Benefit Fraud in Old Europe

For over a century conservatives have struggled against the welfare state’s claim to be “helping people.”
But the problem about helping people is: what if they are lying? Here’s an article about benefit
fraud in Sweden written by an Iranian immigrant,
Nima Sanandaji.

Nima relates how the Swedish welfare state shovels money at beneficiaries, and how it really doesn’t
pay to be responsible and work. There is a presumption of helplessness:

Social security secretaries assumed that the people that they supported had no sense
of responsibility. Also, they were responsible to see that each person had enough money to live a
decent life at all times. If you told them that you had spent all your money at the beginning of the
month and didn’t have any left, they gave you some more. If you told them that your children cried
every day in want of new toys, they helped you.
If you told them that a neighbor had stolen all you clothes, they helped you.

The system might have worked half a century ago when people still possessed a strong work
ethic. But now people are responding to the economic incentives in the system. If you can only earn
five percent more after earning a college degree, why bother?

In Britain, according to
James Bartholomew in The Welfare State We’re In, the government estimates
that the incidence of fraud among people claiming “benefit” ranges from 10 percent for the
disabled to 23 percent for the unemployed and 27 percent for single parents.

There’s got to be a way to make this into the great political issue of the age.