Adam Smith Institute

The Conservative Party plans to harden the line for welfare recipients if it wins the next election by requiring any able-bodied person on welfare who is under 21 and unemployed for three months to attend an intense work-training program. It is hoped that the proposed course would improve their work discipline and teach the skills necessary to obtain work.

Even better, they plan to "ask private sector companies and voluntary organisations to run the… centres." But what if they still don’t find a job? After a year of unemployment, they’ll be required to work full-time in community programme.

This proposal should increase productivity and decrease government spending on a deadweight program. By using private companies and charities, the worker-incentive program has a much better chance of being both effective and efficient.

As the party’s welfare spokesman Chris Grayling said, "Staying at home doing nothing will be a thing of the past."

It all fits in nicely with our line on welfare reform, which you can read more about in our 2007 report, Working Welfare.
 

So we're to have an extension of the right to ask for flexible working hours are we? Quite why anyone thinks this is a great step forward somewhat confuses me: everyone already has the right to ask "Hey, Boss, may I?" and while many might not like the answer given these new "rights" don't change anything. For specifically all that is happening is that you now have the same right to ask that you've always had when negotiating your terms of employment.

That aside, some seem to think that it's a great idea:

A "win-win" in which families are happier at home and work, says research by Cranfield School of Management.

Perhaps, but they do really seem to have missed the most important part about part time working (for this is what is meant by "flexible").

The fact is that 14 million people, far more than the 10.5 million covered by Walsh, already do flexible working, part-time and reduced hours, voluntarily agreed.

Almost half are men, but those who work flexi-time for childcare reasons are overwhelmingly women.

Quite, and there's the explanation of part of the gender pay gap for us as well. Part time workers get paid less per hour than full time ones do, so they cost the employer more in overhead.

Another description of "win-win" in economics is the search for that all too elusive free lunch. In this case maybe it doesn't exist. Perhaps people would be happier if they could work fewer hours, but perhaps not when they find out that they'll get less pay for each of those shorter hours as well?

Given that there is in fact no new right being offered here, might we assume that people have already looked at this trade off and made their own decision?

Essentially then, we've just had a political announcement which means nothing much at all. Honestly, I can't remember the last time that happened, can you?

The broken welfare systems in the United States and throughout Europe have kept the poorest citizens poor while wasting huge amounts of taxpayer money. Rachel Swarns wrote this week in The New York Times that many states now give cash handouts to those who move from welfare to low-wage work.

Arkansas, for example, offers $204 a month for up to two years, while Oregon and Virginia offer $150 and $50 respectively for up to one year. Massachusetts offers $7 a month, Michigan gives $10 for six months, and Utah offers $474 for two months and $237 for the third.

How will these plans work? Fortunately the programs are varied enough that empirical research should shed light on which plans are most effective. Although a cash handout for workers is better than welfare, it leaves the fundamental questions of poverty unanswered.

Swarns highlighted two women who are currently receiving cash handouts. One is a 24 year-old mother of two and the other is a 33 year-old mother of four and grandmother of one. Both women are single, and neither graduated from college. With no disrespect to them, financial success is always going to be difficult under these circumstances. Education is strongly correlated to low poverty, low teen-birth rates, and a host of other factors. Perhaps reforming education and giving the poor access to better education, rather than the moribund state-financed schools in many urban communities, would be a better cure.

Still, at least many states are moving away from detrimental welfare policies and toward programs that encourage productivity.