>>10868082The problem is that incentives and bureaucracies are absolutely fucked desu.
In Britain, welfare spending has continued to grow despite the fact they moved from a system in the early 90s where it was ridiculously easy to get welfare (go to unemployment office every 2 weeks, say you're looking for work, collect money. musicians referred to it as the 'john major [prime minister] musical scholarship' because it left plenty of time to practice) to one that was much harder (provide proof you spent 40 hours looking for work in the last week at a scheduled appointment with fines for being late + sometimes have to spend that time looking for work in the unemployment office itself + have to attend pointless CV building courses, etc, from inexperienced people who inevitably ruin CVs) after 1996, getting increasingly strict from then until now.
because the new system was built on the assumption that people on welfare are on it for a long time and are welfare queens it's inefficient as hell and fucked up the incentives of those working in the welfare office (a lot of long-term unemployed miners, etc, were moved onto disability payments because helping them back into the workforce would be too hard but they had targets to meet) mean that over time the system has severely cut the real terms income available to the unemployed (most of whom are normal people who'll spend a 1-6 months on welfare, then find a new job), and made it harder for the average unemployed person to actually find a job (because now they've got to waste time producing evidence they've looked for work, applying for jobs they can't actually do, etc, rather than just looking for work) in order to subsidize busywork at the welfare office. all just because politicians thought it would make them look tough and serious in the headlines.
the rest of the system is just as bad. disability assessors have no medical qualifications, the govt subsidizes landlords at huge costs rather than building houses, etc.
