The Benefits and Burdens of Social Security

Abstract

Before we can begin to discuss BI we need to have some understanding of the existing social security system and why it is this aspect of the welfare state which attracts perhaps more controversy than any other institution. The benefit system has to be debated under two headings. First, there is the ‘technical’ heading which involves examining how benefits are delivered to people: this is the purview of specialists, experts and ‘insiders’ of one form or another; second, there is the ‘social/moral’ heading which involves analysing why the system does what it does. Therefore, we have the mechanics of the subject and the ethics of the subject. Obviously, any discussion of social security which fails to incorporate each of these headings will be both misleading and incomplete and the purpose of this chapter is to introduce the mechanics of the system to those who are new to social policy. We must not forget, however, that the controversy which this subject generates derives from what I have termed its social/moral aspects because, even more perhaps than health care and education, a system of social security resembles a mirror which society holds up to its collective face. The mirror may distort, and society may try desperately to see what it wants to see, but the reflection is there somewhere nevertheless.