Ideas@TheCentre
A fair welfare system
There is a recurring tension in welfare policy between those who insist that the vulnerable and needy must be helped, and those who worry that too much help can weaken the work ethic and undermine self-reliance. The Left takes the moral high ground in these arguments by demanding that people in need be helped, even if this means higher taxes. The Right’s more practical arguments about costs and perverse incentives often seem mean spirited in comparison.
What both the Left and Right often overlook is that there are two core moral principles underpinning the welfare state. One is the care principle emphasised by the Left – nobody who needs help should be denied assistance. But the second has to do with fairness, or what Jonathon Haidt in his recent book, The Righteous Mind, calls the ‘proportionality’ ethic. People must be helped, but the way we do it must be fair.
Haidt shows that many of our fundamental moral ideas are instinctive, honed through thousands of years of human evolution. Studies on infants show that caring about the suffering of others is one such instinct – even at six months, we know it is wrong to harm others and right to help them.
Similarly, Haidt outlines a number of psychological experiments demonstrating that we also have an instinctive sense of fairness – a feeling that people shouldn’t take without contributing, and that it is wrong to free ride on others.
Our instinctive desire for fairness as well as compassion suggests that any welfare system should conform to at least three basic rules.
First, people on welfare should never be better off than those who work. This applies financially (work should always pay better than benefits) but also in terms of time (people on welfare should not enjoy more free time than those who work). Here is the moral argument for workfare. Research shows that activity conditions attached to welfare often fail to help recipients find jobs, but this is not their prime purpose (even though politicians pretend it is). The point of workfare is to make the welfare system fairer.
Second, everyone in need must be helped, but not necessarily in the same way. Those who have contributed through taxes should be treated more generously than those with weak or non-existent employment records, and people whose behaviour has led to their own misfortune should be subject to different conditions than those who are victims of circumstances beyond their control. People unable to work because of drug addiction, for example, should not be treated in the same way as other ‘disabled’ claimants but should be required to undergo treatment as a condition of receiving benefits. The Left often rails against distinguishing the ‘deserving’ poor from the ‘undeserving’ poor, but this distinction is actually fundamental to a fair welfare system, and today it is too often neglected.
Finally, we should not expect strangers (taxpayers) to help before people have tried to help themselves, and this includes seeking assistance from close family members. In Germany, the Civil Code requires children, parents and grandparents to support each other, so if, say, a father cannot or will not pay child support, his parents are expected to make up the difference. Similar rules apply in Japan and throughout Asia. Again, the Left is often resolutely opposed to policies like these, but they are an essential component of a fair system. As the adage has it, charity begins at home.
Professor Peter Saunders is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
