alamcculloch:
It was called NATIONAL INSURANCE and it worked reasonably well, until so many non nationals heard about it and dipped in without having the inconvienence of paying in.
Actually it worked pretty well until the Thatcher government started attacking jobs and cutting benefits.
The abolition of the earnings-related supplement in 1982, for example, which meant that your unemployment benefit was proportional (for a period) to your previous earnings, thus getting out according to how much you’d paid in.
Nowadays, benefits are so low that most people don’t even consider it worth claiming unless they have absolutely nothing.
Basic benefits in the 1970s were worth the equivalent of about twice what they are today, but people still worked because their wages were higher, conditions were better, and jobs easily available.
And the facility of benefits meant that people didn’t have to take poor pay and conditions at work, whereas current policies of poverty and “activation” simply encourage the unemployed to undercut those already in work. People with secure jobs find their work being outsourced to upstart firms employing hordes of desperate and poorly-paid agency workers.