Lenin vs. Johann
I’ve had to wait a few years for it but finally there’s another proper exchange between two of my favourite writers. Further to what I had to say on the matter they’ve both said their piece here and here. Riddled with reformism though it unforgivably is Seymour is easily the victor here. This is because Hari suffers from his usual, crippling flaw: rather than argue critically each point as it comes he constantly references his thoughts to the looming and increasingly inevitable prospect of what the Conservatives would do. So his view of Labour policy is only condemnatory to an extent sharply restrained by his disdain towards the Tories. This is a highly limiting constraint for any writer. Consider this:
In the Labour model, you will never be cut off, provided you are willing to work. In Wisconsin, you can only receive benefits for two years in your entire life, and every week you claim, the clock is ticking. Once you hit your two years, that’s it: your benefits are severed forever…In the Labour proposals, you don’t have to go to work until your youngest child is seven. In the Wisconsin model, you are forced to leave your baby at three months old.
This does indeed demonstrate that the Wisconsin system is horrific in terms of impact and folly to consider worthy of an introduction. But it is in no way a defence of the Labour system to say that it doesn’t go horribly awry in the way that the American model Cameron wishes to adopt would. A piece of public policy should not be doing such perverse things anyway and the fact that it doesn’t is what we should expect.
As I have said before what this policy amounts to is a low-cost version of social democracy, that has the unfortunate end result of a model more akin to prison earning than state employment. If this is the sort of relationship which wariness towards statism left unchecked leads to then we are left with scanty improvement on outright opposition to the welfare state. So long as you are willing to work as the near slaves of the government, runs the line, you shall continue to be granted state cash.
A perverse outcome, and what a pity that Hari’s binary vision has him so distracted with the outright hostility towards the poor on offer from the Tories that he can not witness the idiocy being planned and plotted by the present party of power.
Posted in: "Progressive" Policy, Bad Policy, The Government, The New New Labour Project
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