Without a safety net

Wednesday, 27th May 2009

Conservatives should give Mr Rudd’s ‘earn or learn’ proposals a fair hearing, says John Heard

There is a tremor thrilling through the ranks of young Australians. Recalled from their generational slumber, mouths agape, stimulus payment-funded Wii sticks hanging limply at their sides, they have received advanced warning of something new under the sun. No longer will they sport and sleep, indulging the semi-fashionable, taxpayer-funded ‘pre-life crisis’ encouraged, in various forms, by gentle spirits such as Friedrich von Schiller and John Winston Howard. For the dole-funded ‘gap year’ is no more. The GFC is here, and the fat years are over.

The inheritance of an artificial class, those born into a bureaucratic minority (and relative poverty, generously defined) during the boom years, the dole-funded gap year too often spread the welfare safety net for those young Australians who simply chose to be unproductive. They were not in any danger of falling. They usually just jumped, arms open, off the cliff.

And why not so choose? Other than the intrinsic rewards associated with an advanced degree in Hebrew philology, for instance, or the dubious kudos granted that guy at the party who boasts of his self-sufficiency — his deeply moral, if not properly self-interested, rejection of all welfare — governments have not put any serious pressure on young Australians to continue study or stay at work. They could coast along, and if Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s analysis of libertarian paternalism is correct, at times the former welfare arrangements even nudged them towards idleness. Even otherwise serious politicians advised patriotic young Australians to take time out to travel. They should figure themselves out, and find out who they are. When things got tight, they could apply for the dole, and spend an indefinite period of time suspended from responsibility. Indeed, the benefits of inertia — money for next to nothing, alongside an apparent gain in self-understanding — were highly desirable.

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