UK Welfare State = Family Breakdown, Emasculated Men
June 3, 2010
Welfare has replaced the provider, "creating a glut of
unemployed, unwanted, unmarriageable men."by Camilla Cavendish
May 28, 2010
(Abridged)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article7138520.ece
In declaring war yesterday on both poverty and the benefits system, Iain Duncan Smith had it right. If the Government is going to make real inroads into the deficit it will have to tackle the nearly £200 billion ($300 billion) welfare budget, which is a third of government spending. This week's £6 billion of cuts was only Round 1: £6 billion is only 1 per cent of government expenditure, so this was a warm-up.
But the argument for welfare reform is not just one of affordability.
In too many cases, welfare has entrenched poverty. ...
Gordon Brown made life more bearable for many people on benefits, but he
also made it harder to escape from them. Get a job tomorrow earning
between £10,000 and £30,000 a year and you'll take home only 30p out of
every extra pound you earn after the first £10,000....
The fear of losing benefits -- of not being able to scramble back on
to the lifeboat if you fall off -- is a huge disincentive to change your
circumstances, let alone report them.
One-in-seven working-age
households is dependent on benefits for more than half its income. More
than half of all single parents depend on the State for at least half
their income.
William Beveridge would be horrified to discover that the safety net he designed has become a trap, creating generations of worklessness and dwindling self-esteem. It is also creating a glut of unemployed, unwanted, unmarriageable men.
Immigration reduced the opportunities available to white British men whose poor education made them less attractive candidates, while the benefits system undermined their motivation.MALE UNEMPLOYMENT = SINGLE MOTHERHOOD
The problem affects the whole of society because of the striking
correlation between male joblessness and single motherhood, particularly
in the old industrial cities.
In Liverpool, male unemployment rose from
12 per cent in 1971 to 30 per cent in 2001. In 1971 11 per cent of
families were headed by a single parent; by 2001, 45 per cent were.
Similar patterns can be seen in Birmingham, Strathclyde and Newcastle. The epidemic of male joblessness after the collapse of manufacturing industries coincided with an increase in female employment and welfare support to mothers who found that they could manage alone.
Overlooked by society, irrelevant to employers, unwanted by women who can raise families on benefits without their help, the man who has no work or a series of short-term jobs is a problem.
Without steady work,
he will struggle to acquire a family: unemployed men are less likely to
marry or cohabit than employed ones. Without a stable relationship, he
is less likely to grow into a good family man and raise good sons.
RECALLS THE FATE OF US BLACK FAMILIES
The taxpayer has become the father: one in four mothers is single and more than half live on welfare. A lot of these women describe the real fathers of their children as "useless" or worse. The men have no role.
In the worst cases, the State has helped to create a class of jobless
serial boyfriends who prey on single mothers on benefits. When two of
these men moved into the flat that Haringey Council had generously
provided for Tracey Connelly, Baby P's mother, the little boy's fate was
sealed. They killed him.
Other such men appear in bit parts in tragedies such as that of Shannon Matthews, abducted and drugged by her own "family". The welfare system has helped to deprive these children of the most effective check on abuse -- the family.
Robert Rowthorn, Professor of Economics at Cambridge, has shown that
female and male worklessness have been going in opposite directions for
30 years, well before this latest "mancession".
His research suggests that half the rise in lone parenthood in the past 30 years may be due to male unemployment. He believes that governments must start to focus on these men, and question the feminisation of education and the workplace.
It is no solution, he says, to say that women don't need men or that
men should become more female. Nor is it any good waiting for economic
growth to dig them out of poverty. Those men need a chance, not a
benefits system that undermines them.
Roger said (June 4, 2010):
Camilla's article on 'UK welfare state=family breakdown, emasculated men' sounds a lot like book 5 of Plato's Republic, where the State achieves everyone's loyalty by destroying the family unit.
'Where no father knows his son and no son knows his father'. The men and women in this article voluntary submit themselves to the control of the State, but they don't know why. Sure these men and women sound like collateral damage, but the next generation not really knowing their father will be loyal to the State without question.
Sure under the Common law no one can force you into a contract, but the State achieves your consent without you don't even realizing it. For example, when these men and women get married, they get a marriage "license" from the Government.
Getting a marriage "license" means in the Government's eyes that you're not responsible enough, and therefore you need their permission. Now if you let Gay people get married and let them adopt, even better, because who knows then who the father is.
However in theory and hypothetically speaking, there is a way to defeat the State without taking up arms or making threats. Very simple, strengthen the family unit and learn NOT to want. You teach everyone in the family to be loyal to the family and not the State.
Within a generation you got a Clan (you grow your own food, help each other out etc), within a hundred years you got a really big tribe. Remember the barbarian tribes like the Vandals, the Visigoths, the Lombards etc, well a lot of them started out small, within a hundred years they brought down the Roman Empire. So it does work.
Unlike Plato's Republic, it doesn't work in real life. Plato tried twice to implement his theories and they didn't work. There's something about human beings that makes them want to be free. So maybe the Government should listen to us, and not pretend to listen or pretend to be sympathetic.
Remember we are worth money to the Government. That's why they give us a birth certificate, and the longer we work in years (the period of production), the more money we are worth to them.
That's why the Government always want people to "participate" in working, that's why they want women to quickly have babies and quickly get back to work. 'Participation rates' are very important to the State, we are like a battery to them, like in the movie the Matrix.