#deserving poor

I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to convince people to give my little organization, Time of the Month Club, money to buy homeless women tampons and pads which, once used, will be heaved into some landfill along with disposable diapers and other unpleasant detritus of lives lived in the city.

If one subscribes to the notion that teaching a man (or woman) to fish is superior to giving them…

How did welfare claimants come to be seen as scroungers?

See on Scoop.it – News and Current Affairs When William Beveridge conceived the welfare state seventy years ago, the poor were seen as “deserving” now viagra no prescription

those using the welfare state are most often seen as “scroungers”. How has the…

In the debate around benefits, or in fact around entitlement to assistance or help of any kind there has been of late a massive move towards stigmatising the recipients of the apparent largesse of the state. This is most apparent around the use of the phrase 'strivers vs scivers'. This is, as many others have pointed out, reminiscent of the Victorian concepts of deserving and therefore undeserving poor. Which essentially can be simplified as those whom we can identify with and empathise with, those where we say 'there but for the grace of God go I' juxtaposed with those whose experience and values are so wildly different to our own that it is easier to attribute fecklessness, irresponsibility or weakness as a cause of misfortune rather than acknowledge how the world works.

But to me it goes deeper than that. It is about choice. I don't come from a liberal background that assumes that everyone is essentially good and if they are given opportunities they will somehow succeed and achieve unparalleled affluence. My upbringing taught me about original sin, the concept that we are all born as seflish and slightly broken people. It would be easy in some ways to assume from that perspective that people will therefore use every opportunity to take without thought, behave without consideration of consequence and be morally bankrupt. This seems to be a mistake that christian and non christian people readily make.

It doesn't help that from Thatcher onwards we were schooled in the politics of envy. Those that profit from the status quo, from the hard work of others and foster inequality through the lie that all have the opportunity to thrive if they work hard enough - these people misdirect the wider population by appealing to our greed.

Two areas where this is most apparent are pensions and benefits.

Over recent years there has been a great deal of talk about the gold-plated pensions of the public sector and subsequent moves to erode and reduce public sector pensions appealing to the public jealousy at the apparent bounteous pay outs. Of course the reality is that rather than dragging down those who apparently do well, to gain equality the private sector should be encouraged, or even forced to compete by raising the pension provision for their employees.

Similarly with benefits, rather than slashing benefits for those who can't, or even won't, participate in employment the answer is not, if you believe that competition motivates everyone and everything, to penalise and demonise the weak and poor in our society. The answer is to force employers to pay a wage to employees such that even the lowest skilled jobs carry an incentive to work that is more than to avoid a punitive system. It is worth remembering that with unemployment figures rising and falling so fluidly, the benefit system provides a pool of redundancy for employers to draw on in he good times. this reservoir of workforce is totally subsidised by the state. When the next big corporation like Starbucks is revealed to have avoided paying their dues, remember where they will get their next batch of employees when they open their next branch.

Take away the cynical polemic point and we are left with choices. Despite the self evident fact that some people do abuse the system we can choose to assume that the significant majority do not. We can apply logic and consider that if people had the skills or knowledge to live a more fulfilling and productive life most of them would choose that way of being rather than subsist under our current system.

For every one of my clients who smokes away their benefits, or has a sky subscription I can't afford, rather than apply injudicious envy, I can choose to examine why people find themselves in that situation and apply some compassion. I can choose to look at the bigger picture and rather than victimise vulnerable and distressed people I can examine the morality of banker's bonuses, tax avoidance and people buying a holiday home through some perception of hard work and being deserving. The full version of that advert sickens me on many levels.