After the Cait Reilly case, we should seriously consider cutting welfare benefits to all 18 to 25-year-olds
There are many striking things about the Cait Reilly case. There’s that photo of her wearing a Palestinian-style scarf outside Poundland (fashion subtext: “I’m way too culturally switched-on to work in a chavvy joint like this”.) There’s the way the respectable media, so desperate for signs of a Left-wing rebellion against the posh ConDem government, have hilariously tried to turn Ms Reilly into a latter-day Rosa Luxemburg. But the most striking thing is the infantilism, the shameless childishness, of Ms Reilly and the youthful backers of her war against Workfare.
Who else but an ill-read infant, utterly lacking in historical nous and self-awareness, would describe something like Workfare as “slavery”, or being paid a small amount of money by the state to work in Poundland as “forced labour”? Comparing oneself to the beaten and manacled cotton-pickers of yesteryear is the stuff of Kevin the Teenager more than Karl Marx, bringing to mind that spotty overgrown teen’s cry of: “Everyone hates me!”
The infantilism of Cait and Co. can also be seen in the underlying aim of their campaigning – to have the state sustain all young adults who fall on tough times; to have the authorities feed, water, clothe and care for every graduate or school-leaver who doesn’t immediately land a plush job and cheap digs. There is nothing remotely radical, nothing Rosa Luxemburgish about this demand. It is in essence a campaign to extend teenage dependency into adult life, where the state takes over the role of parents in being expected to satiate young folks’ needs and stroke their self-esteem. How hilarious that the Cait cheerleaders talk about “slavery” while metaphorically manacling themselves to the state.
This infantilism, this in-built assumption among many 18 to 25-year-olds that they should automatically go from being suckled by parents to being suckled by the state, is a direct product of today’s cult of welfarism. The unstoppable spread of the welfare state into every area of our lives has given rise to a new generation which takes it for granted that they will never have to struggle, that they will never experience the often fruitful existential angst that comes with having no money, because the caring state will always be there, wrapping a blanket around them and slipping spending money into the pockets of their ironic tweed jackets.
We fail to appreciate just how destructive it is, for both individuals and society, to have huge swathes of the 18 to 25-year-old population receiving various state benefits. Historically, that seven-year period between leaving school or home and turning 25 has been absolutely key to an individual’s discovery and development of his moral autonomy. It’s the period when we rip up old bonds (usually with childhood friends, sometimes with family), and venture into the unforgiving world to try our hand at all sorts of weird things. Through risk-taking and experimentation, falling flat on our faces, being so skint that we have no choice but to strike up new relationships with potential work-providers and learn the art of butt-kissing, a young person becomes an adult, more sussed than he would ever have been if he had remained a dependant, if he always knew in the back of his mind that there was always someone else – a parent, a Miss Havisham, a welfare state apparatchik – ready to bail him out.
The spread of welfarism into the lives of young adults seriously interferes with the scary but creative process of becoming morally independent. It neuters young people’s aspirations for independence by coaxing them into a dependency on a watchful, parent-like state. We end up with 24-year-old teenagers like Cait Reilly, who are so convinced that they should never be permitted to go out into the big bad world without welfarist chaperones that they are willing to go to court to fight for this “right”. Some right – the right to not be autonomous. Is it not time to cut benefits to all young adults – no, not to save the state cash, but to save youngsters from the soul-devouring fate of being led by the hand towards adulthood?
As a Leftist, I’m expected to love the welfare state. But there is little to love in a system that implicitly crushes individual initiative and youthful resolve. Yesterday in the Guardian, a researcher for the Joseph Rowntree Trust wrote of her shock at discovering that the poor, those most reliant on welfare, are not “pro-welfare”; in fact, they think welfare is something claimed by losers and layabouts. That isn’t remotely surprising. Those who have no choice but to claim welfare know very well that it has a warping effect on one’s life and ambitions. It is only those who don’t need welfare – comfortably off liberal commentators and charity researchers – who think welfare is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/b...g-welfare-benefits-to-all-18-to-25-year-olds/
