Tuesday 11 January 2011

The Wasted Excesses on Youth

I wanted here to provide a link to Iain Duncan Smith's commentary article in the Torygraph yesterday, but cannot find it for love nor money. In its absence I shall paraphrase: under Labour youth unemployment remained constant throughout 1997-2008 (until the recession) despite the booming economy. It then increased throughout the recession to its current levels. Youth unemployment is therefore not a recession only problem, but one Labour failed to address in 13 years. Instead they threw money at poorly designed headline policies, none of which made a significant impact. They now say cutting these policies (New Deal for Young People etc) is betraying British youth. In fact this is what they did. What the Coalition is doing is cutting the enormous waste here and starting a coherent policy in the form of the Work Programme, Universal Credit system and expansion of the New Enterprise Allowance. He sums up: "It isn't enough to say 'something must be done'. That approach saw billions spent over the past 13 years- money that could have made a real difference to young people's lives but was instead wasted on ill-thought through programmes."

The Labour attack on Coalition cuts to basically anywhere are pretty one-dimensional and require one to ignore a rather important premise for them to be considered sensible. The argument is always that any cut to funding anywhere is hurting someone and therefore the Coalition are mean and nasty. The premise that we are to ignore is that the extra funding they splashed around to buy votes and headlines actually did anything.

They don't want you to think about this. Why? Because the concept of doing more for less is not their thing; by political alignment they like doing less for more (Big Government), because it is what the Coalition are doing (who they must Oppose), and lastly, because it points out how the terrible deficit we are left with due to their spending wasn't even worth anything.

So, before we believe the Labour mantra, have a look at previous success rates, however the may be measured, look at the increased funding, then look at the current success rates. Do this in education, umemployment, health, welfare, anywhere. Then decide if removing funds from that area actually will hurt anything other than Labour's credibility.

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