it would also stimulate economic demand, since the construction of social housing is a proven high fiscal multiplier. This kind of homebuilding strategy would never happen under a Conservative government, given their burning ideological hatred of the whole concept of social housing. Instead we get bonkers schemes like "Bedroom tax".

• In many areas (especially the North of England and Scotland) there is a chronic shortage of one and two bedroom social housing. Take Hull for example:4,700 tenants are going to be affected by the "Bedroom tax" charge, but there are only 73 one or two bedroom properties available in the area. It is impossible for the vast majority of those families to find smaller accommodation, so they face no choice but to pay the "Bedroom tax". If there is nowhere available to downsize to, it becomes absolutely obvious that this scheme is simply a method of impoverishing some of society's poorest members.

• It has been estimated that the vast majority of people who are going to be effected by this tax will be families with disabled members, many of whom have had their homes specially adapted to their needs (wide doors and ramps for wheelchair access, stairlifts, adapted bathrooms and kitchens...). Forcing them out of their home because they are deemed to have a "spare bedroom" means that large amounts of money will have to be spent on making adaptations to their new smaller homes, assuming that there are even any available in their area.

• In some cases people are being penalised by "bedroom tax" even though they live in elderly supported accommodation. The only reason to evict someone from such places for the "crime" of having a spare box room would seem to be to allow wealthier social housing tenants (that can afford to pay some £500+ extra a year for a spare bedroom) to take their place, since elderly supported accommodation is not meant for families anyway.

• Another group of people effected by "Bedroom tax" will be those families with members serving in the armed forces, if they are away on duty for more than 13 weeks, their family members back home will be stung with a tax bill on account of their absence.

• Yet another group to be penalised are separated couples that have joint custody of their children. Those partners that look after the kids on the weekend or during school holidays will be stung with "Bedroom tax" penalties for supposedly under-occupying their homes. Lord Freud, one of the minsters responsible for the "Bedroom tax" scheme famously told one Scottish father that he should make his three sons share a fold-out sofa bed when they come to stay (Freud has two houses with a total of 12 bedrooms, an under-occupation rate of 91.7%).

• Only penalising those that are in social housing means that housing benefits recipients "under occupying" private rented accommodation will not be penalised. Given that the private rented sector is now larger than the social housing sector, this exclusion means that increases in the supply of family sized homes and reductions in the housing benefit bill will be severely limited.

• Owners of empty properties will remain completely unaffected. Tackling the estimated million unoccupied homes with an empty home tax would seem like a much more sensible strategy to tackle the "housing shortage" than financially penalising poor people for the "crime" of having a "spare bedroom" in the home that they occupy.

• Wealthy owners of council houses will also remain entirely unaffected, since they receive no housing benefits. A scheme that tackles "under occupation" by focusing exclusively on the most needy social housing tenants (the ones in receipt of benefits), looks a lot more like undisguised Tory malice than a scheme that is designed to achieve any specific outcome.

• Pensioners in social housing are also excluded (because the Tories certainly don't want to be seen to be attacking one of their core demographics), meaning that many really old people will be allowed to keep the 3/4/5 bedroom social houses that they don't need, whist families with disabled children will be financially penalised for the "crime" of having specially adapted bedrooms.

Tory hypocrisy

Okay, now were past some of the many arguments against this harebrained scheme, lets move on to the ways in which it clearly demonstrates Tory party hypocrisy.

Small state libertarianism
The Conservative party, and right-wingers in general, always love to dress themselves up as freedom fighting libertarians. They pretend that their desire to shrink the state is driven by an ideological objection to "state interference" both in an economic sense and in a public sense too. They pretend that they believe that the state mustn't interfere in the economy in order to allow the "invisible hand of the free market" to guide the economy to prosperity and they also pretend that they believe the state mustn't interfere in the personal lives of its citizens. "Bedroom tax" can be seen as an affront to both of these claimed principles, but especially the second one.
The rules of the bedroom tax are very specific about who should be sleeping in which bedrooms. The state dictates that the children of poor social housing tenants must sleep two to a bedroom. The only exception being children of different sexes that are over the age of ten. Thus, the state is dictating to people that their 15 year old son (who perhaps likes to masturbate a lot and suffers from BO, which would hardly be atypical), must share a bedroom with their three year old brother. There are also insisting that severely disabled children share their bedroom with siblings too (here's one example of a severely disabled and often violent 15 year old being expected to share a room with her 3 year old sister).

These aren't just examples of the state gratuitously interfering in the lives of civilians, they are interferences that in many cases have severely detrimental consequences. It is absolutely clear that the "bedroom tax" has been dreamt up by someone without the faintest regard for libertarian or minarchist principles. It looks a hell of a lot more like a vindictive campaign dreamt up by a party with an ideological loathing of social housing tenants, aimed at penalising the poorest and most needy members of society than a policy from a party that like to claim that government shouldn't interfere in our everyday lives.

Next time you hear a Tory talking up the small-state, free-market credentials of their party, just remember the

"All in it together"
"We're all in it together" was one of the coalition government's favourite soundbytes during the first year-or-so of their rule. Well the tax and benefits changes due in April this year drive a few hundred more ring annular nails through the coffin lid of that particular narrative.

Whilst millionaires are handed a whopping great annual tax cut of £50,000+, corporations are coddled with yet another tax cut and tax-dodging British companies are given their wet-dream of a tax break to help them rip off third world economies, millions of ordinary people will face huge tax hikes, through "Bedroom tax" and "Poll Tax 2.0". Not only that, the government's own research admits that 1.7 million working families will lose thousands of pounds a year because of  the introduction of Universal Credit.

The changes in April will hammer home the case that "all in it together" is a contemptible lie and that the Tories are absolutely intent on forcing the burden of austerity onto those that can afford it the least, whilst enriching, and protecting the interests of the already wealthy.

Mansion tax

Do you remember the Tory justification narrative for opposing the Lib-Dem idea of a "Mansion tax" on properties valued at over £2 million? They loved to rely on the story of a hypothetical "little old lady" in her mansion, without the means to pay the "Mansion tax". Oh how unfair it would be, they wailed, to make our hypothetical old lady downsize her home to avoid the tax or to sell off a few acres of her estate to make more than enough money to cover the "Mansion tax" payments for the rest of her life.

Yet, they are intent on forcing tens of thousands of very real people out of their homes with their "Bedroom tax" charges. Those that cannot move due to the abject lack of 1 or 2 bedroom social housing in their area, will just have to pay up, whether they can afford it or not.

This just shows the mentality of the Tories.They vehemently defend the interests of hypothetical "little old ladies" in multi-million pound mansions, whilst imposing policies that are actually designed to drive very real vulnerable people out of their homes. On the Tory scale of priorities, the interests of real poor and vulnerable people with no means to pay come miles behind the interests of hypothetical rich people, with the hypothetical means to pay a bit extra.

 Conclusion

 
I reckon that in the first section I've demonstrated that the "Bedroom tax" is an absolutely rotten idea, in fact, it's so poorly conceived that even the uber-right-wing Daily Telegraph have referred to it as "mean oppressive and a politically daft gift to the left".

In the second section I've shown how the Tory embrace and trenchant defence of the "Bedroom tax" agenda shows them up as the hypocrites they are.

Next time you hear a Tory whining about Labour or the EU insidiously trying to micro-manage our daily lives, remember that the Tories are intent on financially penalising families that believe it is in their best interests that teenage child do not share a bedroom with their three year old siblings, the father that has a spare bedroom for the days when he has custody of his own kids or the couple that need a spare bedroom because one of them is so severely disabled that they need to sleep in a special hospital bed in a room full of medical equipment.

Next time you hear a Tory as much as imply that "we're all in it together", remember that at the same time as they are launching this plan to financially penalise poor and vulnerable people out of their homes, whether alternative accommodation is available or not, they are handing a whopping great £50,000+ annual tax cut to their millionaire mates.

Next time you hear a Tory decry the idea of a "Mansion tax" or the introduction of higher council tax bands for the owners of huge properties because the hypothetical "little old lady" might suffer, remember that they have no such qualms about deliberately driving hundreds of thousands of very real poor and disabled people out of their homes or stuffing them with hundreds of pounds a year in charges for the "crime" of under-occupying their homes.

Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for Another Angry Voice is the PayPal donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

More articles from
ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE   

     
 Lord Freud: Risks, corpses and slums
      
The Back to Work Jobs Guarantee
       
   A letter to fans of Workfare
      
A coalition of LTBs
        
The Atos "disability denial factory"
    
Gaming the Work Programme
      
The Workfare ship is sinking
        

The Republican science-deniers

 

 Here is a truly remarkable speech from Republican congressman, doctor Paul Broun from Georgia. What makes his speech so remarkable is that he is actally a Republican representative on the House Science Committee. 

Here's what he said (in case the embedded video stops working):

"God's word is true. I've come to understand that all that stuff about evolution, embryology, the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It is lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a saviour.

There is a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a 'scientist' that actually shows that this is a young Earth. I don't believe that the Earth is but 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says."

It is absolutely astonishing that the Republicans would allow a man with such brazen anti-scientific attitudes to sit on a government science committee. That such anti-scientific attitudes are so common in the United States makes me wonder how it is possible that the US became the most powerful and technologically advanced nation on Earth for most of the 20th Century. 

This isn't an isolated case of scientific illiteracy from the Republican party; just a few months previously another member of the House Science Committee, Todd Akin from Missouri made the absurd claim that "according to doctors...if it is legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down" in an attempt to defend his no-exception anti-abortion stance. Perhaps doctor Broun is the medical authority Akin used to justify his absurd claim that women's bodies could spontaneously terminate rape pregnancies?

The fact that the Republican party see fit to stuff the science committee with science-deniers shouldn't really be that surprising given their attitudes to government. The whole idea of small-state minarchism that has become so fashionable amongst Republicans is actually an absurd position for a politician to hold, unless of course their objective is to use their position in government to destroy the power of government from within. Perhaps that is their objective when they stuff the science committee with science-deniers, a desire to destroy American scientific progress.

This kind of reactionary ignorance in the corridors of power of the most powerful nation on Earth is astonishing and really rather frightening. The ramblings of the small-state science-denying Republican right seem even more insane when we consider their attitudes to the United States military.

As soon as proposed military budget cuts are announced, so-called small-state conservatives from the Tea Party begin squealing and protesting like their lives depended upon it. The cognitive dissonance to proclaim small-state minarchism with one side of your mouth whilst loudly protesting against cuts to the biggest military budget in the world (that actually dwarfs the military budgets of all the other nations on Earth combined) with the other is frankly unbelievable. 

I'm pretty sure that Republican science deniers like Broun and Akin, and the hoards of reactionary creationist fools that whoop and shout their approval have a completely different attitude to scientific progress when it is the kind of progress that allows the American military to dominate the globe. A military domination that is predominantly aimed at strategic reserving of oil supplies with a view to future extraction via invasion and occupation (Iraq sanctions and invasion, Iran sanctions and warmongering...).
 
When it comes to warmongering against Iraq (and now Iran), Republican politicians like Broun and Akin are always happy to join in. It is remarkable that when it comes to speeches aimed at the reactionary creationist brigade the Republican sicence deniers will deny science and geological evidence, yet when it comes to "energy security" they will openly support the deployment of highly scientific military hardware, with the objective of seizing multi-million year old fossil fuel reserves.

OK, so perhaps they could argue that the science behind high-tech US military hardware is "good science" unlike science "from the pit of hell" like embryology, evolutionary theory, astrophysics and geology, and that God simply "magicked up" the oil reserves during his busy week around 6,000 years ago. But this leaves us the question of why Christian God chose to plonk such vast and valuable oil reserves in extremely un-Christian territories such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Libya and Kazakhstan.

People like Broun and Akin are lunatics displaying levels of cognitive dissonance that would make them completely unelectable practically anywhere else on Earth. The fact that they are elected politicians at all is shocking enough, but the fact that the Republican party see these science-denying fools as suitable representatives to sit on the House Science Committee is even worse.

See Also

Creationism in British schools

Scottish Catholics and their campaign against gay equality

Moderates and fanatics in religious matters

Richard Dawkins and the slave trade

What is neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism (often also written as neo-liberalism) is a very important, yet often misunderstood concept. To give a short, oversimplified definition: Neoliberalism is a small-state economic ideology based on promoting "rational self-interest" through policies such as privatisation, deregulation, globalisation and tax cuts.

People often boggle at the use of the word "neoliberal" as if the utterer were some kind of crazed tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist raving about insane lizard-man conspiracies, rather than someone attempting to concisely define the global economic orthodoxy of the last three decades or so.

One of the main problems we encounter when discussing neoliberalism is the haziness of the definition. Neoliberalism is certainly a form of free-market neoclassical economic theory, but it quite difficult to pin down further than that, especially since neoliberal governments and economists carefully avoid referring to themselves as neoliberals and the mainstream media seem to avoid using the word at all costs (think about the last time you saw a BBC or CNN news reporter use the word "neoliberal" to describe the IMF or a particularly right-wing government policy).

Origins

The economic model that the word "neoliberalism" was coined to describe was developed by Chicago school economists in the 1960s and 1970s based upon Austrian neoclassical economic theories, but heavily influenced by Ayn Rand's barmy pseudo-philosophy of Übermenschen and greed-worship.

The first experiment in applied neoliberal theory began on September 11th 1973 in Chile, when a US backed military coup resulted in the death of social-democratic leader Salvador Allende and his replacement with the brutal military dictator General Pinochet (Margaret Thatcher's friend and idol). Thousands of people were murdered by the Pinochet regime for political reasons and tens of thousands more were tortured as Pinochet and the "Chicago boys" set about implementing neoliberal economic reforms and brutally reppressing anyone that stood in their way. The US financially doped the Chilean economy in order to create the impression that these rabid-right wing reforms were successful. After the "success" of the Chilean neoliberal experiment, the instillation and economic support of right-wing military dictatorships to impose neoliberal economic reforms became unofficial US foreign policy.

The first of the democratically elected neoliberals were Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. They both set about introducing ideologically driven neoliberal reforms, such as the complete withdrawal of capital controls by Tory Chancellor Geoffrey Howe and the deregulation of the US financial markets that led to vast corruption scandals like Enron and the global financial sector insolvency crisis of 2007-08.

By 1989 the ideology of neoliberalism was enshrined as the economic orthodoxy of the world as undemocratic Washington based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the US Treasury Department signed up to a ten point economic plan which was riddled with neoliberal ideology such as trade liberalisation, privatisation, financial sector deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy. This agreement between anti-democratic organisations is misleadingly referred to as "The Washington Consensus".

These days, the IMF is one of the most high profile pushers of neoliberal economic policies. Their strategy involves applying strict "structural adjustment" conditions on their loans. These conditions are invariably neoliberal reforms such as privatisation of utilities, services and government owned industries, tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the abandonment of capital controls, the removal of democratic controls over central banks and monetary policy and the deregulation of financial industries. 

Legacies

Neoliberal economic policies have created economic disaster after economic disaster, virtually wherever they have been tried out. Some of the most high profile examples include:

South Africa: When the racist Apartheid system was finally overthrown in 1994, the new ANC government embraced neoliberal economic theory and set about privatising virtually everything, cutting taxes for the wealthy, destroying capital controls and deregulating their financial sector. After 18 years of neoliberal government, more black South Africans are living in extreme poverty, more people are unemployed and South Africa is an even more unequal society than it was under the racist Apartheid regime. Between 1994 and 2006 the number of South Africans living on less than $1 a day doubled from 2 million to 4 million, by 2002, eight years after the end of Apartheid 2002 the unemployment rate for black South Africans had risen to 48%.*

Russia: After the fall of communism, neoliberal economists flooded into Russia to create their free-market utopia, however all they managed to do was massively increase levels of absolute poverty, reduce productivity and create a few dozen absurdly wealthy oligarchs who siphoned their $trillions out of Russia to "invest" in vanity projects such as Chelsea FC. Within less than a decade of being one of the world's two great super-powers, the neoliberal revolution resulted in Russia defaulting on their debts in 1998.

Argentina: Praised as the poster-boys of neoliberalism by the IMF in the 1990s for the speed and scale of their neoliberal reforms, the Argentine economy collapsed into chaos between 1999-2002, only recovering after Argentina defaulted on their debts and prioritised repayment of their IMF loans, which allowed them to tear up the IMF book of neoliberal dogma and begin implementing an investment based growth strategy which boosted the Argentine economy out of their prolonged recession. The late Argentine President Néstor Kirchner famously stated that the IMF had "transformed itself from being a lender for development to a creditor demanding privileges".

The Eurozone: The right-wing love to drivel on about how the EU is a "leftie" organisation, but the unelected technocrats that run the EU (the European commission and the European Central Bank) are fully signed up to the neoliberal economic orthodoxy, where economic interests are separated from democratic control. Take the economic crisis in Greece: The EC and the ECB lined up with the neoliberal pushing IMF to force hard line neoliberal reforms onto the Greek economy in return for vast multi-billion "bailouts" that flowed directly out of Greece to "bail out" their reckless creditors (mainly German and French banks). When the neoliberalisation reforms resulted in further economic contraction, rising unemployment and worsening economic conditions the ECB, EC, IMF troika simply removed the democratic Greek government and appointed their own stooge, an economic coup trick they also carried out in Italy. Spain and Ireland are other cracking examples of neoliberal failure in the Eurozone. These two nations were more fiscally responsible than Germany, France or the UK in terms of government borrowing before the neoliberal economic meltdown, however their deregulated financial sectors inflated absurd property bubbles, leaving the Irish and Spanish economies in ruins once the bubbles burst around 2007-08.

The United Kingdom: Here is a short article summarising how three decades of neoliberal policy have undone many of the gains made during the mixed-economy era.

The global orthodoxy

Despite this litany of economic failures, neoliberalism remains the global economic orthodoxy. Just like any good pseudo-scientific or religious orthodoxy the supporters of neoliberal theory always manage to come up with a load of post-hoc rationalisations for the failure of their theories and the solutions they present for the crises their own theories induced are always based upon the implementation of even more fundamentalist neoliberal policies.

One of the most transparent of these neoliberal justification narratives is the one that I describe as the Great Neoliberal Lie: The fallacious and utterly misleading argument that the global economic crisis (credit crunch) was caused by excessive state spending, rather than by the reckless gambling of the deregulated, neoliberalised financial sector.

Just as with other pseudo-scientific theories and fundamentalist ideologies, the excuse that "we just weren't fundamentalist enough last time" is always there. The neoliberal pushers of the establishment know that pure free-market economies are as much of an absurd fairytale as 100% pure communist economies, however they keep pushing for further privatisations, tax cuts for the rich, wage repression for the ordinary, and reckless financial sector deregulations precicely because they are the direct beneficiaries of these policies. Take the constantly widening wealth gap in the UK throughout three decades of neoliberal policy. The minority of beneficiaries from this ever widening wealth gap are the business classes, financial sector workers, the mainstream media elite and the political classes. It is no wonder at all that these people think neoliberalism is a successful ideology. Within their bubbles of wealth and privilege it has been. To everyone else it has been an absolute disaster.

Contrasts with libertarianism and minarchism

Returning to a point I raised earlier in the article; one of the main problems with the concept of "neoliberalism" is the nebulousness of the definition. It is like a form of libertarianism, however it completely neglects the fundamental libertarian idea of non-aggression. In fact, it is so closely related to that other (highly aggressive) US born political ideology of Neo-Conservatism that many people get the two concepts muddled up. A true libertarian would never approve of vast taxpayer funded military budgets, the waging of imperialist wars of aggression nor the wanton destruction of the environment in pursuit of profit. 

Another concept that is closely related to neoliberalism is the ideology of minarchism (small stateism), however the neoliberal brigade seem perfectly happy to ignore the small-state ideology when it suits their personal interests. Take the vast banker bailouts (the biggest state subsidies in human history) that were needed to save the neoliberalised global financial sector from the consequences of their own reckless gambling, the exponential growth of the parasitic corporate outsourcing sector (corporations that make virtually 100% of their turnover from the state) and the ludicrous housing subsidies (such as "Help to Buy and Housing Benefits) that have fueled the reinflation of yet another property Ponzi bubble.

The Godfather of neoliberalism was Milton Friedman. He supported the libertarian case that illegal drugs should be legalised, which is one of the very few things I agreed with him about. However this is politically inconvenient (because the illegal drug market is a vital source of financial sector liquidity) so unlike so many of his neoliberal ideas that have consistently failed, yet remain incredibly popular with the wealthy elite, Friedman's libertarian drug legalisation proposals have never even been tried out.

The fact that neoliberals are so often prepared to ignore the fundamental principles of libertarianism (the non-aggression principle, drug legalisation, individual freedoms, the right to peaceful protest ...) and abuse the fundamental principles of small state minarchism (vast taxpayer funded bailouts for their financial sector friends, £billions in taxpayer funded outsourcing contracts, alcohol price fixing schemes) demonstrate that neoliberalism is actually more like Ayn Rand's barmy (greed is the only virtue, all other "virtues" are aberrations) pseudo-philosophical ideology of objectivism  than a set of formal economic theories.

Conclusion

The result of neoliberal economic theories has been proven time and again. Time and again countries that embrace the neoliberal pseudo-economic ideology end up with "crony capitalism" and a massive upwards redistribution of wealth, where the poor and ordinary suffer "austerity", wage repression, revocation of labour rights and the right to protest, whilst a tiny cabal of corporate interests and establishment insiders enrich themselves via anti-competitive practices, outright criminality and corruption, and vast socialism-for-the-rich schemes.

Neoliberal fanatics in powerful positions have demonstrated time and again that they will willingly ditch their right-wing libertarian and minarchist "principles" if those principles happen to conflict with their own personal self-interest. Neoliberalism is less of a formal set of economic theories than an error strewn obfuscation narrative to promote the economic interests, and  justify the personal greed of the wealthy, self-serving establishment elite.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

* source: Naomi Klein "The Shock Doctrine" p215