Opinion & Commentary
A clumsy hand is no help: Governments are no good at social policy
US founding father and third president Thomas Jefferson was right after all: “The government that governs least is the government that govern best”.
That’s the theme that emerges from the past 25 years of research at The Centre for Independent Studies. Individuals and small groups are better at organising things than governments are. Government often gets involved in things for the best of motives but ends up making things worse. It turns out that in most areas of social policy, the best thing the government could do for us would be to get out of the way.
Take the family. Research demonstrates that, on average, children are better off if they are brought up by their two natural parents. Children raised by two married parents tend to do better at school, are less likely to suffer abuse, they become less involved in crime, the are less prone to mental illness as adults, and so on.
Governments, however, have increased taxes on two-parent families over the last thirty years and have pushed many of them into welfare dependency. Families with one earner have been particularly badly hit, and many of them now exist on an income not much higher than that enjoyed by those who are unemployed. The groups that have gained have been single parents and childless couples.
The result: married mothers who want to stay at home with their children have been forced out to work. Increasing numbers of families are finding that it simply doesn’t pay to work at all. More children are being raised on income support without a father. And some couples are putting off having children altogether because the tax system penalises families so heavily.
It’s a similar story with education. Many of us suspect (and employers confirm) that standards in schools and universities have been sliding – although it is difficult to know for sure what is going on because the teacher unions refuse to allow comparative data on the results of school testing to be released. It seems likely that one reason for the high level of youth
unemployment in Australia is the declining level of intellectual, vocational and social skills being achieved in the public education system.
Increasing numbers of parents (30 per cent at the last count) are now voting with their feet and choosing a private sector alternative. They are not necessarily rich, yet the government penalises them by making them pay taxes to support the low quality government schools that they do not wish to use. Indeed, we have ended up with the extraordinary situation where low income parents who make sacrifices to educate their children privately are subsidising wealthier parents who still choose to use the public schools.
The welfare state has been another disaster area. Back in the 1960s, only 3 per cent of working-age people lived on income support. Today, even though the national wealth has doubled, it is 14 per cent. A system designed to eliminate poverty has ended up increasing dependency five-fold despite growing affluence!
Everywhere you look it’s the same. The government says it wants to strengthen communities, but people only come together in joint activities if they have a reason to do so. If communities were stronger in the past, it is mainly because people were left alone to do things for themselves.
But since the government became the universal provider, there has been little need any more for communal self-help. Nor can we give so much to charities and good works when the government takes so much of our money in taxes.
Even multiculturalism reveals the same pattern. Thirty years ago, opinion polls found substantial support for further immigration – but then the government abandoned its support for assimilation and integration in favour of multiculturalism. Australians are not racist - most are happy to acknowledge that Australia is a better place for having so many people here from different parts of the world. But they do not like what they see as ‘special treatment’ for minorities, and most think that people who come here should adapt to Australian ways. The government’s commitment to multiculturalism has therefore ended up creating hostility and the result has been growing public opposition to further immigration.
Every time it is the same story. Left to ourselves, we normally manage to get along and sort things out. But when government blunders in with its billions of dollars and its bureaucratic zeal, things start to go wrong.
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About the Author:
Peter Saunders is Director of Public Policy Research at the Centre for Independent Studies. This opinion piece is based on his December CIS Lecture.
