Middle Class Benefit Most From Welfare State

WE HAVE been banging on for weeks here about the middle-class S-CHIP chiselers, liberal slackers who get to be first in line when there is free government money going for expensive things like health insurance.

This week in Britain the Civitas think tank issued a report on how the middle class in Britain get first in line in the British National Health Service (NHS).

In Quite Like Heaven? Nick Sedden writes about the advantages that the middle class has in navigating a big bureaucracy for things like hip replacements.

Higher socio-economic groups are more likely to have family or friends who work in the health services, and even if these contacts are not directly used to gain access to services they act as an important source of advice on how to work the system … at least one study-of hip replacement utilisation has found evidence of the effectiveness of the "sharp elbows" of the middle class in the welfare state.

Exactly. I had a friend in Britain whose 80-ish mother needed a hip replacement. No deal, they said; we’ll put you on a waiting list. Getting the procedure done in a private hospital would have cost a bundle, so my friend complained to her Member of Parliament. One thing led to another, and her mother got her hip replacement.

It is well said that when you can’t compete on price then the only thing left is footwork and connections. As the Daily Telegraph puts it:

[T]he fault lies in a system in which the purchasing power of money is absent, leaving social know-how as the only currency.

When the middle class pays their own way then it makes sense to put the squeeze on them to be generous and help the poor with charity and know-how. But when there’s a government system then you get the middle class using its skills selfishly to get to the head of the line.

And as we know from Arthur C. Brooks in Who Really Cares? secular, liberal people give less to charity than conservative, religious people.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

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The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

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[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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