Dignity and dependence

Quoted by Damian Penny from the book The New East End by Geoff Dench, Kate Gavron and Michael Young

....the whole moral order had become inverted by the emphasis placed by the state on individual need. For if what one gets out of the state is determined by need, rather than by what one has put into it, then dignity has gone out of citizenship. Dependency is encouraged, the principle of reciprocity has gone.

(via Damian Penny)