Also, Mark, the sterotype of the teenage never-married single mum is in fact surprisingly rare. Less than 4% of Australian single mums are teenagers, and over 90% of Australian sole parenthood is caused by marriage (de facto or de jure) breakup.

Doesn’t surprise me, dd.

As a recent OECD report pointed out (sorry, haven’t got it at hand as I’m at home), once you standardise for the fact that sole parents are poor and that disadvantaged people tend to become sole parents, there’s little left to explain in the disadvantage of sole parents’ children - in other words, its not the sole parenthood itself that is causing the disadvantage. And the “commonsense” intuition that benefits encourage sole parenthood by making it less punitive does not survive empirical scrutiny - the highest rates of sole parenthood in the US are systematically in states with the lowest TANF payments, and the highest rates of sole parenthood in the OECD are in countries (such as the US) where support for them is lowest.

Look, I certainly believe that incentives matter, but you really have to look at *how much* they matter on an issue-by-issue basis; simply assuming that a particular incentive is the dominating force in a particular issue is not good enough.

And BTW unwanted kids were not always adopted out - there were also orphanages. The outcomes were not usually good.

Also, Mark, the sterotype of the teenage never-married single mum is in fact surprisingly rare. Less than 4% of Australian single mums are teenagers, and over 90% of Australian sole parenthood is caused by marriage (de facto or de jure) breakup.

I take your point that there are plenty of social problems that are not necessarily emerging from the welfare state, but from lots of other complex causes., though I think the welfare state does play a role in much of the worst pathologies of social breakdown.

Mark and DD,

I didn’t ‘target’ the welfare state. I suggested that social breakdown is one of the welfare state’s side effects. Take the example of adolescents having kids. Without the welfare state the kid gets removed from the mother at birth and adopted out. A terrible degrading experience for her, but at least in the worst cases an immeasurably better outcome for the child.

This doesn’t lead me to argue for the abolition of single parents benefits, but I reckon you’re a mug if you don’t admit this is a serious dilemma and that it helps underpin social breakdown in various respects. It makes a whole way of life that is irresponsible economically viable which was not before. So you tackle it as best you can.

Ask Noel Pearson what he thinks of welfare dependency. He doesn’t think the paternalism and discrimination of the past was much chop, but he reckons the tough conditions getting paid shit wages or supplies on the cattle stations was better than the catastrophe that has engulfed aboriginal society when it went from being treated badly on cattle stations to living on welfare in settlements.

So, in my book the defenders of the welfare state (amongst whom I count myself) need to take the problems on board and do what they can to address the issues as best they can.

I would reasonably expect that such intervention has been tried somewhere, and I wonder with what effect.

If it’s the burden on other taxpayers, its not much of a problem at all - a few percent of GDP to keep beggars off the street and to keep children fed is excellent value.

As I understand it, the amount the Commonwealth spends on unemployment benefits is about $5 billion per annum. That is massively less than the amount the Commonwealth spends on benefits to families which are not means tested, and massively less than it loses in revenue from tax dodges that low income earners have no access to.

Yes, those who do so acknowledge that it’s not all material disadvantage ‒ there’s ’social disadvantage’ as well. But that looks a bit like a trick to me ‒ it redefines the problem to look like the old problem that the welfare state was invented to address.

Without having read the book, it sounds to me like a Weberian distinction between class (objectively measurable by income rather than the Marxist notion) and status (subjective and related more to others’ perceptions).

I’m interested, Nicholas, in why you target the welfare state in the post - without saying anything much about it in the column. In order to do that, I’d have thought that you’d have to demonstrate that kids’ problems are disproportionately concentrated among those whose parents are on welfare. I’ve long doubted that’s the case - just that the problems are more likely to come to the attention of academics and authorities if the parents are on welfare.

That’s not a defence of the existing welfare system, by the way.

Consider what many teachers report - some of the worst behaved kids (and those most over diagnosed with things like ADD) are in newly middle class suburbs where the parents invest so much in emotional capital in seeing their kids maintain their status - whereas many of the kids in deprived suburbs really want to learn but have all sorts of crap in their lives outside school that makes it hard for them.

IMO its a problem but a vastly overrated one, at least in Australia. Its vastly overrated largely because of the efforts of the sort of people I had a go at in my earlier post.

Just what is it about welfare dependency that makes it such an issue? If it’s the burden on other taxpayers, its not much of a problem at all - a few percent of GDP to keep beggars off the street and to keep children fed is excellent value. If it’s that it is bad for the *recipients* I want evidence, not the sort of hypocritical bullshit we get from the US (”we’re only punishing you for your own good”). That you think those dependent for long periods on welfare are severely disadvantaged, or even if you think them the scum of the earth, is neither here nor there - I want evidence that their disadvantage or scumminess would be less in the absence of the welfare state. And, speaking as someone who has read an awful lot of the relevant academic literature over the years, I reckon the evidence is not there.

Your comment wasn’t muddled at all. It was a good one. One of the many problems with speaking the way I did in the column is that people take you to be saying that you have some alternative silver bullet. But you don’t. As Homer (who uses names like hermit crabs use shells), says it’s always a work in progress.

There are no magic bullets, but regarding talk about the difficulties of the welfare state and welfare dependency as impolite or worse and therefore denying their existence seems one of the worst things you can do.

one of the reasons for the Welfare State was that Christians in government ( Bismark, Asquith,McDonald etc) knew that the poor would always be with us thus the biblical need to assist them. I assume Jews would be of a similar view.

This is always going to be a work in progress. One of the first things to do is reduce the very heavy EMTRs on people trying to go from welfare to work.

Nicholas I agree that there is another dimension that is centred around a moral framework or at least a healthy understanding of and application of authority (eg in encouraging respect for civil authorities, discouraging anti social behaviour), particularly for, but not exclusively for children.

It’s been a topic of discussion in Christian circles in recent years as well
(and yes, authority in Christian thought includes honesty, compassion, social responsibility and civility and not to be partial to either rich or poor in matters of justice). However, we can teach our own because we have a common understanding of all authority as being derived from the Author himself.

And while I concede that even laws, social mores tec in a secular nation-state have a moral element to them, yet laws etc in themselves are insufficient to encourage moral/civil/good social behaviour, the question is, how does one encourage, apply a ‘moral framework’ in a pluralist secular society and who can/should/does?

Hmm, I think that was a bit of a muddled comment…I guess what I am saying is. Agreed, but who, what, how?

I can appreciate your concern at my line about the welfare state. It reminds you of ideological enemies and views (for which I don’t have time either).

Trouble is I can’t make the point without reminding you of those with more extreme positions. It’s a bit of a worry don’t you think that such a commonsensical point can’t be made by defenders of the welfare state? The welfare state is a huge undertaking. It is hardly credible that it woudln’t have downsides. But it’s regarded as seriously bad form to ever point them out. I don’t think that does the defence of the welfare state any good at all in the long run.

Do you have any objection to the items that have been suggested for the moral framework - honesty, compassion, civility, social responsiblity? And what would you and others like to add? The list was not supposed to be exhaustive.

Geez I hate that line - it’s pushed by people whose model of the good society is 19th century Britain, and accompanied by a great deal of intellectual dishonesty (Charles Murray, anyone?). There are enough problems with actually existing welfare state institutions without blaming them for things they are *not* responsible for. Are you seriously telling me there was no “irresponsible or anti-social behaviour” prior to the welfare state?

More generally, the term “irresponsible and anti-social behaviour” is largely used these days to refer to any behaviour that the speaker finds irritating, challenging to their own religious or moral code, merely different from their own lifestyle, or a convenient pretext to expand state power (vide the abuse of “antisocial behaviour orders” in the UK). In other words, it’s used by people who keenly desire to tell other people how to live. Liberals and libertarians should be deeply suspicious of it.

“and a moral framework that includes honesty, compassion, social responsibility and civility.”