Making Welfare Work maintains that:

– half the population live in households on means-tested welfare;

– means tests paralyse self-help, discourage self-improvement, and tax honesty, while at the same time rewarding claimants for being inactive or deceitful. Means tests are the poison within the body of the welfare state.

Making Welfare Work challenges the current political orthodoxy that legislation alone brings about social progress. While the impact of legislation is pivotal, Making Welfare Work argues that a successful welfare reconstruction must reflect the role that self-interest, self-improvement and altruism play in human motivation. The book then proposes a gradual replacement of means testing by new forms of social collectivism as opposed to state collectivism.

Making Welfare Work specifically calls for the establishing of:

– a new National Insurance Corporation run jointly by members, employers and government;

– a Private Pensions Corporation to universalise private pensions to run alongside the national insurance pension;

– income support as a proactive agency of opportunity which serves as a life raft taking people from welfare to work.