Dependency Culture and Thatcher

[Hen]

There was the influence of the so-called guru of the American right, Charles Murray, who believed the 60s Great Society in the USA and elsewhere had not improved the lot of the poor but conversely, had made it worse, by creating an underclass. Murray, from the New York-based Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, argued that the problem of the American underclass – the unemployment, the crime and the illegitimacy that characterise American ghettos – were largely the fault of welfare programmes themselves. The policies born of compassion and guilt were flawed. People should not be told : "It’s not your fault". People were not owed a decent standard of living, it was something they had to work for. State welfare systems remove work incentives and undermine family and individual responsibility

Thatcher saw truth in this and led a scathing attack:

"It might be imagined that the devastating effect of such policies of overspending on employment would discourage Labour authorities from such action. But I never forgot that the unspoken objective of socialism – municipal or national – was to increase dependency. Poverty was not just the breeding ground of socialism : it was the deliberately engineered effect of it."

(M. Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, 1995)

These sentiments live on through our Cameron government

:(

[~Spectre]

It's standard Orwellian propaganda. Words take on their opposite meaning. The poor people in capitalist society are the fault of socialism. Thus capitalism never fails, and when it looks like it has, it's only because we didn't have enough capitalism.

[scarletghoul]

You talk to people on the streets though and just about none of them believe that crap. Especially the youth. They know god damn well that rich pricks are the cause of poverty in this country.

[~Spectre]

Coincidentally, like all good propaganda, it's actually based on a kernel of truth. Increasing dependency IS bad. But what is dependency? Using any reasonable definition of the word, by far the biggest form of dependency is wage slavery.