The Welfare State Destroys The People It's Supposed To Be Helping
As a society, I think we should care for the mentally ill, the seriously disabled, and the elderly and infirm. These are people who have no hope of getting a job.
However, we ruin lives by paying young and able-bodied people to not work. And a big part of the reason we do it is not to serve the people we're paying welfare to but to serve a massive system that employs countless handlers, along with support systems employing researchers and processors and accountants and others.
Brendan O'Neill writes at The Spectator/UK:
The growth of welfarism in recent decades, the replacement of economic vision and the creation of new wealth with a colossal system of state charity and therapy, has terrible consequences. It dents individual ambition, and corrodes social solidarity. When people are invited to rely for their every financial and psychic need on the distant, faceless state, then they're less likely to rely on their own volition and on the support and kindness of neighbours and friends.Welfarism is a classic good intention turned hellish: in the name of helping people it actually weakens both individual pluck and community zest.
...Some people say, 'But welfare benefits is not a huge part of government spending!' This is true. It accounts for somewhere over 20 per cent. Or they say, 'And old people get most of it!' This is also true, and I think it is quite proper: the generational jihadists who moan about pension spending don't seem to realise that old people who have worked or child-reared all their lives deserve society's help in their twilight years, and that this is massively different to giving state largesse to fit, young 25-year-olds.
But my concern with welfarism is not how much it costs the government but the costs it has for community life, public spirit, the self-willed individual. Welfarism should be radically rethought not in order to save a few billion quid but in order to reverse the state's spread into communities and to repair the self-belief and independence of working-class and poorer sections of society.
...Both the right and left are failing on welfarism. The right ought to oppose it in the name of shrinking state interventionism. And the left ought to oppose it for the reason that many working-class institutions did oppose it when it was first being developed in the early twentieth century: because it makes people unproductive, and rips them from the society they live in, and because we should have full employment not paternalistic handouts.
The end result of this right/left failure is acquiescence to the rise of a new feudalism: millions of middle-class people employed by the state to look after millions of poor people. It is a scandal. It is domestic imperialism.
I don't know how things are in the UK, but given that line about 'pensions' I suspect they are the same as here in the US. Mr. O'Neill sounds like the real generational warrior. He wants all those young people off of welfare so more can go to the elderly.
In the US welfare accounts for over 50% of the federal budget. (Yes, SS and medi are welfare). The best solution to welfare at all levels I know of is to transfer from a defined benefit to a defined contribution. People hate it. They don't know how much they will get each year. But that uncertainty is key. It drives people to take care of themselves. It also increases program stability. As more pile in there is less to go around, which then encourages those who are capable to find other options. Beyond the benefits it brings to recipients a defined contributions program also prevents the program from destroying those who are paying for it. This limits the damage welfare can do to the productive economy.
The reality is simple. No one can predict what the future may hold. Having government promise a stable future payment is damaging both to the recipient and those taxed to pay for it.
Ben at November 29, 2015 11:57 AM
I don't know why anyone would call Social Security welfare, it simply isn't true. I am now drawing Social Security and I've been paying into it since I was 16. It is my money, not the government's.
To those who complain that I might draw out more than I put in I say you don't understand how money works. There is a concept called the future value of money. If I invest my money I expect to receive my money back plus interest. I expect if the government takes my money on the pretext of giving it back to me later I still expect it to draw interest. It is only the government's gross inefficiency and ineptitude that prevents Social Security from making interest and thereby growing its assets.
Social Security is not a government entitlement as some claim. For over 40 years I was forced to pay into it, I had no choice in the matter. I repeat, it is my money not the government's.
As for Medicare I paid into it as well and I continue to do so, $100 per month. How is this 'welfare'? Again, I have no choice as to whether or not I have it. I can choose different options, but not whether I participate or not.
If I had the opportunity to put the money I paid into Social Security and Medicare into private insurance and annuities I would be drawing well over $100,000 a year and have much better coverage for medical care.
Steve Moyer at November 30, 2015 11:57 AM
Sorry Steve, but you are flat wrong. SS is welfare plain and simple. The money you draw out comes from taxes paid by other people. The money you paid in went to other people. You have no property rights. You have no account. This has been well established by the courts. The money was not invested. There is no future value. There was no interest.
As you say, the program is not voluntary. Neither are taxes for welfare programs. Many people compare SS and medi to ponzi schemes. And they are correct. All welfare programs are also ponzi schemes.
It doesn't matter how many times you say it. It is not your money. As you note, you didn't have any choice in paying it. You don't have any choice in receiving it. You have no control over it, hence it isn't yours.
Ben at November 30, 2015 12:36 PM
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