Читать книгу Reinventing the Welfare State - Ursula Huws - Страница 18

By these and other means, welfare systems have evolved into a disguised means of redistributing from labour to capital, not from capital to labour. And this reversal has been disguised in such a way that the blame for it is displaced along multiple dimensions. Most obviously it is displaced onto welfare claimants, seen as ‘scroungers’ taking scarce resources from ‘hard-working taxpayers’. But it is also displaced onto overseas workers, seen as stealing jobs from British workers, and onto migrants, who, in addition to stealing jobs and undercutting wages are also often perceived as consuming public resources, such as housing, education and health, which should by rights belong to native workers. The search for groups to blame does not stop there, however. Another favourite target is the elderly, adding an intergenerational wedge to the other divisions forced into the working class – splintered not just by employment and citizenship status but also by age.