Subsistence allowance

“ Registered rural families eligible for subsistence allowances are included in the subsistence allowance system in accordance with established procedures, and they receive the allowances based on the gap between their per capita household income and local subsistence allowance standards. Rural families covered by the subsistence allowances and eligible for poverty reduction programs are registered in accordance with established procedures, and receive help and support based on the different causes of their poverty. ”

“ Whatever allowance it may be necessary to make for the lowest class or residuum of our modern populations, it is the most clearly proved and prominent fact in modern industrial history—and one which even socialists are now ceasing to deny—that along with the vast increase in wealth which the ablest employers have, by their struggle with rivals, secured for their own enjoyment, there has been not a corresponding diminution, but a corresponding increase in the means of subsistence that have gone to the population generally. ”

“ The younger members of such families are incapable of aiding in the production of means for their own subsistence, and, when very numerous, form a heavy burthen to the employer. A shepherd, with a wife, and five or six young children, requires an amount of rations for their support fully equal to the services he can render, or at all events only justifying the employer in giving a rate of money wages so small as to create dissatisfaction on the part of the labourer, who is but too generally indisposed to make the requisite allowance for the peculiar circumstances in which he is placed. ”

“ When the resources of the obligor have been reduced to the point where he cannot give the support without neglecting his own needs and those of his family; (3) When the recipient may engage in a trade, profession, or industry, or has obtained work, or has improved his fortune in such a way that he no longer needs the allowance for his subsistence ”

“ If put on a footing then, for wages and subsistence, with the young and the able of their class, they will be liberally compensated: say with one hundred and fifty dollars wages and the usual allowance of meat and bread. The subsistence will probably be contributed in kind by the warders, out of their family stock. The wages alone will be a pecuniary tax of about nine hundred dollars. To a county, this addition would be of about one-fifth of the taxes we now pay to the State, or about one-fifth of one per cent, on every man's taxable property ”

“ But, whilst we adopted as a settled principle that a legal provision of compulsory relief should be made to the able-bodied, we did not propose that it should be extended to more than the relief of indigence—the state of a person unable to labour, or unable to obtain, in return for his labour, the means of subsistence. ”

“ That such a man as John Stuart Mill should have attached so much importance to the compensation of landowners as to have urged the confiscation merely of the future increase in rent, is only explainable by his acquiescence in the doctrines that wages are drawn from capital and that population constantly tends to press upon subsistence. ”

“ We did not propose to extend the provision to the relief of poverty—that is, the state of one who, in order to obtain a mere subsistence, is forced to have recourse to labour, nor did we propose any legal relief for poverty, strictly so called, and we thought it would be extremely mischievous if we did. ”

“ The failure of employment in one quarter, diverts the command of the means of subsistence, and causes it to flow more strongly in another channel. Consequently, the more fortunate labourers who retain their employment, can purchase, by their labour, an amount of subsistence, which the proportion between the whole population and the food of the country could not afford to all, were all employed. ”

“ When he and his family have been fed from the produce of the farm (and perhaps clothed with materials grown thereon, and manufactured in the family) he may, in respect of the supplementary remuneration derived from the sale of the surplus produce, be compared to those labourers who, deriving their subsistence from an independent source, can afford to sell their labour at any price which is to their minds worth the exertion. ”

“ We know from experience that in the southern States it is this which has mitigated the institution and ameliorated his condition; because it is under this, that, when population begins to press on the means of subsistence, he is removed from a place where his labor pays but little to one in which it pays more, not only to the master but himself. ”

“ As regards their means of support and methods of subsistence, they may be divided as follows: those who support themselves upon their own reservations, receiving nothing from the government except interest on their own moneys, or annuities granted them in consideration of the cession of their lands to the United States, number about 130,000; those who are entirely subsisted by the government, about 31,000; those in part subsisted, 84,000,—together about 115,000; those who subsist by hunting and fishing, upon roots, nuts, berries, &c., or by begging and stealing, about 55,000. ”

“ Wages would fall if they were regulated only by the supply and demand of labourers; but we must not forget that wages are also regulated by the prices of the commodities o whick they are expended. As population increases, these essaries will be constantly rising in price... If then the money wages of labour should fall, whilst every commodity on which the wages of labour were expended rose, the labouter would be doubly affected, and would be so. totally deprived of subsistence. ”

“ Under the Act of July 29th, 1848, a per capita transportation and subsistence fund of $53 33 was created and set apart for their benefit, in accordance with a census-roll made under the provisions of said act; the interest on which fund, until such time as they shall individually remove to the Indian country, is the only money to which those named in said roll, who are living, or the heirs of those who have deceased, are entitled. ”

“ The only appropriate relief is to be found in the removal of the grievances complained of; in the modification of certain of our institutions; in the lightening, and, yet more, in the equalization of taxation.—Mark what a state we have arrived at from our mistaken recognition of this right to support! Though the subsistence-fund has increased at a rapid rate within a hundred years, through the improvements introduced by art and civilization, the poor-rate has, in that time, increased from five or six hundred thousand pounds a year to upwards of eight millions! ”

“ First, it is urged that in a series of rulings since 1920 the Commissioner has treated both public and private 'subsistence relief' payments as not constituting gross income; that union strike benefits are not relevantly different from such 'subsistence relief' ”

“ In all old countries—all countries in which the increase of population is in any degree checked by the [pg 467] difficulty of obtaining subsistence—the habitual money price of labor is that which will just enable the laborers, one with another, to purchase the commodities without which they either can not or will not keep up the population at its customary rate of increase. ”

“ But the effect would be far different if their land or other resources gave them only a fraction of a subsistence, leaving them under an undiminished necessity of selling their labour for wages in an overstocked market. Their land would then merely enable them to exist on smaller wages, and to carry their multiplication so much the further before reaching the point below which they either could not, or would not descend. ”

“ The cause of the distress is said to be the absolute entailment of the landed property, which keeps the country in the hands of those who are too poor to cultivate it; and the only remedy is to break the entails, so as to suffer capital to be laid out upon the land, and thereby furnish employment, and produce subsistence for the resident population. ”

“ No one argues that a tax principle regarding 'subsistence relief' can be drawn from the statute or the cases. The taxpayer does urge, however, that a principle concerning 'alleviative,' 'reparations' payments can and should be derived. I have already discussed why such a principle in my view does not include the present strike benefits, which compensate no loss but the loss of wages, and these would have been included in gross income if received. It might be argued that the Court should itself formulate a principle covering 'subsistence relief' payments which would cover this case. ”

“ So very heavy a tax upon the first necessary of life must either reduce the subsistence of the labouring poor, or it must occasion some augmentation in their pecuniary wages, proportionable to that in the pecuniary price of their subsistence. So far as it operates in the one way, it must reduce the ability of the labouring poor to educate and bring up their children, and must, so far, tend to restrain the population of the country. ”

“ The contract evidently supposes that the debtor, while laboring, is to have enough of the fruit of his labor for his subsistence, (because a man cannot labor without a subsistence;) that his labor is to he bestowed upon the capital on which the creditor has a lien ”

“ It is further, without question, true, that all who do not possess property in land must draw their subsistence from wages received, directly or indirectly, from the proprietors, unless they violate all rights, and become robbers. In this respect, every service is alike; the most honourable and the most disgraceful receives each its wages. It is certain, too, that if the circumstances determining the rate of the various kinds of wages remain the same, that is if the offers of service, and the demand, preserve the same proportion to each other, after as well as before the imposition of a tax ”

“ Under such an arrangement, the worker will be regarded not as a potential vendor of so much labour-power, subject to the law of supply and demand, and liable to lose his subsistence and that of his family by the chances of the market, but as a regular member of a society which provides a financial reserve for the purpose of maintaining him when he falls into the labour reserve. ”

“ It is not necessary to the production of things that cannot be used as subsistence, or cannot be immediately utilized, that there should have been a previous production of the wealth required for the maintenance of the labourers while the production is going on. It is only necessary that somewhere within the circle of exchange there should be a contemporaneous production of sufficient subsistence for the labourers, and a willingness to exchange this subsistence for the thing on which labour is being bestowed. ”

“ For these duties, however heavy, are still voluntary, and are paid by the merchant only in proportion to the quantity he buys; and as he buys only in proportion to his sale, he himself gives the law its particular application; but the farmer who is obliged to pay his rent at stated times, whether he sells or not, cannot wait till he can get his own price for his commodity: even if he is not forced to sell for mere subsistence, he must sell to pay the taxes ”

“ The slave received subsistence--clothing and shelter--and the wage-earner who could get more than these out of his wages was rarely fortunate. The rate of wages, except in new countries and under special conditions and for skilled workers, kept at about the subsistence point, quite as often dropping below as rising above. ”

“ And this, manifestly, is not the sense in which the proposition is used to support the important reasoning that is made to hinge upon it. That sense is, that before a work that will not immediately result in wealth available for subsistence can be carried on, there must exist such a stock of subsistence as will support the labourers during the process. ”

“ When the necessaries of life have been taxed in any country, it becomes proper, they pretend, to tax not only the like necessaries of life imported from other countries, but all sorts of foreign goods which can come into competition with any thing that is the produce of domestic industry. Subsistence, they say, becomes necessarily dearer in consequence of such taxes; and the price of labour must always rise with the price of the labourer’s subsistence. ”

“ Generally speaking, the reduction of rates is of no benefit whatever to the working class. Rates are levied upon property.—Q. Do not the working class pay the rates and taxes? A. No. Rates and taxes are paid out of the surplus value taken from the workers by [245] their exploiters. As already explained, the return to the workers, their wages, is determined by their cost of subsistence, regulated by competition in the labour market ”

“ If the debtor and his family must live, it is self evident that they must derive their subsistence, either by selling their labor for wages, (independently of any prop­erty in their hands;) or by bestowing their care and labor upon the property in their hands, and taking their subsistence out of it, and its proceeds. ”

“ The faculties, therefore, of the physical-necessarians (as we have taken the liberty to call them) will, in countries of industry, determine the standard value of subsistence; and the value, in money, which they receive for their work, will determine the standard of those faculties; consequently, the price of subsistence must rise and fall according to the number of workmen, and demand for their work: that is to say, the price of subsistence must be in the compound proportion above mentioned. ”