This was obviously written in the U.K. Its provenance is lost. It explains what 'welfare' prrograms were intended to do in the first place, and why the attacks on 'welfare' are so dishonest and stupid. However, advocates of CI beleive the 'welfare' idea has outlived its usefulness. It can not cope with today's problems. tr
The politics of welfare are shaped by what people believe. Debates about poverty and welfare in Britain are full of myths. This pamphlet tries to correct some widespread misconceptions.
Many of the current myths are throwbacks to the eighteenth century. As a result, social policy has come to be driven by the very policies that the welfare state was supposed to replace.
There is not much agreement about the idea of poverty - numerous definitions are used by different researchers and policymakers.
Approaches used to measure poverty include benefit receipt, income levels and indicators of deprivation; the government uses multiple indicators, and is currently advocating its own measure based on deprivation.
Different measures suggest that at any one time up to quarter of the UK population may be poor. Most people are on low incomes at some point of their lives.
Explanations of poverty can be individual, familial, subcultural or structural. Currently the trend is away from structural explanations and back towards individual and familial explanations.
Poverty is not a problem of the behaviour of poor people - although poor people do act differently because they are poor. It is not because poor people have too many children. It is not the result of racial differences.
The government believes there is a large hard core of persistently poor people, that poverty is long term and that it is passed from generation to generation. This is not consistent with the evidence. People move through dependency, and most poverty is temporary. Poor people do not stay in poverty indefinately.
The welfare state was an attempt to break away from the stigma of the Poor Law.
It was not designed for the poor; it was supposed to offer social protection for everyone, to prevent people from becoming poor.
The welfare state has not been especially costly in comparative terms, and there is no good evidence to suggest that it has been an economic burden.
Scare stories about costs spiralling out of control and large sums lost to abuse are greatly exaggerated.
Many arguments about dependency and the misconduct of the poor are survivals from the days of the Poor Law.
People are rarely better off on the dole. The welfare state has never offered especially generous benefits; though benefits were meant to be adequate, they often have not been.
The argument that welfare encourages dependency has been around for over 200 years, and has repeatedly been disproved by changes in the economy.
Poverty is not the moral, cultural or social problem of a permanently excluded underclass, but an economic risk that affects everyone.
The purpose of the welfare state should not be to target programmes more carefully on "the poor", but to ensure that there is a general framework of resources, services and opportunities which are adequate for people's needs, and can be used by everyone.