Our Welfare State is not fit for purpose, people experience poverty because they are simply too lazy, coupled with a deep disdain to our country, they, seemingly sycophantically, siphon the resources from our far too lenient welfare state, instead of finding ways to end their precarious circumstances. The exceedingly right-wing conservative idea that people are poor because they are too lazy to work and are thus parasites, barnacled to the welfare state, is ostensibly growing – more now than ever in this the Coronavirus pandemic and as BREXIT looms over us all. But would there be merit in designating the nomenclature of laziness upon the entirety of impoverished people in our country? This idea resolutely disregards the countless other factors that result in a person becoming impoverished, it synonymously rejects the idea that there is a ‘cycle of deprivation’: the reproduction of inequalities and poverty based on the impossible nature of experiencing upward social mobility while being inexorably entangled in the welfare state. In his 1942 self-titled report, William Beveridge wished to examine how the country could recover from the destruction the war had caused. In this, while thinking primarily about economic prosperity, Beveridge envisioned the welfare state as a tool to combat five giants that he described to be halting our nation from thriving. While this may have been revolutionary, can a welfare state conceived over 72 years ago truly help our modern Britain prosper?

Ignorance is defined as a “lack of knowledge or information” but Beveridge used this rather curt noun to describe the educational problem plaguing our country. It would be demonstrably ridiculous to argue that a poorly educated workforce is beneficial to a county, and its economy; this is why Beveridge wished to create a system in which all received a synonymous education. He viewed this egalitarian style of education as being the key to creating an expansive and well-educated workforce that would thus usher in an ear of economic prosperity. However, despite Beveridge’s best efforts, the education system he envisioned did not come to fruition - while after his report, free secondary education was introduced, there are still other forms of fee-paying schools that privilege certain people: namely university. A key aspect in becoming specialised in a certain field – gaining a degree – requires exorbitant fees that subjugate lower and working classes who fear the idea of taking out loans and could not possibly pay for university any other way. Even within state-funded comprehensive education, there are still many issues that disadvantage certain children. For example, cultural deprivation theorist Pierre Bourdieu argues, that working-class failure in education – based on exam success – is the fault of the education system itself and not the individual. He explains that the education system devalues the culture of its working-class pupils, thus forcibly hegemonizing working-class students to an unknown environment and culture - that if they reject will result in them leaving the education system with menial or no qualifications, resulting in them taking up a superfluous and poor paying job, if not becoming trapped in the welfare state and unemployed – as Beveridge granted the nomenclature of idleness.

Want, squalor, and disease do not present themselves as the significant giants that Beveridge may have referred to while writing his report, since the cumulative creation of the many branches of our national welfare state. However since then, other ‘giants’ may have been created as a result and, potentially the creation of the welfare state has not entirely removed the giants as Beveridge may have expected, in some cases other giants may have been exacerbated. Concerning the giant of ‘disease’, in 1948 we saw the foundation of the National Health Service that both its literal founder Aneurin Bevan and its conceptual founder Beveridge had envisioned would allow for all forms of healthcare to be entirely free. While that idea was short-lived, as was Bevan’s role as health secretary – given he quit at the introduction of certain fees in the NHS – its main goal of allowing medical aid to all Britons regardless of wealth was largely stuck to. The introduction of the NHS anteceded a stark decline in mortality rates and the general rise in national health, this, of course, allows for Britain’s economy to prosper as people can work for longer, people have more experience in their roles in the workforce and are thus better at their job, which inevitably helps the government and the economy. Squalor refers to the uninhabitable living conditions people faced, both before and after the war. This was expunged by the austere rise in the number of council houses being built. People were thus able to live in clean, sanitary, and safe housing and given the recently founded NHS, unsanitary living conditions that would result in health problems could be quickly extirpated. The welfare state was chiefly created to tackle the giant of want – a rather strange way of describing poverty. The welfare state was created to give benefits to people, to help supplement their precarious circumstances. This was revolutionary in its time but as it stands, today in 2020, the welfare state is inadequate in providing people with what they truly need; it imprisons people into it, oftentimes before they realised they were a part of it.

Members of the welfare state are confined to it, there is no conceivable possibility of a person participating in upward social mobility while entangled in the welfare state, nor is it ostensibly possible to experience intergenerational social mobility while in the welfare state. The giants – proposed by Beveridge – are synonymously interconnected in relation to the welfare state. They all seemingly appear – potentially in a different form – in the cycle of deprivation, that explains the inescapable nature of the welfare state. Imagining the cycle is simple: picture a working-class child, whose parents receive benefits and live in cramped inadequate council housing. As this child goes to school, their parents will not be able to provide them with the necessary tools they need to flourish in education simply because they cannot afford it. Synonymously, as Bourdieu explains, they will become subjugated and will most likely reject the culture of the school and as a result of both of these things that are both out of the hands of the child and their parents, they leave school without the necessary qualifications to succeed. They thus take up an inconsequential job and rely on the state to supplement their income. When they later have a child, they cannot provide them with the tools needed to excel in education and thus the cycle continues. 

A common argument concerning the cycle of deprivation is “whose fault is it”? Who is at fault for the child growing up in an unsuitable environment that resulted in them failing in school and not being able to take up a well-paying job and whose fault is it that their child will fall victim to the same circumstances. Simply the only place that blame can be vested onto is the welfare state, and its creators, the government. If the resources given to the parents of the aforementioned child were enough to help sufficiently aid her in education if the benefits and council housing they received were enough for the child to live in suitable accommodation if the education system didn’t devalue the culture the child was socialised into, and if the child didn’t live in a society that deemed the only option for economic security is getting a job with qualifications that was arguably designed against them: then they would unwaveringly not still be enmeshed into the welfare state, and neither would their child. 

The idea that people are poor because they are lazy or that people rely on the welfare state because it allows them to absolve themselves of having to work is ridiculously unfounded and demonstrably untrue. It is clear that the welfare state does not allow for people to leave its tight grasp, and it can be agreed by both economists and philosophers that escaping the welfare state is inconceivable. Nevertheless, the idea that it is just the welfare state that forcibly retains people is not professedly true. It is not just the welfare state that causes people to stay impoverished, there is a whole host of other issues and they are not synonymous to the five giants that Beveridge hoped to expel. It appears that Beveridge’s giants have been the causal mechanism, or at least the foundation of other ‘giants’. For example, the many different types of inequalities that lead to incongruence in our society unequivocally play a role in subjugating certain demographics and forcing them to stay impoverished. While The Beveridge Report was ingenious in its help to rescue the country in its publication, in our modern Britain, 72 years later both the giants it outlined and their method of expulsion – namely the welfare state – fall far too short in explaining the problems we face in modern Britain, let alone the necessary way to expunge them. 

Laconically, as has been demonstrably explained, it is the welfare state trapping people into poverty, not the proposed idle nature of the person themselves. While ‘benefit scrounging’ is apparent in the country, there is no merit in granting the nomenclature of lazy onto the impoverished people in our country, nor is there any in using the Beveridge report in describing the issues we face now as a country; a neoliberal Beveridge would succumb to the many issues that riddle our country today. People experience poverty because they have been subscribed to a system set on reproducing unequal opportunities and inequalities if there was a disdain to our country it would undoubtedly stem from that.