Sterilising the unemployed smacks too much of eugenics and Hitler’s fascist society to ever happen – thank heavens.
The issue of getting parents (i.e. two parent families, or single mothers where the absent father isn’t working either and therefore not contributing to the child’s upkeep) off benefits and into employment is a different one. And a huge stick isn’t going to work.
It would be very hard for the government to cut benefits to such families. One of their aims is to cut child poverty – cutting benefits would effectively increase child poverty.
At present, we hand out money to people on benefits to enable them to buy what they need. How they chose to spend this money is up to them – even if the money is intended to be spent on the children. So whilst junior should be getting new shoes and decent meals, if the family decide to spend it on booze, fags and a new x-box, that’s entirely up to them.
What the state could do is institute a system similar to that used for refugees, where rather than being given cash, they are given vouchers, and so are limited as to how the benefits are spent. This would mean that the government would need to decide what was necessary for a family to survive, and allocate the vouchers appropriately. So for example different amounts could be given for food, rent, power, transport, etc. with maybe a smaller amount allocated in cash that the family can spend on “luxuries”. This would ensure that the children would have adequate basics, housing, food, clothes, etc.
Doubtless there would be a stigma attached to these vouchers, but maybe that would encourage people to get off benefits and out to work. It would be the only way they could get hold of those luxuries that our society deems necessary.
I suspect that this idea is a bit too left wing for any politicians to consider these days however. So it’s not likely to happen.
Essentially you’ve got to change the culture so that people expect to work – education might have a role in this. The idea that you work because you should be a contributing member of society, however lowly the job, and that you should provide for your family seems to have died out in certain circles. However, if you’re at the bottom of the pile in our capitalist society, and the only jobs available to you are low paid and unpleasant, it’s not exactly motivating is it?
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