Conservatives and Republicans are
constantly vilified as heartless, evil monsters when they propose austerity
measures. My liberal friends often ask me, “How can you put someone out in the
cold when they have nothing to live on?” It doesn’t help that conservatives
usually don’t make their own case very well either. The top argument in favor
of cutting welfare payments is often that there is some “welfare queen” who is
cheating the system and loafing around on others’ tax dollars. Mitt Romney
recently exacerbated this misconception when he said (as out of context as it
may be) that he “doesn’t care about the very poor,” because they have a safety
net. I feel it’s important for Americans to know that not only is it the most
economical plan to cut public assistance (or even eliminate it entirely), but
it is the most moral as well.
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| Get a man this excited about fishing, and he'll feed a community...? |
The old adage goes that, “If you
give a man a fish, you’ll feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish,
you’ll feed him for a lifetime.” No other quote perfectly synopsizes how I feel
about poor relief quite as well as that one. By subsidizing poverty, we are not
helping to eliminate it, but rather, we are perpetuating it. Those receiving
the payments are the true victims. They never get the opportunity to practice self-reliance,
and therefore become just another cog in the machine that results in roughly a
third of those on welfare being comprised of second generation recipients. And
still, 15% of the country remains below the poverty line, even as big
government doubles-down on its initiatives.
Believe it or not, welfare is not
that old of an institution in the United States. It was prominently introduced
by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935 to combat the Great Depression. The new
government expansion eliminated any need for private-sector companies like the
Women’s Christian Association and the Charity Organization Society, which had
existed to do the same job. Even with this act of “compassion,” the U.S.
suffered through unemployment above 20% for the rest of the decade. We will
never know what might have happened had FDR been willing to put his trust in
the free market and the good faith of American individuals and charities.
That brings us to the largest
misperception about what would happen without welfare. Many seem to think that,
without help from the government, the streets would be filled with homeless
people, slowly starving to death. But in reality, we would not suddenly see Americans
en masse, in the streets begging.
Without the government to bail them out, it is only human nature for people to
do what is necessary to live and prosper. Instead of sitting back while working
minimal hours and waiting on a government check, a man might realize he’d better
look long and hard for a second job if he wants to keep his electric on. As a
result, he would gain life experience he would have never had otherwise, and
would improve society as a whole.
As alluded to earlier, not everyone
would be able to prosper on his own. And that is where soup kitchens, food
banks, private charities, and churches would come into play. It is well known
that Americans are some of the most compassionate and caring people on this
planet. With citizens now having more faith in the tax system and better
knowing the way in which their money is being spent, not only would they feel
more inclined to help, they would also have to pay less in taxes, resulting in
them having more discretionary income to give to the charities that help the
poor. Citizens would no longer have to worry about someone “cheating the
system,” or think that they should hold their money when someone asks for a
little help, because the government should have them covered. By eliminating
welfare and other public assistance programs, we would save our government
billions of dollars, and create a better society, where every American can
live, prosper, and better him or herself.
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