It may surprise my readers, but I am an opponent of most welfare. The state should not be paying healthy people of working age for not going to work. BUT
It’s just that if people work according to their ability and don’t earn a decent living, then the state is being mismanaged.
It is, of course, a legitimate position in the debate to demand that this be addressed by cutting social spending, let the poor do as they please.
But it is also a legitimate position to regard the promulgators of such views as dangerous psychopaths, or as fools. However, permanent payments or social regulations are nothing but a bailout for state incompetence.
The minimum wage can be accepted as a temporary solution. In a healthy state, plenty of well-paid jobs are created (and in the right structure). If those jobs are not being created, the government should ask the factory workers what is wrong and create the conditions for those jobs to be created.
And that too many free-riders unable to work are growing up? When the government tolerates or even encourages faulty educational patterns, it cannot complain.
Housing benefit can be accepted as a temporary solution. In a healthy state, rents and energy prices are such that no one needs housing benefit.
And so on.
Supporting families with children is something else. There the state pays people for a specific service – the birth and upbringing of children.
Long-term benefits are a failure of the state. If some argue today that in China, for example, the state pays no or almost no welfare, that does not mean that people are left to starve under a bridge. It means that the state is looking after economic development.