7 thoughts on “Work”

1. Alan Knight June 25, 2014 at 7:49 pm

   Mr. Dalrymple, a.k.a. Anthony Daniels, has written an essay for Hillsdale College’s “Imprimis”entitled “The Worldview that Makes the Underclass.” It is, of course, perfectly congruent with the worldview of Hillsdale College.
   In it, Daniels offers the viewpoint, based on his observations of England’s poor, that heroic addicts choose to be heroin addicts and the poor are poor because they choose to be; they don’t want to work. Hell, they don’t even want to clean up their government provided backyards. That’s government’s job.
   I suspect there is a measure of truth in Daniels’s observations.
   But where are his solutions?
   Moreover, where is the evidence that links all his observation to this conclusion: “By a mixture of ideology and fiscal and social policies, the family has been systematically fractured and destroyed in England, at least in the lowest part of the society that, unfortunately, needs family solidarity the most. There are even, according to some researchers, fiscal and welfare incentives for parents at the lower economic reachers of society not to stay together.”
   Daniels’s inference, amplified elsewhere, is that wealth redistribution is the root cause of all this social rot. Why work if it’s just going to be given to you, anyway? Why try to quit the heroin habit if it’s not really your fault, anyway?
   Daniels suggests that one of the three reasons “why we imported foreign labor to do unskilled work while maintaining large numbers of unemployed people. The first is that we had destroyed all economic incentives for the latter to do work.”
   Did it never occur to Mr. Daniels that paying working class people a living wage might go a long way toward solving all these problems? Enough money to pay the bills, take a vacation, put the kids through school? Enough to restore dignity to that despair-ridden drug addict? Enough to restore a sense of pride of ownership in one’s own flat? Enough to take the job that even-more-desperate Africans and Latinos take?
   Yes, Mr. Daniels is right: Fiscal and social policies are largely responsible. But it needn’t be after-the-fact wealth distribution. Try fairness in the first place. Try policies that stop exploitation of the working class. The remedy won’t be instantaneous. But it will come—a generation or two down the road—provided the families of Western civilization haven’t been ruined beyond repair.
   Got any better ideas?
   Yeah! How about another big war? That’ll straighten out these slackers, by gum.

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2. Bill McCubbery July 14, 2014 at 9:55 pm

   Mr. Knight’s suggestion of paying a “living wage” as a solution to any problem implies that the work done warrants that payment – otherwise it is just more Nanny State feather-bedding. By raising the minimum wage one creates unemployment and guarantees a hopeless prospect for the unskilled, unemployed youth .”One man’s pay rise means another man’s job”. Theodore Dalrymple has described accurately the psychosocial consequences of the dole mentality which, in the long term, proves fatal to self-respect and motivation to improve one’s lot in life. Knight’s criticism is divorced from economic reality.. Where do these wage increases come from? Taxation? Instead of subsidising idleness, apathy and waste would it not be better to reward industry, initiative and frugality? If you penalise those who work hard by plundering their savings why should they continue to strive? What a formula for setting up a fascist state!

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3. Matthew White January 12, 2015 at 5:49 pm

   I just wanted to point out that the links to the summaries of each book appear to be broken. For instance, the link provided for ‘The Wilder Shores of Marx’ is: http://blog.theodoredalrymple.org/work/the-wilder-shores-of-marx/

   This leads to a broken link page.

   The correct link should be: http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/work/the-wilder-shores-of-marx/

   Thanks, I hope this can be fixed.

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   1. Clinton January 17, 2015 at 11:59 am

      Matthew, thank you very much for notifying us. We will work on getting this fixed ASAP.

      Reply ↓
4. Jonathan April 18, 2017 at 9:44 pm

   Does anyone know anything about this book: “Migration : Multiculturalism & Its Metaphors”
   Amazon.com seems to have it incorrectly listed as a book by William Dalrymple.
   However, the publisher’s website says the author is Theodore Dalrymple (http://www.connorcourt.com/catalog1/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=380#.WPa_82mGOUk)
   And bookdepository.co.uk concurs.
   Publication date is May 2016, but I’ve only just stumbled upon it now. It’s another collection of essays, so it might not have much new to offer for veteran readers.

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   1. Steve Post authorApril 19, 2017 at 1:09 pm

      Hi Jonathan. Great to hear from you, and thanks for this comment. We didn’t know about this book, but yes, it does appear to be from “our” Dalrymple. It looks like it was published in conjunction with Dalrymple’s speaking tour of Australia at about this time last year. We should add it to our list of his books, but as you can tell, we haven’t exactly done the best job keeping up with them all.

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      1. Jonathan April 19, 2017 at 3:58 pm

         Hi Steve, I always appreciate the hard work you fellows put into this website – it’s the best reference for all things Dalrymple. I’ve got a foot and a half of shelf space in my library which testifies to your thoroughness – I believe it matches the sidebar here almost perfectly.

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