Only 2000?

This is outrageous:

Almost two thousand people who are too fat to work have been paid a total of £4.4 million in benefit, it emerged last night.

Yes. It's a disgrace that so few lardies are on incapacity benefit.
One word - externalities. I don't want fatties getting on my bus, especially on summer afternoons when they're sweating like bulls. Nor do I want them contributing to global warming through the increased carbon emissions required to transport them.  Will no-one think of the children?
And then there's the paternalistic argument. If fatties get work, they'll only eat even more, because they'll have higher incomes and because some will find it hard to waddle past Greggs on their way to work. This'll add to the burden on the NHS.
And there's little offsetting gain to them working. To a large extent, we'll replace incapacity benefit with tax credits. The value of their output is low - it's not as if they'll become Premiership footballers (though Paul Robinson might offer them a role model). And the profits from employing them in a competitive economy are tiny. 
In cost-benefit terms, then, it's better that we pay some people not to work.

Comments

[Jackart]

What about if we didn't pay them benefits, or tax credits and then they would either starve (making them thinner - woohoo!) or be forced to get an unsubsidised job, benefiting both themselves and the tax payer.

Can we end the welfare state yet please?

[Jackart]

What about if we didn't pay them benefits, or tax credits and then they would either starve (making them thinner - woohoo!) or be forced to get an unsubsidised job, benefiting both themselves and the tax payer.

Can we end the welfare state yet please?

[Matt Munro]

They fart more as well, and methane is a greenhouse gas.

[Scratch]

They all drive, that's why they're tubbers.

Incidentally, as anyone who has taken the tube on a regular basis will confirm, there is a strong positive correlation between expensiveness of suit and rankness of body odour so driving the exessively pungent out of work should also assist social mobility.

Do it Brown, do it now.

[dearieme]

Turn them on their sides and use them as road-rollers.

[jameshigham]

This is cruel, Chris but it's correct.

[james c]

You still don't understand that transfer payments are irrelevant in any cost benefit analysis.

[wj]

One word solution: telecommuting. If they were working from home, they wouldn't be on the busses, and they wouldn't have the temptation of Greggs on the way to work. No, nothing for it but to have them join the 21st century.

[M. A. George]

Too many of us pack on more lard as the years go by (yes, guilty!) But morbid obesity is a real illness, as much as bi-polar disorder.

[Claptrappist]

What a nasty, mean-minded little rant (and comments). For every person who's fat because they overeat, there's another who's fat because of their physiology... that's just how they are, just like some people are tall and some short, and some hairy and some not, blah blah. But that's okay, let's pick on them and be rude and insulting because they're an easy target. Very mature. Very brave. And last time I saw the doctor I was told I had an "average" Body Mass Index, so I'm not one of *them*.