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]

At least in the history of the US, there has been a ladder of advancement, especially over the course of generations. The poorest of us have struggled to improve their own lives and provide a springboard for their children. We still have immigrants who come here and work multiple menial jobs in order to give their children the opportunity to become educated and do better. Those members of the first generation often didn't and don't manage more than modest success for themselves, but their children tend strongly to do much better.

People have done this consistently across the US and throughout its history with excellent overall success - except when actively suppressed by government, either through hostility (as in the deliberate state- and local-level suppression of black progress through the late 19th and much of the 20th century) or good intentions gone awry (as in US bilingual education programs that prevent immigrants from gaining a command of English or the destruction of working-class black neighborhoods through "Urban Renewal" that created impoverished, crime-ridden housing projects).