Grandpa:
Carryfast:
…
We’ve never had national insurance ‘income protection’ in the UK, it’s a term, a phrase. If you’re on £400pw and suddenly become unemployed, social security does not protect your income, it protects you from absolute poverty with what the state gives you until you become employed again and that won’t be anywhere near £400pw.
In fact social security did used to protect your previous income. It was called the earnings-related supplement, and it was abolished by Thatcher in about 1982.
The basic dole by the 1970s was also worth about twice what it’s worth today in real terms, with considerably fewer hurdles and exceptions in practice. Though of course there were no in-work benefits and employers were expected to pay sufficient wages.
The reason people didn’t claim it unnecessarily was because why would you sit at home just making ends meet by scrounging when you could go to work and earn considerably more with dignity, or train for a trade, and do something useful with your time?
For the long term unemployed, what income they haven’t got are they supposed to be protected against?
The national insurance scheme didn’t supposedly alleviate absolute poverty, it was what it was set up to prevent. If you’ve ever read Orwell’s ‘The road to Wigan pier’, or ‘Down and out in Paris and London’, those kind of inter-war years of absolute destitution is what the NIS was set up to prevent.
There was dole in George Orwell’s era. In fact one thing he observed in the 30s that middle class people were complaining about the unemployed getting married and having children whilst on benefits, when in reality people simply had to get on with life.
And like today, a major part of the problem was the lack of jobs, the poor wages, and inadequate levels of social security that promoted squalor.
I don’t have a problem with returning to a pension age of 65 and 60, the reason that it won’t happen is because too many people were dipping into the pot and there’s little left for those that paid into it. If people can afford a private or company pension, or healthcare, I’ve no problem with that. Likewise, if you earn more than me, or have a bigger house, or car, I’ve no problem with that either.
It’s nothing to do with Thatcher 40 years ago. It’s more to do with the more recent socialist focus on equality that took the money you paid in and gave it to the ones that didn’t and you’re now wondering where it has all gone. Did you know there are around 1.34m unemployed and nearly 6½m on some kind of benefit? Don’t complain there’s nothing left for you because that’s where your contributions went – to everyone else, comrade. 
The reality is that most of the spare cash in the economy has gone increasingly to the rich, not to various benefit claimants. The slump in wages in the past 10 years under the Tories, has coincided with continued profitability for the rich.
It was the same in Orwell’s day.
