Fiddling While Rome Rots

Politicians and the Growing Underclass

About a year ago, John Key, Leader of the National Party, claimed that there was a growing underclass in New Zealand. The chattering classes tut tutted between sips of pinot gris, and the Labour government said, “Diddums.” Yet there was a surprising groundswell of agreement.

It is highly unlikely that John Key will be able to do anything about the underclass. It is probable that he has only the barest modicum of understanding about what constitutes the underclass, how people get into it, how people get out of it, and what causes it to contract or grow. But it was good political theatre—particularly coming from a “poor boy who made good”. Nevertheless there is a broad social consensus in New Zealand that everyone deserves a fair crack—hence the groundswell of agreement—and so there is a general desire to do something for the underclass.

But before we hive off into yet another costly utopian dream, which, like all utopian dreams, merely makes some people feel good, whilst creating far worse problems than it was ever designed to overcome, we would be wise to establish a definition of the underclass that comes close to approximating reality.

Firstly, let us establish what the underclass is not.

The underclass is not to be defined in terms of race. Whilst it is true that at any given time certain races may be predominantly reflected in underclass statistics, race itself does not determine who populates the underclass. People may loosely speak of Maori being over represented in the underclass, or of Polynesians, or of any other racial type or group. But the characterisation is loose and misleading because race is not a determinant of class, nor is it a necessary cause.

Moreover, the underclass is not to be defined solely in terms of socio-economic status or income. This is counter-intuitive, because when people speak of upper or lower classes they almost always are referring to levels of relative income or wealth. It is also confusing because the underclass—as a group—are predominantly poor and less well off than other groups. But if we think of the underclass only in terms of socio-economic status we fail to take cognizance of people that are in transition through low levels of income.

For example, younger people who are just entering the work force, may soon increase their level of income and rise relatively rapidly up the socio-economic scale. We would also fail to account properly for people who have fallen on hard times, whether through sickness, death of a breadwinner, loss of employment or some other hardship. Yet these people often regather themselves, start over, and make progress. Incidentally, this is why John Key was never in the underclass, although he and his widowed mother were poor. Any extenuations from Key's experience to generalisations about the underclass would be terribly misleading.

Socio-economic status and income levels may be a sign-post to the underclass, but they fail as a definition. If they are used as a definition—which is universally the preference of the bureaucratic mind, which requires things that can be measured, in order to devise policies and plans—the measurement is foolishly simplistic and the policy outcomes which are built upon it end up doing far more harm than good. It is axiomatic that policy outcomes based on such stupid and naïve criteria will cause the underclass to swell rapidly. In fact, because of such folly, it is not an exaggeration to say that the modern underclass is largely (but not solely) a creation of government.

The underclass is not a function of race, nor of socio-economic position. The underclass is essentially a function of family (hence, its often mistaken association with a particular race.)

Here is a description of the underclass:

They have no respect for the law, or themselves
They enjoy their shacks and huts along the river or across the tracks and love their dirty, smoky, low-class dives and taverns.
Whole families—children, in-laws, mistresses, and all—live in one shack.
This is the crime class that produces the delinquency and sexual promiscuity that fills the paper.
Their interests lie in sex and its perversion. The girls are always pregnant; the families are huge; incestual relations occur frequently.
They are not inspired by education, and only a few are able to make any attainments along this line.
There are loud in their speech, vulgar in their actions, sloppy in their dress, and indifferent toward their plight. Their vocabulary develops as profanity is learned.
If they work, they work at very menial jobs.
Their life experiences are purely physical, and even these are on a low plane.
They have no interest in health and medical care.
The men are too lazy to work or do odd jobs around town.
The group lives for a Saturday of drinking or fighting.

A further characterisation is as follows:

They will leave a job casually, often without notice . . . 8 percent of the mothers and 46 percent of the fathers had been convicted once or more in the local courts. Serial monogamy is the rule . . . one-fifth to one-fourth of all births are illegitimate . . . The mean (number of children) is 5.6 per mother. . . . Disagreements leading to quarrels and vicious fights, followed by desertion by either the man or the woman . . . is not unusual.. . . The burden of child care, as well as support, falls on the mother more often than the father when the family is broken. Before the sixteenth birthday is reached . . . 75 percent of [their children] have left school.

Sound familiar? Which town or city in New Zealand is being described? Murupara? Kaikohe? Manurewa East? Which race is being described? Maori? Pacific Island Polynesian? Chinese? European?

Actually, the description is of twenty-five percent of the population of a small Midwestern town in the United States in 1940. The entire population was white, apart from one black family, and was mostly native-born Protestants, mainly descended from “old America stock.” (The sociological analysis is presented by A B Hollingshead, Elmstowns's Youth [New York: Wiley, 1949]. The summary and citations are found in Edward Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited [Boston: Little Brown, 1974], p.88,89)

What Hollingshead presents is a picture of the life style of the underclass. It is eerily consistent with the behaviour of the underclass in New Zealand. How many of you reading the descriptions were not recalling people and places you know in our own country? How many had a vision of Macsyna King and Chris Kahui spring to mind?

The underclass is not a function of race, nor of income. It is a function of habituated family lifestyle, which in turn is an outworking or expression of one's inherited heart, soul, and world-view. Thus, everything that occurs and happens is interpreted by the pre-conditioned mentality of the underclass. If you gave a $100 note to a member of the underclass, and a second $100 note to a non-underclass member with instructions that they were to use the money to achieve the outcome that they desire and value the most, it is likely that the choices made would be very different. The underclass member would be focused on immediate benefit and gratification.

It is around about now in the discussion that everyone sees light at the end of the tunnel. Right then—what we need to do is educate the underclass so that they can be reprogrammed. We need to indoctrinate them into taking responsibility for themselves and for their families, work hard, save, order their priorities around food, clothing and shelter, not drugs, drink, or indulgence—and so forth. If we do this, the underclass will shrink. We will have provided a hand up, not a hand out.

Now there is a notion which is risible. There is absolutely no way modern Athenian society or government can provide such an education or indoctrination—and even if it could, it is doubtful that it would have any impact whatsoever. Modern Athenian social and political culture is built pervasively around the notion of rights and entitlements. It is a blasted and benighted legacy of the rationalistic, humanistic Enlightenment.

Modern Athenian social ideology tells everyone—including every member of the current underclass—that they have a right to automatic, unconditional entitlements. Everyone is told ad nauseam that society owes everyone a living. It is a right of being a human being. No matter what terms are used to disguise the ideology—such as “safety net”, “emergency benefits”, “helping hand”, “closing the gaps”—the reality is that modern culture believes deeply and universally in unconditional entitlements as an necessary expression of justice, human rights, and equity.

The idea that the underclass should be taught that they must become responsible for themselves and accountable for their own lives would be an anathema to modern society—because it would be seen as unfairly discriminatory. Since any ideology of self-responsibility and “un-entitlements” would be so contrary to all that modern Athens stands for and represents, one would have to conclude that the underclass was being unfairly singled out—and therefore discriminated against.

Education of the underclass to change their world view would be an utter waste of time and money, since the modern Athenian education system is founded on an ideology shared and held in common with the underclass. In a way, the underclass are the true vanguard of the world view of modern man—they are fearless enough, and honest enough to live consistently with what the world believes about life, humanity and happiness.

However, notwithstanding the inevitable abject failure of any attempt by modern man to educated the underclass, try they will. And everyone will feel better about it.

In New Zealand now, we are seeing the fourth welfare generation emerge. For four successive generations the underclass has not worked but has been kept alive by unconditional entitlements. And more families are falling into the underclass lifestyle month by month—and staying there in perpetuity. The underclass mentality is now so pervasive, so influential, so synonymous with New Zealand that large numbers of people have concluded that getting ahead and progressing necessitates leaving the country entirely and going to Australia and elsewhere. The country itself is becoming seen as the underclass ghetto.

But don't worry our politicians, our governments, are busy off tilting at incredibly costly and expensive windmills, such as saving the planet from green house gases. If ever there was to be an instance of utterly incompetent blindness we have seen it now. But Athens will not change. Athens cannot change. It can no more change than deny itself.

The ideology of rights based entitlements results in a permanent and growing underclass. A welfare system that only supports needs over time produces more and more needy people. To get what one wants and needs, one must be more needy. That is the inevitable outcome of humanist, rights based ideology.

The disgust of modern Athens is that it makes the lifestyle and mentality of the underclass rational and reasonable. But its prevailing ideology and religion mean it cannot do otherwise.