Saturday, 3 May 2008

"Good parents should be rewarded"

Or "Meddling authoritarians dream up new social engineering scheme that is unenforceable and counter-productive".

From the MW manifesto:

1. Parents in couple-families are more likely to have a bit of spare time to spend with their kids. So stop subsidising single-parent families and/or pay the same benefits to married/cohabiting mums as to single mums.

2. Kids with at least one parent in work are more likely to have a bit of ambition and less likely to drift into a life of welfare dependency/crime. So reduce the benefit withdrawal rate to 'make work pay', preferably to no higher than the normal rate of income tax.

3. It is very difficult to improve the 'life chances' of The Underclass. But I genuinely believe that the vast majority of people would like their kids to go to the best school possible, or for the local school to be as good as possible. But most of them can't possibly afford to send their kids private or to buy a house in the catchment area of a 'good state school'. So give them education vouchers instead, the competition will help drive up standards.

1 comments:

Snafu said...

Mark, there's a fundamental flaw in your policy. Fewer benefits for single mums means they are less likely to have children, meaning there will be fewer disadvantaged children meaning fewer employment prospects for the social workers and educationalists tasked with correcting society!