Suppose you have a child with special educational needs. Suppose the only school that could meet your child’s needs (as set out by their Statement of Special Educational Needs) was over an hour away (as can often happen). It falls under your local authority’s duties, who agree that they cannot provide a school within your area, to pay for transport for your child along with the essential carer who understand your child’s needs. Finally, suppose you’re very well off: should you pay for that transportation service?

You may think:

(a) you have to pay and that it would be wrong for you not to pay;

(b) that it would be good if you paid, but you aren’t obliged to pay (these

sorts of things are often called “supererogatory”);

(c) you neither have to pay, nor even would it even be a good thing for you

to pay (directly for this service).

I think I believe either (b) or (c); insofar as it could be (b), this supererogation is grounded in my thinking, were I to be rich, I should contribute more to the state anyway—and look, here’s an opportunity for me to contribute more—so in actuality it may be (c), with an additional clause that I contribute more generally. Why do I think this? Well, I think it speaks to how we conceive of the welfare state; and, we should conceive of the welfare state as offering a necessary set of services and goods that we are owed in virtue of our being members of that society. *

This case came up in the news this week during a discussion between two housemates on Celebrity Big Brother (I’m pretty sure that’s a first for the Practical Ethics Blog!). Katie Price (a former glamour model and now television personality) explained to Katie Hopkins (a former Apprentice contestant, now pantomime villain) that the state funds her son’s (Harvey) transportation and carer to and from school. Harvey is blind, on the autistic spectrum and suffers from Prader-Willi syndrome. Hopkin’s said, given Price’s worth (reportedly $40m), that this was wrong: “I’ve always held that if you can afford to pay for something you should pay for it and you shouldn’t rely on the government, I think that’s wrong.”

A lot of the responses on Price’s behalf have focused on how much Price, being worth as much money as she is, will have contributed already to the state through taxation. I’m not sure anything should turn on this. Consider, were Price not to be as well-off then she would receive more from the state than she contributes through taxation; this is the case for many people on median incomes with a depend family member, let alone all those less so fortunate. It seems wrong to say here, those people shouldn’t receive support from the state in virtue of their not having contributed more. So it can’t be something worked out through what you contribute versus what you receive.

Is it that receiving from the state is conditional on contributing at the least something? Well, again, I’m not sure it is. The issue is made a little more complicated depending on whether you cash out the service of transportation in terms of a benefit to the parent (who has contributed to the state) or the child (who hasn’t contributed). Either way, I’m not sure it matters. Suppose a child was left on the door step of a hospital; it later turns that they suffer from severe special educational needs and so will never formally contribute through taxation to the state: surely we owe this child support throughout their life?

I’m going to cut to the chase now and get to what I think—especially because what I take to be the strongest argument for (a), that one should pay, arrises in response to my suggestion. The debate (for me anyway) turns on what we conceive of the welfare state to be: one way you could see the welfare state is as a safety-net in place to catch members of society who fall and to provide for them while they try to get back to their feet. It would then be the case that Price should pay for the transportation service, since she (and Harvey) doesn’t need that support. I’m not happy with this view. I think the welfare state should be seen as providing members of society with a set of services and/or goods that they are owed in virtue of their being members of that society. And, plausibly, the structure (both, for the child and for the parents) offered by the service of taking the child to school is one of these goods. Some other candidates would be healthcare, education, housing, a basic diet (and, more contentiously, nutrition), well-maintained public spaces, out of work benefits (or, more contentiously, a basic income), etc. To be more precise, I think the service offered is grounded upon offering an education to every child—and, since the needs of a child with learning difficulties are so acute, the appropriate school may often be further a field from home. It could also be something like offering a structured support network for those parents of children with special educational needs. On this view it seems that being able to afford any of these services without the state’s support is not enough to ground an obligation to pay for them oneself.

The strongest objection against this sort of view would be one that runs as follows: that’s all well and good Joe, these services should be offered to everyone, and they should be offered to everyone purely on the grounds of being a member of society; yet, we’re under conditions of scarcity. We simply do not have enough money to fund everything—and so, plausibly, those services that people can afford themselves should be payed for themselves.

The charge is: under conditions of scarcity, those who can pay for certain services should pay for those services. There are two ways this view could be cashed out: either, it applies for all services or we try to rank the services which ought to be owed, and those that fare low on the list should be paid for. The problem with the first of these suggestions is that it would imply that were a rich person to need an expensive operation, then they should pay for that operation; they should also pay for their children’s schooling (assuming they go to a state school); and so on. Someone may reply, that’s exactly what I think. I shall come back to this below. Against the second way of thinking (the ranking view) I’m not sure it’s going to get us as far as we want: it seems highly plausible that the structured transportation of children with special educational needs is of as fundamental importance as many other goods that we would intuitively place at the top of the list; that is, I think everything offered is going to be too important. Why is everything going to be too important? Because these are the things, by the very function of the welfare state I have suggested, that should be owed to everyone.

Which leads me to my reply to the first point: the reply shouldn’t be, ‘in times of scarcity, those that can pay for services should pay for those services’; the reply should be, ‘during times of scarcity, those that can afford to contribute more, should contribute more.’ Receiving from the state should not be seen as conditional on how much you have given (or are able to give); rather, it should be offered in virtue of your needing it. As mentioned, we don’t say those that can afford more should pay for their own healthcare, their own schooling and should pay VAT on essential goods such as food or children’s clothing, in virtue of the fact that they can afford them. And so, if we can’t offer the full range of services that we think should be offered to everyone (viz., we’re under conditions of scarcity), then we shouldn’t make some people pay for some of the stuff themselves, we should make those that can pay more, pay more simpliciter.

* There is a separate question of whether I am owed these goods and services from my state in virtue of being a citizen, or whether I am owed them in virtue of being a human being, and yet the state is the most practical level at which to achieve this—I won’t address this question here.

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