When people come to be more reliant on the state than they are on each other, community bonds fray and social solidarity falls into disrepair. When the struggling mum looks to the state for help, rather than turning to family, friends, neighbours, the end result is that she becomes more isolated from her community. When a 17-year-old school student short of cash turns to the state for a weekly handout, he never really develops skills of self-sufficiency or dependency on friends and neighbours. When young men looking for work know that the state will sustain them for long periods of time, especially if they make a performance of being “ill” or “depressed” at the dole centre, then their instinct to work becomes frayed. The old healthy working-class habits of pulling together, “getting on one’s bike”, offering one another work and advice have slowly but surely – and tragically – been replaced by the “helping hand” of the ever-watchful state. People start to rely less on their own wits and mates, and more on the faceless keepers of charitable cash.
It is soul sapping.
It has debilitating effects on the “other end” as well:
It destroys the sense of community of the “doing ok” or well off. It relieves them of being involved. They figure, well I’m taxed to pay for all of that, so my job is done. It saps virtue. It removes the burden on the well off to pitch in and help the people having difficulty – or even NOTICE them. It disconnects the well off from the people who need some help. It cements the notion that it’ s government’s job, not theirs.
Dickens understood this:
Scrooge: “Are there no prisons? ……. And the union workhouses – are they still in operation? …… I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish sir, that is my answer. I help to support the establishments I have named; those who are badly off must go there. ”
When I talk to libs or socialists and they scream that people should be taxed more to help the needy – they usually add something to the effect of “After all, what kind of civilization are we?” Not realizing that extracting money at the point of the gun makes neither the government nor the taxed, virtuous.
It’s been well documented for years that Americans tend to give more to charity than welfare-state Europeans, who are taxed out the wazoo and naturally expect that the government will take care of it. As America becomes more of a welfare state, I expect that the numbers will gradually equalize.
For a view of the end result of the welfare state, look no further than the native reservations in Canada. It is truly soul destroying for any who stay. Life itself becomes cheap.
Thing is, even if you have the narrow focus of keeping the socialist state running, you need both money and to spend that money effectively enough, so that your programs continue to function. That’s going to require reform of some sort anyway.
The welfare state is a criminal activity. The fact that we allow it says something devastating about the world today and ourselves.
Adults wouldn’t allow it.
Another part of the “entitlement” problem is that people begin to feel that they are entitled to whatever they want. They extend the process from getting free/subsidized food and shelter to other areas. When this happens, we get a fairly large segment of the population that believe they should get what they want, when they want it. It manifests itself in things like the fights and near riots we saw a week or so ago when the new Jordan basketball shoes were released. Large groups of people who said: “We deserve these shoes” confronted other groups of people who believed the same thing, leading to violence.