It's a useful symbol of the truth about the modern welfare state - "shut up, we're displaying the fact that we care about you by shelling out the money - now go away."Before Mr Brown became Chancellor, most benefit claimants visited the job centre weekly to qualify for their money. This arrangement gave benefit officers time to assess claimants each week and ensure they actually existed. Now that most benefits are handled through the tax system, often on an annual basis, claimants receive less advice and are rarely checked out.
I imagine that the Brown welfare arrangements are by some way more efficient than the old system. I imagine that your chances of getting out of long term unemployment is lower under them, too.
Perhaps it was thought demeaning to welfare recipients to have to visit a figure of authority, to constantly have to explain their situation, to "justify" their continued status. But perhaps, too, that contact was in their interest, although they didn't want it. Sounds very paternalistic, doesn't it? But that's what welfare is, per se .
Shovelling money at welfare recipients has achieved remarkably little. As I've previously posted here, Laffer said that
If you pay people to be poor, you will never run out of poor people.
I'm not advocating any answer, or claiming to have one. But it does seem to me that there is force in Newt Gingrich's argument (made some 10 years ago in his book To Renew America - and nothing's changed since) that
The defenders of the status quo should be ashamed of themselves. The current system has trapped and ruined a whole generation whilst claiming to be compassionate. The burden of proof is not on the people who want to change welfare. It is on those who would defend a system that has clearly failed at incalculable human cost.
