AND ANOTHER THING
Challenging the philosophical fallacy behind the rise of the idle poor
PAUL JOHNSON
If there is one extinct species in Britain today it is the idle rich. Fifty years ago there were still a few around, living off divi- dends, pottering about, doing 'the Season', travelling. Some did nothing whatever. Lord Clark, the art maestro, described his parents as such in his autobiography. Both inherited cotton fortunes, did nothing with their lives, and were bored and unhappy. That kind of parasitism was becoming unacceptable even in their day and public opinion would not permit it now. Even notorious black sheep among the aristocra- cy, marquesses and the like, feel they have to turn their estates into theme parks or sell vintage cars — sometimes landing themselves in jail as a result — rather than admit they have no job.
All the rest of the rich work fanatically, partly because they like doing it, partly because they feel they ought. I do not know a single plutocrat who does not slave away. Billionaires well over 80 insist on turning up at their offices every morning, even though there is really nothing for them to do. Successful men never retire these days unless they are forced into it. Even when they are supposedly on holiday, they are surrounded by mobiles, fax machines and secretaries. Almost without exception their wives run their own businesses or have reg- ular jobs. A rich wife who has to fall back on a diary crammed with committee meet- ings for charities and art trusteeships to jus- tify her existence is made to feel a low form of life. Above a certain income level, the work ethic has completely taken over. What is responsible? Guilt, no doubt. At the end of a century in which the doctrines of Freud and Marx were unibiquitous, their only positive result has been to make the people with enough money to do nothing but slog their guts out. In consequence, the rich are becoming richer.
At the other end of the scale is the new phenomenon, the idle poor. It is now possi- ble, in Britain and a number of other coun- tries, for perfectly healthy people, men and women, to pass their entire lives without doing any work at all, living on welfare and on such windfalls, lawful or otherwise, as come their way. Their standard of living is not high but it is adequate. They are appre- ciably better off than those working at the lowest-paid jobs. Of course, like Lord Clark's parents, they are bored and unhap- py — in most cases, anyway — and resent- ful at society's failure to do more for them. But unlike their historic predecessors, the idle rich, they suffer from no feelings of guilt. They take everything that is done for them, or given them, for granted. They have been taught, and they believe, that the payments they receive, their unearned income, is their moral and legal right. Any moral failure, in their way of looking at things, lies with 'them', for not making the payments higher. They regard their time, thus liberated by the welfare system, as entirely their own. They feel no obligation to use it for the benefit of others, even if they knew how to set about doing so. In their own clumsy way, they are lotus-eaters, leading lives devoted to the pursuit of low- level hedonism.
Recent work by Paul Greg and Jonathan Wadsworth at the LSE, findings by Frank Field MP's Commons Social Security Com- mittee and statistics compiled by the DSS itself indicate two interdependent but hos- tile moral cultures in Britain today. About 60 per cent of households consist of work- fanatics, with both parents working and often young adults in work too, generating large total family incomes and paying mas- sive amounts in income tax. Only one-fifth of households now have a single earner. On the other hand, another one-fifth — soon to become a quarter, if present trends con- tinue — have no earners at all and are entirely dependent on social security. The all-work households have a work ethic. The no-work households have a rights ethic. The first supports the second. Each resents the other. These moral attitudes are cer-
'It's the wife and kids!' tainly passed on from one generation to another. We will soon have people reaching retirement age after an entire working lifespan spent on welfare, whose children have grown up in a workless household and are unable to comprehend the work ethic because they have no experi- ence of it. It is a grim future for an expand- ing section of the nation.
It is a grim future for all of us, in more ways than one. The last time we had a Labour government, in the late 1970s, social security payments (excluding pen- sions) were about £19 billion a year at today's prices. They were £45 billion in 1994-95 and considerably more now. The social security budget has been regularly overrunning estimates by billions a year. It is easily the biggest item in total govern- ment expenditure and is increasing faster than any of the others. It is a spending monster, completely out of control, and all the increasingly draconian attempts to curb it have failed because none has dared to attack the principle of entitlement which lies at the heart of the welfare state. So long as people are entitled to welfare money by law, all attempts to impose ceil- ings will fail. And the voracious appetite of the entitlement monster means that there is nothing over for higher spending on any- thing else, however desirable. To his credit, Tony Blair is the first senior politician to face up to the implications of the idle poor, who are protected from work by the law. He realises that all his plans to improve education, training, health and housing will come to nothing unless spending on bene- fits is not only stabilised but actually reduced.
But we are unlikely to do this peacefully without changing the moral climate. In par- ticular, we have to overthrow the doctrine of universal rights. Some of us may deserve something, but none of us has a right to anything. Only God has rights. Men and women merely have duties. If all of us per- form our duties to the best of our ability, talk of rights becomes otiose because everyone who deserves and needs help will almost certainly get it. The rest can then be pushed off the welfare rolls and back into the real, healthier and certainly happier world of duties. And the first duty, for all of us who are fit and able, is to work. In a civilised and just society such as we strive to create, the idle poor have no more place than the idle rich.
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