Who said this?:
Every penny bestowed, that tends to render the position of the pauper more eligible than that of the independent labourer is a bounty on indolence and vice.
David Cameron? George Osborne? Ian Duncan Smith?
No, that is a statement included in the 1834 Report of the Royal Commission into the Administration of Poor Relief.
You would have hoped we would made progress since then; that we might have got beyond the culture of the work house. But apparently not. It is the very same sentiment that the Tories now which to revive.
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In similar vein, Richard, and something of a contrast to the idealised view of the 19th century which underpins so much of what we’ve heard from the ConDems and others this week.
‘The age of capital found it difficult to come to terms with this problem [the poor]. The bourgeoisie’s insistence on loyalty, discipline and modest contentment could not really conceal that its real views about what made worklers labour were quite different. But what were they?…in the countries of the Old World the middle class believed that workers should be poor, not only because they had always been but also because economic inferiority was a proper index of class inferiority. If, as happened occasionally – for instance in the great boom of 1872-73 some workers actually earned enough to afford for a brief moment the luxuries which employers regarded as their right, the indignation was sincere and heartfelt. What business had coal-miners with grand pianos and champagne?…the middle classes would have been shocked and appalled if the workers had actually asked for the sort of life they themselves took for granted, and even more if they had looked like acheiving it. Inequality of life and expectations was built into the system.’
Hobawm, E. The Age of Capital (1975, pp. 256-257)
All this punish the poor stuff is excellent tactics, its practically impossible to implement, and distracts from the more intractable problem of the majority who want to work for a living wage but cannot.
Any humane politician would address this first, and then we could actually see who the mythical indolent were afterwards.
There are only no comments because you have moderated out differences of opinion to yours
@Rob Atkins
Far from it – or you would not have got on
The vast majority do
And editorial freedom is a right
@paul
As Keynes said, deal with the recession first then do the reform
Pretty obvious really
And the ConDems have got it wrong