Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

This question applies to the plight of those who have and those who have not in today's mainstream society.

The scenario takes on added significance when you consider matters pertaining to welfare to work schemes and other government initiatives that attempt to address the myriad of problems that plague vast swathes of the UK. In this case let us consider the relationship between cause and consequence, the chicken or the egg. Which comes first and does every action lead to an equal and opposite reaction?

Public sector bodies in all their many forms create a climate wherein which the third sector [those bodies that are involved in charitable organisations] can exist and thrive. They in turn rely upon the funding provision allocated to them by the very same public sector bodies. This dynamic contributes nothing in the way of solving issues that are faced by the much-maligned socially excluded members of UK society. Instead of providing a solution to a problem this dynamic has become a feature of why in the words of development economist Micheal Lipton why poor people stay poor. Endemic poverty is not just down to individual/collective choice, its not down either to alien cultures, values or practices. It is all down to systemic failure, something that is apparent in the world of finance, that has exposed the fractures that have been evident in UK society for decades.

The underclass, lumpenproletariat, kulturegemeinschaft etc have all been part of political thought since the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe. There has always been a suspicion that should these members of society become organised and active that they would seek to compromise existing power elites. This suspicion holds true when considering that public debate on key issues like immigration, crime, unemployment, poverty and race. Public discourse is shaped by those who are interested in maintaining the existing social structure; where matters of complexity are always reduced to throw-away soundbites. This in turn shapes public opinion and has a great influence on the way in which communities integrate into mainstream society. By conflating issues like race and crime, by reducing complexities into throw-away soundbites those in power are guilty of manifestly subjecting 11.4 million people in the UK to a life of poverty.

Philosophers considered what came first: the chicken or the egg? Cause or effect? It is evident that when considering the plight of Somalis or any other ethnic minority community in the UK, there is a case that those in power have deliberately shaped the world that we find ourselves in. It is now up to us to challenge them and influence change.