Ok, so in your view, what’s an acceptable baseline for relative poverty in a developed western country?
I'm not in favour of setting a defined 'human right' level of provision of food, housing and services.
The temptation would always to be to set the level at a point where a considerable amount of people would decide that seeking any significant amount of (likely low paid) work wasn't worth it as they can rely on their 'right' to be fed, clothed, accomdated etc at someone else expense.
Any one with even a basic level of foresight could see that this would cause the collapse of the whole system as a diminishing pool of workers and tax payers have to pick up the slack of a growing welfare class.
Life can be tough and people need incentives to do what are often unpleasant, boring and repetitive tasks.
So as tempting as it is to suggesting welfare as being a universal catch all to carry people through there lives I would prefer it return to a more of a safety net approach for thoose able to work to catch them on the way down not to provide subsistence for intergenerational welfarism.
Is what we have currently ok or could it be improved?
I think there's far too much emphasis on 'top down' solutions to societies problems. I. E welfare to deal with issues where the welfare provision may actually long term be exacerbating the issue.
In the short term I would like to see more emphasis placed on responsibility. For example if you have demonstrated an inability to manage your (state provided) finaces then your housing benefit component gets paid straight to the housing provider.
Some of that feckless decision making is coming from government, like the shambolic rollout of Universal Credit. In those instances I’d say it’s even more shameful.
Universal credit is just an egregious example of how poor goverment is at spending other people's money. The cure isnt to change the system but rather elimate the root cause of the problem
I’m not denying there are individuals who repeatedly make poor life choices (some you may even describe as lost causes), and I agree that simply throwing them spending money is unlikely to change their behaviour.
However, the only way we will solve the underlying issues is through support and education, which does require spending. It may not fix things in the short term, but inaction will only resign the next generation to the same fate.
I disagree. . our education system may not be ideal but children in this country (and their parents) have access to learning resources that most of the rest of the world could hardly imagine.
You have to change the
culture before you can educate and support people away from absolute poverty.
Unfortunately we are increasingly embrassing an entitlement culture.
The recent history of the western nations is full of immigrant communities that have come from quite extreme poverty but who have within a generation or two often passed the 'natives' when it comes to attainment.
Examples include South Koreans (the country was a very poor war torn mess in the 50's), certain Indians and Jews.
We would do well to observe some of the common cultural themes like ensuring a high percentage of children remain with two parents (of which at the least one retains gainful employment), ensuring children make good use of the education offered to them and a culture that is heavily adverse to criminality.