The Income Disqualification.

Convenient openings for fraud are also offered by the property and income disqualifications. The man who earns £52 a year gets no pension. The man who earns £34 a year or less gets the full amount of the pension, but for every £ he earns above that sum he loses £1 from his pension until at £52 a year he loses it altogether. The man who can earn £34 a year, but cannot earn more than £52, is just as well off with the former amount as with the latter, since the State will make good the difference. He has therefore the following alternatives open:—(1) To work up to his full capacity of £52 a year and forego his pension; (2) to work up to £34 a year only (i.e., to be idle to the extent of one-third of his working capacity) and to secure the pension; (3) to work up to the full amount, but return his earnings at the lesser sum, and thus secure the pension. The State will not often get the advantage of the first course. Human nature is not wont to work for nothing, and least of all is this to be expected from those who are both old and poor. Moreover, where the State is the other party to the transaction, men, whether young or old, deem it more blessed to receive than to give. This alternative, therefore, is not likely to be taken unless the pension is regarded as a badge of dishonor, and such a possibility will hardly be urged as a recommendation of the scheme. On the second hypothesis, the State will have lost the value of the labor wasted; on the third, the value of the pension. In the one case the pension will have promoted idleness, and in the other fraud.