persons insured for unemployment the great majority do not actually
pay any income tax.
It is true that most of these persons who derive benefit make
some contribution to the maintenance of the Funds.
On the other hand, contribution is paid by those who derive
no benefit at all, since these Funds receive contributions from the
Exchequer. that is from the tax-paver. and also from Emplovers.
One effect of legislation regarding social services since the war
has been a common belief among those who have benefited, that
these services not only need not be paid for by them, but ought not
to be paid for by them in any form. They have come, in some cases,
to regard them as a debt due to them by nature as though Old
Age Pensions, Health Insurance and the like were as much a common
richt of humanity as air and light.
In fact, however, no such right exists. Social services are a
part of wages and not a supplement to them.
Another result of this wide impression that social services are
a right which has not to be earned, is the widespread abuse of them.
If all the workers insured against unemployment paid all their
premiums themselves and only obtained benefits strictly propor-
tionate to the premiums paid, they would be very careful to see
that the Funds were properly handled, that nobody drew benefits
bo which they were not entitled, and that the insuring Fund was
itself not bankrupt.
i Yet that is exactly what is happening at the present time.
Employers, employed, and tax-payers are compelled to pay their
premiums for unemployment insurance into an Insurance Fund
which has long been bankrupt, and its bankruptcy is due, in the
main, to the fact that it is compelled to pay benefits for which either
no premiums have ever been contributed. or insufficient premiums.
It is true, no doubt, that in every institution of the kind there
will be found certain persons who by nature are inclined to take
every advantage of gaps in laws or regulations controlling it. But
it is also true that large numbers of persons who would never dream
of taking a penny bun from a baker's shop without paying for it
cheerfully take money which is in no sense due to them, because
they consider that the State pays, and the State in this case appears
to them a universal provider.