Most incapacity benefit claimants are casualties of capitalist restructuring

Evidence

It is typical of New Labour that it should have committed itself, so early in its third term, to removing people from incapacity benefit, as if most people claiming the benefit were 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 Kapital. A significant proportion of claimants, for instance, are people psychologically trashed as a consequence of the capitalist realist insistence that mining was no longer economically viable (though, even considered in brute economic terms, once you factor in the cost to taxpayers of such benefits, the arguments about “viability” seem rather less than convincing). — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1407

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Most incapacity-benefit claimants are casualties of deindustrialization, not malingerers — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 81; Neoliberal restructuring systematically further privileges the already privileged — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1742; Capitalism structurally requires excess for some and deprivation for others — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1094 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Capitalism structurally requires excess for some and deprivation for others #expands (0.80) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1094
• Capitalist accumulation itself systematically produces a redundant working population #expands (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 243
• Victims of failed neoliberal policy are forced to pay its costs #exemplifies (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1466
• Neoliberal restructuring systematically further privileges the already privileged #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1742
• Debt securitization served as inadequate compensation for welfare-state dismantling #expands (0.70) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 963