Most British Incapacity Benefit claimants are casualties of deindustrialization, not malingerers

Evidence

It is telling, in this context of rising rates of mental illness, that New Labour committed itself, early in its third term in government, to removing people from Incapacity Benefit, implying that many, if not most, claimants are malingerers. In contrast with this assumption, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to infer that most of the people claiming Incapacity Benefit – and there are well in excess of two million of them – are casualties of Capital. A significant proportion of claimants, for instance, are people psychologically damaged as a consequence of the capitalist realist insistence that industries such as mining are no longer economically viable. (Even considered in brute economic terms, though, the arguments about ‘viability’ seem rather less than convincing, especially once you factor in the cost to taxpayers of incapacity and other benefits.) Many have simply buckled under the terrifyingly unstable conditions of post-Fordism. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 81

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that mining closures weren’t even economically ‘viable’ when benefit costs are included is a strong contested empirical assertion worth investigating.
• ADDENDUM: Psychological casualties of deindustrial ‘unviability’ is a concrete companion case to my trees-as-infrastructure piece’s theme of industrial lifeworld loss.
• XREF: connects to: Policies framing benefit claimants as malingerers conceal that most are casualties of deindustrialization — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 81; Most incapacity-benefit claimants are casualties of deindustrialization, not malingerers — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 81; Most incapacity benefit claimants are casualties of capitalist restructuring — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1407 (+1 more)

Related

• Most incapacity-benefit claimants are casualties of deindustrialization, not malingerers (similarity 0.95)
• Most of over two million incapacity-benefit claimants are casualties of post-Fordist capitalism (similarity 0.95)
• Policies framing benefit claimants as malingerers conceal that most are casualties of deindustrialization (similarity 0.95)
• Most incapacity benefit claimants are casualties of capitalist restructuring (similarity 0.89)

Broader Connections

• Most incapacity-benefit claimants are casualties of deindustrialization, not malingerers #corroborates (0.98) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 81
• Most incapacity benefit claimants are casualties of capitalist restructuring #expands (0.88) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1407
• Most of over two million incapacity-benefit claimants are casualties of post-Fordist capitalism #expands (0.86)