US evangelist Lawrence Mead's 'work makes you free' impact on UK welfare reform policies

“In my interviews with state officials [in the US] they did not blink about putting men in prison to enforce a work requirement,” says Lawrence M Mead. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

(Kwug Blog editor apologises for accidental misspelling of Mead's forename in the address for this Web page.)

In a recent Kwug Blog post I referred to my attendance on Monday 8 May at the book launch for Prof. Guy Standing's book, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen.(1) I now turn briefly to flagging up a reference Guy made to the influence of Lawrence Mead on the ideas and strategies of now former Work & Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and David Cameron from as far back as 2007.(2)

Mead's overriding message: "Make it harder for people to claim," reported Guy Standing.

This blog post is intended more as a reference source than an 'article'. I shall close it with reference to a blog post I wrote from dire personal experience that the British Broadcasting Corporation never properly reported on but that was far more widespread than the 2007 Blairite Government would have liked to have flagged up: Benefit claimants require firmer safeguards, not tougher sanctions.(3)

Since then, we have had introduction of food stamps as decreed by Lawrence Mead the evangelist of a 'despise thy claimant' theology.(4)

Laurence Mead: "Hitler was non-democratic, whereas work requirements claim a popular mandate."

I close this blog post with the closing paragraphs of the Guardian Society article Does getting tough on the unemployed work?(5)

The key intellectual insight for Mead when he began his assault on the American welfare state was that what changed behaviour was not economic incentives but tough government talking. "It was authoritative statements from people in authority that mattered. We should not [incentivise people] to work. We hope [they will]. We say it because you are supposed to do it, we expect you to do it."

Such sentiments have a whiff of 1930s Germany, something the Twittersphere buzzed with when welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith said: "Work makes you free" – the same words hung over the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp. "I have faced this accusation," says Mead. "Hitler was non-democratic, whereas work requirements claim a popular mandate. There is something wrong when because of fascism we have to solve every problem with freedom and benefits."

In the wake of another Tory victory, would Theresa May claim a 'popular mandate' for the Gospel according to Lawrence Mead?

"Arbeit macht frei" — the German for
"work makes you free"

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Link references

1. http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/universal-credit-application-processes-bleed-claimants-dry-simplicity-of-basic-income-application-processes-revives.html
2. https://uk.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A7x9Ukn3cRhZaEoAKjeP3olQ;_ylc=X1MDMTM1MTIxMjY4NwRfcgMyBGZyA3locy1tb3ppbGxhLTEwMARncHJpZAM4al95U19YelFyV3FyWU1tS0ZqV0ZBBG5fcnNsdAMwBG5fc3VnZwMwBG9yaWdpbgN1ay5zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tBHBvcwMwBHBxc3RyAwRwcXN0cmwDBHFzdHJsAzUxBHF1ZXJ5AyUyMmxhdXJlbmNlJTIwbWVhZCUyMiUyMCUyMmlhaW4lMjBkdW5jYW4lMjBzbWl0aCUyMgR0X3N0bXADMTQ5NDc3NTIwOQ--?p=%22laurence+mead%22+%22iain+duncan+smith%22&fr2=sb-top-uk.search&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-100&type=newtab
3. http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/benefit-claimants-require-firmer-safegards-not-tougher-sanctions.html 
4. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/jun/16/lawrence-mead-tough-us-welfare-unemployed
5. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/jun/16/lawrence-mead-tough-us-welfare-unemployed
6. https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.TXIkYO_C3vKprrqbIq501QEsDB&pid=15.1&P=0&w=241&h=157

Universal Credit application processes bleed claimants dry. Simplicity of basic income application processes revives

I attended a book launch on Monday night (8 May) at London School of Economics, for the latest book by Professor Guy Standing of School of Oriental and African Studies.(1) His book Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen is being published by Pelican.(2)

Though I bought the book, I shall not be reviewing it here in this blog post as I am a very slow reader and have personally pressing priorities that get in the way of my reading it just now. I shall, however, refer a little to his presentation speech content and a film that was shown outlining a pilot scheme for an unconditional basic income that was trialed in India and has excited the Indian government.

Professor Guy Standing's new book Basic Income:And How We Can Make It Happen is published by Pelican

In his introductory talk, Standing referred back to his works on the precariat as a new socio-economic class that is particularly vulnerable to change in an environment in which the global wealthy seem to be pulling all the strings.(3) The means-testing embedded in the UK's welfare state over the past several decades has been ever more firmly embedded into the new Universal Credit, and that makes work far less rewarding especially for those in precarious employment he argued.

The idea of a basic income has been around for centuries, he pointed out, and included in the writings of Thomas Paine in the 18th century, for example.(4) More recently, Norway nationalised its share of North Sea Oil and distributed the wealth among its own nationals. (UK government privatised its North Sea Oil.) He also pointed out that since the industrial revolution that happened in North-East England on account of local mineral resources, Middlesborough is one of the most deprived areas of the UK.

Standing observed that critics of an unconditional basic income have argued that it would breed laziness. Advocates of basic income, by contrast, state that an unconditional basic income, by fostering a more socio-economically stable and equal society promotes goodwill between state and citizens, and increases people's intelligence.

He presented a film of a basic income pilot scheme that was recorded in India with English subtitles. The overriding image for me from that film was of claimants congregating to receive their payments, and applying their thumb print as identification on a piece of paper. (Well, fingerprinting originated largely on the Indian sub-continent, and not as a means of tracking down criminals, as I recall reading years ago.)

Contrast that with the Department for Work & Pensions' (DWP) obsession with closure of face-to-face benefits outlets that has been going on for decades now in the UK.(5) Claimants are kept on hold for a long time at pay-as-you-go mobile phone call charge rates of £33/hr while the claimant has to wait for the 'adviser' they are speaking to to refer back to their supervisor. Claimants do this in isolation from one another, adding to their sense of alienation and isolation. And the DWP has a bullying insistance that jobcentres are no longer so necessary, because 75% of Jobseekers Allowance claims and 99% of Universal Credit claims are made online.(6) Whose choice is that?

In place of Guy's wording 'reciprocity' for the goodwill effect of a basic income, I believe people in the precariat would describe the liberation that an unconditional basic income would bring as "being freed from being bled dry." And I would also add that the 'conditionality' embedded in Universal Credit and Claimant Commitment procedures in alienation from what is represented of 'life' in the mainstream mass media puts people into a 'headless chicken' state of panic.

So, yes, Basic Income makes people more intelligent and frees society from the problems of low birth weight that Revd Paul Nicolson has helped to highlight;(7) but what gets in the way of people manifesting their intelligence?

I will close this post with a further referencing to means-tested benefits that Guy gave in, as I recall, the question and answer session. He pointed out that under means-tested systems, more benefits go to immigrants because they have experienced the most deprivation. Thus that creates more hostility between the indigenous poor people.

Link references

1. http://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2017/05/20170508t1830vOT/Basic-Income
2. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/304706/basic-income/
3. http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/guy-standing/
4. http://www.guystanding.com/files/documents/CDHE_Standing.pdf 
5. http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/terra-firma-benefits-services-closures-leave-the-economically-vulnerable-in-the-lurch.html
6. ibid.  
7. http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/news/rev-paul-nicolson-to-appeal