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We also live in a world where people will do anything to get by on nothing.
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Yeah.....ya know though I think most people actually do want to work (bear with me)..
When society sends large numbers of people a message that they are worthless and allows the market to create large pockets of unemployment coupled with low social mobility, that's a recipe for creating a subculture that feels it is *thinks how to phrase this* at war, or under attack from the wider culture. If that sub culture continues for long enough and a new generation is born to that sub culture, then you have a recipe for a sub culture that sees itself as separate and distinct from the wider community. That's when people begin to see the protections that are still left as something to take without putting back.
The answer is to exert enough controls over your economy so as to not produce ghettos of poverty and social exclusion. In the event that a country has already produced such ghettos you are faced with (the way I see it) two distinct paths of action. You can either a) become ever more strict in how that help is regulated and debarr as many people as you can, reducing the levels of protection as a way of making it even more unappealing in order to drive people to find work; thereby increasing the sense of social exclusion and 'attack'. Or, b) you
increase social protections whilst simultaneously trying to apply pressure and incentives to business to employ at home rather than sending jobs to Mexico and the Far East; alongside that you try to actively engage those communities in dialogue and make the justice system less brutal in the way it deals wth non-violent criminals (thereby removing some of the sense of being literally under attack by the economically active classes).
The problem with b) is that this solution would require more than a generation to reintegrate the sub-culture into the mainstream culture. The problem with a) is that it further alienates the two cultures from each other, creating an ever wider gulf and a siege mentality within the sub-culture; and resulting in the phenomenon of wealthy, gated communities existing within a short drive from housing complexes where simply walking down the street is a dangerous thing to do.
I believe that b) has the potential to reintegrate the cultures of the middle class and the cultures of the long-term, unemployed over a couple of generations resulting in a culture where, as in the mainstream, people want to be a part of the employed world.