@ISIDEWITHQuestionseconomyStarted 11yrs agoActive 12mos ago

Should there be fewer or more restrictions on current welfare benefits?

In 2011 the level of public spending on the welfare state by the British Government accounted for £113.1 billion, or 16% of government. By 2020 welfare spending will rise to 1/3rd of all spending making it the largest expense followed by housing benefit, council tax benefit, benefits to the unemployed, and benefits to people with low incomes.

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Answer Overview

Response rates from 18.5k Front de Gauche voters.

62%
Fewer
30%
More
43%
Fewer
18%
More
19%
Fewer, and ensure benefits go to those that need it most
8%
More, reform the system so that it supplements, rather than replaces, a working income
1%
Fewer, current benefits do not provide enough support
3%
More, but increase benefits for the elderly and disabled
1%
More, current benefits should be capped
1%
More, and deny benefits to immigrants

Historical Support

Trend of support over time for each answer from 18.5k Front de Gauche voters.

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Trend of how important this issue is for 18.5k Front de Gauche voters.

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Other Popular Answers

Unique answers from Front de Gauche voters whose views went beyond the provided options.

 @9GJV8KRfrom Ontario  answered…1yr1Y

Introduce Universal Basic Income and remove other welfare to save on administration costs and give people dignity

 @9974C82answered…2yrs2Y

More, but ensure that more people are encouraged into jobs from unfavourable positions

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…9mos9MO

Claudia Sheinbaum Elected as Mexico’s First Female President

Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, will become Mexico’s first female president after romping to victory in an election billed as a referendum on the leftist policies of departing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a vote that handed his party enough power in Congress to push through controversial constitutional changes.Sheinbaum, the candidate of the ruling Movement of National Regeneration, known as Morena, had 58.6% of the votes with 73% of the ballots counted, according to official results from Mexico’s election agency.Her closest rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, the candidate of a coalition of three opposition parties, had 28.4% of the vote and conceded defeat. Jorge Álvarez Máynez, from the center-left Citizen Movement, had 10.6%.Sheinbaum’s victory was bigger than expected and her margin of roughly 30 points would be the largest in a presidential vote since the 1982 election, when Mexico still was a single-party state. Pre-election polls had given her a 20-point lead.The vote reflected a resounding show of support for the government of López Obrador, a populist nationalist who won power in 2018 on an anticorruption platform. After taking office, he launched an austerity program for the federal government bureaucracy and redirected spending to welfare programs, especially cash handouts that included students and the elderly, keeping his approval ratings above 60%. López Obrador, who won with 53% of the vote in 2018, was barred by law from re-election.

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…3mos3MO

German Economy Nears Collapse As Election Nears

Presenting the CDU/CSU’s manifesto on Tuesday. Merz said he would make savings of €100bn by reducing spending on migration and welfare. He also promised tax cuts and lower electricity prices to kick-start the economy, stuck in its first two-year contraction since the early 2000s. Meanwhile, the SPD and Greens pledged to reform Germany’s “debt brake”, its constitutional cap on new borrowing, saying the country needed to invest billions of euros in its ramshackle infrastructure and the green transition.Meanwhile, the SPD and Greens pledged to reform Germany’s “debt brake”, its constitutional cap on new borrowing, saying the country needed to invest billions of euros in its ramshackle infrastructure and the green transition. Some observers worry Scholz’s televised intervention could end up setting the tone for the rest of the contest. Even the Greens, his allies in government, expressed disapproval. “One is sometimes surprised by his choice of words,” said Franziska Brantner, the Greens co-leader. Germany is not used to rambunctious, no-holds-barred elections. Under Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel, who governed Germany from 2005-2021, campaigns were soporific affairs, lacking the cut and thrust and spectacle often seen in US contests. But Merz is an altogether different politician. Critics routinely describe him as irascible and touchy, given to intemperate outbursts that delight his fans but can put off more moderate voters. But even his detractors admit his powerful oratory can get under Scholz’s skin. Scholz, too, has changed his tone. As chancellor of a fragile, three-party coalition made up of SPD, Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, he cultivated a decidedly restrained, taciturn style. But that changed in November when he sacked his liberal finance minister, Christian Lindner, triggering the break-up of the coalition after just three years. He has since become a lot more combative. In the vote of confidence debate he accused the liberals of “sabotaging the work of the government” and Lindner of lacking the “necessary moral maturity” required to govern.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…5mos5MO

Porn stars launch campaign against Project 2025 targeting swing states

Concerned with provisions of Project 2025 that could criminalize pornography, a group of porn stars is jumping into the 2024 election, launching “Hands Off My Porn” and purchasing $100,000 in ads in swing states to spread their message. “We must fight back against this ultra-conservative agenda that is rooted in religious conservatism, fearmongering, and the suppression of women’s rights,” Casey Calvert, one of the porn stars involved with the effort, wrote alongside the announcement of the ads. Twenty porn stars came together to found Hands Off My Porn, and they are placing the ads on sites that show explicit content in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan, warning users about Project 2025’s drive to criminalize porn.The ads will direct people to the Hands Off My Porn website, where they can watch testimonials about Project 2025’s dangers. “This ‘180-day playbook’ for the next Trump Administration puts the anti-porn agenda front and center – on page 5 of this nearly 1000-page document that’s endorsed by The Heritage Foundation, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Koch Brothers, and hundreds of conservative organizations,” the group writes online.Hands Off My Porn is referencing the foreword written by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who calls for pornography to be “outlawed.” “It has no claim to First Amendment protection,” he writes. “Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned…telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…3mos3MO

US Jewish Groups Oppose Resettling Gaza

JTA — A number of major centrist and liberal American Jewish groups say they oppose the re-establishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza.The statements by some of the largest Jewish organizations in the country, made in response to press inquiries, come amid accusations that Israel has cleared out portions of northern Gaza, which Jerusalem has denied, and as far-right government ministers have called for resettling the Palestinian enclave. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have also repeatedly called for Israel to encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza, drawing condemnation from the Biden administration.For several American Jewish groups — including some that have vocally defended Israel’s prosecution of its war in Gaza against Hamas — the idea of Israeli settlements in Gaza is a non-starter. Groups opposed to the idea include the Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League. Also opposed are bodies representing the Reform and Conservative movements, which together can claim to represent the majority of American Jews.“The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, indigenous to both Jews and Arabs, cannot be the exclusive domain of one people, but must be shared,” Jason Isaacson, AJC’s chief policy and political affairs officer, said. “Like the vast majority of Israelis, AJC believes that the re-establishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza, or a program of displacing Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, would be contrary to Israel’s interests.”Israel evacuated its Gaza settlements in 2005, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out the idea of re-establishing them after the war. But while most Israelis oppose the idea, more than a third — including 42% of Israeli Jews — support it, according to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute. That includes nearly 60% of Israeli Jewish right-wingers, the current government’s voter base.“Ideas like settlement in Gaza are welcome, we need to remember that, in the end, that’s the biggest punishment for what they did to us on October 7,” Ben-Gvir said in an interview on Israeli radio this month, referencing the Hamas terror onslaught in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were slaughtered and 251 were seized as hostages, sparking the war in the enclave.

▲  158 replies