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Thursday 16 October 2008

It’s the Broken Society, stupid

Most children of the underclass are born out of wedlock; relationships are fleeting and unstable (which ensures that what is born into the underclass stays in the underclass). This is a world in which there are almost no worthwhile male role models, which is a disaster when boys turn to youths. Single mums struggle to cope as best they can — and usually lose control of their kids, especially if they are boys, when they become teenagers. With sad, depressing predictability, the children of today’s underclass become tomorrow’s criminals and dropouts.

Many social trends, under governments of the Left and Right, have encouraged the fracturing of families and the undermining of values which have created the underclass. The Broken Society has many fathers. However the welfare system, which Mr Blair promised to reform by ‘thinking the unthinkable’ but which remains largely untouched a decade later, has been its fertiliser. It traps millions into welfare dependency and penalises anybody foolish enough to try and get a legitimate job.

Labour ministers still like to remind us of Mrs Thatcher’s three million unemployed. They do not mention that, under their care and despite a growing economy, almost 5.3 million people of working age do not work but live on various benefits. Many are behaving entirely logically: they are better off doing nothing. The marginal tax rate for those who try to better themselves through work can be as high as 90 per cent for the poorest — over twice the marginal rate of tax paid by the City boys on their million-pound bonuses.

The poorest fifth of the population now receive more than half their income in state benefits. Even for the next 20 per cent of the population the figure is close to 40 per cent. The Blair years have been ones of rising prosperity and high employment. Yet for many, welfare dependency and doing nothing has been a way of life, despite Mr Brown’s pledge a decade ago that doing nothing would no longer be an option.

More articles from: Andrew Neil | this section

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