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‘Populists and scapegoats’: How to build a better social security system

As Keir Starmer cuts benefits in the UK, openDemocracy readers discuss social security where they live

Welcome to openDemocracy’s weekly reader comments round-up. This is an opportunity for us to showcase some of the many carefully considered messages we receive on a range of topics.

These comments are edited for clarity, accuracy and length and don’t necessarily reflect openDemocracy's editorial position.

Re: What the world can learn from radical queer aid collectives in East Africa

Good to hear the collectives are becoming independent! The sooner we dispense with charitable institutions, which divide us into the haves and have-nots and use volunteers for cheap labour (the labourer is worthy of his hire), the better. –June Ryan

To read the original story, click here.

I live in Germany, so our social security systems are working, but to a lesser extent than they used to. Populists here and everywhere else try to spin it to have a few scapegoats be responsible for that, but the real responsibility would fall on our government (true I think for most of the Western world).

Changing taxation on the assumption that there will be a ‘trickle-down’ impact of giving more money to the rich has left our services underfunded, understaffed and – thanks to a lot of money from very rich organisations and people – underappreciated.

Meanwhile, the amount of misinformation about social security, the people who need it and the amount we pay for it is truly staggering. I regularly encounter friends, colleagues and family members who think outside pressures cause the decline in services, with the clear idea that we can't afford them anymore. This is the true tragedy.

In a time where these services become more urgent thanks to an ageing population, we are letting the richest people on earth take the money we need to fund them and use it for their own selfish purposes.

I think social security is working. It would be great to take a deep dive into how it could work even better by keeping management and bureaucracy at a minimum and not double- and triple-checking everything and trusting people. But otherwise, I think our biggest problem is the ultra-rich running away with the money they made thanks to monopolies, low oversight and a lot of ‘donations’ to politicians. When I talk to people and they don't think we have a corruption problem, I despair.

Climate change and a very volatile economy will change our way of life again, but whether we will manage to come back to civilisation will depend, I think, on whether we can trust in our neighbours, in the common good and in social security. Long answer to a short question. Thanks for the good work, I'm happy to have found you as a source of news. –Susanne

I live in NZ where the same rhetoric on the need to reform social security programmes is coming from a conservative government.

We should not campaign against these changes by highlighting the moral failings of their arguments, but by pointing out what is, at best, the ignorance behind them. Our governments’ social security policies and systems try and force people into work, while their economic and monetary policies rely on structural unemployment – ie the manufactured rate of unemployment required to deliver the preferred rate of profit to corporations.

This policy is dressed up under various terms and arguments such as the equilibrium unemployment rate, apparently referred to as the ‘Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment’ or the ‘natural’ rate of unemployment, which they say represents the level of unemployment consistent with stable inflation in an economy. All bullshit of course. –Marney

The only social security system that will work is when everyone throughout their life can access a living allowance and learn how to build mud huts for a roof over their head, or if they so wish, learn how to become rich. Poverty is not a necessity.

Banks do not take money out of their safes to make a loan – they write cheques! Governnments can do the same. No gold or coins needed… just little legal pieces of paper or a credit card. –June Ryan

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Click here to read the story that inspired this week’s poll: Keir Starmer doesn’t understand the benefits system