{"id":19751,"date":"2013-04-06T09:34:59","date_gmt":"2013-04-06T14:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19751"},"modified":"2013-04-06T09:34:59","modified_gmt":"2013-04-06T14:34:59","slug":"the-old-class-system-and-the-modern-welfare-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/04\/06\/the-old-class-system-and-the-modern-welfare-state\/","title":{"rendered":"The old class system and the modern welfare state"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A majority of Britons who are on state assistance now believe that the system is too generous and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/debate\/article-2304776\/The-Great-Welfare-Myth-The-chattering-classes-peddling-poisonous-myth--poor-survive-soul--deadening-embrace-welfarism.html\" target=\"_blank\">discourages recipients from seeking jobs<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In 2003, 40 per cent of benefits recipients agreed that \u2018unemployment benefits are too high and discourage work\u2019; in 2011, 59 per cent agreed. So a majority of actual benefits recipients now think the welfare state is too generous and fosters worklessness. Surely those well-off welfare cheerleaders, when shown these figures, would accept that perhaps they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about. But no, they have simply come up with a theory for why the poor are anti-welfare: because they\u2019re stupid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Even more resented than those who abuse the system are those who run it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Working-class mothers hated the way that signing up for welfare meant having to throw one\u2019s home and life open to inspection by snooty officials, community health workers and even family budget advisers.<\/p>\n<p>They didn\u2019t want \u2018middle-class strangers\u2019, as they called welfare providers, \u2018questioning them about their children\u2019. They felt such intrusions \u2018broke a cultural taboo\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>And the use of welfare as a way of allowing society\u2019s \u2018betters\u2019 to govern the lives of the poor continues now. Indeed, today\u2019s welfare state is even more annoyingly nannyish than it was 80 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>As the writer Ferdinand Mount says, the post-war welfare state is like a form of \u2018domestic imperialism\u2019, through which the state treats the poor as \u2018natives\u2019 who must be fed and kept on the moral straight-and-narrow by their superiors.<\/p>\n<p>Mount describes modern welfarism as \u2018benign managerialism\u2019, which \u2018pacifies\u2019 the lower orders.<\/p>\n<p>Working-class communities feel this patronising welfarist control very acutely. They recognise that signing up for a lifetime of state charity means sacrificing your pride and your independence; it means being unproductive and also unfree.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A majority of Britons who are on state assistance now believe that the system is too generous and discourages recipients from seeking jobs: In 2003, 40 per cent of benefits recipients agreed that \u2018unemployment benefits are too high and discourage work\u2019; in 2011, 59 per cent agreed. So a majority of actual benefits recipients now [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,84],"tags":[262,95,322,289,545,42],"class_list":["post-19751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-bureaucracy","category-government","tag-culture","tag-jobs","tag-nannystate","tag-polls","tag-socialsecurity","tag-sociology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-58z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19752,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19751\/revisions\/19752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}