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Lord Freud: Some disabled people are “not worth” the minimum wage ...
Yes, all working fine now, thanks again Dan and good luck with the JR :-)
Just came across an article by Dr Simon Duffy of the Centre for Welfare Reform on Freud’s musings:
As a society we have seriously lost our way on these issues - despite some fairly obvious truths.
* Salaries tell you nothing about human worth. Whatever salary you earn is a function of the scarcity in the labour market of the skills you happen to have, and any power you can exercise in the setting of wages. Your human worth doesn’t go up when your price rises, nor does it go down when your price falls or you lose your job.
* The most worthwhile activities we do are not even paid. For instance, the going wage for being a parent is currently zero.
* Well paid jobs can be worthless. People will pay you well to commit crimes, make weapons or gamble with money on the stock-market. High salaries have never been associated with virtue or competence.
It is perhaps natural to confuse real human worth with salaries, celebrity or power - it’s not an uncommon mistake - what is really upsetting is to see this error turned into an ongoing policy which crushes disabled people or indeed any group that the powerful deem less worthy.
I think people might be interested in the attached article written by David Scott whose question to Lord Freud led to all the media cover -
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/blogs/disabled-rights/7006371.article?sm=7006371.
If I have not correctly created a link perhaps someone smarter than me could do so?