A NATION OF THIEVES
Review by Walter E. Williams
To date, welfare programs have reduced America's GDP by about $4 trillion. In a new book, Edgar K. Browning details how it happened -- and why we shouldn't use the government to steal from one another.
Go here to read the full article:
http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/080811-williams-welfare-state.php
It sounds as if this book drives home a key point about government welfare programs that always escapes the moral calculus by which so many misguided people on the left deem them to be good endeavors: the majority of the money pumped into these programs never reaches the poor.
Instead, most of the money is siphoned off into the wallets of people employed by the welfare system. And then what happens? Poverty doesn't disappear. And if you were employed in "solving" the problem, why would you want it to end? To ask that another way, if your employment involves solving poverty, you're unemployed when it does get solved, aren't you? Thus the perverse incentive to make people poor, keep them poor, and to keep taking money from everyone else in the name of the poor so government employees can stay employed.
The alternative is private charity. Why pass your money through the government to help the poor, when government will take most of it, when you could just give it directly to a poor person yourself? Doesn't that make more sense?
10 comments:
So private charities don't have employees? I know that quite a few utilize volunteers, but not 100%. Administrators, accountants, admin assistants, etc. are all needed and used at private charities. Money donated there goes to their overhead just as taxes go to welfare overhead. Both also use brochures, information packets, a screening process for beneficiaries of the funds, websites thus servers, etc.
I use the government welfare system, and it's not great for getting a hand up. However, Pell Grants are a fantastic help, and are provided via taxes. No doubt that program has administrators as well. :-)
"when you could just give it directly to a poor person yourself?"
Do you need my address?
;-)
I do agree with you that the system is not working as it should, but I think we disagree about the methods of fixing the situation. Maybe. Probably.
"Money donated there goes to their overhead just as taxes go to welfare overhead."
I never said you have to go through an alternative organization, I only said private charity - that can be just you (in fact, it always is, because organization or no, the source is private and so is the choice).
But there's one major difference that makes all of the difference between the halves of your dichotomy that's worth pointing out: if a charity wastes my money on exorbitant salaries, frivolous publications, etc., I can make sure they don't get any of it.
If the government does that, I go to jail if I try to make sure they don't get any of my money.
The point isn't costs and benefits, actually. It's choice. I don't have any choice at all when it comes to government redistribution; I have a gun pointed at my head. Consequently, that's why the title of the book is what it is.
Hrm, we should chat about this one day in more detail.
Granted you don't have choice when it comes to government redistribution, but what is the alternative? Seriously. If taxes are eliminated and the poor rely upon charity alone, how does that work nationwide?
The book quotes a loss of GDP of $4 trillion, does it also discuss how much of that $4 trillion is paid to Americans in the form of health care, food stamps, and cash assistance? What is the alternative cost to the American public if those families, individuals, and children did not have health coverage or food? Cash assistance is incredibly low, trust me on this, but the alternative for not having it in times of deep need can be incredibly high.
The alternative is freedom and voluntary charity, and that is a much more compelling argument than the false dilemma/scare tactic of accepting forced redistribution or chaos.
One thing that is always left out in that false either-or scenario is the unseen cost of government in everything as we have it now. Strip away much of the unconstitutional role(s) the government has taken on - such as income redistribution - and costs of many things will plummet. At the same time, $4 trillion in lost GDP would instead be an additional $4 trillion in an active economy that employs people. Employment and wealth creation is a much more powerful force for social mobility and poverty elimination than any government program or even private charity (not to mention that there would be more individual wealth available for charitable donation and fewer people in need, magnifying the effect).
I'm not doing scare tactics, btw, just trying to figure out the logistics. Some areas of the nation are more economically pressured than others. Some areas have higher incidents of certain diseases. Some have lower educational standards. Etc. I'm just trying to figure out how it would work.
"Employment and wealth creation is a much more powerful force for social mobility and poverty elimination than any government program or even private charity."
Hrm, can you give examples of this either nationally or worldwide and how specifically employment and wealth creation were solely responsible for the elimination of poverty without any government influence whatsoever?
btw, gonna shut up now! And am hoping my curiosity isn't coming across as snarky. I'm just trying to figure out your p.o.v.
You may not intentionally be employing scare tactics, but you are using an argument that at its base is a scare tactic, i.e. "if we don't do X then there will be chaos." It's a form of false dilemma with a particularly nasty emotional hook.
As for meeting different needs in different areas, why does government necessarily have to do that? Are they really the best for the job? Katrina was handled beautifully, wasn't it?
I also never said that wealth creation is "solely responsible" for eliminating poverty, I said it is more powerful than government or private charity. I also did not say "no government influence whatsoever."
What kind of government is in place of course has a big influence on the state of a nation's economy. It's makes a tremendous difference if you have a government that protects the individual or a government that is a tool of robbers. One need only look around the world at the constant failure of socialist and communist societies versus more free states to verify that. As such, government that gets out of the way of its citizens and does not look at them as milking cows can help eliminate poverty a great deal - by letting people handle it themselves. Look at the former eastern bloc countries, in particular the Baltic tigers. They are all the proof anyone ought to require.
Anyway, where I am coming from and my point of view is very easy to sum up: I want to be left alone and I am sick of people sticking their hands in my pockets against my will while they try to tell me and themselves that they're anything other than simple thieves. I want the involuntary mortgage that has been taken out on my life removed, I refuse to take one out on anyone else's life, and I am furious with people who constantly try to create schemes that would force me to do so.
"You may not intentionally be employing scare tactics, but you are using an argument that at its base is a scare tactic, i.e. "if we don't do X then there will be chaos." It's a form of false dilemma with a particularly nasty emotional hook."
No, no, what I'm trying to ask is about logistics. How does it work?
Stupid internets. Tone is impossible to tell, but when I say I'm curious, I mean it.
"No, no, what I'm trying to ask is about logistics. How does it work?"
Spontaneous organization. People can do stuff without government.
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