Children - a Ponzi scheme?

The argument for child benefit - that we need to produce a future generation of tax payers - is bunk. Which I will proceed to de-bunk. Don't even attempt to introduce a counter view. I am 100% correct in this case and there is no room for argument. The country is so far up shit creek right now that the last thing we need are more mewling, puking, helpless dependents sucking up even more resources in an endless quest to pretend that life on earth is not a veil of tears.

You see, in an effort to make everybody happy and fluffy and lovely we have to invent ever greater controls to curb the undercurrent of unpleasant opportunism that lies at the very core of humanity. It's the drive that helped us survive and once upon a time the procreative part of that drive was necessary  as new members of a true community would balance the loss of experience at the top with vitality and vigour at the bottom. Also, high infant mortality rates meant that over-breeding was essential; but in-bred redundancy is a genetic imperative we can no longer afford.

Trouble is nowadays, not only do we not lose enough of the little fuckers early, we keep children dependent until their mid-twenties by extending their aimless education and kidding them they're all university material. Then they can't find jobs anyway, so they go back to sponge off the very parents we helped to incentivise in the first place. Then they get bored and end up, inevitably, becoming parents themselves and remove themselves, sometimes permanently, from the jobs market. Where's the point in that?

Child Benefit is a type of failed Ponzi Scheme that pretends to reward its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation. Or; invest in kids now and they'll repay that investment as taxpayers in the future. That model may have been viable in 1945, but it's nonsense now.

A Ponzi scheme entices new investors by offering higher returns than other activities, such as low-grade work. Perpetuation of the returns requires an ever-increasing flow of money from new investors to keep the scheme going. Or, the more sprogs you pop out the more we need to take from current taxpayers to continue to encourage the unworthy to squeeze out yet more sprogs.

People will breed anyway, whatever measures are taken to prevent it - I favour something in the water - but actually paying for the product is utterly ridiculous. Remove Child Benefit altogether. It won't stop the underclass from duffing-up, but it might slow them down a bit.

For fuck's sake STOP Sprogging up!

And as for the argument that we'll need those kids to run the country when we're too old and sick and stupid to do it ourselves, have you looked around lately? Who drives the buses, cleans the offices, works the fields and wipes the arses in hospital? Who makes up the bulk of doctors, dentists and opticians in most cities? The previous government showed that when you can't get your own kids to do menial work you can easily import that labour. Then their kids will go on to take the decent jobs as well.

So don't try to tell me there is any need to pay people to breed. As a Twitter playmate tweeted earlier - stop all child benefit... nine months from now. Have a nice weekend and wear a condom!

Feeling the benefit.

I saw a lot of bleating again today, from various quarters about 'nasty vicious Tory cuts'. Would those same people have complained of nasty vicious Labour cuts had Ed financially-illiterate Balls been making them, as he undoubtedly would have had to? I somehow doubt it, as the socialist hate rhetoric only applies to approved targets based on labels promulgated via some pretty smug propaganda. Where, for instance, is the deserved righteous lefty hatred that should be levelled at twice disgraced Peter (Lord, note) Mandelson who last year  bought an eight million pound house? Power to the people indeed.

You won't hear it because Labour have perfected the Orwellian art of 'doublethink' the ability to hold two contrary views at the same time. Thus, all Tories are bad because they make money and have cronies in the House of Lords, but when one of Labour's own attains high office and literally lords it over the rest of us, that is somehow acceptable. Or taxpayers must be squeezed till the pips squeak but taxpayers with children are better than the rest of us and must be given some money back.

This is dangerous territory, but I'd argue that those with children should pay more tax... or at least get no state assistance in raising them. Or, if that is unpalatable - which it will be - that I should get both Child Benefit and Working Families' Tax Credit. But, but, but... you'll splutter, we need that money to help raise children for your benefit. Well, if that were true, how come all the low end jobs, the ones that actually shore up a large part of the economy, are mostly taken by the tide of immigrant workers?

Your kids that gain no useful qualifications won't be wiping my arse when I'm eighty and your kids that get good grades will bugger off and work abroad, given half a chance, if the UK continues on its arse-ride to EU federal oblivion. At the very least, if they are successful, they will employ accountants to minimise their tax burden. So I'm not paying tax to maintain a healthy population top-up at all; I'm paying - the bit of it that you get back in benefits - for no useful purpose whatsoever. One way or another your kids are an investment on which the country is never likely to reap dividends. On top of that I pay for schools, roads, local services, healthcare and the like, all of which I use far less of than you breeders

Allowing unchecked immigration let the previous government suppress wages and opportunities for your young Britons while at the same time buying your silence and capitulation by showering on you the fruits of their magic money tree... until the bubble burst. It's effectively outsourced our breeding and rearing department. Now you want the state - that is, me - to keep paying you a stipend for something I already pay for anyway. That's like outsourcing your HR department, but not sacking your current in-house staff.

So, parents, it appears you are politically redundant so you can do your bit to help the country by giving up the bribe that no longer serves a purpose. Take one for the team and give it back, or let me have it as well. It's only fair.

The dirty, dirty bastards!

So, here's the thing. The reason I wasn't chattering away on Twitter last night? (What do you mean, you didn't notice?) I had to drive up to Leeds to get my house back.

Four years ago, when I first rented it out it was all newly finished. Rewire, new kitchen & bathroom,  re-plastered,  new central heating & beautifully decorated throughout. Early this year, when the first tenant left, it was still pretty much immaculate. Now, nine months later, I receive an anonymous text, asking me if it is available for rent, as it is empty.

What the f...? Call tenant; no pickup. Send text seeking explanation; received text back saying she'd tried many times to contact me to no avail. Funny how, when she blew up the washing machine, broke the back door and flooded the bathroom, etc, she could get hold of me just like that. Funny how everybody else who tried to contact me on holiday had no problem doing so.

Cool as you like she informed me she'd vacated ten days ago, that she'd got a council house and when would I like to pick up the keys? Leeds is only 110 miles from Birmingham, but it took 2-1/2 hours to get there through rush hour, accidents and lane closures. Did she show? Of course not. My reception committee was a pair of sub-human, track-suited, pond scum with overtones of welfare-funded, common or garden paedohilia in the form of a hooded middle aged man with an emaciated teenage kid in tow, who tossed the keys to me from over the road with a cursory grunt...

Their reason for my ex-tenant's no-show? She had the kids 'back'. When she took the place - recommended by previous perfect tenant - she had only one brat... turns out the others have been recovered from the social services lost property shop. To people like this, this is just a normal event. When I got inside I immediately saw the real reason she didn't meet me... dirty protest. (The kids are just an excuse; as easily ditched as soon as a better offer arises.) No wonder I got no notice until the evacuation was a done deal.

To us, the decent, striving, tax-paying fuellers of the economy, Life of Grime was a freak-show documentary about people with extraordinary and slightly amusing mental aberrations. To the underclass of idle, scrounging, sprog-popping, benefit-thieving peasants, it was a design for life. The Labour Party would have you believe that everybody is deserving of minimum standards way above those they have the ability to afford or appreciate. I defy you, after seeing the state she left MY house in to demand anything better than extinction for this breed of animal.

Labour's legacy

I am owed rent. The place needs a top-to-bottom, hospital-standard, disinfectant deep-clean -  full carpet & curtain replacement, new shower, total redecoration - before it's fit again for habitation. So, not content with taking our money - she/they lived entirely off the state - she sees nothing wrong in leaving me further costs to recover what is mine to a reasonable standard.

Do I have any sympathy for these generations of 'forgotten' souls? Do I believe for one second that they are the equal of any other human being? Do I think their squalid, mean, existences can be improved and that that improvement would benefit society as a whole? Do I reckon this breed of sub-human is the result of decades of mealy-mouthed, weak Socialism?

What do you think?

It's the stupid economy!

I’m not going to get embroiled in all the emotive hoo-ha that is Jimmy Savile’s dubious legacy. Nor the bereavement machine rumbling into mid-Wales right now. That’s dodgy ground for other people to dig over, although I would question the morals of a society so prurient as to want to know all the grubby details, all the time. Really, society? You really want to go down that route? All the best with keeping your own family skeletons firmly in their cupboards, then. 

Nope. No way José. Instead, we’re going to do economics. Again. 

Much chatter on the LBC 97.3 FM this week about paying mums to stay at home. The whole business of child benefits and fiscal social engineering aimed at procreation is simple idiocy. That’s not how economics works and we know this policy area is doomed simply because Harriet Harman likes it so much. 

It’s very easy really, the price of a ‘good’ is dependent on simple supply and demand. Demand is driven by one of two things, need and want; stuff you can’t live without and stuff you THINK you can’t live without. And it doesn’t matter how much you desperately WANT children, it is absolutely, unarguably true that you will not expire for lack of them. 

In fact, people want to have children so much there is absolutely no need to pay them to do it. They will do it all by themselves, sometimes without even realising it, often without thinking it through. At the moment our supply line is overflowing with excess product spilling out all over the place. But it’s worse than that. The state paying more than market value for production encourages most those who are unfit producers. So, the market is flooded with an excess of such poor-quality stock we actually have to import foreign labour. 

As a result, the monetary worth to the country of a new child, is negative. In fact, over its lifetime it will cost many hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money. That’s Socialist economic intervention for you.

In the same daft vein a gentle lunatic we tolerate on Twitter last night suggested – nay demanded – that the minimum wage should be £20 per hour. Well, in time it will be, either by diktat or by inflation. But, here’s the thing, when the minimum wage is £20 a loaf of bread will cost you a fiver. 

The moral of this tale? Simply that if you rely on the government to make your life comfortable, you will end up with the government controlling your life. You don’t like Tesco? Don’t patronise them. You want to earn more? Make yourself a more desirable product. You want freedom? Then go out and get it. But if you expect the Labour Party to come good on Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ pledge then you’ll get exactly what you deserve. 

Golden Bread - The Loaf of the Future!

I did say there would be a test. 

The minimum wage is raised to £20 per hour. Does this mean

1. Chuka Umunna’s been at the rum again, 
2. Harriet Harman (Just Harriet harman), 
3. We are ALL millionaires, or,
4. There’s trouble at’mill.