An interesting shot of welfare expenditure by GDP. For those who think the UK pays too much welfare, we pay the 4th lowest amount in the list.
Look at the source: DWP, Eurostat (ESSPROS.) You can't just slot the DWP figure for the UK into a list based on ESSPROS database, see below, We would actually be near the top based on ESSPROS: For context the last easy to access ESSPROS data I can find for the UK was when we were still in the EU seeing as it is a EU commission reporting body. So in 2015 ESSPROS had the UK figure at 28.4% which the ONS used as their figure. The DWP announced figure? 11% (For info France was 32% so pretty close) So the DWP figure at 11% in 2015 is remarkably similar to this week's published figure of 10.8% Not much change there although I would say looking more at a % based on a GDP per capita 2015 to 2025 comparison would show a much bigger difference. With such a difference between all these number then you have to wonder surely how they are comparing in order to present a like for like comparison. A vast amount of uk welfare is spent on housing! EU countries spend a vast amount more on youth unemployment.......something we in the UK have hidden away by pushing 50% of youth into Uni on student loans that they will never pay back and in the next decade we will see a huge uptick in the amount the government writes off as these 30 year loans expire! At the moment it is pretty low at 50m per year or so but then in 1995 there were less going to university and the fees/loans was in its infancy. In 10 year's time we will see a massive increase in government write offs and it will continue increasing year on year but hey ho. don't need to be paying welfare to out of work youth and our unemplyment figures look great and the best youth unemployment going. Happy days.
Elsewhere? Maybe, maybe not. What an absolute **** the orange arsehole is, come on karma strike the dirtbox down. please log in to view this image
