...that the manager of the USA team, which was to play England first in the championship, should tell his backs to insult Rooney and even punch him. Even for British culture, it is unusual for a newspaper to quote someone recommending a totally unprovoked assault. This is what sportsmanship has come to in Britain today. It is shameful and a complete contrast to the values that existed fifty years ago.

The attitudes of Rooney and Butcher contrast starkly with those of players in the past. A former senior referee, Mervyn Griffiths, was the referee at a particularly celebrated cup final in England in 1953. He wrote about football at that time, “Players were better behaved. There was more sportsmanship than gamesmanship in those days… There were not big arguments and demonstrations when I had the whistle. It makes my hair stand on end when I see players today surrounding a referee, hurling abuse and even laying hands on him. Such a thing was unheard of.”

This is just one example – and there are many – of how behaviour has changed in Britain in the past 50 years. The deterioration has been extraordinary.

And here is another recent experience in which I have seen a big contrast in behaviour.

When Poland joined the European Union, the British government, unlike most in the European Union, allowed unlimited entry of workers. Hundreds of thousands came. I met a lot of them. A large number worked in the building trade. In my home I had Polish carpenters, electricians, stoneworkers, general labourers and so on and on. It was an astonishing experience. Why? Because they were so polite. They turned up at 8am exactly. I could sometimes see them waiting outside so that they would not inconvenience me by being early. They worked solidly and well, taking only short breaks before leaving at 4pm. They never demanded tea or coffee. They never played radios. This was a huge contrast to the British and Irish workers I had known in the previous decades. They would often not arrive on the day they had promised and they turned up at any time that suited them. The played their radios and took offence if you asked them to turn the radios off. They would leave at any time, saying they would be back the next day but then they were not.

This huge contrast was striking but I drew no particular conclusions. But then I began to a day, a few years later, when I was rung by a radio station in Poland. The caller said, “Our government is planning to introduce a welfare state. Would you like to comment?”

I had already written my book about the welfare state in Britain but it took me a while to realise the implications of his question. We think of the communist states as the ultimate in left-wing rule. But actually, many of them did not have a welfare states anything like the British one. They therefore avoided some of our welfare state’s effect on behaviour. Poland, though Communist, had not had a welfare state like that of Britain. Could that be why the behaviour of its tradesmen was so superior to that of the British equivalents?

At this point, ideally, I would move on from a couple of anecdotes to give you undeniable proof that welfare states tend to damage behaviour. I would then explain exactly how and why the process happens. Finally I would describe what the policies are that would be accepted in a democratic country and would put everything right. Unfortunately I can’t manage this ideal. In Britain, at least, we are still at the foothills of the mountain in examining and explaining these things. Our academic community has been spectacularly slow and unenterprising in making any study at all. Perhaps that is because academic life in Britain has been nationalised.

All I can do – certainly in the time I have – is suggest the sort of way in which I believe the process works – how moral and decent behaviour can be undermined by welfare states.

I believe that it is in the nature of human beings for their characters to be strongly influenced by the circumstances in which they find themselves. Welfare states change our circumstances. They change the pre-existing state of affairs in which people’s characters develop. I suggest that in the circumstances prior to the welfare state, people were, in general, encouraged or obliged to behave in certain ways we which consider moral, kind or decent. The welfare state changed this.

To see how this works, I ask you to imagine you are living in 1890. You are neither rich nor terribly poor. You are working class. You are one of the majority.

You are in work but naturally you are aware that if you lost your job or became ill, you would not be able to work and get an income. You might become penniless. You, your wife and family might not have enough food. If the worst came to the worst, there would be the workhouse but you would not want to end up there. So what do you do? You, like the vast majority of industrial workers, join one or more of the many Friendly Societies that existed at that time. These Friendly Societies were an extraordinary phenomenon of 19th century Britain. They grew from a small base into the most widespread form of welfare provision prior to the welfare state. Other countries had different arrangements, some of them based on the church.

The British friendly society was a remarkable kind of organisation. You paid your monthly subscription and for this you were insured against unemployment and illness. In many of them you also would get the services of a doctor and/or a hospital if need be.

OK, let’s pretend you get sick. Members of the local branch of your Friendly Society come round to see you. If you are genuinely ill, they will sympathise. They will let you have the money you are entitled to. They may even help your wife in looking after you or looking after your children. These are men whom you see every month at the meetings of the friendly society. But if they see that you are in fact in fine health, looking after your garden or mending your bicycle, they will be outraged. They will not give you the money and your reputation will be shattered. You may even be expelled from the society.

You have a good reputation and it is extremely important to you to keep it.

Your job is also extremely important to you, too. Without it, you are in a very bad way. So again, your reputation is important to you. You need to have a good reference so that if you are not needed in your current work, you will be able to get another job. Gertrude Himmelfarb in one of her books on 19th century thinking and behaviour describes how working class men used to carry a reference in their pockets. They were proud of a good reference and would produce it as needed.

Again, without a generous welfare state, you really wanted to have savings built up in case of need. During the 19th century, saving developed at a fantastic rate. You saved to be rich enough to be able to afford to marry. You saved to help pay for the school fees or contributions which the thousands of private and charitable schools might require.

Since you know, from your own experience, how life can be uncertain, you also give to charity. According to one survey, half of the working and artisan class gave to charity on a regular basis.

I must say, I am beginning to like and admire you.

You are a man who works hard, who tries to ensure he behaves properly to keep his good reputation. You take responsibility for your family. And you give to charity.

Of course there were some awful people, too. But I can certainly provide some evidence that people were much better behaved in the late Victorian times and particularly in the first half of the 20th century.

The welfare state changed all this.

For a start, they destroyed the friendly societies. These were crowded out by compulsory contributions to national unemployment insurance and later by the creation of the national health service.

So what happens to you now – or at least in the recent past - if you lose your job? You might go onto a benefit for the unemployed for a while. But you might be advised by a friend or even the government agency that you would be better off going onto a benefit for incapacity. There has been a vast increase in the numbers claiming they have bad backs or suffer from depression. Whichever benefit you go onto, you will not be monitored carefully. No one in your area may know which benefit you are on even whether you are on a benefit at all. No one will care if you work on the side. The money will not be coming out of their pockets.

Let us say that a little later you become physically well and also able to find work, though the job would be low-paid. You may take the work and conscientiously inform the benefit office. But many do not. Some do not take the work. Some take the work but fail to mention it to the benefits office. This is called ‘working and claiming’.

It is very easy and because of this, you are tempted to take this route. You are tempted, in other words, to be dishonest. You may also, in order to justify to yourself your behaviour, develop a great sense of entitlement. “I deserve this money. I paid my national insurance when I was working. I even pay taxes when I buy things in the shops!” The tendency is to become, instead of like the late 19th century man, someone who takes responsibility for himself, to become instead someone who demands that the state take responsibility for you and yours.

Through this kind of process, the welfare state has created unemployment. Worse that this, it has created permanent mass unemployment. This permanent unemployment on a mass scale never existed prior to the welfare state.

Unemployment, in turn, has its effect on the psychology and behaviour of human beings. It is immensely depressing. Unlike divorce, from which one gradually may recover, the depression and alienation from unemployment tends to get worse, the longer it goes on.

One aspect of this depression – especially for young males – is a sense of alienation. This can lead to anger and willingness to damage things. Perhaps it can also lead to not caring what others think and being rude. There is some evidence it can even lead to crime among the young.

In Britain, there is another way in which the welfare state has damaged behaviour. Special subsidies in money and housing have been offered to those people who have children outside marriage. Not surprising to an economist is the idea that if you give people extra money for something, more people do it. So it is that Britain has become the European capital for children being born outside marriage.

This has damaging effects on the women involved, the men and also the children. Not in every case, of course. There are many individuals who manage very well. But on average, lone mothers tend to be more depressed than those who are married. Government figures show among the other disadvantages the women endure are that that they are more likely to hurt or injured than married mothers.

The men, finding they can get away with it, are more likely to go on being promiscuous and fathering other children whom they will also not look after. The men therefore go without the socialising effect of marriage and of caring for a family.

But the children are the worst affected. There are many figures to show this. Here is just one: the sons of lone parents are 2.7 times more likely to truant from school. That is after adjustment for the socio-economic status of the parents. They are also more likely to become delinquents.

So the intervention of the welfare state in parenting has, in sum, caused underachievement, incivility - including crime -, alienation and irresponsibility.

One further factor has been the mass creation in Britain of what is caused social housing. This used to mean the creation of vast housing estates, many of which still exist though fewer than originally because a remarkable number have had to be destroyed because they became so awful no one wanted to live in them. This social housing may have caused bad social effects in many ways. Initially at least, and perhaps still, they have disrupted families. People may be given accommodation a long way from their parents, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. They lost a close support network which surely was socialising in its effect.

In addition, the large council blocks were ones in which no one owned large parts of the property and so felt no responsibility to maintain it in a good state. Many blocks became places that were frightening at night and even in the day time. The maintenance was poor, leading to broken lifts. They became ideal places for gangs to roam.

To this list you might like to add a few more factors that are more speculative. Now that people feel that healthcare and education are free, the importance of earning a good wage and being careful with your money has automatically been reduced. Similarly, for women, when choosing who will be their mate and keep the finances going when they are bearing children, the importance of finding a mate who appears reliable and hard-working has gone down. It does not matter so much if the man is a ne’er-do-well. The key issue may just be whether she fancies him. So there is less advantage for a man who wishes to attract a female in being a reliable earner.

So what have we got, in summary?

Prior to the welfare state, the circumstances of life created a lot of pressure to be responsible and to work , to have a good reputation and to save.

After the welfare state – or the British one at least – benefits allowed the creation of mass unemployment, which is alienating. It made mass fraud in unemployment very tempting and easy which encouraged dishonesty as a matter of routine. It possibly encouraged crime as well. The benefits in Britain also encouraged lone parenting which caused further alienation for all three parties – the mother, father and child and there is data to support the idea that the children are more likely to become delinquent and then criminal.

Then it created social housing which broke up the social support and civilising effects of family. They also created places where nobody was responsible for shared areas and these became havens for gangs and places of intimidation.

Put all these together and you have a recipe for the de-civilisation of a country. This is what has been happening in Britain, I believe. Other countries have their welfare states, but few have gone as far as Britain – or perhaps have done it so badly. Few have suffered effects as serious as Britain. Other countries should take Britain as a warning and hope they do not create a culture which gives rise to footballing ‘stars’ whose behaviour is like that of Wayne Rooney and whose newspapers quoted former players suggesting that punching an opponent would be a sensible thing to do.

(Some of the material in this entry was taken from The Welfare State We're In.)