Category: Welfare is Theft
The Cost of Bad Intentions
Shriver and like-minded policymakers designed programs far more ambitious than those of the New Deal liberalism that had characterized the Democratic Party since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election in 1932. Though the New Deal vastly expanded the government safety net, it still recognized a connection between work and upward mobility and viewed government’s role as that of a temporary helper when someone was truly down and out. The officials behind the War on Poverty, by contrast, saw the poor as powerless, crushed by economic and cultural forces that could be overcome only with massive government help. Instead of temporary aid, welfare would now be a right, which the poor were entitled to receive, and benefits became far more generous, so that, by the late 1970s, welfare payments and other government aid now brought in about as much money as low-wage work.
Read the whole thing.
Source: The Cost of Bad Intentions
The Intoxicating Effects of Socialist Benevolence
These folks mean well. They seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Inequality outrages their sense of justice. They regard conventional habits of behavior as so many obstacles to be overcome on the path to perfection. They see tradition as the enemy of innovation, which they embrace as a lifeline to moral progress. They cannot encounter a wrong without seeking to right it. The idea that some evils may be ineradicable is anathema. The notion that the best is the enemy of the good, that many choices are to some extent choices among evils—such proverbial wisdom seems quaintly out of date. The result is a campaign to legislate virtue, to curtail eccentricity, to smother individuality, to barter truth for the current moral or political enthusiasm.
For centuries, prudent political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom.
The Constitution was written to ‘secure the blessings of liberty’ not equality. That’s why Democrats hate the Constitution.
Yes, it Is a Virtue to Reject Charity – Jeffrey Tucker – Liberty.me
Once you accept the largesse, you have a political investment in continuing it. Your loyalties gradually change.People justify this based on observing how much they are paying into the system. It pillages them with every paycheck, so they might as well get something back. No matter how much welfare they pay in, they can never take enough out to make the bargain work out equally. For most people, this is surely true.
Once you accept the largesse, you have a political investment in continuing it. Your loyalties gradually change. The state becomes your benefactor. Your sense of self reliance is compromised.
Do you see the vicious cycle? You are forced to pay in, so you have no moral resistance about taking out when the time arises. Pretty soon you find yourself part of the Bastiatian calculus: the state becomes the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at everyone else’s expense.
I see this in my aunt who is a staunch conservative in most things but still refuses to realize that Social Security is government theft — robbing others to give to her.
Source: Yes, it Is a Virtue to Reject Charity – Jeffrey Tucker – Liberty.me
Justin Welby reimagines a poorer and less free Britain
Economic mistakes permeate Welby’s ideas, but they stem from a deeper philosophical omission: Forced actions do not have the same moral value as actions which are freely chosen. It is more valuable for an individual to freely decide to pay for healthcare for someone who cannot afford it than for that same individual to be forced by the government to provide that care.
Exactly.
The United States Constitution was adopted to “…provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty…”. Note it is Liberty, not force, that is to be established. Force is evil and is to be used sparingly.
Source: Justin Welby reimagines a poorer and less free Britain
Just say NO!
The only moral obligation that the government (ie: We the People) have is to leave you alone to pursue your happiness.
It Ain’t Charity, It’s Theft
The Moral War
A few decades ago, exactly no one thought it was our collective moral duty to make sure everyone has health insurance and the same level of health care as everyone else. We understood that poor people had to rely on charity. In the 1970’s, the free clinic, where young doctors volunteered as part of the training, was a staple of poor neighborhoods, especially urban ghettos. No one thought they were a failure as a citizen because the blacks in the ghetto did not have access to world class health services.
Today, the political class starts with the assumption that only a thoroughly immoral person does not dream of a world where everyone gets health insurance and access to the finest medical care. Since this is impossible in a world of choice, the default assumption is that the state must take control of the health care system.
You do not have a right to anything. It is immoral to steal from one to give to another. That is government welfare.
It is the government saying you have a ‘right’ to something someone else has and using the police powers of the state to take it, keep a sizeable chunk, and dribble the rest to you.
This makes you immoral also as it is immoral to covet that which is your neighbor’s.
Source: The Moral War
Why is liberal California the poverty capital of America?
Apparently content with futile poverty policies, Sacramento lawmakers can turn their attention to what historian Victor Davis Hanson aptly describes as a fixation on “remaking the world.” The political class wants to build a costly and needless high-speed rail system; talks of secession from a United States presided over by Donald Trump; hired former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. to “resist” Trump’s agenda; enacted the first state-level cap-and-trade regime; established California as a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants; banned plastic bags, threatening the jobs of thousands of workers involved in their manufacture; and is consumed by its dedication to “California values.” All this only reinforces the rest of America’s perception of an out-of-touch Left Coast, to the disservice of millions of Californians whose values are more traditional, including many of the state’s poor residents.
Obvious. See Venezuela. Liberalism/socialism always ends badly.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Animal’s Daily Birth Control News | Animal Magnetism
Our poor – and mind you, we have little or no abject poverty in the U.S., only relative poverty – have cell phones, game consoles, laptop computers and microwave ovens.
Been saying this for years, ever since I visited other countries like Mexico, the Philippines, and Pakistan and saw real poverty.
Source: Animal’s Daily Birth Control News | Animal Magnetism