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Social welfare is insufficient from "summary" of The Road To Wigan Pier by George Orwell

The problem with social welfare, as it stands today, is that it simply isn't enough. The meagre allowances given out by the state are barely enough to keep a person alive, let alone provide any sort of comfort or security. Families are forced to make impossible choices between paying the rent and putting food on the table, between buying clothes for their children and keeping the lights on. This kind of constant struggle wears people down, both physically and mentally, until they are left feeling utterly defeated. Furthermore, the process of applying for and receiving social welfare benefits is often dehumanizing and demoralizing. People are forced to jump through endless bureaucratic hoops, to prove and re-prove their need at every turn. The whole system seems designed to make people feel small and insignificant, to grind them down until they are willing to accept whatever scraps are thrown their way. But even if the process were more humane, even if the benefits were more generous, there would still be a fundamental problem with social welfare as it is currently conceived. It is a reactive rather than proactive system, designed to pick up the pieces after people have already fallen through the cracks. It does nothing to address the root causes of poverty and inequality, nothing to prevent people from slipping through those cracks in the first place. What we need, then, is a new approach to social welfare, one that is based on the principle of social justice. Instead of simply providing handouts to those in need, we should be working to create a society in which no one is in need in the first place. This means not just redistributing wealth, but fundamentally rethinking how wealth is created and distributed in the first place. In the end, social welfare is insufficient not just because of its meagre benefits and dehumanizing process, but because it fails to address the underlying causes of poverty and inequality. If we truly want to build a more just and equitable society, we need to start by reimagining what social welfare can and should be.
    oter

    The Road To Wigan Pier

    George Orwell

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