My guess is that it is a false rumor. I think I would have heard of it, if it were real.

Still, to be honest, the only home-mom in my family lives in Germany. Women (and why not men) tend to take few years (per kid) off the work, when the children are young. But I would say, that the life is rather lonely for the women who stay in home. This is likely, because there are not so many other women working in homes.

- BtD

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"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
[George Orwell, 1984]

Well, since you live in Finland, I'll take your word for it. Who lied to my mother about this?

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"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased- short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed." (Max Beerbohm)

Your theory can't be right Force, because, citing Britain again, welfare was introduced in 1945 and unemployment has been up and down like a yo-yo since. But your post seems to be asking why, so i'll try and share some the logic behind my leftist beliefs.

Lets take your example. Lets say the government does decide to give people free housing, in fact lets the government provides all essential needs free (food, water, clothing, shelter, heating, health care etc.). Most people although able to live of this will want better. The'll want a TV. The'll want a computer. Greed and boredom will drive them. People do get up and work because they want a better life.
So whats the point in providing this is everyone is willing to and can get up and work? Well not everyone is. Some people are single parents who have to spend or want spend time raising their child(ren). Some people have been to jail and will be refused work wherever they look. Sometimes there's just no work available and people need something to fall back on. The list can go on. Some people i will admit are just lazy. I'd say this is a very very small % but there are bound to be people out there. So a simply question would you rather have this person not caring about there job and building shoddy buildings? Teaching your kids without caring whether they learn or not? Even something as simply as cleaning can have devastating effects if not with care (for example MRSA). (Admittedly there are jobs it wouldn't matter if you took care or not but if your THAT lazy are you really going care witch job you have to take) They should be working true, but there not going to and would rather see a few take advantage of the system or watch them and probably quite allot of others get ill or even die because you took that system away?
As far as welfare causing poverty in the long run. First of all the money people on welfare receive is payed straight back into the economy so it isn't the giving of money that would hurt it, it would be lack of labour. So why doesn't it hurt the economy? Because for the most part there just aren't enough jobs that people are qualified to do. Whether or not the unemployed are being given money to live off is little to do with how many jobs there are available. In recent times the reason people are still on welfare (in the west) had been the collapse of manufacturing and with it labour opportunities. Think welfare had a card to play in the service industries rise? I don't.
All i have to do is look on the local streets to see people who want to work but can't. Why if people could get a job are they out on the street trying to sell the big issue? To me that shows how desperate and willing people are to work.

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What's this i hear bed? Word has it you and Pam are sleeping together.

Okay, then it would seem that the key question in a given economy, dealing with this point only, is whether and to what extent the lack of demand for labor exceeds the shortage of labor inevitable in a welfare system. Then there is the problem of inefficiency. Addressing right-wingers, could government grants to private charities solve this problem?

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"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased- short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed." (Max Beerbohm)

Two points: a) You're not alone in the pusuit of a possible reform
b) When we don't know we need to experiment. Sounds scary, yes. But we need to stop doing the things that are inefficient and start bringing in new ideas. This is exactly why free market participation would do so much better than government. Unfortunately welfare policies have the added trouble of offering no incentive to entrepreneurs- and if they did, they would also provide incentive to keep people in poverty to use the services. That means conventional capitalism won't work on charity. It's going to take no less than a deep-rooted cultural change in which we see helping as a benefit in itself. Until then, government or government-funded institutions are the only choice we really have. Though keeping government accountable like good citizens would help maintain efficiency in this issue as with all other issues (provided citizens start getting more far-sighted; once again, culture)

Trim the inefficiencies, not just in welfare, but in EVERYTHING. There is a lot of waste in government. Conservatives tend to concentrate on welfare programs, but waste can be found everywhere in government. Also, and in favor to the dirty stinking Pubs, policies that help business help to increase tax revenue and create jobs. Thus less people on welfare and more money to use on welfare. Thus we see the (or one of the) problem with the Crats. They focus on both the down and out and labor unions. They don't seem to realize that those two groups are typically in direct opposition with one another, at least insofar as policy decisions go.

Would you sit on your @$$ all day and earn a subsistence income while being the pariah of society given the choice? What people don't get is that the chronically poor are living is resignation, not in some royal poverty- unless they sell drugs on the side, then they're actually taking up the very entrepreneurial attitude we say they're lacking. People first and foremost do what they need to (take care of self, family, get food, meet accepted social norms as they understand them[don't think for a bloody second that the last-mentioned is not important. That is a mistake of those that like to degrade the poor]). People will take risks for a better life when a) not doing so will lead to a loss of what they have AND they see a possible means to do it, b) doing so has a great chance of producing benefits that will outweigh possible loss AND they can afford the loss, c) they have nothing to lose but a possibility of something to gain[though usually the risks people take in this category are riskier than normal and not generally ones we like], or d) they are irrational [that is why statistically insane people do better on the stock market].
The chronically poor tend to either a) not have any sudden "up or out" occurrences pop up and if they do, not see a way to move up, b) not have a substantial resource base to afford risk or not see any risks likely to provide more gain than potential loss [also common with the middle and working classes, but we don't complain about them until they retire and collect social security], c) they either have something they fear losing or they don't see any possible way to gain, or d) they are irrational [if none of the others are true]. The criminal element of the poor tend to take risks much in the way we'd like the chronically poor to, but in a way we don't like. This is because they do see good risks, but no legitimate ones or they see much more profitable illigitimate ones.
Now one trouble is that all of these are relative and subjective. It makes the case for why classes need to be integrated more to avoid the creation of ghettos where choices are very limited. Also many people just need better information to make better decisions. They need the opportunity and the know-how to make cheap and low-risk investments of time, money, or resources and work their way up from there. This know-how is taken for granted by many, but it is in no way intuitive. It can be learned from experience perhaps, but ONLY IF there is an opportunity to learn from and escape from the mistake. Too often mistakes can permanently ruin the lives of the poor (or even the middle class) and society is quick to scorn the maker of the mistake.
Many people could do better if they could move where jobs are needed (both in skills and location), so I think any real charity should be involved in this principle.


Welfare is not the only part of government that is involved here. And the burden is on the taxpayer. We need to hold government accountable. For too long people have used government as a way to ignore the things we need to get done. We should be paying attention to how they do things. Whether it is private or public, the truth of the matter is that we, the people of this nation (and of this world for that matter) are the ones that bear the responsibility for how and if problems are handled.

At this point, I can't remember who said it but I'll say it again. Don't have a belief and look for support. Beliefs should be inductive. You can test them with deduction. But you shouldn't cling to them. Paradigms stunt mental growth. We can't help but to fall into them but it is best to keep your mind open while fighting for what you believe. It's a balancing act. At one point, Force, I was a Christian anti-technology anarchist who hated globalization and capitalism and believed that the antichrist was in control of the earth. Paradigms can change.
Although the existence of Red-Corner is starting to make me wonder about the antichrist part again... Oh well.

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The lack of demand for labour is what causes people to be on welfare in the current system. When jobs arise unemployment lowers. There hasn't been a drastic shortage in labour for a long time (at least in Britian).

Why do think private charities would spend more efficiently than the government?

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What's this i hear bed? Word has it you and Pam are sleeping together.

Personally I think that charities have the potential to do better if there is a way to make charity competative. For example if the government outsourced all welfare and service programs to private companies while holding the purse strings, they could create an environment within which charities compete and free market forces improve the service. The government will obviously pick companies that are cost-efficient, fill a necessary niche, diverse, and effective. That is as long as we can avoid cronyism.

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I made the fundamental mistake of thinking of welfare spending as economically neutral and hence the disincentive factor as infinitely outweighing it. In reality, as Nathan pointed out, welfare spending in and of itself is economically positive, and it is obvious that there is more money spent on welfare than money lost through disincentives. Therefore, even though I will probably be called an authoritarian for it, I support welfare again. Private charities (especially smaller ones) are more efficient because they lack the government's bureaucracy. I also agree with JavaBlack that competition for government welfare money among private charities would be good, though an independent board as powerful as the Federal Reserve would have to oversee such transactions to ensure that they didn't become corrupt.

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"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased- short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed." (Max Beerbohm)

Okay, I've made up my mind. We should keep government aid in place but use private competition for grants to lower its costs. On other fiscal issues, we should keep taxes and the minimum wage where they are, though the minimum wage should be indexed to inflation on a local level. I am an uncompromising fiscal moderate.

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"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased- short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed." (Max Beerbohm)

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And I do not need to know.

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