by Mabon Dane

Created on: February 19, 2010

I have had the experience of being employed, self-employed and on Welfare.  In Britain we call Welfare the Benefits System.  I will be blunt when I say Welfare is a hindrance to the individual, to society and to the nation.

When I was on Welfare it was rather easy to sit and do nothing, claiming Welfare whilst not looking for work.  I know of many people who have made a good living in Britain on our Welfare system.  In Britain there is a lack of incentive to look for work. The UK Welfare system fails to encourage those on Welfare to better themselves or seek employment.  I came off Welfare mainly because I was bored, and I ended up back in employment.  Those who know the system will play it, they will remain on Welfare forever, sucking the nation dry.

It dawned upon me how corrosive Welfare is when I was researching a family that lived in Victorian England in 1870.  In 1870 Britain had no Welfare system, an individual would learn a trade, join the military, be a labourer, became a servant, or sank into criminality and worse.  The only "charity" that existed in Victorian England was the horror of the Work House, something nobody wanted to end up in. The family were Irish and poor, who lived in a poor district of the town.  The family, the Hardings, like many families of the time were resourceful, making money where they could. The head of the family was a veteran soldier with a pension who in old age had turned his hand to being a Machine Labourer; his wife ran a small grocery operation where she would visit soldiers in the town selling potatoes, coal and other goods from a cart; a daughter aged 15 was a spinner; the four sons from the age of 14 joined the army or became labourers.  In 1870 education for under 10's was just about to begin, but from the age of 14 (as low as 10)  all family members would be turning their hand to some form of work.  In most cases those aged 16 had left home to find work. In Victorian England in 1870, at the height of the British Empire, when Britain was the most powerful nation on earth, the lazy and stupid ended in the Work House, transported to Australia, hung, jailed or in the gutter.

140 years later Britain has no empire; is an insignificant player in the world; and our citizens present a vastly different attitude to work than did the Victorians.  In Welfare Britain there is none of that creativity, resourcefulness or self respect amongst the citizens that had once made Britain great.  The Welfare system breeds a contempt for the work ethic, discouraging and dis-empowering the citizen so that they prey on the nations resources, but do nothing to better themselves through work or education. It is an irony that in Britain, despite a Welfare system some of our citizens through poor nutrition suffer Victorian diseases like Scurvy and Rickets.

It is my opinion that to empower the citizen and to rebuild a nation, be it Britain or the USA, Welfare should be abolished.  Let the citizen sink or swim, but provide them with the means of employment or self-education, and in the case of Britain refound the Work Houses for those who wish to continue to be losers.

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