Welfare State - Mugs State (the fundamental flaw)

WELFARE STATE

Our Welfare State is based on the 1942 Beveridge Report. It proposed a series of measures to aid those who were in need of help, or in poverty and recommended that the government find ways of tackling it called "the five giants", namely: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness. It urged the government to take steps to provide citizens with adequate income, adequate health care, adequate education, adequate housing, and adequate employment, proposing that "All people of working age should pay a weekly National Insurance contribution. In return, benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired, or widowed."

The basic assumptions of the report were that the National Health Service would provide free health care to all citizens; a Universal Child Benefit would give benefits to parents, encouraging people to have children by enabling them to feed and support a family. The report stressed the lower costs and efficiency of universal benefits.

MUGS STATE (the fundamental flaw)

There is a fundamental flaw in the Beveridge plan or certainly there has developed one. 

The current welfare state rewards those with no assets and relatively penalises those who work hard to secure their futures.

Today we are not just giving a helping hand to those in need  - the real outcome - many choose not to work or if they have to - take minimum work.(careful not to exceed a figure that will jeopardise benefits). They don't save. They grab what they can.They enjoy it while they can.They take because they can - they don't contribute because the system does not require that they do. They know having children secures their benefits future - certainly future housing because no government is prepared to let children suffer - Sure Start etc.

They know that if they have assets they will not receive benefits. They know they will get a state pension or if they do not qualify they will get payments in some other form. They know that if they have assets the state will not pay for their elderly care. So many are profligate, scheming, often demotivated - certainly irresponsible and anti social. 

We are making them like this by being too indulgent and it is slowly bankrupting the country - both financially and perhaps more significantly - morally.  

The only way this cancer can be treated is to ensure work really pays and that the people that are helped are in real need - and that need is not a lifestyle choice. It means being tough. It means life on benefits is barely existence - the bar of "welfare" has to be significantly lowered. Not quite the workhouse - but something much less like a hotel. 

Where the system falls down is an inability to differentiate between those in real and chronic need (which we all agree justify help) and those that just can't be bothered to help themselves. Politically some see an unemployed person and readily accept it is the States fault they do not have a job and compensate accordingly. Where has personal responsibility gone?