ABSTRACT
Mr Norman Fowler's Social Security Review was billed as "the most fundamental examination of our social security system since the Second World War". Instead the entire patient received was a stern rebuke and a prescription for more of the same – but with a reduced dosage. A new initiative, based on integration of the tax and benefit systems and abolition of payroll taxes, would be much more effective. Most schemes on offer under the brand name integration involve at most partial integration, and some are no more than extensions of the existing system. The technicalities must be confronted if the case for integration is to be fully understood, but the real argument concerns human relationships and human values. Abolition of payroll taxes would help reduce unemployment, by making labour more competitive with machinery.
