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Why is Government “Charity” So Toxic?
This is what James Madison was concerned about when he said, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
This is a central flaw of progressive politics and the welfare state. Charitable giving and helping your neighbor are worthwhile endeavors that help your community. You would think that if something as big as government, with its limitless resources, got into the business of charitable giving and helping your neighbor, then that would be really good for your community, right? But it hasn’t worked out that way.
Charitable giving starts with giving. That is, with individuals giving their money to a cause, of their own free will. Government welfare programs start with taking. Taking money away from people who have no choice in the matter. And then distributing that money as the government sees fit. This seemingly minor difference tends to create problems on multiple levels.
First, those whose property is taken against their will tend to become cynical and lose their enthusiasm for supporting their government when their tax dollars are spent in ways with which they disagree. If that money is being spent on common defense, or even highways, people tend to accept those taxes a reasonable price of living in a nice safe place. If that money is spent to support drug habits of single mothers who live in places that taxpayer has never been to, that taxpayer may become very skeptical about government as a whole. Creating cynicism among those who fund our government is not a minor matter.
The other problem is that those on the receiving end of this exchange view their newfound money differently that if their pastor pulled him aside after service and gave him $250 for groceries for his family because he was out of work. In that case, he knows that the people sitting in those pews are feeding his family out of the goodness of their hearts, as he had for others for years when he had a job. He becomes determined to get back on his feet as quickly as possible.
But those who receive government assistance are told that they are entitled to these payments; this is not charity. This is a legitimate government program, and they applied for it, and were found to be deserving of these payments; which means they deserve to have that which belongs to someone else. This is a dangerous precedent. I’m not a huge fan of slippery slope arguments – I think they can be overused. But telling someone that they have a right to the property of someone else is a doozy of a precedent, and where, exactly, does that stop? Those who decide where that stops are elected with 51% of the vote — so that the other 49% are in trouble, and they know it.
So they become even more cynical. This is a dangerous cycle.
Government is viewed as a scam, taxes are viewed as something to be avoided, and even those who love their country find themselves viewing their government with disdain. A government that suddenly became very powerful, because it now lays a claim to all the money of, well, everyone. And then how you vote suddenly becomes really important.
Mr. Sowell and Mr. Madison were right: our welfare state has cost us a lot more than just money. I think these problems will be difficult to repair.
Published in General
And thus begins the path of tax avoidance by millions of good citizens who(m) previously did their best to pay their ‘fair share’ on April 15. Then we’ll really see how much the Progs love their IRS, and oh boy won’t that be fun!?!
Speaking of which, you really should try slipping your Pastor the ol’ “holy ghost handshake” with a folded Grant or even (God forbid!) a Benji at least once every 5-10 years or so. May even pleasantly surprise them the first time or two.
The problem, I think, is that you are glossing over, well not even mentioning, a major flaw in the progressive thought process. See, the left think that when they ask for someone to pay “their fair share”, they are only speaking to the “rich.”
They imagine that the “rich” are those people who resemble Scrooge McDuck:
That is to say, those people who have hordes of money in a vault somewhere. Because that money is in the vault, it is unavailable to the common man. Or so goes the progressive thought.
Because the typical progressive is economically ignorant, they think that they can simply tax Mr. McDuck at some rate that won’t cause him much harm. They don’t realize that all tax is paid by the consumer, always. I think this distinction is an important one to pass on to them.
Another huge misconception is that the rich are stealing from the poor, as can be seen in the following meme:
The progressives have no concept of reality: the “rich” are not even fishing in the same stream as the poor. The more appropriate meme would show the government taking from the rich, and putting it in the poor man’s basket, while he sits and smokes a cigarette.
Anyway…
OP:
In a nation of laws, they are entitled to these payments because their eligibility (and thus entitlement) has to be written into the law or regulation.
Besides the moral hazard you lay out, this also contributes to ineffectiveness, as it reduces the ability of actual charity to differentiate the “deserving” from the “undeserving,” or between those for whom particular payments would be helpful versus those for whom they’d be unhelpful, which distinctions are often fine and difficult to define.
Your words are accurate but the ‘principle’ still precedes the misperception of ‘reality’ by the ignorant hordes.
Agreed. But the principle falls on deaf ears when they think they are just taking from a guy who won’t even know its gone. See what I mean?
@drbastiat,very well said, as usual. I especially like that Thomas Sowell quote, I don’t recall seeing it before; very apt.
As you say, government “charity” corrupts both the giver and the recipient.
Interesting word, charity. At least biblically, once upon a time it referred to acting in the way which was best for the other person.
Then that began to be translated in English as “love”, and charity began to be relegated to the provision of physical aid.
Nowadays charity is provided with little or no consideration of what is actually best for the recipient. I would propose that charity, absent a true knowledge of the other person’s circumstances, not overlooking how and why they arrived there, and some reasonable basis for understanding what will actually help them, is not at all charity in that original sense.
The government’s resources are not limitless. That is one of the left’s false assumptions.
Yeah, I was writing that from the perspective of the left. Sorry I wasn’t clear.
Remember, though, that capitalism won’t work because its a zero sum game. But government’s resources are limitless.
It can be confusing to small minded conservatives, but its really very straightforward…
Why isn’t it obviously apparent? Because of scienee
Why isn’t it straightforward? Most people automatically believe in the zero sum fallacy without thinking.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to dodge the slow creep of socialism because of the way our government is set up. The voters have voted for the politicians who enact these laws.
In Massachusetts, we have something called Proposition 2 1/2. It is a law against raising property taxes over 2.5 percent above the current year’s tax rates (2.5 percent used to be the accepted rate of inflation). There have been two benefits from the law: it has kept property taxes in check and it has forced towns to be more careful with their budgets and planning.
I wish we could do something like that nationally. It is an excellent way to force a national debate that involves the people paying the taxes as well as those receiving the benefits.
We have to accept the fact that politicians win elections based on the services they promise the government will deliver.
Government grows because it must constantly sell itself. The status quo is not exciting.
People about ten years older than I am used to talk about a standard high school course, which was put together by the high school history departments, called Problems (or Issues) in Democracy. I think this is one of those classic problems. I think that is the underlying issue that we need to address.
I think it was Thomas Sowell that invented the ‘Mic Drop’.
There’s a great deal of wisdom in what you wrote. A dear friend of mine whose father grew up during Great Depression, his father had died when he was 12 and he became ‘man of the house’ and began working along with his mother to feed and house his brothers and sisters. They were on aid but he said it consisted of staples:flour, potatoes, dry beans. We’re worlds away from hardworking, deserving situations like that and someone paying for a pizza with an EBT card.
I figured something like that. ;-)
Have we Republicans and conservatives been asking the wrong question? Is the right question, “What do Americans want?”
I think Donald Trump gave us the answer during the primaries in the New Hampshire debate that touched healthcare. He said this:
Trump understands something important about the American people: We don’t want to live amid suffering because we’re basically good people. This is not about the individuals. It’s about their family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors.
Conservatives can prevent further socialism gains by creating successful alternatives.
We have, it is called the free market.
I think a less regulated free market, perhaps almost completely unregulated.
I read an interesting book years ago which predicted that American doctors would end up practicing in Thailand to escape the regulations here. Certainly it shouldn’t be any more regulated than the food industry, which is also about life and death but which manages to produce and sell and profit from food for all budgets. :-)
The problem, of course, is that we are out there talking about easing regulations to make things better, and the left are saying we are throwing gramma over the cliff. And again, the young Bernie-ites think that paying for gramma’s hip replacement (which she’s gonna need if she survives the fall) with “rich” people’s money is just peachy.
When I changed jobs a couple years ago I considered working in Costa Rica. I got offers, and strongly considered them. I decided to stay mainly because I have family here, including kids in college.
That must have been a tough call. Costa Rica is a freak show of beauty.
It’s not charity when the government creates a program, that sets an expectation, that people “deserve” something, for nothing. Not only do those recipients not care where the money comes from (rich, poor, as long as they’re not paying for it), the government encourages people to stay on these programs.
I was on permanent SSDI for a head injury (insert joke here). When I recovered, unexpectedly, it took me several months to convince the SSA that I no longer needed SSDI, because I couldn’t go back to work legally if I was on disability.
I was told directly by a woman at the SSA that “it’s just easier if you stay on it”, and to give up ideas of going back to work.
This is an organization self-propagating. The culture of the organization encourages its employees to tell people to stay on entitlements, because the more people on it, the more budget they get next year, and the more likely their jobs continue.
We have created a slow-rolling catastrophic sequence of events that systematically destroys the individual, while making him or her a slave to the government’s existence, and demonizing the people who fund the leviathan’s existence out of the sweat of their own efforts.
We’re doing this to ourselves. We do not have the correct incentives that apply to politicians that apply to the rest of the real world. They are rewarded for spending more money, at the ballot box. This is flatly wrong, insanely irresponsible, and has resulted in $21 trillion in debt with over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, which is a fancy way of saying we can borrow and spend all we want until the one day when we can’t.
Then it all ends.
It was a tough call. My middle daughter went there on a school trip and loved it. I’m 49 years old. If I was 10 years older, I might have done it. And I still might – you never know what the future holds.
They told me that there are more Americans in Costa Rica than anywhere else in the world except America. I’ll bet it’s a neat place to live. But I’ll bet there are aspects of life there that would drive me CRAZY.
I’ve had patients tell me similar stories. Disability and other government programs want you to sign up, and they want you to stay. It takes a lot of determination and force of will to get off disability – I’m impressed that you successfully accomplished that.
And your comment is so very true. Our whole system is set up to fail. It’s bonkers. It can’t go on forever.
And you’re right – it won’t.
I particularly like this phrase:
You’re right – we are all slaves to the government’s existence.
The beneficiaries of these programs become slaves to these payments – they become dependent on them.
Those who pay for all this are slaves as well, as the fruits of their labor do not belong to them. They are working hard, but not benefiting from their own labor – someone else benefits from their labor. That’s a pretty good working definition of slavery.
So we’re all slaves. Great point.
Thanks for cheering me up.
Nothing is limitless. Every resource is scarce. Why can’t the left accept the most basic and True principle of economics.
We often fall into this trap of thinking the government has limitless resources, but those resources are only “seemingly limitless,” as we discover over time or by doing thought experiments to determine how money flows from how many to how many.
I’m not on board with this. I don’t believe any social workers ever use that wording or ever talk about welfare as a right. I think they more matter-of-factly tell a person in need of what is available that can help them. I think you’re choosing this word to up the angst for your post. No need. You’ve made your argument well enough without.
The resources are limitless for the United States given the role of the dollar, we just print our foreign exchange and it’s always possible to borrow another dollar until it isn’t which isn’t going to affect the person handing out someone else money today.
Of course some clerks and social workers handing out other peoples money refer to it as a right, “what they are entitled to” like health care, we hear it all the time.
The system is rotten and should be abolished. It’s purpose was to create dependency and Democrat voters and it has worked beyond LBJ’s wildest dreams. To abolish the abuses the programs should be moved to the states with rapidly decreasing Federal money and no federal mandates, some states will figure out how to take care of people who really need help or how to move them back to voluntary groups and churches which actually worked well.
What Dr Bastiat left unstated was the insight of his Uncle Fred Bastiat about the seen and unseen. The unseen affect of governmrent redistribution is a contagion that infects all who are involved in the transaction.