Of course there is.
If Johnny has 5 apples there is a limit of 5 apples that he can give away.
Its pre even basic economics.
If resources are finite (which they are in this present world) then if one spends more & more then eventually they reach a limit.
I know thats an over simplistic answer but is there anyone who isnt aware of these facts?
ok well having just seen you around on the travellers thread, perhaps the quote will bring you here but I doubt it..
Anyway, I'm now going to explain the category error you are making that I was hoping to lead you to so you'd learn something, never quite as good when it just gets laid out, and you were getting there so it's a shame but there you go.
I'll stick to your patronising analogy for the moment since that's the level you seem to be happy with.
5 apples.. this year I'll give away 3. I'm going to give away 4 next year and 5 the year after.. limit reached yeh? but I'm going to give 6 away the year after that.. oh no! pre-basic economics! I can't do that can I?
Actually yer I can, because the number of apples I'm producing each year has grown as well - from 5 to 7 to 10 to 15.. In fact, whilst my apple giving has been rising every year it's become more and more sustainable.
Now the logical corresponding thing in the real world to the apples is GDP - the total product of our nation each year, and (if we discount borrowing abilities cos that's just putting a commitment off) this is the limit for what we can spend on welfare. Be a bit of an odd world to spend 100% of gdp on welfare but you certainly couldn't spend more than that.
Real terms spending measurements take into account inflation which you obviously have to do, but they don't take into account the rise in GDP that has also happened, and therefore tell us nothing (absolutely zero) about the sustainability of our welfare spending.
If we have a look at welfare spending as a proportion of GDP we get a rather different story to the one your painting:
from:
http://duncanseconomicblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/welfare-spending-some-facts/ which links through to the source data set.
It's worth noting that this data set counts state pension separately from welfare spending, when the two are often conflated by politicians to up the amount we're supposedly throwing at scroungers.
The pensions graph looks like this - though I don't know why the data only starts in the early 90s - my suspicion is that prior to that year they were included together in this data set, there is a big big drop in welfare spending in 94 or 95 - if that's true then the amount of benefits spending in the previous years is actually lower than shown in that graph:
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/spending_chart_1950_2011UKp_10c1li111mcn_00t
It's risen by about 2% of GDP in the past 20ish years though - and backs up what I said earlier which is that pensions make up the largest part of growth in welfare spending.
Anyway, you never answered whether you think that pensioners who've mostly worked and paid taxes all their life are addicted to state cash and should have welfare removed, mostly people don't so I'm leaving pensions out of this.
So what can we see from welfare spending - oh yeah, it's fallen year on year as a % GDP since the mid-80s, bar during the recession of the early 90s. It was pretty steady in the 50s, rose a bit in the 60s and then from the mid-70s to mid-80s rose more quickly as the oil crisis and subsequent recessions saw real wages falling, huge inflation (which I'm assuming would have meant benefits rising faster than wages as they have done in the past year - were benefit levels tied to inflation then?) and unemployment rising.
It then steadies off in the mid-90s until the recession of the last couple of years.
It's currently at a level similar to that of the 1950s and well below 10% of national income..
I don't think that's an unsustainable level, and I hope you can see now that we are nowhere near the limit of spending, and understand why real terms rising spending figures on their own tell you absolutely zip about how sustainable the spending is. if you've come back to look at this thread that is.
not that I'm surprised though.
