I read the headline of John Lloyd’s article in the FT Magazine this week, and I read it again, and again. Every time it seemed to make less sense than before:
Personal politics: There are times when the government is right to intrude into the realm of private morality
Regardless of what it is or is not right for the government to do, state intrusion means something is no longer a matter of private morality, or morality at all. It is certainly not private, once the state is involved. And regulation displaces morality. The capacity for choice is required for morals to play a role.
Reading the article was even more perplexing. To the extent Lloyd’s piece is about the Catholic/gay-adoption argument, it is as tedious as most of the vacuous discussion on the question. What engaged and enraged me were his premises. Mr Lloyd in this discussion treats the state as a kind of super person, possessed of its own opinions and moral sense, and that hectoring people who do not conform to those pseudo-desires is legitimate.
The morality of the welfare state depends on contribution and responsibility. Since some people don’t contribute and many are irresponsible, the choices of those who do contribute and are responsible is [sic] either to tolerate the free riders, refuse to pay for the effects of their irresponsibility or trust the state to educate them.
False dichotomy and all, this is the authentic voice of the New Labour branch of civic republicanism: ‘citizenship’, which is to say personhood, defined by duty to the state-collective. He notes entirely accurately that:
[T]he British state has progressively, and under New Labour very significantly, delved deeper into both the prejudices and the private behaviour of citizens, and sought to reform both […] ensuring that society as a whole observes the new order.
The square brackets there stand for the omission of two and three-quarter paragraphs, so apologists for the New Labour point of view may object that the last clause refers only to removing some disadvantages from homosexuals. But I am not being unfair. Ensuring that society as a whole observes the new order is the key to the project.
Despite there being other theories of the welfare state that I and other Samizdatistas might reject but that are less repugnant to human autonomy, we are now offered a Hobson’s choice: be treated as drone in the sense of a worthless idler – or become a drone in the Borg sense, actually not a fertilising drone but a sterile ergate, emptied of all capacity for moral choice.
What is the eGovernmental equivalent of soft hands, marking the unproductive drones out for hounding to destruction of their dronish identity? Inadequate contribution. Failure to comply with whatever compliance is required.
You will not will incorrectly. You will comply.
John Lloyd is one of those NuLab types who occasionally get favourable writeups from the right because of his support for the overthrow of Saddam, etc. Be in no doubt, however, that he is the enemy. He is a communitarian, like the hyperventilating Melanie Phillips. and has no regard for individual liberty in any significant regard.
It is crucial to recognise that Blair gets a great deal of his inspiration from people like Lloyd.
I agree it is important to recognise them. But I disagree that Lloyd is a communitarian – though I do think Phillips is.
Both communitarians and soi disant ‘civic republicans’ (of which neo-Conservatives are arguably a breed) are enemies of liberal enlightenment values, but they are different sorts of enemy.
As a reader and admirer for several years of both Samizdata and Melanie Phillips, I was surprised by these comments. Perhaps you could supply a link or two to support your assertion about Melanie’s communitarianism. I would expect libertarians, with good reason, to be wary of communities, but as Samizdata itself demonstrates, groups can, in the right circumstances, be greater than the sum of their parts.
David, I think communitarian is another example of choosing an inappropriate but popularly acceptable term for something that if labeled accurately would be far less popular. See this concurrent thread.
While Samizdata is a form of community, it is a coopertative one that meets on private property. Not to be confused with a collective one that meets on public property, or a ‘communitarian’ that collectively decides who will meet and on who’s property.
Did that make sense? Hhmmm… Not sure.
In a different by related “Pay Attention to Me you Fools” moment, The CBS morning news anchor was chastising the American public for ignoring such important news as last week in Iraq, the continuing embarrassment called the City of New Orleans, and the ridiculous Scooter Libby trial in order to “obsess” about the life and death of Anna Nicole Smith. She said that we ignore the events surrounding those people who are truly important to our lives and waste our time watching irrelevant train wrecks.
“There are of course different views, often passionately held and argued for, about how to run the world economy. The debates are usually conducted by American professors of economics, with guest appearances by George Soros. The differences between them, however, are quite minor because everyone seems to agree that there is no fundamental alternative to globalisation.”
Yeah, well okay Mr. Lloyd, and I’m sure you have the inside scoop on that all the way to the top, but how far did Anna Nicole fall?
This is pretty much verbatim from ITV news in the UK:
“Anna Nicole Smith set out to be like her idol Marilyn Monroe but after a string of failed relationships it all ended in tragedy”
The morality of the welfare state depends on contribution and responsibility. Since some people don’t contribute and many are irresponsible, the choices of those who do contribute and are responsible is [sic] either to tolerate the free riders, refuse to pay for the effects of their irresponsibility or trust the state to educate them.
Er, “choice” number 2, “refuse to pay” equals a prison term. I suspect this “option 2” is in there to make it seem like people have some control or liberty, but it is a sham. If you reword it to the reality:
The morality of the welfare state depends on contribution and responsibility. Since some people don’t contribute and many are irresponsible, the choices of those who do contribute and are responsible are either to tolerate the free riders, refuse to pay for the effects of their irresponsibility and be imprisoned for non-payment , trust the state to educate them or join with the free-loaders in collective irresponsibility and systematic theft.
Mid,
I didn’t link to the original article since it requires an FT subscription. Those with one can go to Ft.com and search for John Lloyd.
Kenneth,
The British media, on the other hand, has obsessed all day about one David Cameron having tried cannabis as a schoolboy. The public and politicians are united in good sense for a change, and coudn’t give a damn.
“The morality of the welfare state depends on contribution and responsibility”
The morality of the welfare state is based on the idea that failure bears a horrific cost out of all proportion to the sin involved – people who did work hard and did make sacrifices and yet ended up in the poorhouse, or worse. (And there was worse – the poorhouses and asylums were charitable foundations that did great good, relatively speaking.) The basic idea was for us to all buy the safety net while we had the money, because any one of us might be the one to need it later.
The problem with the idea was that they did not understand at the time that the only reason many working class people worked so hard and made such sacrifices was not for desire of the common goal, which they believed was out of reach for them, but for fear of the fall. Take away the fear, and they cease to work.
And further, as the standard of living rose dramatically, so did expectations. Once you were grateful to have enough to eat; now people feel deprived if they don’t get to go on foreign holidays or own a TV and video recorder.
This problem could probably be solved in any number of ways. The market solution would probably be some sort of insurance scheme, with freeloading regarded as insurance fraud. Or to take the statist line (yes, yes, I know…) they could become government employees on minimum wage, guaranteed job security but required to do useful (if uneconomic) work for it. Significant projects, both great and small: going into space, or irrigating the deserts, or teaching, or nursing the sick and dying (and thereby freeing their relatives to do more useful work).
Their approach instead was first to ignore it and let the protests against the freeloading build, and then to try to exert control over the protestors. They firmly believe in the morality of providing a safety net; and therefore see the protests against the results as immoral and to be opposed. People tend to see disagreements as ‘us and them’ with only two possible options. Intelligent alternatives that short-circuit the entire conflict require imagination.
On the whole, I’m more pleased to live in a society that can now regard owning a car, fridge, and TV as essential than I am distressed by the injustice of not all of us having done the work making it possible; so of the options offered, I prefer option 1. But it is human nature to resent freeloaders, and human nature that when you see something wrong you want to fix it – by force if necessary. In this, the government necessarily represent a strong current in society who think as they do.
Welfare is in some ways much like freedom. It is distressing for those who have worked and sacrificed so much to achieve it to watch people use their freedom to try to destroy it. Do you tolerate such people and their actions, withdraw your support for freedom in their case, or trust the state (or constitution? Or ‘the People’?) to force a respect for freedom upon them?
It’s been done. With predictable results.
Ms Phillips appears to think Etzioni is a liberal, at least in 1997, when he was (pace her remarks here) actually rather fashionable, she did. She is still keen on duty and responsibility in a prescriptive sense, and in particular derives them from group values in civil society. Makes her communitarian conservative by my reckoning.
It is by no means the worst thing to be. Communitarians may be uncomfortable with exotic lifestyles, but they are pragmatic and don’t have great zeal to impose the perfect life on others. I’d much rather live in Melania than Blairistan or its more theocratic cousins.
Mid,
🙂
Yes, I said I know. (Although I was interested by the link in your linked article to the CCC, which Wikipedia suggests did seem to work.)
Actually, I was thinking of thinking of stuff like NASA in the US, and comprehensive schools and the National Health Service in the UK – famously inefficient, and yet generally more popular than the dole. The point is not that it is the right answer, but that it is at least a better answer than paying people to do nothing. The problems mentioned with the WPA were not with the principle, but with the choice of projects considered ‘worthy’. Again, a problem that can potentially be solved by means short of shutting the thing down, or stamping on the critics.
Yes, we may well be better off without statism, but given that we’ve got it, how can we make the best of it?
Like I said, instituting freedom inevitably results in freedom for ‘freeloaders’ like Socialists and Statists whose actions work to destroy it. Is your answer to delve into their personal beliefs and morality and tell them they can’t believe as they do? That they’re not allowed? (I’m not talking about governments here, I’m talking about the people who vote for them, or who infest the internet.) Or should they be compulsorily re-educated? Of course not.
I was agreeing with the original argument; that the moral arguments for the welfare state do not in any sense justify intrusion into people’s private beliefs. And that even in statist terms the state’s solution was less than ideal. I was simply pointing out that there is a real problem and a genuine moral issue being addressed here, and that it is more constructive to offer workable alternatives that are better, if we have any. And perhaps whatever answer we are proposing to having Socialists in our society could also be applied to irresponsible and non-contributing benefit claimants… 🙂
Nothing new here – a trace of the same old Marxism:
The Communists stated explicitly that one of the main tasks of the state (controlled and guided by the enlightened communist party) – was to create the “new communist man” … a man devoid of selfishness, that works only toward the common good.
Nothing new, nothing strange in John Lloyds words.
David Roberts, perhaps I was being a bit harsh on M. Phillips, but I think the label communitarian sticks. She is fiercely opposed to liberal laws on things like drinking hours, drugs, marriage, divorce, homosexuality, etc. She is not a reactionary, and she is admirable on issues like the rights of women.
I often agree with some of her foreign policy views and views on the Islamist threat but I find a lot of her agenda to be pretty authoritarian and she is certainly not a small-government liberal. I have not read her singing the praises of entrepreneurship. However, she has been pretty sound on the Greens.
I think part of the problem is that she tends to write as if in a vicious temper the whole time. It can be rather wearying after a bit.
Pa,
As a transition phase, perhaps even a very prolonged one, I’ll take this plan over make-work plans the pull people out of the labor pool and make them unavailable to the free market, leave them beholden to politicians, and place tax paying businesses in competition with projects paid for with their own taxes.
Pa,
I would have thought the “market solution” would be to allow the market to raise the funds via charity for the safety net.
The problem with freeloading is that the system funds the creation and nurturing of the next generation of freeeloaders. I believe much could be done if those on welfare were not given additional resources above thsoe already being received, if they enlarge their family. E.g. single person on jobseekers allowance has a baby. unemployment benefit can continue, but no increase in benefits, one-off payments, queue-jump for apartment etc. They remain on their existing “income”.
An additional problem of freeloading is that if an individual decides they want to accept it, why should other people be forced to also pay for that? It is down to the old issue of spending other peoples’ money.
A further issue is the “right” they have – a right comes with an obligation just as a North comes with a South. If a freeloader has a right, the obligation lies not with the State, who is just the pimp, but the taxpayer. The taxpayer has the obligation, yet has to pay. The freeloader has the right, but has no obligation (not even to behave in a civilised manner, another story). If the link in a true market/charity setup existed, the right would belong to the giver – the right to withold, and the obligation would be to the receiver, the obligation to be honest, decent and sincere.
While we have the abomination that is the welfare state in its present form we will have ever growing numbers of utterly ungrateful freeloaders. HG Wells was wrong, the lazy Eloi would be the ugly creatures feeding on the hard-working Morlocks.
Guy’s article was very good. We must all obey the “new order” – these collectivists are impossible to parody.
And, of course, the standard stuff about welfare state taxes (money taken by the threat of violence) being “contributions”. Would the Financial Times man also describe money spent on the Iraq war as “contributions”?
Now for the History Stuff.
Much of England and Wales (although not Scotland) has a sort of “negative income tax” (i.e. subsidies to wages paid for by taxes) before the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834.
In the few decades (in started in the village of Speenhamland in 1795) it existed the system of wage subsidy exploded in expense and had many other bad effects.
Gordon Brown has brought back the principle with his income tax credits, and there is a simliar concept in the United States – a welfare scheme dressed up to look like a tax rebate.
It is a welfare scheme because many people get more “income tax credit” than they pay in income tax.
People have to be very good at filling in forms (and other such) to get this welfare money, so the really desperate do not get the money or find that they are hit in some way (such is the welfare state).
On Workhouses.
Unlike Alms Houses, Workhouses tended to be government institutions.
Under the Poor Law Act of 1723 local parishes were allowed to say to poor people who were able in body and mind “if you want poor relief you must go into a Workhouse”.
Some parishes followed this policy and some did not.
Under the Poor Law Act of 1834 elected Poor Law Guardians (who had not existed before) were under an OBLIGATION to demand that people who were able in body and mind go into a Workhouse – if they wanted poor relief (unlike the scheme that J. Bentham wanted – the Poor Law Guardians did not go out looking for poor people and drag them off to the Workhouse).
Whether it was worse to stay outside the Workhouse than go to one is a moot point – as I have not heard of anyone ever being turned away from a Workhouse (other than in Ireland during the horrors of the late 1840’s).
Of course many people who were able in body and mind still managed to get “out relief” – the system never worked quite how it was meant to.
However, the basic principle “if you want taxpayers money, and there is nothing physically or mentally wrong with you, you must go to the Workhouse – and you will not like it in the Workhouse” did work fairly well (as well as any government scheme works).
People only went to the Poor Law Guardians if they were in real trouble – as these Guardians (elected by the local property tax payers) could always turn round and say “well if you want to be supported by the ratepayers you had better report to the workhouse”.
Of course people were poorer in the 19th century because the economy was more primitive (they did not have the stuff we have) not because their “system” was worse than ours.
Indeed, with our stuff, people in the 19th century would be many times richer than we are (due to their lower taxes and less regulated society), – and if we only had their capital goods we would have economic breakdown and mass starvation.
There is no way that modern levels of taxation and regulation could be supported by 19th century capital goods.
TimC,
Yes, there is a sort of “market” charity in the form of the worker’s cooperative, common before the welfare state, in which workers would voluntarily band together and agree to help other members who fell on hard times. It’s part way between insurance and charity-proper. I’ve no doubt there are many other variants possible too. But to work, there has to be reciprocation and enforcement of the rules. And they suffered from problems of scale – small enough for honour and unofficial justice to bind meant too small to spread the risk very far. It really needs contracts.
The issue with penalising those with more children is that it is the children who suffer most, and as they’re not responsible for the problem this is unjust. If there was a way to give the money to the children and not the parents…
In a way, children are the classic example of the problem, a stage we all go through. No money, and no skills with which to earn any, you are forced to rely on your parents’ charity until able to fend for yourself. And again, it is the the parents who have the obligation and are forced to pay – neglectful parents will be chased by the state.
Until children get the vote, I don’t expect the politicians will see any reason to do anything about it. I wonder what changes would be made if they ever did?
The workers’ cooperatives – friendly societies – were voluntary and no OBLIGATION to pay out existed AFAICT. Thus, I have no issue with them – quite the reverse. The issue if they existed now would be with a dispersed contributing workforce, one that could not check up on other contributors. Alas the Welfare State has killed them off.
As for kids, Pa, yes it is unjust, but those who have the children are those who are responsible for that injustice and should be accountable. You sound as if you are falling into the trap of “the children!” – i.e. you are being, basically, blackmailed by those who produce children knowing they cannot support them and so you are sucked into feeding the tumour. That road eventually leads to where we are now.
If you make it clear there is no financial gain for EXTRA children (preferably taught at age 11), then the incentive to pop a sprog and get on the Councill housing list disappears in a flash. It is not perfect, just the “least worst” solution. Often that is all that is open to us. I am quite certain Welfare is just one of those areas (though I am happy to be corrected).
Most children have worked (normally from quite an early age) in every society in the history of the world before the mid 19th century. Then in a few counties (such as Britain and some of the States of the United States) some people became upset by idea of children working.
As Britain and some States in the United States were richer than any other societies had ever been in the history of the world, it proved possible to actually ban children working (other than for a few hours a week in some token job). But I do not see why this new development should be considered a great moral principle.
Workless children may be a nice luxury (I tend to like the idea – it makes every family look as if they are aristocracy, or at least gentry), or the ban may have a bad effect on children and familes (it may even explain why almost all Western nations are not producing many children – they are now all cost and no financial benefit to the family). But great principle it is not.
On obligation.
I agree that parents have an obligation to feed their children – even if they are incapable of work and always will be (say they are disabled in body and mind).
This IS a basic princible to be found in the Jewish and Christian faiths (and other places) and makes us different from Classical Civilization where children could be legally done away with and tossed away on rubbish heaps (one of the marks one finds when a town in the Roman Empire has become Christian is that one stops finding the bodies of babies in the remains of refuse).
However, with the modern change in the attitude to abortion (whether rightly or wrongly) we have moved part of the way to Classical Civilization, but it is still considered wrong to kill (or starve to death) children after they are born. Whether this will also change in the future I do not know.
The line between morality and legality is a difficult one.
Most Greek city states did not regard homosexual acts as a matter for the criminal law indeed in some cities it was not even regarded as imoral (as long as one was using a beardless boy).
The Roman attitude was more hostile, but they (for the most part) were wary of using the criminal law in such matters.
Jews and Christians regarded homosexual acts as vile in the extreme and most (although not all) also regarded them as matters for the criminal law. The minority faction holding them to be on the other side of he divide between “sins and crimes” (the idea that there is a difference between the two has always been much developed in Christianity than in, say, Islam).
I hold to the view that homosexual acts should NOT be a matter for the criminal law (although I do not hold with “antidiscrimation” laws, or special government ceremonies either).
Children.
Clearly (at least to the Jewish and Christian view) killing a child is both wrong (as in a sin) AND wrong (as in a crime – i.e. it should be punished).
The question Pa Annoyed raises is whether parents should be punished for simply not feeding their children – or kicking them out into the street.
The Jewish and Christian view would be “yes they should be punshed – they brought the children into the world and they have a natural law, as well as a moral obligation to feed them”, but another view has been that as long as other people are allowed to look after the children (i.e. they are not locked up in a dark room somewhere – or exposed the birds and beasts as the Greeks and Romans did), the parents should NOT be punished.
I tend to the Jewish and Christian view – but some other libertarians do not agree with me (and these people are neither unintelligent – nor wicked in their personal dealings).
Thanks, Paul.
The question I was interested in was to draw out the details of the justification for forcing or never forcing other people to support those unable to support themselves. By drawing a parallel between the subjects of welfare and children, I had hoped to get to the nub of the reasoning without all the preconceptions and historical baggage associated with Socialism. The nanny state does tend to thinks of the underclass as like children, at least in the abstract and at a distance, which is where the metaphor came from.
So why do we advocate parents being forced to support their children? Is it economic – to train workers of the future? Or precautionary – because they will one day have the power to pay us back for mistreatment? Or a matter of responsibility – parents being the cause of children being in the situation they are? Or human rights – that people have the right to the means to life irrespective of what they can offer in return? Or moral hygiene – that anyone who doesn’t want to support children is a wicked moral aberration deserving of punishment/correction? Or natural justice – that people should not suffer unless they have done something wrong? (I.e. that bad things should only happen to bad people.) Or what?
Because all of those arguments are ones I’ve seen Socialists apply to aspects of the welfare state.
The Greek and Roman concepts of natural law and the Judeo-Christian absolute moral were not ones I had considered, for which I thank you. But then, the Bible also says one should pay one’s taxes and obey one’s rulers, and I’m pretty sure the Romans did too, so I’m not sure how much help that actually is. 😉
My last little point was a question I’ve often pondered – why does nobody ever propose to give children the vote? They are, after all, citizens of the state, and affected by its laws. We do not apply more than the most minimal criteria on adults that they should be mature, intelligent and informed in their political views, so I do not see how we can exclude children on such grounds. (And I seem to recall such arguments were also put forward against universal suffrage for women and former slaves.) I’ve seen the argument that they’d naturally vote as their parents told them, effectively giving parents more weight. But the same argument applies to many adults for who various group loyalties outweigh their own considered opinions.
I don’t expect it would make things any better, but it is hard to see how their choices could be any worse, either.
So what is the reason? Why shouldn’t children be allowed to vote?
I should note that I’m not making any attack on people’s beliefs here. These are philosophical hypotheticals and thought-experiments, to sharpen one’s ideas. Don’t take it seriously.
Pa, the idea of children voting in the government elections is preposterous. But like you point out, not any more preposterous than what we are doing now. If there is any consolation, look at Australia. They apparently force people to vote who personally know enough not to.
I like this question because it is perfectly valid and forces opponents of children voting to admit things they would rather not. Namely, that ultimately nobody is qualified to know how somebody else should be spending their money and living their lives. In our family the justification for parental authority was “If you are going to live in our (mom’s and dad’s) house, you’ll do it by our rules.” And those rules extended to personal behavior as well.
They even let one of my older sisters pack her bag and run away when she was about 3 or 4 years old. Of course, they followed her down the street until she changed her mind and then welcomed her back home. We were taught these rules from such a young age that I never expected anything else.
The ultimate ideal is for whoever is picking up the tab to decide how the money is spent. This was the basis of landowner voting etc. (Way more Paul’s shere of knowledge than mine.)
Pa,
I do not think it is a question of forcing or never forcing people to support their own children per se – in fact I consider that a false dichotomy if expressed in that way.
Yes, I am being simplistic in not getting into the legal discussion (frankly I am not qualified), but I feel that it is wrapping what is basically a simple issue – if you have kids the default is you are responsible for them and to them until they reach the age of majority (an interesting term in itself…for another time). This is not “forcing them” as no “force” is applied. Maybe you mean what I stated, but the term can be warped by those with malice or certain agenda to peddle.
What is wrong is that others are made responsible – forced indeed – in terms of funding for the third person and their children – responsible but with no authority.
Mid hits an important point – those who pay should have the say.
“This is not “forcing them” as no “force” is applied.”
Tell that to our beloved Child Support Agency.
Yes, most people voluntarily support their children, just as most people voluntarily pay their taxes and support the welfare state. But if people choose not to, and after all, one would expect people to be much more economically successful if they don’t have to pay all the childcare bills, then this is seen as a matter for police and prison. Parents are as much forced to care for their children as workers are forced to pay taxes.
I’ll admit there is a legitimate exception in the case of people who put their children up for adoption. But even though the parallel is not exact (you can declare yourself bankrupt to avoid paying taxes, but it isn’t the same), I think it is still close enough to be used to explore the issues. That it is the ‘default’ assumption isn’t good enough – the default assumption is you pay your taxes and pay welfare. Why is it the default? Why have we always done it that way? What is the moral, political, or economic case?
I think it is necessary in order to define your metacontext – you can question and reject the common assumptions of other political positions, but to develop an alternative paradigm you need foundational principles and precise definitions of your own that you can rely on. The exception proves the rule, in the original sense of the phrase. You may choose to say that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and move on, but that would at least be explicit about it.
It really wasn’t meant to be all that hard a question.
If it helps, my own personal position is that I’m in favour of a limited welfare state, but that it should be strictly bounded to essentials. And in the same way, I’m in favour of minimal standards for childcare, but that anything beyond meeting basic needs is a matter for parents. That still has its hard emotional cases, but it is a place to start.
Thanks Pa, for a very interesting and measured response.
To say we are forced to look after our children is like saying we are forced to not murder. One could say we are forced to pay taxes, however, because if we do not, the taxes are taken from us by force or we are imprisoned and the taxes are still taken from us by force. Yes, there is a high level of cooperation and consent in the issue of taxation but this is a dangerous parallel as we have been “frog boiled” into our present position. I do believe in taxation as the least worst solution, but in a far smaller state and with much more direct democracy as in Switzerland. We may not be forced to pay taxes per se, but we are forced to pay for things we do not wish to withih that, if only because in the bundle that is tax and the state we do wish to pay for other aspects like defensive armies or sanitation.
You cannot force someone to look after a child, but you can use the law to remove the child if necessary and/or imprison them for damage done to the child. I see that as not forcing someone to look after the child, it is the implementation of the consequences of action/inaction upon another person, as with murder.
In the case of the CPA, I see this as about an obligation between the parents. One parent breaks the agreement. How best to do this is another matter. Civil courts are messy. What is the “least worst” solution? Truly, I am unsure. It would be alot easier if it were not for the emotional chess-play that goes on in regard to access and the bias towards one partner or another or when additional people enter the equation.
Much can be done in my view if we begin at the beginning by not encouraging the people who are least capable to have children to start with, e.g. not providing any additional benefits (money, housing) to people who have a child or more children. People who FALL into poverty for genuine reasons (death of partner or injury/illness) are another thing entirely, though if they expect to increase their family when on benefits, the same should apply.
That way women are likely to be far more rigourous in selecting their mate and if they do become pregnant accidentally, adoption immediately after birth is not an issue from the demand side – newborn babies are in great demand. Of course people will wail that the mother has “the right” to look after the child herself – I woudl say that the mother does not have the right to demand that others pay for it.