The entire basis of the welfare system, as envisaged by Sir William Beveridge, was that help is afforded at a time of need in return for contribution when the going is good.



Your school leaver would, ultimately, contribute throughout the course of his/her working life. The worker who reaches retirements gets something called a pension. It's not rocket science. And you don't need a 1.0 in economics from Oxford to understand that basic principles.



In the second paragraph you have answered your own question.



People are not asking for a direct link between contribution or entitlement. What they are saying is that the system is broke. And needs fixing.

Quote Dally="Dally"According to The Independent Cameron has told his ministers that their favoured target, the Welfare Budget, cannot take all of the strain of further cuts and conservatives they should look for cuts in their own departmental budgets. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 19957.html So, I guess we can either expect the Welfare Budget to be cut further or Cameron to go soon.'" The bit about linking the right to claim benefits to the payment of national insurance is interesting. Sort of like asking people to contribute to a system when the going is good, that they will ultimately benefit from when they hit hard times. It sounds eminently fair and makes great economic sense. I really don't see why some people have a problem with that.

Quote Dally="Dally"According to The Independent Cameron has told his ministers that their favoured target, the Welfare Budget, cannot take all of the strain of further cuts and conservatives they should look for cuts in their own departmental budgets. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 19957.html So, I guess we can either expect the Welfare Budget to be cut further or Cameron to go soon.'" The bit about linking the right to claim benefits to the payment of national insurance is interesting. Sort of like asking people to contribute to a system when the going is good, that they will ultimately benefit from when they hit hard times. It sounds eminently fair and makes great economic sense. I really don't see why some people have a problem with that.

As people keep explaining to you, there are a relative handful of able-bodied claimants who will never make any contribution. This is no indication of a 'broken system'. And since [ieveryone[/i gets a pension regardless of whether they drew other benefits or not I left that out of the equation.



Running around saying that the system is broken or open to widespread abuse without offering any [ievidence[/i is poor debating technique. All you've offered so far is [iopinion[/i.

Because what's being proposed there is linking the rights to benefits to [iprior[/i NI contributions. Otherwise it would have zero effect on 'benefits tourists'. Which leaves my student example to starve or freeze to death.

Somebody robbed our local newsagents a few months back. I think that is evidence the system is broken. Clearly all newsagents must close to prevent this happening again.

If that was the basic principle it could be achieved commercially, via simple insurance policies.

But, as I understand it, it is not the basic principle ... the pinciple is that, as members of a civilised society, those of us who are able to do so will look after those who are young, old, infirm, disabled, ill or unemployed.



The notion that we can't afford it is entirely spurious.

In that case we should close down The Sin Bin. Because this is a place where opinions collide and debates / arguments ensue.



Unless you are a university professor conducting empirical research, pretty much everything is opinion. Reference The Sin Bin, pretty much every post, on every thread, is someone's opinion.

Which is it this week anyway: are they all coming here and taking our jobs or taking our welfare payments?

[iDemonisation[/i is having a few days off.

There all too busy fighting for bankers bonuses in Brussels.

But we were only blessed with the banking geniuses that broke the economy because of the huge bonuses they could trouser. It is accepted as a given that somewhere else, there are plenty of other banks that would pay these geniuses the same as what they earn here.



The geniuses only thus stay because of the bonuses they can earn, which they can't beat elsewhere.



But, you may ask, if they are that good, why didn't an "elsewhere" offer them a tad bigger bonus, and they would have secured the services of their desired genius, so they could have bankrupted their banks instead of ours?



Is it then that we pay the biggest bonuses? Or do we just pay bonuses that attract second rate bankers, because the top bonus earners work elsewhere? So the argument would be that we already have second rate bankers, but we don't want third rate bankers? Why not? How much worse could they be?

And what do your base your opinion on? That is what you are basically being asked. You appear to have formed your opinion based on no evidence at all. Merely hearsay. There are plenty of resources on line so when the likes of IDS paints a picture of a work-shy poor do you just accept it? If so why?

Not quite up to speed with how this is supposed to work, are you?



It's quite simple. When you express the opinion that something is 'evident', be prepared to back it up with something more than idle speculation based on other people's unsupported opinions. Or accept that your opinion is not based on facts.