One of the things I now impress upon my children (they're mostly teenagers) is the need to develop personal "accomplishments". So far, this has meant learning musical instruments, dance, drama and 'how to play the social game', as well 'tricks' (card tricks/drawing, slight of hand), critical thinking, reading quality literature (I would need to define what I mean by this, but I don't mean for the sake of acquiring cultural capital), or indeed anything that demands some patience and dedication in the mastery of.
One needs a sense of personal accomplishment, I tell them, in order to rise above the mere gormandising popular culture in its myriad form is given to.
Consumption without discretion and accomplishment is consumptive. It tends to sedentariness, obesity, depression and other diseases of the mind (as distinct from the brain) which consumer culture cultivates.
Personal/professional accomplishments are the staples of happiness (such as is available to us) and to want for them is to be impoverished indeed.
In short, our culture is so shallow as to demand individualistic cultivation in its stead. Even our ceremonies (weddings and all) are confected. All is affectation--especially sincerity!
Here is what our generationally-disadvantaged tend to lack: accomplishment/artfullness.
Their shallow, rapacious and ruthless culture gives them nothing to cleave to and their want of accomplishment leaves them desolate, even vicious. Their sincere wretchedness is not affected, but pathetic.
So when I urge the acquisition of accomplishments, it's with misgivings but in the knowledge that artful self-deception is the most important accomplishment of all in the world as it is.
"what a well-lived life might look like" is dictated by the culture and the POV it cultivates.
The old question, "how should we live," can only be addressed outside the confined mental space composed by life as we know it.

As things are, a well-lived life is one of accomplished awareness and sufferance.

A few commenters here have queried how such a system would be administered, but no one so far (that I can see) has queried the expense.

What the media and political class never mentions is that, for every welfare crackdown that is introduced, the expense far outweighs any savings made in benefit payments. So, for every one welfare recipient that fits the criteria of ‘no contraception, no dole’, at least 5-10 other people would be required to police and administer it.

This would include at least one medical practitioner (plus nurses and other medical assistants) to carry out the procedure and to conduct ongoing medical monitoring. Also, at least one social worker would be required to conduct one-off and ongoing interviews, make one-off and ongoing assessments and write one-off and ongoing reports.

Then, Centrelink would need extra administrative staff to deal with the extensive paperwork and payment procedures involved – no doubt, an extra Fertility Control section would have to be created within Centrelink, or contracted out to a private community health firm.

So, in order to prevent the innocent taxpayer from having to pay an 'unworthy' pregnable female about $250 per week, the innocent taxpayer has to foot the bill for about $1000 per week to all those employed to save the innocent taxpayer some money

Having a baby is a public act, Killarney. Each baby requires a birth certificate to be considered as a future citizen of any country.

Here is how it can work. First illegitimate child unsupported by father, full child support from social security. Second illegitimate child unsupported by father, child support halved. Third illegitimate child unsupported by father, children removed to government care as mother is clearly unfit to be a responsible parent.

The present system of government handouts to that part of our populations which are the most troublesome and irresponsible, so that they can breed and become even more of a problem in the future, amounts to Eugenics in reverse. The fundamental problem for western society is that those among us who have the lowest intelligence and the greatest need for social security, are breeding at a much higher rate than the intelligent people who pay the taxes that support the dummies. Extrapolate forward and western society is doomed.

Unless we think up some way to get intelligent people to breed and stop the dummies from sending us broke through welfare, we may s well buy prayer mats and start facing Mecca when we pray.

LEGO

I have a pretty good idea of how the system would work. What I'm referring to is the expense.

Countless measures have been introduced over the decades to 'crack down' on unworthy, immoral or illegal social welfare recipients, but all this has ever done is escalate the welfare spending budget.

Your premise of 'first illegitimate child ... second illegitimate child' etc is simple on paper, but it would be an expensive bureaucratic nightmare to implement. You would need an army of not exactly underpaid social workers, medical practitioners, lawyers and government bureaucrats to plough through all the paperwork.

Then there is the bureaucratic hassle of determining whether a multiple MARRIED woman unsupported by the father(s) of her children should be deemed unfit for benefits. Again, that same army of doctors, lawyers, social workers and admin staff would have to spend a considerable amount of time and (paid) effort to determine her 'worthiness' to continue doing her taxpayer-funded 'bad' parenting.

It's my belief that the welfare spending budget could be virtually halved if all the self-righteous protectors of the innocent taxpayer would lay off their obsession with distinguishing between 'worthy' and 'unworthy' welfare recipients. Spending up to $60 billion per year just to feed our sense of self-righteousness is beyond a joke.

Well said Killarney.

One wonders why, when there are more people out of work than there are jobs, Centrelink needs to monitor dole recipients.

Squeers, thanks for your well-considered answer. I'm not sure that I agree with you that a well-lived life is beyond our subjective judgement, although I most certainly do agree that our modern world is not conducive to the contemplative dispassion that is needed.

One thing I am pretty sure of, though, is that there are some kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who rise above their beginnings and others who don't. I'm also sure that there are plenty of children who live in poverty or with parents who are a long way from ideal by the measures we have come up with here, who consider themselves to be happy and have little wish for their lives to change (although they would have a large list of things they'd buy if they won the lotto, I'm sure).

Given those things and referring to the work of Martin Seligman and others on positive psychology, http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/ppintroarticle.pdf is a good intro and there are some excellent resources on the net, it seems to me that it is not beyond the reach of our ambition to socially engineer (in the true sense, rather than the usual sociological constructionalist flim-flam) enhanced outcomes for those in the worst of circumstances without spending a huge amount on doing so.

It would mean starting at the top, where the decision-makers set policies and where managers design bureaucratic processes. It would also mean starting at the bottom, where children meet the world, by teaching prospective parents the skills needed to make good decisions about their childrens' upbringing. It would need to start in the middle, by training high-quality teachers and culling those who are not able or willing to meet the standards of training and commitment needed. It would need to be supported by decent communications and power infrastructure, enabling people in remote and poor communities to be as connected to the world and the opportunities it offers as those in the best schools.

We need to give people a dream they can build on and the tools to make it happen. They'll do the rest for themselves