Criticism of welfare
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The modern
Conservative criticism
In his 1912 book
Some conservatives in the United Kingdom such as James Batholomew and Theodore Dalrymple claim that the welfare state has produced a generation of dependents who prefer to remain on assistance and make no real effort to find employment, even though assistance is officially only available to those unable to work or who are temporarily unable to find work. The welfare state in the United Kingdom was created to provide certain people with a basic level of benefits in order to alleviate poverty, but these conservatives believe that it has fostered irresponsible and immature attitudes in many of its recipients.[3][4]
Some British conservatives such as Conservative Party co-chairman Sayeeda Warsi also criticize the "'something for nothing' culture" of the welfare state, claiming that the high extent of the welfare state "discourages the unemployed from finding jobs".[5] 55% of people in England and 43% of people in Scotland believe that "benefits for unemployed people are too high and discourage them from finding jobs".[6]
According to political scientist Alan Ryan, "[m]odern conservatives argue that liberalism promises a degree of personal fulfillment that the welfare state cannot deliver and that attempts to deliver it will inevitably lead to disillusionment". Additionally, citizens' resentment of paying taxes to create benefits for others creates "hostility between more and less favored groups that is wholly at odds with what modern liberals desire".[7] Ryan also argued:
Moreover, the welfare state must employ an extensive bureaucracy whose members are granted discretionary powers and charged by law to use those powers for the welfare of their clients. This means that classical liberals' concern for the rule of law and the curtailing of arbitrary discretion is ignored: bureaucrats are given resources to disburse to their clients. [...] The liberation the welfare state promises – liberation from anxiety, poverty, and the cramped circumstances of working-class existence – is easily obtained by the educated middle class and is impossible to achieve for most others. There is thus a grave risk of disillusionment with liberalism in general as a result of its failure when it overextends itself. Some writers suppose that the worldwide popularity of conservative governments during the 1980s is explained by this consideration.[7]
Conservative and libertarian groups such as The Heritage Foundation[8] and the Cato Institute[9] argue that welfare creates dependence, a disincentive to work and reduces the opportunity of individuals to manage their own lives.[10] This dependence is called a "culture of poverty", which is said to undermine people from finding meaningful work.[9] Many of these groups also point to the large budget used to maintain these programs and assert that it is wasteful.[8]
In the book
Liberal and libertarian criticism
Advocates of classical liberalism, economic liberalism and neoliberalism such as adherents of the Chicago school of economics like Milton Friedman faulted the New Deal version of social insurance for creating "notches" that perverted economic incentives, with J. Bradford DeLong arguing:
The government, Milton Friedman and others argued, told the poor: make more money and we will take away your free housing, food stamps, and income support. People are rational, Friedman said, so they will not work for long if they get nothing or next to nothing for it. The big difference between the Malthusian conservative critics of social insurance in the early nineteenth century and the Chicago critics of the 1970s is that the Chicago critics had a point: Providing public support to the "worthy" poor, and then removing it when they began to stand on their own feet, poisoned incentives and was unlikely to lead to good outcomes. And so, from 1970 to 2000, a broad coalition of conservatives (who wanted to see the government stop encouraging immorality), centrists (who wanted government money spent effectively), and leftists (who wanted poverty alleviated) removed the "notches" from the social-insurance system. Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and even George W. Bush and their supporters created the current system, in which tax rates and eligibility thresholds are not punitive disincentives to enterprise.[12]
Certain American libertarians criticize the welfare state because they believe welfare programs do not work to reduce poverty, improve education, or improve health or retirement. According to them, welfare programs also increase out-of-wedlock births and decrease the incentive to work. Moreover, they believe welfare programs reduce freedom by reducing the opportunity of individuals to manage their own lives.[13]
Social stigma is prevalent towards recipients of public assistance programs. This includes programs frequently utilized by families struggling with poverty such as Head Start and AFDC (Aid To Families With Dependent Children). The value of self-reliance is often at the center of feelings of shame and the fewer people value self reliance the less stigma affects them psychologically.[14][15] Stigma towards welfare recipients has been proven to increase passivity and dependency in poor people and has further solidified their status and feelings of inferiority.[14][16] Caseworkers frequently treat recipients of welfare disrespectfully and make assumptions about deviant behavior and reluctance to work. Many single mothers cited stigma as the primary reason they wanted to exit welfare as quickly as possible. They often feel the need to conceal food stamps to escape judgement associated with welfare programs. Stigma is a major factor contributing to the duration and breadth of poverty in developed societies which largely affects single mothers.[14] Recipients of public assistance are viewed as objects of the community rather than members allowing for them to be perceived as enemies of the community which is how stigma enters collective thought.[17] Amongst single mothers in poverty, lack of health care benefits is one of their greatest challenges in terms of exiting poverty.[14] Traditional values of self reliance increase feelings of shame amongst welfare recipients making them more susceptible to being stigmatized.[14][18]
Socialist criticism
Critiques of the
Marxian socialists argue that modern social democratic welfare policies are unable to solve the fundamental and structural issues of capitalism such as cyclical fluctuations, exploitation and alienation. Accordingly, social democratic programs intended to ameliorate the issues of capitalism—such as unemployment benefits and taxation on profits—create further contradictions in capitalism by limiting the efficiency of the capitalist system by reducing incentives for capitalists to invest in further production. As a result, the welfare state only serves to legitimize and prolong the exploitative and contradiction-laden system of capitalism to society's detriment.[20]
The most extreme criticism of
See also
- Criticism of social democracy
- Disability fraud
- Involuntary unemployment
- Moral hazard
- Nanny state
- Pensions crisis
- Reserve army of labour
- State Socialism (Germany)
- Welfare capitalism
- Welfare culture
- Welfare fraud
- Welfare queen
- Welfare's effect on poverty
References
- ISBN 978-0521286510.
On purely socialist criteria, social democratic reform is always a failure since all it does is invent new devices for strengthening the system, which should itself be attacked.
- ^ Hayek, Friedrich (1944) [2007]. The Road to Serfdom. (London: University of Chicago Press. p. 67.
- ISBN 978-1849544504. Archived from the originalon 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2015-04-21.
- ISBN 978-1-56663-721-3.
- ^ "Labour's 'something for nothing' culture must end" Archived 2014-04-11 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ "British Social Attitudes Survey". Archived December 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ a b Ryan, Alan (2012). The Making of Modern Liberalism. Princeton and Oxford University Presses. p. 26.
- ^ a b Confronting the Unsustainable Growth of Welfare Entitlements: Principles of Reform and the Next Steps", The Heritage Foundation
- ^ a b Niskanen, A. Welfare and the Culture of PovertyThe Cato Journal Vol. 16 No. 1
- OCLC 750831024.
- ^ Murray, Charles (1984). Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980. Basic Books. pp. 58, 125, 115.
- ^ DeLong, J. Bradford. "American Conservative's Crisis of Ideas".
- OCLC 750831024.
- ^ S2CID 144636532.
- ^ "How Long-Term Unemployment May Mess with Your Mental Health". Psych Central. 2021-11-05. Retrieved 2023-10-24.
- ^ Drasch, Katrin (2019). "The social stigma of unemployment: consequences of stigma consciousness on job search attitudes, behaviour and success".
- S2CID 144933839.
- ^ "Individualism Is A Myth — No One Is Completely Self-Sufficient". Scary Mommy. 2021-06-15. Retrieved 2023-11-26.
- ISBN 978-0801485565.
Although insurance reform was merely tolerated in early socialist manifestos, passage of such reforms appears to have been a hallmark of conservative and liberal appeals to working-class voters and responses to socialist threats at least in Germany and the United Kingdom.
- ^ Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists, by Schweickart, David; Lawler, James; Ticktin, Hillel; Ollman, Bertell. 1998. pp. 60–61. "The Marxist answers that [...] it involves limiting the incentive system of the market through providing minimum wages, high levels of unemployment insurance, reducing the size of the reserve army of labour, taxing profits, and taxing the wealthy. As a result, capitalists will have little incentive to invest and the workers will have little incentive to work. Capitalism works because, as Marx remarked, it is a system of economic force (coercion)."
- ^ Schweickart, David (2006). "Democratic Socialism". Archived 17 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. "Social democrats supported and tried to strengthen the basic institutions of the welfare state—pensions for all, public health care, public education, unemployment insurance. They supported and tried to strengthen the labor movement. The latter, as socialists, argued that capitalism could never be sufficiently humanized, and that trying to suppress the economic contradictions in one area would only see them emerge in a different guise elsewhere. (E.g., if you push unemployment too low, you'll get inflation; if job security is too strong, labor discipline breaks down; etc.)"
- ^ Schweickart, David (2006). "Democratic Socialism". Archived 17 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. "Virtually all (democratic) socialists have distanced themselves from the economic model long synonymous with 'socialism,' i.e. the Soviet model of a non-market, centrally-planned economy. [...] Some have endorsed the concept of 'market socialism,' a post-capitalist economy that retains market competition, but socializes the means of production, and, in some versions, extends democracy to the workplace. Some hold out for a non-market, participatory economy. All democratic socialists agree on the need for a democratic alternative to capitalism."
- ISBN 1-56324-465-9.
Social democracy achieves greater egalitarianism via ex post government taxes and subsidies, where market socialism does so via ex ante changes in patterns of enterprise ownership. [...] [T]he maintenance of property-owning capitalists under social democracy assures the presence of a disproportionately powerful class with a continuing interest in challenging social democratic government policies.
- ^ Bernstein, Eduard (April 1897). "Karl Marx and Social Reform". Progressive Review (7).
- ^ Marx, Karl (1850). "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League". Retrieved January 5, 2013 from Marxists.org. "However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable."
- ^ Jackson, Ben. "social democracy." The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Second Edition. Eds. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 15 February 2009. Retrieved 19 August 2011.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "J.5 What alternative social organisations do anarchists create?". An Anarchist FAQ.