The community’s responsibility for all has a long and varied history. A thousand years ago, among other things, the Gulating Act required the regional community of the region to provide the necessary help to people in need, if they did not have their own family to turn to. This imposed solidarity became the benefit scheme. Poverty at that time was brutal, but it was not a moral issue. It was not until the Reformation in the 16th century that poverty became linked to personal guilt and became an expression of failing work ethic.
Gradually, the leg scheme was replaced with public responsibility for those who needed it, and from the middle of the last century with more comprehensive and universal welfare services. But we took strict work ethic with us, along with almost as strict condemnation of those who for various reasons do not work.
[ Er sykdommen din kul nok til at du får hjelp? ]
Protestant ethics is still strong in Norway, and has become even clearer in recent decades. Through the NAV reform in 2005, the line of work was strengthened. Anyone who wants support from the community must first prove their work ethic. There are many good reasons for policies that ensure high employment. It is important that safety nets do not help to keep people out of work. Work and income are not only crucial to people’s lives, it is also what carries the entire welfare state.
Nor is the work line itself the problem. The problem is the strong belief that it is first and foremost the individual who bears the responsibility, who can get a job and a good life, if she just makes the right choice. In her opening speech to the Conservative Party’s national meeting in May, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said that “each one is unique. Both those who are doing well in our society, and those who have made mistakes». What she thinks about those who have gone wrong, but still do well, or who have not gone wrong, but still feel bad, is not known.
[ Jeg finner meg ikke i at du snakker sånn om meg, Stein Erik Hagen ]
The truth is that most people make mistakes, have bad luck and make bad choices sometimes. The real difference lies in how much impact this has on our lives. Do you have people around you who can pick you up again? Have you inherited money you can invest in something new? Did you have a secure upbringing that has given you faith that you can achieve something in life?
The NAV reform, the line of work and the individual’s increasing responsibility to get a job and, to put it with the Prime Minister, “do well”, is not something particularly Norwegian. These are ideas that are well placed in an international trend, as politics often are. The logic is taken from the eighties, the belief in the individual, in incentives and in lower taxes and cuts in public spending. In the United States, both major parties throughout the 1980s and 1990s helped to take apart broad welfare systems to save money and hold individuals accountable.
The truth is that most people make mistakes, have bad luck and make bad choices sometimes. The real difference lies in how much impact this has on our lives.
It was Bill Clinton who in 1996 was behind it Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. Or the line of work, as we call it. The only problem was that poverty in the United States increased. It has also done so in Norway. Both exclusion, wage differences and poverty have increased in the same period as the individual’s responsibility for their own destiny has become stronger.
In many ways, we have also made the shame greater. Researchers at OsloMet have found that Norwegian poor people are a little extra ashamed compared to many other countries. One possible explanation, say the researchers, is that we as a society constantly tell each other that with such a generous welfare state as ours, everyone has equal opportunities. He who does not then get it, well, she has to blame herself. But that is not true.
[ Langtidsledigheten er økende. Det gir grunn til bekymring. ]
Do not misunderstand me. I am a big supporter of getting up, getting together and doing my best. But many problems are too big to bear alone. We know that the chance of becoming an adult is significantly greater if your parents were also disabled. We know that poverty is increasingly inherited, and so is wealth. We know that children who grow up in families with little money miss important social arenas such as after-school activities and leisure activities, and that they are less followed up and enjoy school than their richer classmates.
More and more people are realizing this, and possibly the pendulum is therefore about to turn. With the global pandemic, it is simply quite obvious to most people that the individual cannot always control his or her own destiny. In the United States, President Joe Biden has introduced universal child benefit, regardless of whether the parents work. Here in Norway, the government had to turn around and still give the unemployed the right to holiday pay. More and more people are calling for a slightly softer NAV.
[ Jobber du? På en ekte jobb? ]
Everyone says they want people to work. No one wants poverty and big differences. The difference is perhaps most in who we think should be most ashamed when someone is still left out. The one standing there alone, or all of us who did nothing about it?
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