Roland Turner wrote:
I am outright hostile towards the payment of welfare to people who fail to make every effort to: a) support themselves and b) protect their ability to support themselves
I was watching a recent report that tried to represent a few Aussie attitudes toward contemporary issues by interviewing people off the street. There were two twenty year-old girls from Penrith talking, and one explained about how she's a "dole bludger", and that she's comfortable enough so there's no incentive for her to go out and seek work. Instead, she spends most of her day running around after her child. The proverbial single Mum with a daughter. Her comment was that she felt 'guilty' about this.
The typical reaction to this is "That's disgraceful!", but I don't think so. I'm quite happy to know that we have enough wealth in this country to support a twenty year-old woman from Penrith so that she has enough time and money to help raise her child. I'll help pay for that, especially seeing as how we can. That's a Good Thing. The ability of an economy to sponsor social programmes like this should be seen as a sign of strength; as a sign of the effectiveness and productiveness of a civilised and free society.
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