[On Welfare State][11th April 1970]

[Redbook1:139-140][19700411:1945][On Welfare State][11th April 1970]

Saturday 11th April 1970  7.45 p.m.

On Welfare State

            Every child should be given equal opportunity insofar as that is possible -- and though the methods are not easy to discern, at least here the aims are clear.  However, in the interest of this country the means should be positive, not negative: to raise standards to the highest reasonable or obtainable factor, not to lower them to the level of the mass, even as a short-term means to a long end -- for that is a dangerous gamble.

            In the end, however, the economic system must be left to work in its own way on the adult in society.  The economics of scarcity affect every living human, as even the Russians have found; it is no use pretending that they operate against the human interest and for the benefit of the few, as theoretical left-wingers so often maintain: they are a vital part of the human predicament, and as far as we are concerned they exist only because of us.  We can prod the economic system but we shall not be able to change it and remove its emphasis on scarcity until there is no scarcity -- and the fastest way to eradicate scarcity is via the economics of scarcity -- prodded gently.

            It is vital to remember that economics, for all its mathematics and technology, deals primarily with people; this is something often forgotten by economists themselves.  People are physically pliable but mentally resistant*; and they are, after all, the prime reason for the whole science, not (as economists often seem to imply) an awkward, unreliable factor within it.

*[but cf 111,158?]

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