“People who are poorer should be prepared to take the biggest risks; they’ve got least to lose.” — Lord Freud.

That’s the prefect logic for revolt.

Lord Freud’s comments are the perfect example of the need for an elected second chamber and the introduction of democracy into our country.
No wonder our ruling elite have engineered the politicisation of the police – obviously they are going to need them – maybe sooner than later.

Completely out of touch and out of control !

Freud should be forced to spend a week in the real world. Maybe he should spend a week on the streets with the homeless to find out the reality of the consequences of what he preaches.

Rich bankers and investors took our tax payers money to bail them out after taking risks that brought this country to it’s knees and now they expect the rest of society to make the same mistakes. Difference is, the people that take his advice will not get bailed out !

How selfish and out of touch and out of control is that from the spoiled brat.

Freud is just taking the piss and laughing at the poor.

Pretty much spot on analysis, it’s telling that policy aimed at making the poor ‘more productive’ tends to be all stick – sanctions, increased monitoring of their actions (ID cards by the back door anyone?), reductions in things that would allow them to get ahead like the EMA because ‘they’ll just spend it on beer’. Meanwhile, in order to make the rich ‘more productive’ we have to lower their tax rates, give them bonuses and incentives and generally treat the poor dears with kid gloves, because they’re ‘wealth creators’.

He is having a go at the rich as well – for not paying their taxes. (Top 1% of earners pay 28% of all income tax collected, though). He seems to me to be a bit of an equal-opportunity basher.

Wikipedia, via the IFS has that at 12.8% not 28%.

John O’Donohue

He did not complain about the tax break that George Osborne gave to the richest in society in the last budget, guess what : most of the front bench also benefited from that tax break ! No taking risks there, they just sat back and let the rest of society suffer the austerity measures only to see it go straight into the pockets of the richest that have no financial worries.

Freud appears to be very much fragmented and hypocritical like the rest of the Tory Cabinet Ministers.

Strange use of the word ,”morale.” Doesn’t he mean morals?

I get less class-consciousness from this than simple misanthropy. The man is obviously unpleasant and probably a narcissist. His grandad would have had a field day with him.

All of the poor will be PUT AT terrible risk when Universal Credit crashes and burn but the Coalition, unwilling to lose face, resolutely plod on with it creating terrible poverty and homelessness in their wake.

Thanks David!

“Rulers often see the attitudes and behaviour of the poor as a problem to be solved by exhortation and policy, whereas the attitudes of the rich are givens, to which governments must adapt”.

Not just rulers, any powerful special interest group: Women, vegetarians, cyclists, social workers; all see themselves as part of the solution and the out group as part of the problem. Co-existence is seen as irrational, and in a supposed age of “tolerance and diversity”, there is precious little of either.

@ 5 That oft quoted statistic (I thought it was 20% but anyway) just shows how wide income inequality has become. It does not, as the rich like to pretend, show that they pay more than their “fair share”.
The wealthy often appear to have low incomes relative to their wealth, as they have capital wealth, not income wealth.

What a completely moronic article. It is obvious Lord Freud wasn’t saying the poor should go out to Ladbrokes and gamble. So why does the article go off on some diatribe about it?

It seemed clear he was saying the welfare system should allow the least well of a safety net that allows them to take risks to get them out of that same system. He was criticizing the fact that the system as it stands punishes those wishing to take a risk.

I also didn’t spot the word gamble, so morphing the concept of risk into gambling makes you either disingenuous or simply so shallow that you only hear what you want to hear. Strangely enough, taking such an opposing view to something which was not actually written makes you a bit of a pleb caricature.

It’s ‘bias against’, not ‘bias towards’, and it would help if you would describe fairly and accurately what the person has actually argued. LC seems to be slipping into a bad habit of setting up strawman articles as a result of careless reading. There is no need for this.

I think what he says next is even more worthy of criticism:

“We have, through our welfare system, created a system which has made them reluctant to take risks so we need to turn that on its head and make the system predictable so that people will take those risks.”

I realise he’s not talking about gambling, but what other sort of “risks” does the man think could possibly be available to unemployed people on benefits? I assume he means they could all start their own businesses. I don’t even know where to start with how insane that is as a concept. There’s this thing you need to start a business, Lord Freud, it’s called “capital”. Benefit claimants tend not to be able to get it, especially given they don’t usually own a house for collateral.

On the other hand, “risks” such as stealing manhole covers from Lord Freud’s driveway for scrap are entirely free of capital requirements.

That may seem like a flippant way of putting it, but looking at the level of theft and violence in any poor country, it’s pretty obvious that creating extreme desperation among the poor will tend to have negative side-effects.