Politics: Dispelling the myth of the underclass

[adderslj]

My American readers may delight in this statement:

The British welfare state is not working. I've become aware of that in the last couple of years, as I've seen the lifestyle of those who have no intention of working, yet are quite happy to siphon as much money out of the Government as they can, while subisdising their lifestyle with some drug dealing on the side. Somehow, in the minds of such people, the link between Government money and the taxpayer has been lost. They have no awareness of where the money comes from, and see it as their right to have it.

The current policy of the Labour Government has been based on the assumption that there is a persistent underclass of poor people, stuck in a poverty trap. This idea has been thoroughly debunked. Indeed, it has been debunked by a left wing think tank. Instead, it raises the notion that we have a lot of people in short-term unemployment and a hard-core of people who have no interest in working. We have a duty to support the former. We have no obligation to support those who sponge off the state without any desire to give anything back to the society around them.

Let's hope this is a first step towards a wholesale reform of social policy in the UK.

Comments

[point5b.livejournal.com]

I don't want to sound belligerent, but your thoughts "the reason you're seeing these results are because your system is in fact working" and "reductions on the welfare rolls that governments claim are a result of policy are the direct consequence of the reclassification of clients" strike me as contradictory. What sense of "working" do you have in mind, if you think reductions in welfare rolls are simply governments refusing service?

As an American, I really don't know how your welfare system compares to ours. I do think that American welfare agencies have managed to perpetuate and expand serious poverty here through policies that deter people from becoming capable of supporting themselves and their families (the most famous examples being cutting off certain benefits to women with children if they marry, expanding benefits to women with children if they have additional children they can't support, and cutting benefits to people who take jobs that don't pay as well as those benefits did). I don't take a punitive or resentful view towards welfare "cheats", as most of them do nothing fraudulent. To remain on welfare instead of working at a job that doesn't pay as much, especially if one has children, is perfectly reasonable. The welfare system itself traps people in the lowest income levels and prevents generational advancement.