“End of Welfare”.

I see that £30 billion taken from the Suburbs are injected towards improving life in the inner Cities has had , according to Policy Exchange , had no effect whatsoever. In fact there was a widening gap in personal income and unemployment levels life expectancy and the usual markers.
Whilst I lived in Islington I noticed that dependency culture had much to do with the intractability of such problems and in particular the Council housed population for whom work involved massive marginal. Spraying money at the weed will only make it deeper rooted
Years ago all this was predicted by Frank Field who began to think beyond welfare . He was , as we know , stymied and ejected by Gordon Brown whose collectivist vision is oil to reforms water.At the moment we have ample assistance to find a job but while the carrot is in place ,there is no stick .That is does not work will suprise only polticians of the left.
Eyes have tuned to the ‘Wisconsin miracle ‘. The star of welfare reform was Governor Tommy Thompson, ...He said

“Welfare reform in Wisconsin began with one simple premise: Every person is capable of doing something. The challenge for government is to help people go from doing nothing to doing something. If we are going to invest money as a society or as a state to help poor families, it makes sense to invest it in ways that will help them enter the workforce and become self-sufficient—instead of sending checks out once a month and in effect just walking away from their needs. To me, the latter is not compassion. Expecting nothing in return and offering no real help is hardly compassionate. That is apathy.”

The vital component is that there is a limit to the time you have at the states expense. Enter, Mr. Stick. Its success has transformed debate across America . There they talk about the “End of Welfare”. The reaction of Cameron and Brown will be the fault line between them . Gordon Brown is known to be dismissive, preferring to spend the tax payers money on means tested hand outs . Cameron , we assume is cautiously interested especially in the context of Iain Duncan Smiths work on out broken society. The rub will be how to empower voluntary organisations to pick up the ultra needy who cannot be left to starve .
I doubt myself that a scheme can be simply transferred from the States to this country. Tax credits for example came from the US but has been a disaster because people here do not understand how to fill in returns and on the other hand understand all to well how to use the system especially the housing system. By working 16 hours you can get a total of £25,000 thereabouts through rent payment and the benefits associated and all that happens is that cheap part time Labour is subsidised by the tax Payer. What a waste of time and the delivery was catastrophic as we know .

I suspect that the property factor, attitudes to independence and the sheer number of state serfs will make it exceedingly difficult to begin solving our self inflicted sicky. In America it took a consensus to bring about reform and I worry that there are far too many vested interests in keeping the poor , poor , for that in the old world.