Getting it right

摘要

Roughly 5m working-age Britons-13% of the total-subsist on benefits; 1.4m have been receiving benefits for nine out of the last ten years. As The Economist went to press the government was due to publish a new welfare-reform plan, designed to tackle this huge social and economic problem. There are, broadly speaking, two ways to get the jobless into work. One is to make life on benefits uncomfortable or precarious; the other is to make the prospect of work viable and appealing.