Three generations of welfare recipients are enough

In Buck v. Bell, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously commented "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." The Daily Mail reports on a similar problem with "Three generation of welfare recipients" in the UK. Just a simple set of economic incentives at work here, well, maybe not at work for them. Having read the Mail for years, they may be some dramatic license but if there is even a remote chance of 6 million Britons living in households where nobody works and instead lives off government benefits, that should be enough to fear.

Another article points out another problem:
...inequalities in the tax system mean that those receiving welfare who find work face punitive rates of taxation as for every extra pound earned they lose up to 90 per cent of their benefit.

Given that "social mobility has not improved since the 1970s, despite substantial increases in benefits" in the UK, is it really a surprise that LBJ's "Great Society" has yet to take hold? There are now massive perverse social, political, and economic incentives against people working. Perhaps, instead of looking for that next great program to solve the problem, it is time to consider whether giving people money for not being able to work incentivizes them to want to work at all.