A classic post from Norman Tebbit:
Lord Beveridge, the architect of the postwar welfare state, was no fool. He saw the dangers, as well as the merits of a comprehensive welfare system. Sadly a lot of fools, or worse, did not listen to all of what he said. As he warned us, “The danger of providing benefits, which are both adequate in amount and indefinite in duration” is “that men as creatures who adapt to circumstances may settle down to them.”
He would be horrified at the extent of welfare dependency today. It is not just, as he put it, “men becoming habituated to idleness”. There is a growing army of men and women, whether in or out of work, dependent on the state (that is the taxpayer) for their living. They are not all at the bottom of the stack of society. An increasing number are in the £100,000 a year class, with pensions to match.
It seems to me that, as Beveridge instinctively understood, the most habit-forming, dependency-creating, narcotic substance known to man is the milk which flows from the collective breast of the taxpayers. The number of addicts is rising every year. Many are now hereditary welfare junkies, born of junkie parents into junkie families, trapped by the welfare pushers into the poverty trap. They are offered no way out of the trap. Work leaves them worse off, for that means they would be taxed to feed their own addiction.
The pushers, as in the trade of other narcotics, are mostly reliant on the taxpayers’ milk, too. Many of them are nice hand-wringing Guardianistas.
They would like things to be other than they are, but they could not afford it to be so. These are the upper class of those in dependency upon the taxpayer and they live a good life. Some will be found at Regional Government Conferences in agreeable parts of Europe. There those of high social standing as “executives” in local government (mostly reluctant to let the poor old milch cow know how much of its milk they imbibe).
I recommend the full article.
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