Hey, what have you done for me lately? The next time you are inclined to cheer the rhetoric of Old Liz Warren, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Robert Reich the other stars of the left, ask yourself how we have come to achieve tens of millions of Americans on some form of government assistance and yet have not changed the percent of the American population living in poverty. The answer lies in the statement by Senator Moynihan below.
We are not shrinking the poverty population, we are increasing the population that comes to rely more and more on government and others. Opportunity is not dead, rather more and more Americans are caught in the entitlement trap which blocks progress by sucking away initiative, self-reliance and responsibility. This is not about ignoring those truly in need, it is about making great swaths of America dependent on others.
Before you dismiss what I say or criticize this view, please read the entire article linked below. Look at the numbers for SNAP, disability Social Security, tax credits, health insurance subsidies, single parent homes and births and more. Is this how we define progress?
We are giving out more and more fish while taking away the fishing poles. That is a trap and the road to mediocrity for America. We are losing our spark, our drive, our sense of achievement.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a lifelong New Deal liberal and accomplished social scientist, warned that “the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it but what it costs those who receive it.” As a growing portion of the population succumbs to the entitlement state’s ever-expanding menu of temptations, the costs, Eberstadt concludes, include a transformation of the nation’s “political culture, sensibilities, and tradition,” the weakening of America’s distinctive “conceptions of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and self-advancement,” and perhaps a “rending of the national fabric.” As a result, “America today does not look exceptional at all.” – George Will: The harm incurred by a mushrooming welfare state- Washington Post
While the following may sound harsh, there is a great deal of truth in the message and I think our current state proves it, except now we have greatly expanded the concept of “poor.” Help the truly needy by all means, but don’t create a dependent class comprised of half of America.
Old Ben had it right.
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. – B Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor (29 November 1766)
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