A hat tip to reader Jackson for alerting us to this YouTube video of a debate between Dalrymple and Belgian politician Frank Vandenbroucke on sentimentality, personal responsibility and the welfare state. It is 45 minutes long and well-argued. Although Vandenbroucke does bizarrely assert that America’s 1990s welfare reform made the system “much more generous” to its recipients. It actually did the opposite, and famously so, placing time limits on benefits, resulting in some states in a drop in the welfare rolls of 90%. Of course, one could easily argue that the “tough love” in this approach actually was more generous to recipients – massive numbers of them immediately found work and became productive citizens for the first time – but somehow I doubt this is what he meant.
The Skeptical Doctor
Blog categories
Dalrymple’s Essays
- BMJ (Dalrymple)
- BMJ (Daniels)
- City Journal
- Daily Mail
- First Things
- Law & Liberty
- Manhattan Institute
- New Criterion (Dalrymple)
- New Criterion (Daniels)
- New English Review
- New Statesman
- New York Post
- PJ Media
- Quadrant
- Salisbury Review
- Second Opinion
- Taki's Magazine
- The American Conservative
- The Critic
- The Epoch Times
- The European Conservative
- The Oldie
- The Spectator
- The Telegraph
Dalrymple’s Books
- These Spindrift Pages
- The Wheelchair and Other Stories
- Ramses: A Memoir
- Neither Trumpets nor Violins
- Midnight Maxims
- Saving the Planet and Other Stories
- Around the World in the Cinemas of Paris
- Embargo and Other Stories
- In Praise of Folly
- False Positive
- Illness as Inspiration
- The Terror of Existence
- Grief and Other Stories
- The Proper Procedure and Other Stories
- The Knife Went In
- Nothing But Wickedness
- Migration
- Good and Evil in the Garden of Art
- A Pinch of Salt
- Out Into the Beautiful World
- Admirable Evasions
- Threats of Pain and Ruin
- The Pleasure of Thinking
- Farewell Fear
- The Policeman & the Brothel
- Anything Goes
- Mr Clarke's Modest Proposal
- Litter: How Other People's Rubbish Shapes Our Life
- The Examined Life
- Spoilt Rotten
- The New Vichy Syndrome
- Second Opinion
- Profeten en Charlatans
- Not With a Bang But a Whimper
- In Praise of Prejudice
- Romancing Opiates
- Our Culture, What's Left of It
- Life at the Bottom
- An Intelligent Person's Guide to Medicine
- Mass Listeria
- If Symptoms Still Persist
- So Little Done
- If Symptoms Persist
- Monrovia, Mon Amour
- The Wilder Shores of Marx
- Sweet Waist of America
- Filosofa's Republic
- Zanzibar to Timbuktu
- Fool or Physician
- Coups and Cocaine
Recent Comments
- David Seri on Historiography and the State of the Western Mind | NatCon UK
- Tom Welsh on Historiography and the State of the Western Mind | NatCon UK
- Thomas Lewis on New book: These Spindrift Pages
- David Seri on An Interesting Life
- Lynn Chu on An Interesting Life
- David Seri on In the Road Bloody
- Andrew S on In the Road Bloody
- Iwona Hunter on Thoughts on Representation and the Envy of Wealth
- David Seri on Job Snobs
- Carl Wells on Job Snobs
“Of course, one could easily argue that the “tough love” in this approach actually was more generous to recipients – massive numbers of them immediately found work and became productive citizens for the first time – but somehow I doubt this is what he meant.”
Yes, UK MP, Clare Short recently did a very similar thing on a live discussion, claiming that the cuts will ultimately make people question greed and selfishness and they’ll become more caring and generous, if not, life will be very miserable.
Something along those lines.