It must be a pretty horrible business for old people who have to leave your home and go into residential care. My mother is currently in a home, and although the place is clean and warm and the staff are kind to her, visiting such places is a pretty depressing experience. Living in one must be a thousand times worse, even if, like my mother, you haven't had to sell your home to fund the cost of care.
For those who have had to sell up to fund their care, the experience must be devastating. With more and more of us living into our 80s and 90s, the issue of care for the elderly has assumed a far greater importance than 100 years ago when the first state pension was introduced. However, this habit of the state intervening that began with the old age pension has come back to bite us in the early 21st century.
Now the state is seen as the answer to so many problems which our Victorian forbears would have resolved through private initiatives. No surprise that the Dilnot report into social car funding has recommended that the state pick up the shortfall, although Mr Dilnot would have preferred a lower figure than the £75,000 figure above which the state will step in. No surprise too that a Lib Dem minister (can't remember who, but then he was a Lib Dem - all pretty unmemorable unless they do something like Chris Huhne), intetiewed on The World This Weekend, crowed about the achievement in supposedly ending the "scandal" of people having to sell their homes to pay for their care, saying that a Tory government wouldn't have done this. I hope this man was correct. I fear that so few Tories at the upper echelons of the party have avoided contamination by the all-prevailing belief in the power of the state that I'm not so sure.
Whay as a Christian should one be so uncomfortable with a proposal that is meant to ease the pressure on the most vulnerable in society? Answer: because compulsory wealth redistribution in any shape or form is intrincially wrong. it is basically theft - a violation of the Eighth Commandment. The proposed state funding above the £75,000 cap will be partly met by freezing inheritance tax - one of the most wicked of all taxes, where the government, having taxed us to death in our lifetimes, then proceeds to assume the role of a grave robber. The current Inheritance Tax threshold of £320,000 is peanuts - barely equivalent to the value of a semi-detached house in Surrey. It therefore affects more than just the rich - it hits ordinary people on middle incomes - people who have lived and saved carefully to provide for their children. The state, after wasting much of this hard-earned money on the wages of bureaucrats, will take what is left and give it to other people who may well have lived frivolous, wasteful lives and who have made little effort to save for old age. Indeed, one effect of implementing these proposals will be that it may deter people from saving. Why bother if the state (i.e., responsible people) can pick up the tab? Let's take out equity release and go off on a cruise round the world!
There's another reason why this idea is the wrong solution. Instead of extending the scope of the Welfare state, it is time to dismember it. It has already become unaffordable. it is creaking at the seams. I'm under no illusions - I don't expect to receive much from it when I get to 65, and by the time my nephew and niece reach 65, they won't get a bean. We're all going to have to work well into our 70s (unless you work for the state, of course) and we're all going to have to put more into savings in order to pay for private health insurance. There is no alternative, and it's about time that politicians stopped being in denial about this. The 1945-51 Labour administration of Clemet Attlee believed that they were building a new Jerusalem. Instead, they have created a financial millstone round the necks of the British people. I'm not saying that there is an easy solution to the problem of care for the elderly, but it's time for the folk at the Institute for Economc Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute to start coming up with a free-market solution that can enable the welfare state to be dismatled gently and sensitively before we end up in about 10-20 years' time having to impose the sort of benefit and state pension cuts the Greeks arre facing now.
For those who have had to sell up to fund their care, the experience must be devastating. With more and more of us living into our 80s and 90s, the issue of care for the elderly has assumed a far greater importance than 100 years ago when the first state pension was introduced. However, this habit of the state intervening that began with the old age pension has come back to bite us in the early 21st century.
Now the state is seen as the answer to so many problems which our Victorian forbears would have resolved through private initiatives. No surprise that the Dilnot report into social car funding has recommended that the state pick up the shortfall, although Mr Dilnot would have preferred a lower figure than the £75,000 figure above which the state will step in. No surprise too that a Lib Dem minister (can't remember who, but then he was a Lib Dem - all pretty unmemorable unless they do something like Chris Huhne), intetiewed on The World This Weekend, crowed about the achievement in supposedly ending the "scandal" of people having to sell their homes to pay for their care, saying that a Tory government wouldn't have done this. I hope this man was correct. I fear that so few Tories at the upper echelons of the party have avoided contamination by the all-prevailing belief in the power of the state that I'm not so sure.
Whay as a Christian should one be so uncomfortable with a proposal that is meant to ease the pressure on the most vulnerable in society? Answer: because compulsory wealth redistribution in any shape or form is intrincially wrong. it is basically theft - a violation of the Eighth Commandment. The proposed state funding above the £75,000 cap will be partly met by freezing inheritance tax - one of the most wicked of all taxes, where the government, having taxed us to death in our lifetimes, then proceeds to assume the role of a grave robber. The current Inheritance Tax threshold of £320,000 is peanuts - barely equivalent to the value of a semi-detached house in Surrey. It therefore affects more than just the rich - it hits ordinary people on middle incomes - people who have lived and saved carefully to provide for their children. The state, after wasting much of this hard-earned money on the wages of bureaucrats, will take what is left and give it to other people who may well have lived frivolous, wasteful lives and who have made little effort to save for old age. Indeed, one effect of implementing these proposals will be that it may deter people from saving. Why bother if the state (i.e., responsible people) can pick up the tab? Let's take out equity release and go off on a cruise round the world!
There's another reason why this idea is the wrong solution. Instead of extending the scope of the Welfare state, it is time to dismember it. It has already become unaffordable. it is creaking at the seams. I'm under no illusions - I don't expect to receive much from it when I get to 65, and by the time my nephew and niece reach 65, they won't get a bean. We're all going to have to work well into our 70s (unless you work for the state, of course) and we're all going to have to put more into savings in order to pay for private health insurance. There is no alternative, and it's about time that politicians stopped being in denial about this. The 1945-51 Labour administration of Clemet Attlee believed that they were building a new Jerusalem. Instead, they have created a financial millstone round the necks of the British people. I'm not saying that there is an easy solution to the problem of care for the elderly, but it's time for the folk at the Institute for Economc Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute to start coming up with a free-market solution that can enable the welfare state to be dismatled gently and sensitively before we end up in about 10-20 years' time having to impose the sort of benefit and state pension cuts the Greeks arre facing now.