Dear Killarney,

<<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.>>

Thank you so much for bringing some sense into this discussion!

Indeed, welfare and children are two very different issues and should not be mixed.

Welfare should be unconditional, so anyone who earns less than a bare minimum receives it with no other questions asked (other than about their income). As you wrote, this will save us a lot rather than waste the tax-payer's money, because each public-servant costs 10 times more than a dole-recipient.

And as for children, while what's done is done, bringing more children into this overcrowded world should not be encouraged in any way, thus should be treated like any other hobby - paid exclusively by those who pursue it.

If I got you right, Killarney, (correct me if I am wrong) your thinking goes like this.

It costs too much money to differentiate between parasites and people who genuinely are in need of social security. So, just give everybody who wants to live on the dole or the DSP what they want.

You must have a bit of Greek in you if you think like that.

I thought you were an Arab because of your reflexive anti Americanism. Now you have got me confused as to who you really are.

Craig,
It seems to me you’re assessing the human capacity for eudaemonia as a state of mind that may be cultivated independently of material conditions. I would argue that this capacity for spiritual/psychological transcendence is an indulgence first afforded by material comfort. “Grub first, then ethics” as Brecht has it. Philosophy is a social construct ruminated idly and on a full stomach, as it were. Even the Buddha had first to taste decadence before he could renounce it. Philosophy does not occur to us spontaneously except in as much as carnal pleasures are found wanting. Even then, it is the knitting of idle minds which the novice takes up in an attempt to add a row. Language affords us the capacity to pass our ‘wisdom’ down, lending the noviciate the illusion of its primacy. But now the well-lived life is formulaic, a prescription, self-enchantment cut off from its inspiration, a fetish couched in positive suggestion.
Psychology, rueing its negative spin and tendency to pathologise hitherto (to worship empty norms), now wants to spin it the other way. As if material conditions were beside the point, then and now; the individual, rather than its culture, remaining the subject to be treated. Mental illness, like mental health, is largely affectation, an industry built on the fetishisation of the self. Neurosis is largely a lifestyle disease.
You suggest we differ in “…the way we weight the importance of distributive fairness on the one hand and access to the fruits of production on the other”.
This sounds ‘holier than though,’ but I beg to submit that redistributionism has always riled me; I object to glut and unsustainability and have scarcely more sympathy for wealthy mendicants than millionaires. Your second clause seems to make a conceit of abstemiousness; while I applaud asceticism—I’m anti-consumerism myself—a cloistered state of mind amounts to abnegation of responsibility. There are larger ethical and ecological issues at stake.
The way we think about things can certainly be a comfort or a curse, but this has no bearing on the actual conditions and ramifications of our social existence, which remains precarious.

Dear LEGO,

<<It costs too much money to differentiate between parasites and people who genuinely are in need of social security. So, just give everybody who wants to live on the dole or the DSP what they want.>>

This occurs all the time in your intestines, where there are beneficial bacteria as well as parasites and everything in between sharing your food. You could use antibiotics to kill them all, but the cost to your health would be too high. Also, the money you pay in the pharmacy for your antibiotics could easily buy the extra food needed to feed your bacteria.

Squeers/Craig Minns,

It must be wonderful up there on Olympia.

Yuyutsu,

Surely any moves to reduce child neglect is to enable carers to be better careers by providing opportunities for them to get out of the hole they are in and give their children far more positive role models.

Perhaps Andrew Forrest's proposition - that jobs should be identified, people selected to train for those jobs, those people undergo effective training and then move into those jobs - could be tailored for single mothers, not straight away, but once their child is in FREE child care and they care able to devote time to study.

When somebody is in a hole, don't throw blankets into it, and deliver hot meals, so that he or she can exist more comfortably in their hole - surely the aim should be to get them out of it as soon as possible.

Single mothers are probably no less intelligent than anybody else: they can study and move into employment at an appropriate time, like anyone else.

Surely the aim of any decent welfare system is to get people out of welfare and on their feet, as soon as possible ?

The children of single mothers deserve it. They deserve better than to be raised for fifteen or sixteen years in potentially negative and dangerous environments: Big Nana's point about step-fathers should be borne in mind, that problem's real, not just some scare-story.

Joe

Squeers, it's sounds like your are the ideal parent, however, all of what you mentioned cost money, with some families spending thousands a year just on hobbies/sports alone, and that doesn't include the travel costs.

I am retired from business at present however one thing my wife and I did was to spend heaps on our kids education, both school and no school, and it's paid off. Unfortunately I would like a little more cash nowadays, but that's the price one pays to ensure your kids will not be a burden on the tax payer and it's money well spent.

However, if we were starting again today, on average wages, we couldn't afford it.

Loudmouth...Surely any moves to reduce child neglect is to enable carers to be better careers by providing opportunities for them to get out of the hole they are in and give their children far more positive role models.

Are you forgetting it's often a self dug hole.

If we placed more effort on finding ways to make fathers who do the 'dump and run' more accou table, many if these problems would be solved, because as it is there is very little that can be done to address the problem. Making parents who dump their kids more accountable would be my first step.