Fight for Freedom!

DISCLAIMER: These opinions are ficticious and form part of a celebration of Felix's 1500th issue. Any resemblance to real opinions, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The welfare state: we are told it exists to create equality in the country, to make it a fairer country. This is a lie! The welfare state is so profoundly unfair it is ridiculous! Those who work hard to earn a living have to sacrifice a large proportion of their pay to tax to “benefit society”. However there are some people who do not want to work, cannot be bothered to work, some even who can’t work(!), and still get some free money every week off the state – how on God’s green earth is that fair?!

People in this country have become far too dependent on the state. Forecasted government spending in 2012 is £703bn, with £111bn on welfare and £124bn on healthcare. That works out at about £3,500 per person, and that’s what each of us should receive in a fair and equal system. Unbelievably, not everyone gets access to that though. The man who works hard every day to pay his way in life won’t see a penny, but the man who sits on his sofa all day long watching daytime TV will get some few pennies more than his fair share.

Have we become a society of entitlement? It seems we have begun to believe we should all have access to the same things, the same quality of life, no matter what we do to benefit society and our country. In the past, the reward for working hard was being able to have the luxuries in life – owning your own house, your own car, going on holiday and buying the latest technologies. But now it seems it has almost become a human right to have these things. In the past, any spare money that didn’t need spending on the bare necessities would be saved, so when something out of the ordinary was required or when times were tough, you would be able to make ends meet. Those who sit around on benefits don’t have to save, don’t have to think about the future; benefits become pure disposable income. It’s no wonder that some of these same people living off benefits have the latest phones, the biggest televisions, and go on numerous holidays a year – they can afford to because they know even if they spend all their money, next week or month, the next payment of benefits will come in.

“There was a time when ... your job depended on who your father was – what a wonderful system!”

All we need to do is look to the past to see where we are going wrong. This country was at its greatest at the end of the 19th Century under good old Queen Victoria. During the industrial revolution the economy grew by leaps and bounds, and the Empire was at full strength. This was a time when you had what you could afford, when what you could afford depended on your job, and your job depended on who your father was – what a wonderful system! Those of us who could afford the luxuries in life would be guaranteed a standard of life for generations to come, and those who couldn’t, worked in factories or as servants. There would have been no riots this summer if such an employment system still existed, where you had to toil to reap the rewards of life...

Just imagine the possibilities if we could scrap the welfare state. Think what we could do with that £111bn. We could offer tax breaks to the rich, the people who so valiantly shoulder such a large chunk of the tax burden; we could reduce inheritance tax, so those of us who have family estates do not have to bare such excessive financial costs when passing our fortunes from one generation to the next.

So why should everyone deserve the same standards of life, and why should everyone be able to afford the same things? Surely the fairest economy and society is one where you are rewarded for working hard, having rich parents, and punished for not pulling your weight? We shouldn’t become a nation where we depend on hand-outs from the state; we should be encouraging people to work hard to strengthen the economy! And if they do not want to, they should lose their “human rights” to televisions, and be forced to work in a Victorian-esque manner like this woman on the left. In these times of austerity and rising taxes, welfare is an unfair and unnecessary financial burden, and should be scrapped ASAP if we are to put the Great back into Great Britain.