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The document summarizes the two main schools of thought on healthcare and welfare provision: collectivism and individualism. Collectivism believes the government should provide services like healthcare, education, housing, and unemployment benefits to ensure a minimum standard of living. Individualism believes individuals are responsible for their own welfare and the government should promote self-reliance through low taxes. The document discusses challenges these views face from issues like an aging population, lone parents, and unemployed youth, as well as reforms by the UK government to cut spending and reduce dependency on the welfare state.
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Higher Modern Studies Collectivism and Individualism Essay Revision Notes
The document summarizes the two main schools of thought on healthcare and welfare provision: collectivism and individualism. Collectivism believes the government should provide services like healthcare, education, housing, and unemployment benefits to ensure a minimum standard of living. Individualism believes individuals are responsible for their own welfare and the government should promote self-reliance through low taxes. The document discusses challenges these views face from issues like an aging population, lone parents, and unemployed youth, as well as reforms by the UK government to cut spending and reduce dependency on the welfare state.
The document summarizes the two main schools of thought on healthcare and welfare provision: collectivism and individualism. Collectivism believes the government should provide services like healthcare, education, housing, and unemployment benefits to ensure a minimum standard of living. Individualism believes individuals are responsible for their own welfare and the government should promote self-reliance through low taxes. The document discusses challenges these views face from issues like an aging population, lone parents, and unemployed youth, as well as reforms by the UK government to cut spending and reduce dependency on the welfare state.
• There are two main schools of thought on the question of who should be responsible for health and welfare provision—collectivism and individualism. PARAGRAPH 1: Collectivism • The original ideals of the welfare state, as outlined in the Beveridge report, were the inspiration of British social policy from 1948 – 1979. • The principles of the welfare state were essentially “collectivist”. • Collectivists believe that society and the government, in the interests of fairness and equality, should be responsible for all of its citizens. • This view is often associated with the Labour Party and the SNP. • The government has a duty to provide services such as health and education for all. • The SNP government in Scotland abolished prescription charges in 2011 and are currently looking to implement minimum pricing on alcohol. • The government should provide a comprehensive system of social insurance to all citizens ‘from the cradle to grave’. • The collectivist approach is that all working people should pay a contribution to the state in the form of taxes and National Insurance Contributions. • The Government’s role is to provide full employment for all working age citizens. • State education for all children. • Housing provided by local authorities to make sure that anyone who could not afford to or did not wish to buy, could have a comfortable home. • If the state provides these essential services the nation will be healthier. • Everyone will be better educated. As a result employment opportunities will be better. • A National Health Service, free at the point of use and available to all. • The NHS, as part of the wider reform of public health, such as better housing, means in theory that sickness can be prevented, rather than cured. • Benefits should be paid to the unemployed, the sick, the retired and the widowed. • The collectivist view is that there is a minimum standard of living in Britain below which nobody should fall. 21st century challenges to collectivism Ageing population • The proportion of older people in the population is rising. • Occupational pension schemes are being abandoned by companies so it is likely more state help, as well as more private savings, will be needed. • Tough decisions were made by the UK Coalition Government. • All Britons will be forced to wait an extra year for their state pension with everyone qualifying at age 67 by April 2028. • The Government has also proposed changes to public sector pensions. • These will result in workers having to: pay more into their pension, work for longer and accept a pension based on a "career average" salary, rather than the current final salary arrangement which currently applies to many workers. Lone parents • Nearly ¼ children in Britain live in a single-parent family. • Such children are often very well cared for and financially secure. • However there is a considerable cost to the welfare state in supporting lone parents. • There is also a wider cost to society in dealing with the effects of poor parenting. • The UK Government (in England only) is attempting to solve the problem of what it calls "troubled families". • It believes that there are 120,000 households across England where children are not being properly looked after. • Troubled families cost the taxpayer £9 billion every year. • UK Government has promised local authorities in England up to £4,000 to deal with each family: by reducing truancy, youth crime and anti-social behaviour, or putting parents back into work. NEETs/More Choices More Chances • Recent years have seen the rise in numbers of the so-called NEETs. • NEETs present the welfare state with challenges and costs. • A study by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) estimates that each new NEET dropping out of education at 16 will cost taxpayers an average of £97,000 during their lifetime, some more than £300,000 apiece. • They are, 50% more likely to suffer from poor health; 60% more likely to be involved with drugs and more than 20 times more likely to become criminals. PARAGRAPH 2: Individualism • Those who oppose this view are described as individualists. The Conservative Party is the party most closely associated with individualism. • Individualists believe that it is the individual’s responsibility to secure a decent quality of life, not the state’s. Individual responsibility and private ownership should be promoted. • Low taxation to encourage self-reliance and hard work. • Inequalities in health can be explained by “lifestyle choices” such as smoking, drinking too much, or eating unhealthy foods, which lead to lower life expectancy. • The individual should take much more responsibility for their health care, to the extent of taking out private membership of gyms and health insurance. • They believe that a cradle-to-grave system of benefits creates a “nanny state” and a dependency culture. • Former Prime Minister Thatcher is the person most identified with the individualist ideology. Her Conservative Governments of the 1980s rolled back the state. • Her ideas of individualism live on in the modern Conservative Party. • Charles Murray, an American sociologist claims welfare benefits for single-parents have encouraged the decline of the family. • He believes this has encouraged a counter-culture which devalues work, encourages criminality and a dependency-culture. • He claims Britain will see an “underclass” develop who will avoid "normal" work and live a life of crime, illegitimacy and government “dependency”. • Former Prime Minister David Cameron developed the idea of the “Big Society”. • Cameron wanted to “heal” our so-called broken society by encouraging greater individual responsibility, a traditional Conservative approach to social policy. • He wanted to use the voluntary sector to help those prepared to face up to their problems, thus reducing the scope and size of the state. • The Government has set up “vanguard communities”. • In these communities, individuals and voluntary groups are funded to take over duties previously provided by the state. • They can run housing projects, schools and youth groups. • Former Chancellor George Osborne used slogans like 'strivers not shirkers'. Cutting dependency • The UK Coalition Government introduced wide ranging welfare reform in 2013. • A single universal credit. • Changes to the disability living allowance. • Private companies given contracts to get the unemployed back to work. • Those refusing to work facing a maximum three-year loss of benefits. • Annual benefit cap of about £26,000 per family. • The so-called ‘bedroom tax’ has also been introduced. • Those on benefits can have their housing benefit cut if the Government believes they have surplus bedrooms in their house. • It is argued that the Big Society is individualist Conservatives slashing the state on ideological grounds. • It is claimed that the Conservatives just do not like the welfare state. • The Big Society, therefore, is an attempt at American style social services, where volunteers and charities fund hospitals and schools, rather than the state. • In reality, some people, in some communities, have greater talents, skills, time and connections than others. • The already well off and well educated will be able to take advantage of the Big Society and create fantastic schools and sporting facilities in their areas. • The poor and the powerless will be left further behind, effectively ending the welfare state.