With Strings Attached — The case for welfare with expectations
By: Camryn Brown
Tags: Economics, Values, Politics, Social Welfare, New Zealand

What are the right strings and how can we workably attach them?

Tax is not love[7], but we can make the end result of tax more loving if we make governments love like real people do. Real people love unconditionally but do not enable. Real people love reciprocally and with mutual respect. Real people love by making choices that maximise mutual happiness, not individual happiness. Real love is a mutual binding. It is simultaneously unconditional but bound by voluntarily accepted “strings attached” that keep it strong and unbroken. A loving government simply must apply the same expectations of reciprocity, respect, and mutual benefit that individual people do.

As noted above, this is not simply drug testing or job seeking requirements or sanctions on undesirable behaviours. These types of expectations have a place but (a) they tend to be perceived as punitive and so have an out-sized negative impact on recipients’ feelings of social obligation and respect[8], and (b) they are prone to being tested and broken. A requirement to return to job seeking once a dependent child reaches a certain age will be defeated by continuing to have children who’re under that age. A sanction applied when the father of a child is not named will be decried as hurting the child rather than the parents seeking to maximise the taxpayer contribution to that child.

So, we must also have strings of the type that tug at the heart, not just the head. We must have strings that acknowledge the basic human desires to avoid shame or disapproval and to seek acceptance, approval, or praise. Public welfare can be delivered in ways that better tap into this human element.

Firstly, the welfare system can behave more like a human would. The Social Investment policy[9] of the previous National government is an example. It intended to better combine government data about individuals and families to provide preventative assistance and interventions rather than enabling assistance. This was a government mimicking loving interpersonal relationships in the same way you might say to your daughter “I love you, and I don’t want you to have another fatherless child” or your close friend “I love you, and I don’t want you to choose cigarettes over decent school lunches for your kids”.

Secondly, the welfare system can facilitate genuine human connections e.g. by adopting proven social marketing techniques. Adopt-a-child charities make a connection between recipient and donor so that the donor may feel more responsible and the recipient more cared for. This creates a more rewarding and sustainable relationship for the benefit of both. Though social welfare via government is not voluntary, the concept can still be applied. Households could be matched (voluntarily) such that recipient households are connected to the household(s) supporting them. In this way, recipients can put faces to what would otherwise be a faceless bureaucracy and can experience strings of expectation, support, and praise from them. Both parties can share life experiences for the benefit of the other.

Third, the welfare system can devolve the application of strings to community-based agencies that can mimic the methods that worked in the past — a personal look-them-in-the-eyes relationship between provider and recipient, values-based expectations tailored to the individual, and so on — without the downsides[10]. There have been steps in this direction, from the regionalisation of decision-making and community involvement of Labour’s ‘New Opportunities’ programme in the early 2000s to National’s transfer of social housing to registered community providers in their 2014–2017 term.

Finally, the welfare system could incorporate greater tax deductibility of contributions to directly to agencies delivering devolved public welfare, thus enabling the taxpaying public to both directly reward success and to have a more direct stake in it.

Our welfare system must enable unconditional love without being an enabler of self-destructive behaviours. With strings attached, we can enable positive behaviours and empower people to make their own better choices.

Camryn Brown is an Associate Partner in the management consulting practice of a large professional services firm and the Northern Regional Policy Chair for the New Zealand National Party. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, political party, or other group or individual.