智慧人生篇章 第10期:社保困局（在线收听）

 　　But social security carries a risk: the risk that some will abuse the system, taking without giving. It's a risk we seem increasingly unwilling to accept. Attitudes are changing. Yet coming down hard on the unemployed also carries a risk. The risk that we penalise those who want to work but cannot in a time of high unemployment, when jobs are scarce in one part of the country and moving is not an option. Some out-of-work people in my congregation hardly have the train fare to get to somewhere else let alone the means of setting up home there.So, we want to bear down on those who won't work, but we know that the more heavily we do, the more we risk penalising those who would work if they could. So what are we to do? John Maynard Keynes said that the test for any new social policy should be that the final outcome must not only be better than what went before, it must be sufficiently better to make up for the pain of transition that some would bear.As we debate changes to welfare, I look for some overarching principle to guide me. My golden rule would be this: that I don't ask others to pay a price I in their shoes would find unbearable.