Welfare Mentality: Jumping off the Rodent Wheel

When looking for how people get welfare mentality we need to look at several theories of social learning and development of schemas. Within social learning there is a concept of "scaffolding" and "modelling". I will first explain these concepts. Scaffolding is the concept that the teacher is keeping their teaching slightly higher that the student. The term scaffolding comes from the building trade, where the scaffolding is always slightly higher than the building the builders are building. Just like this the teacher always tries to educate at a slightly higher ability of the student. Modelling is what kids do when watching their parents, friends, and what ever multimedia they use. So in essence kids copy behaviour to learn what "appropriate" behaviour is within the social network of the family. So you can see that these terms are not really difficult to understand, though these ideas are not really thought about unless you have been told about them. Now I need to add in to this the mind trap, aka schema. This is when we have one script of behaviour through life and when we want or need to change our behaviour or way of thinking, it is incredibly difficult to do without help or training. Because how can a person change when you do not know what to change into, which is like the mouse running on the wheel and told to jump off the wheel, and the poor mouse has never jumped off the wheel before. Likewise if a person has not been taught to get of a treadmill at speed, and accident is bound to occur, thus trepidation keeps them on the treadmill. So being stuck in the welfare trap I feel is not a matter of skills, knowledge, or abilities that one has, but an attitude that a person has developed of inherited. An attitude of poverty is developed when being bourn into poverty or if someone has been in poverty or some time. Not too many people have learnt to budget or keep a running account of the home. But people do keep all the bills in mind and in sight and try to pay them first and save every where they can. The attitude shift here is also in gratification delay, so one does not go out and spend all the pay in one day on what you want. This is why the bills like the electricity, rent, phone, and food gets priority and then think about buying things for yourself. Also an attitude shift takes place from that of self-reliance versus relying on others for survival. There is a theory that those that received pocket money from their parents in childhood are being taught to be reliant on others for their survival thus taught to have a welfare mentality (http://wealthisgood.blogspot.com/2011/05/allowances-create-welfare-mentality.html). Though it may also be that when people experience receiving welfare from an organisation break the self-pride and become accustom to receiving help thus view it as a source of income not welfare. It is also seen that pocket money and welfare does not teaches people the value of work and the association of the value of money. It is through work and the remuneration for the work that we comprehend that money is a token for work done, and that what we are trading is not money but work done in the form of tokens being money. It is a funny thing that a lecturer of mine at UNI stated that to traverse the red tape to receive welfare takes a lot of knowledge in what entitlements are available, skill in filling in forms, passions in dealing with government workers, and work to fulfil requirements. Though there are some that see that having a job is not advantageous to their life style. Being on welfare means that travel concessions are given, medication and doctor appointments are highly subsidised, rent and electricity is reduced, free counselling, and lots of free time to live. When a person works all this is lost. So in a summery from my view, a welfare mentality is an attitude of what you are willing to settle for in your life and how you wish to live it which represents the amount of welfare one receives. Granted this view excludes people with mental health reasons of being on welfare.