Ann Coulter says welfare policies responsible for looting....

[Reasonable]

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

All things are relative in terms of rioting and social action. Just because migrants from the Dust Bowl were glad to get $5 a day from California farmers in the '30s doesn't mean people can't be livid about not getting health benefits on top of $10 an hour on a given farm today

Though these riots in particular had little to do with entitlements, however, and more with the general culture of hooliganism in Britain, which has to be something that runs deeper than any overt social engineering

Agreed that it isn't entirely about entitlement policies, but I think it's a huge part of the cultural picture. People who have kids they could never otherwise afford simply to collect more in child benefits don't exactly tend to be contenders for the Parent of the Year award. Also, entitlements... breed a sense of entitlement. That sort of attitude becomes pervasive pretty quickly once it sets in and doesn't just limit itself to the stereotypical "welfare queens".

I'd disagree it's a huge part of the picture.  The number of people cheating that severly - i.e having kids, etc. - is small compared to the number of people fairly using the welfare system in the UK.  I'm pretty sure the lingering effects of the class system and other much longer term aspects of British history, coupled with other more important more recent factors all have a larger effect than the welfare system.

I'd say the cheating of the welfare system by some is more of a symptom than a cause and also is more down to the system being open to cheating than anything else.  TBH I think any system that can be exploited will be, from the exploitation of of the UK's welfare system to the exploitation in the US of the overly deregulated and uncontrolled financial investment system.

In short, people will often exploit any social or commercial system for their own benefit if given the chance.

Based on data points I get the impression that we should be seeing a lot more rioting/looting in a lot of other countries if having a major welfare system was a huge part of the picture.

As a final point I'm fairly confident that in general UK citizens haven't been conditioned to be "welfare queens" at all in any pervasive sense.  Again, other factors in certain demographics have given rise to that situation and the welfare system just happens to be one of many systems such people will try and exploit.