The Governments New Universal Credit Crackdown But Will The Peasants Revolt?

UNIVERSAL CREDIT - Today is the start of a government crackdown aimed at getting people off benefits and into work. 

Under the previous rules Claimants would have three months to find a job in an industry where they have experience and/or want to work in. That leeway has been reduced to just four weeks. A ridiculously short time, where even if you find a job you want to do, the recruitment process is likely to take longer than this short period. 

It remains to be seen whether it will make any difference. These jobs are likely to be low paid, and with everything going up due to inflation, how can people afford to travel to take up work? Top company directors argue they need to be paid what they are worth to incentivise them into work in jobs often grossly overpaid, yet those at the bottom are expected to be forced into mainly, rubbish, low-end jobs. Working for employers that want the lowest-cost labour. 

There is the question mark over the morality of refusing to pay benefits to people via sanctions who have paid tax even when out of work. Claimants still pay VAT and other taxes even without a job. If people have paid into the system, then they lose their job, the ethics of stopping their benefits is very questionable. 

The sanctions system is used by DWP staff pursuing personal vendettas against people who have upset them. The idea that the general public is slaves to the state goes against the principle of free-market economics where the public should be tempted and incentivised into work exercising free will.

The Peasants Revolt in 1381 saw wages rising as the plague had reduced the population giving the peasants higher bargaining power. The aristocracy was not having that. The rebels sought a reduction in taxation, an end to serfdom, and the removal of King Richard II's senior officials and law courts. 

From Wikipedia: The authorities responded to the chaos bypassing emergency legislation, the Ordinance of Labourers in 1349, and the Statute of Labourers in 1351. These attempted to fix wages at pre-plague levels, making it a crime to refuse work or to break an existing contract, imposing fines on those who transgressed. The system was initially enforced through special Justices of Labourers and then, from the 1360s onwards, through the normal Justices of the Peace, typically members of the local gentry.

Although in theory, these laws applied to both labourers seeking higher wages and to employers tempted to outbid their competitors for workers, they were in practice applied only to labourers, and then in a rather arbitrary fashion. The legislation was strengthened in 1361, with the penalties increased to include branding and imprisonment. The royal government had not intervened in this way before, nor allied itself with the local landowners in quite such an obvious or unpopular way.

If this all sounds like what is happening today don’t be surprised. The government are helping business owners to recruit staff by attempting to stop the use of free will in the jobs market. Forcing people into work by in essence by ‘fixing wages at pre-plague levels and making it a crime, at least a sanctionable event, if you refuse to accept work.

History revisits itself. We may see a revolt once more against these draconian measures emerge simmelar to the 'anti-vax' movement which is simmering away in the background. Freedom is hard to define a concept. You only know what it is when it is taken away. 

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