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| Counting the Cost for Pensioners |
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Another hadeeth of the Prophet Muhammad states:
“Start with yourself and make charity for it, and if anything is left give it to your (immediate) family, and if anything is left after that give it to your relatives, and if anything is left after that, do it like such and such, i.e. in front of you, to your right hand and your left hand.”
The narration gives a particular order of responsibility of provision that expands outwards. After the relatives, family and the individual have been provided for, the general duty to provide for others begins. This is significant as it indicates that the government should tax the general public from their excess wealth, not from the wealth that should go first to the close or distant relatives.
So the funding that would underpin an Islamic benefit system would have to come from wealth taxes that duly reflect the extent to which people need first to support their family, young and old. Thus, taxes, such as income tax and VAT, which disproportionately are drawn from the working poor, would not be levied. More effort would be focussed on drawing taxation from wealthy citizens who are more than capable of providing for themselves and their families.
On the other side of the table, since the state exercises effort to ensure that families support their relatives directly, less revenue will be required to be raised. Further, no state pension would be given to those wealthy pensioners who have large savings and the support of wealthy families, as they are simply not in need of it.
One objection that could be raised to this view is that the paid carers working for the government to provide care for the elderly can provide superior care to that provided by untrained family members. In comparison to the current situation, this is very unlikely, due to the fact that so many professional carers have received little or no training for the work that they do. However, the ability of the state to provide better trained carers for the elderly, or financial assistance for families with elderly relatives, would be improved by a system which provided care targeted at those with reduced means rather than a general system that provides state pensions even to the elderly who are well-off.
There are many people who are sceptical about the effectiveness and validity of the family as the idealised basic unit of society. This is due to the fact that the ‘return to family values’ has been a convenient rallying call for those who oppose the existence of the welfare state. Rather than admit the fact that they would prefer the market to be the only arbiter of what goods and services people receive, such free market champions, in the UK and US especially, focus on the importance of family. Due to this focus, sceptics point out that, for example in the case of childcare, the majority of abusers are either relatives or acquaintances of parents. Thus they suggest that proclaiming the family, or family values, as a panacea for social ills is misleading.
Indeed, if we look to the findings of Action on Elder Abuse, a UK organisation that aims to raise awareness regarding abuse of the elderly, we could find confirmation of this view. They conducted a study of calls to their national helpline from people seeking advice concerning possible cases of abuse, from 1997 to 1999, during which they found that 46.5% of abusers were family members and 29.4% were paid workers. But the study also found that the least likely abuser was the relative providing the main care for the elderly person (1.9%). So in the vast majority of cases, this problem does not stem from the relatives still committed to providing care, but rather reflects the spread of a more venal attitude towards the elderly among other family members.
From another angle, if a person has a number of dependants this would mean that the State would take less of their wealth in taxation, provided they gave proof that they were maintaining such dependants whether old or young. Thus people would readily supply information about the people they were providing for to the authorities. Since such information could be expected to be accurate, it would give state officials, such as health workers for example, the opportunity to visit homes and check on the condition of the elderly and see that they were getting proper care, if there were concerns that this was not taking place. Currently, there are no standardised procedures to ensure that this happens, as the elderly are supposed to report their need rather than others being obliged to follow up and look into their situation. As was the case with George and Gertrude Bates, unless the elderly inform social services or some other state authority of their situation, it is likely that they will not receive the help that they deserve. So, if for nothing else than a tax break, relatives will be inclined to over-report care for the elderly, giving the state information to track and verify, rather than under-report.
For society to be more effective in providing for the elderly requires changes in the way that government and families view their responsibilities. But despite all the positive results that could be attributed to a rebalancing of the relationship between the generations, the fact remains that individualism is one of the defining characteristics of western society, one that has had an immense impact on the social and legislative climate in the UK over the past 50 years. However, as has been made clear over the course of this article, this same philosophy has produced an increasingly imbalanced society, which has not repaid many of its citizens in old age for the material and moral contributions they have made to society over a lifetime.
Thus an effective solution to the pensions crisis will not be provided by changes in government policy or tax regimes. It is not a managerial issue that merely requires better handling. This problem is rather a product of the core values that have been embraced by this society. Islam presents a radically alternative viewpoint towards family and society that offers an answer to the problems facing the elderly in the UK and the developed western world as a whole.
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