QotD: On adulthood and middle-class welfare

"In New Zealand, every citizen is a beneficiary... We are insulated from the full consequences of failure and hampered by a progressive tax and social regime that places a drag on success. The results are rising numbers of single-parent families, record levels of incarceration and persistent pockets of poverty and low academic achievement.
    "The response to this ongoing failure is ever-increasing intervention.
    "Today [marks the extension] of the Orwellian Working For Families programme, where middle-class parents receive even more government cash paid for by scrapping the last government's tax cuts.
    "We have become infantilised by this paternalistic managing of much of our economic life and are unwilling to embrace the freedom and responsibility of adulthood."
~ Damien Grant, from his oped 'Nanny state insulates us from the consequences of failure'

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